Despite the unusually moderate weather summer is in full swing and as you can see from the picture above so is the garden! The wall of greenery you see in the background are my cucumbers scaling the 6 foot yard fence. Everything is beginning to produce with the zucchinis and tomatoes being harvested daily. D and I are looking into canning and pickling recipes to handle all of them.
A zucchini blossomEggplant blossoms
Eggplants are the only thing we haven’t harvested yet. The poor plants have had to fight with giant tomato plants on one side and aggressive beans on the other and haven’t done as well as I’d hoped.
Eggplants are starting to show up, though
Despite how aggressively the beans are growing they aren’t producing very meany beans though. Only a handful every other day or so. Not enough to do anything with but throw in salads or eat as a snack.
These blooms better be beans soonCucumbers and beans climbing up the trellisA tiny cucumber and blossomFried green tomatoes, anyone?This was the complete haul for last Saturday
The harvest for last Saturday was 11 tomatoes, seven bean pods, two zucchinis, and a cucumber. The cucumber, tomatoes, and zucchinis we all be going into a bread salad that I’ll be enjoying tonight!
The last time I touched any of this stuff was more than a decade ago...
My parents came through Fourth of July weekend on the way up to Wyoming for their summer vacation. They brought up with them the last of my belongings that were at my childhood home. It was mostly art supplies. I don’t consider myself that creative and I certainly don’t think I have much talent. But, in my family I was always the creative one, the one with the wild ideas and the ability to convey those ideas through word or image. I took art classes through middle and high school and might have taken a quarter of figure drawing at one point in community college. Since then? I haven’t done any sort of creative work outside of the occasional writing and photography.
pencils, inks, erasers, etc...
Sadly, the one thing that my parents forgot was my old portfolio that has all the work I did in high school/college in it. That is still sitting in a closet somewhere in the desert. At least it isn’t outside where the extreme weathers would surely ruin the paper, chalks, oils, etc…
Black and white crayons, brushes, calligraphy pen, ink...
I don’t why I didn’t pursue art further. I had time in college to take classes. I must have thought that it wasn’t worth the time to practice at something I never considered myself very good at and so couldn’t do anything with later on in life. Yes, I realize how stupid that sounds coming from someone who got their BA in Classical Civilizations. I think another reason might be that I never had any interest in pursuing the craft through digital means… I like getting my hands dirty and feeling the paper beneath my fingers; and my parents didn’t have the money or processing power (this was the mid/late 90s) to get a drawing tablet or the software then in use. So, I sunk my time into other things: poetry and photography. I miss it sometimes. Now that I have all this stuff just sitting around maybe I’ll pick it up again… Who knows?
More pencils and graphites. Those might be water colors on the right?This is a surprising amount of spray paints and sealers...
If you would like to see some of my old creative work and new stuff as well you can check out my other blog: Fictive Funk. I’ll be posting up old sketches all this week and next!
Is what D got me on the fifth anniversary of our first date.
Stripped downItchy beard is more at fault that the razor is...
I’ve only cut myself a little using it so far! Besides a few knicks and scratches is worth the money I’m going to be save not having to buy disposable razors all the time.
D and I went to the local u-pick berry picking patch this weekend, Impossible Acres (I love that name if I had a farm I’d name it that too). Turns out it was a great time to go too! Both the raspberry and boysenberry bushes were heavy with delicious berries and they hadn’t been picked over dozens of times (we normally go later in the year and have to really work through the bushes and thorns to get a decent amount). Berries aren’t the only thing available at the picking patch. They also have multiple varieties of cherries, peaches, apricots, tomatoes, apples and pumpkins (those last two are not currently in season. You knew that, right?)
Rows of berry bushes, to the left are stone fruit trees
Most of what we got has already been used up in the making of smoothies, cakes, and for snacks. D and I are definitely heading back to Impossible Acres before the end of the season, I don’t know how many times. It’s just enjoyable to spend an early afternoon walking through a garden with D picking fruit as we go along. The amazing things we do with them once we get home aren’t bad either. Below are some more pictures from the excursion.
We made smoothies with all the boysenberries. Oh! and cake too
D picking some boysenberries (stop staring at my wife's ass!)
Bing cherries? What do I know? I'm no fruitologist
Who's that dashing, good-looking fellow picking cherries?
This cherry tree was literally being pulled down by the amount of fruit on its branches
