Here are a some images I made a few days ago. With the hot weather and sprinklers going all the time, hings have probably changed since then.
This is the season of abundance. Gardens, farms and orchards are in full swing harvest mode. The farmers’ markets overflow with fresh produce and happy customers. Neighbors sneak to your doorstep in the wee hours of the morning leaving deposits of zucchini and other summer squash that has overtaken their garden. Or if you are lucky they bring fresh tomatoes, peppers and other delightful harvests. My neighbors called to say they had recently harvested bushels of basil and there was still more and did I want any. Well yeah. Last week was busy with other abundance here at home since Ken had had a successful early season hunt and brought home an elk to fill our freezer. When we were finally finished and he left on a work trip, I made it down to the neighbors’ house for basil. Three batches of pesto later, I felt very satisfied to add more food to our freezer!
Last week, before the temperatures rose to the nineties, the garden was vibrant and full of color. This week, it seems tired and droopy, no matter how often we water. Fortunately I made some images last week and captured it at its prettiest, so far, this year. It was full of pollinators – mostly Ken’s honeybees.
This week’s weather has been less than desirable. I suppose I should not complain about the rain and I don’t mind that too much but it’s also been darned cold and when it’s not raining, the wind is blowing. Last week was warm and pleasant and I managed to get a few images from the garden. With all the rain, the garden is looking much different now!
This Pine Siskin was obsessed with our dandelions. We have a good crop this year.
Johnny-jump-ups
Columbine
So far, the deer don’t eat columbine, knock on wood.
Iceland poppy
Something else the deer don’t eat
We are eating radishes and greens from the fenced, vegetable garden now
Every Spring, it’s a big project to move the finished compost to the garden beds and turn over last year’s accumulation of garden waste for next year’s compost. Sunday, despite forecasts of 30% chance of showers and some high winds, I was going to take care of the compost.
Getting started. You can see that the mountains are obscured by the ‘scattered showers.
There’s my two-year-old compost. It filled the pallets a year ago.
And that is last year’s garden waste.
The whole setup is framed with seven pallets held together with baling twine from old straw or rotten hay bales.
Beautiful compost! Gardener’s gold.
My garlic was planted and mulched last fall.
And it gets compost to get it through the growing season.
With some help from Ken all of the compost is distributed to various garden beds and one flower bed.
Here is a cross section of last year’s gardening efforts!
Shortly after this image, it began to rain and then it rained pretty hard. The wind blew and it snowed sideway too.
Once the storm passed I returned to the compost project. Here I am getting through the hard part of turning it over and moving it. Also, I replaced the center pallet. It was rotting away at the bottom. There is old horse manure in the wheelbarrow that I layered in the pile. It will help it ‘heat up’ and break down.
There it is finished. I topped it with some of the dead grass from our lawn mixed with some more manure.
Next year’s compost!
All tidied up and ready for more garden waste
And the garden beds with the compost spread around and garlic mulched again. In the background you can see the beehives. Since it was so cold, they were not out and about.
