A week in pictures & garlic harvest

A beautiful blue jay feather. This is the second one we've found this week.

Relaxing in the hammock with the baby.

A evening with the family at the lake.

A mostly vegetarian meal from the garden.  We're getting zucchini and potatoes now and it's really exciting.  You know it's a good dinner when a toddler nabs a bite while you're taking a picture.  

A grey sky after some much needed rain.  We got an entire night of storms and the rain barrel system on the chicken coop hit it out of the ballpark.  We had let it go empty before the storm to see how it would work and it was totally full the next day.  And the coop has a tiny roof! Maybe 9 x 5 feet? Now that I see how well it's working it makes me regret not taking advantage of this resource earlier.

I was able to find transplants on clearance this week, a flat for $10.  Some got planted in the garden. Not shown: cucumber, pepper, tomato and herb transplants.

The rest my helper and I planted up in pots on the porch.

Some sweet zinnias in the garden.  I pulled the rest of the fava plants and would like to get a second round of bush beans planted tomorrow along with the cucumbers.

Cannas and winter squash.  My husband is still mowing in between the rows for me.  You can see how much Japanese Beetle damage we're getting - the edges of the canna leaves are brown and tattered.

I love these tiger lilies.

The sunflowers are beautiful too.  In this picture he's bothering Bee, who is in one of her favorite napping spots.

The quail pen is being totally overtaken by winter squash.  This should look really fun in another month.

The wild blackberries are coming on.  I've put about a quart in the freezer and would like to can some blackberry pancake syrup this week. Maybe blueberry syrup too if there's time to pick berries at my parent's house.  That was a really nice treat for us last winter.

I can't seem to find on the blog when I planted garlic last fall.  Anyway, it's ready to be pulled and cured so I did that this evening.

 

Here's what I ended up with.  File this under "free food" since it was planted entirely with the cloves that were leftover after I put up last year's harvest by canning the garlic.

None of them are very big, but it's a ton of garlic.  Enough to can a couple of pints for the house, give away and re-plant this fall.  I wonder how long we can continue re-planting from the same original batch? Free garlic every year? Count us in.  Most of the stuff in the stores is imported from China.  No thanks.

Well, that's it.  It's been a wonderful week.