Bad backs and walks around the gardens.

So, I’ve been a bit quiet this week. I’ve unfortunately thrown my back out and have been trying to deal with our everyday routine while walking at a 45 degree angle. Needless to say that carrying around a 23 lbs wiggly weight is not an easy way to get a back healthy again.

But I’ve been doing better slowly and I thought I would show you a bit of what has been happening on our little plot.

The crabapple blooms are happy and healthy. We regularly have multiple bumblebees jumping from flower to flower, doing their best so we can harvest these sour little beauties for making jellies and jams.

Our beans are up and growing great! We have 2 types of heirloom beans growing this year. The rows you see here are Ireland Creek Annie beans, an endangered heirloom variety that we are helping save by saving and sharing seeds every year. We also have (not shown in this picture) a double row of Sunset Runner beans which are by far the loveliest beans I’ve seen. The beans itself is dark brown (almost black) with orange tiger like stripes. Next to the beans, we have are usual crop of Ethiopian lentils. We unfortunately can never really produce much. They are small pods with only 3 or 4 lentils per pod, but the beautiful deep lavender flowers attract so many pollinating insects that we add them to our garden every year.  We are usually able to collect about 2 cups of lentils and we save a handful for the next year and we’ll keep the rest for special occasions.

We’ve been having the most frustrating weather this week. It’s been climbing into the 20s (‘C) during the day but dropping down to freezing at night. So our tomatoes have been needing  cover. We’ve been lucky. Out of 32 plants we’ve only lost 2. Are squashes have not been so lucky. We’ve lost 4 of our 8 plants. Looks like a trip to the farmer’s market for more plants is in the plans for this week-end!

Our radishes on the other hand have been LOVING the cold. In the last 3 days they have doubled in size. We are excitingly watching for the first little jewels to be ready to eat!

Our potatoes have exploded! We will have to add some soil and add a level to the cages in the next few days.

I have happily convinced my mowing loving hubby to let part of our yard grow wild. We have a very acidic soil in which grass doesn’t grow very well. But wild flowers and wild strawberry plants are thriving and I would like to see them take over. So we have a deal : He can mow the front yard and around the house, but the rest is mine and the kids to run through and play. 🙂

Finally, I started many medicinal herbs from seed this year. Some are very slow growing (like agastache, lemon balm, purple coneflower and verbana) but others have simply exploded. Especially the chamomile and the calendula.

This week-end, the pepper plants, sunflower seeds and annual herbs are going into the ground. And that will be it for this year until late summer/early fall planting of greens to harvest until late fall. We’ve over-extended ourselves before and have decided to show a little more restraint this year and do it right. As we add garden beds over the next few years, we will increase our yield. But for now, we are still learning and choose to move slowly but surely.

Hoping all of you are having a wonderful week, I wish you a very peaceful day.