Early July Garden

The yard, left to right.

The grape trellis is starting to go up.

Poor strawberry bed, slowly working on weeding it when I can.

Still looks messy, but it’s really not as bad as it was.  Hubby ran over everything with the lawnmower so it’s not as intense.

Mowing down the asparagus ferns made a huge difference.  There’s a few little blackberry shoots happening by that pile of dirt (from the front where we put in the driveway addition) that I need to move sometime.  But in the old asparagus bed there…  we have some evil Canadian Thistle.  Those things are mean.  And yeah, I kinda want to Roundup the whole thing.  Given how anti-chemical I am, that should say something about how evil these things are.

First raspberry harvest of the season.  I let the 8yo and 6yo eat them because I didn’t want to deal with them at the time.

Garlic scapes.  Still need to freeze them, didn’t have room in the fridge at the time.  Quite a little haul though.

Second raspberry harvest of the season.  The 8yo and 6yo and 4yo were the ones that gathered this bounty.  Not bad, eh?  4yo is still learning about what ripe things look like, still a work in progress.


Lilies in bloom!  Yay!


The beans are starting to come up.  Around the weeds.  Need to get in there and weed.

Beans and cucumbers around the trellis, tomatoes that are slowly acclimating.

Progress, little by little

So…  hubby was flaming the weeds in the main garden bed.  He got a little happy with the flame thrower.  Whoops.  Luckily, he didn’t get all the tree, and I’m hoping it’ll bounce back by next year.  Was my Lambert cherry tree, too.


I stained these puppies all by myself.  The big screen is to use over the raised beds, the little one is to screen dirt into the wagon or wheelbarrow.  Sidenote, do you know how difficult it is to find decent work gloves for a 3-4yo?  Sigh.


First strawberry of the season!!  Yay!  Still need to weed out the evil clover in this bed, but hey, strawberries!

View of the garden from the patio door of the dining room.


Poor grape vine.  A new trellis for her is on our to-do list soon.


The herb bed.  Starting to get a smidge green.


My mint pot.  There aren’t even drainage holes in the bottom, so these suckers can’t escape.  From the fun.  Anyway.  Peppermint, spearmint (darn, I really much grow wintergreen to make root beer!), and maybe something else I can’t remember.

The future orchard.  Hopefully I’ll get everything in the ground by fall.


Um, I forget why I took this photo.  Middle of the backyard.


The peach tree, she lives!  I wasn’t sure if she would, but she did!  Costco had fruit trees long before they were safe to plant outside as newbies, so it hung out in the garage.  For a bit.  But, she lives!  Yay!


Close up of newly transplanted and then-wilty tomatoes and basil.  And shallots.  They’re kinda cranky about transplanting.  But the shallots certainly have more elbow space here.


The other raised bed.  Tomatoes, basil, shallots (lots of shallots!), beets, lettuce, kale, radishes, green onions, Walla Walla onions, carrots, calendula.


Got most of the herb bed planted.  Day lilies, boneset, arnica, plantain, violas, yarrow, blue vervain, valerian, chamomile, comfrey, and I’ve planted zucchini seeds there in the front left where we’ve had ant nest issues (aka, I don’t want to be digging in the ground there for roots to use).


Raspberries seem to be doing well.  Certainly less jungly.  This patch has been positively humming half the time with various bees.  Pretty cool.


We got a lot of rain this day.  Was at a local grocery store.  And either they didn’t do their geology impact study correctly, or the storm drains were clogged.  I think the former, because I’ve seen this several times.  Just not as impressive.  Half the parking lot was unusable.  Kind of impressive.

And deep.

Burnt croissants

These didn’t turn out like I’d hoped.  Turns out you really should set your oven timer when baking.  Whoops.

This is what they’re supposed to look like, just golden brown and delicious.

They were playing dress-up.  They were twirling around and having a blast, despite these goofy “cheese!” photos I took.

The yard and some garden.  A few things like the parsley and over-wintered celery are perking up, I saw a few teeny asparagus shoots the other day.  See all that brown yard?  The kids have run around the yard so much that it’s just straight up dirt now.  No grass.  At all.

The blackberry canes I’d transplanted last year.  Put the thyme there as well, having to dig up stuff from the front yard so we can fix the entry way.  The 9yo started mulching things for me, but then we ran out of our pile of wood chips.  Aiming to work on reclaiming the garden spaces this year and mulching everything within an inch of it’s life.  Because I detest weeding, I just need to own it and act accordingly and mulch like there’s no tomorrow.

My 6yo has been grabbing the camera and getting some really funny photos.  This is the messy kitchen from a 6yo’s perspective.  Apparently I hadn’t done dishes yet.

I’ve been working on re-doing our emergency supplies in the van.  They need to be somewhat easily accessible, but need to stay put and out of the way, without taking up my trunk space that I need for hauling stuff around.

Enter the little plastic lidded containers I’ve found from various places.  They snug up underneath the seats there, almost inconspicuous.  And so far they’re staying where they need to.

See, just out of the way.  There’s some food and water, a change of clothes for each child (in a size or two larger in part so I don’t have to change them out for a bit), extra blanket(s), those little heating pouch thingies, things along that line.  Mostly a just-in-case thing, and were we to have to evacuate our houses with our 72-hour kits, this would just be a nice extra oomph.  Especially since we’d likely not be able to evacuate on foot with so many youngsters.

And then the oft-used snack cooler that’s underneath the 3yo’s feet (so he almost has a floor under his feet).  The 9yo sits next to him in the van, and can dole out snacks for me as need be.  I struggle sometimes keeping this current and filled, but it is what it is.  I finally scrubbed down the inside of it for the first time last week, whoops.