The Bounty!!

It's cool inside, but it sure isn't outside. It was ninety degrees in the shade with 63% humidity, I can't imagine how women survived a hundred or more years ago all bound up tight in multiple layers of clothing.

Baby beach plum (and weeds) in protective custody.

I've been busy trying to reduce the impact the deer have on our trees.  Almost every baby tree has 4' high barrier to keep the deer from browsing.  Some day someone will look at our oddly shaped fruit trees and wonder why we ever pruned them that way and the answer would be, "We didn't, the deer did."

As I was out there cutting fence sections early this morning, the deer were hanging along the edges of the property.  I walked toward them and they did not behave as wild deer should.  They just stood there looking at me.  Some serious deer feeding is going on around here, they are not afraid.  There are two does that we see regularly, the larger buff colored doe and the reddish doe.  We see other deer sometimes, but these two are the regulars. 

One nice flower bud on top, tonight they feast!

They find my Julia Child roses very tasty, which is both amusing and annoying.  Each time the rose gets close to blooming, the buds get nibbled off in the night.  I ran out of fencing. I need to get more.

The critter count for this week is pretty high: bunnies, bunnies and more bunnies, one woodchuck (ground hog), two deer (seen repeatedly), crows (trying to steal eggs, but the girls are laying where they are supposed to and the crows are missing out), blue birds, bluejays, cowbirds, a pileated woodpecker, a snake (in the potato patch), cabbage loopers, harlequin beetles, tomato horn worms, skinks, stink bugs, dog ticks, slugs, deer flies and more.

I haven't seen the box turtle yet, he must be hiding from me.

We have had sugar snap peas for dinner almost every night this week, after having some sort of greens every night for the previous two weeks.  I spent a couple of mornings blanching and freezing greens, now we have ten meals worth of greens ready to go. Now a few days have elapsed, I should get out there to pick some more (when it cools a bit). I'll probably blanch and freeze some of the peas tonight, so we can have more variety later. 

Alpine strawberries

Blueberries, not ready!

The mulberries (no work, and they are one of my favorites!) and strawberries are ripe, the blackberries will be ready shortly.  The raspberries will be ready on about the same time as last year, late next week!

Sorry girls, no cabbage loopers this time.

The girls are laying 3-4 eggs a day.  I have been in a bit of a baking frenzy, so we have been keeping up with them.

The bounty!!

Seeing Red...Berries

 

The raspberries are ripe!  They grow with no attention needed, just mowing to keep them from taking over the yard.  I picked about a pint of them in six minutes this morning, and then went back later to pick three more pints.  I decided the rest can wait until dinner time when they will be shaded, it is 87 degrees and nearly eighty percent humidity, there's no need to cook  myself out there.

Lots-o-Berries

 The only drawback to picking raspberries is in their defense mechanism, many tiny velcro-like prickles with a few larger firmer thorns, to get at the really good ones I need to wear pants and in this heat that is challenging.

nasty little prickles

Thai Take out tray of Berries

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I made raspberry syrup this afternoon and I will probably make raspberry pancakes one day this weekend (Sunday??).  Our house guests think it is really cool to go out into the yard pick a few berries, throw them in the blender with a few other things to have smoothies in the morning.
On top of raspberries, the Alpine strawberries just started producing yesterday...teeny, intensely flavored. A quarter of a fingernail sized berry made us all groan with delight.  Note to myself, I must plant more of these next year.

Alpine Strawberries- Mignonette

Apache Blackberry

Not all the berries are red, the Apache blackberries are ripening, there are only a few, but that is more than we were expecting.  The first one was disappointing, but we're going to wait an extra day or so for the next few, until they fall off the vine into our hands, just to make sure the sugar has fully developed.

Then there is the squash and melon patch, the land of the over achievers.

Raised bed garden in front yard

No nice, neat, rectangular garden to mow around!

We are still eating the zucchini bread and zucchini pickles, there are two big zukes on the counter and two more just about eating size in the garden.  The way those things grow they should be about the right size by sunset.  The cooking pumpkins are doing fabulously, two are almost ripe and there are dozens more headed that way.  If you have a good recipe that has pumpkin in it please send it along, I am going to need it.  After I'm done with this post I will be looking up how to cook squash blossoms, there are plenty of male blossoms out there, no sense in letting them go to waste!
The veggie garden in the back is coming along.  The first eggplant will be ready this week, the peppers are producing, the tomatoes have been waiting for some sunshine and we finally seem to have some, maybe they will ripen in the next few days.

Tomatoes-Jetsonic

Sweet Cooking Pumpkin

Yellow Pear Tomatoes

 

Chickens, Spicy Peppers, Berries and Other Random Thoughts

Athena

Ursilla with Paisley hiding behind her.

The chicks have been in their outside coop for four days, they love it!  They had their first taste of pizza crust yesterday, they love that too!  They seem very happy to be outdoors, scratching and eating bugs.  The buffs still pose for the camera and the other two still seem camera shy.

Athena again

Paisley with Ursilla hiding this time.

At almost four weeks old the Buff Orpingtons are becoming fully feathered, Ursilla is improving, and poor Paisley, I guess she is a late bloomer.

They are hanging around inside the run, once they get a good feel for where home is they will get a chance to free range a bit.

Scroll through the pictures, I'll move on to gardening below.

Back yard garden

The back yard garden has its issues.  The placement of the garden was chosen by the previous owners of the house and like most of the trees they planted, it's in the wrong place.  It is too close to the trees and it is shaded too much of the day in the summer,  the sun doesn't hit it until after noon.  On top of that, the trees that it is too close to are black walnut, which are known to send out a nasty chemical, juglone, to kill plants living near them. I'm doing battle with the caterpillars in the collards and the cabbage, the cilantro and dill decided that it is too hot and bolted, the tomatoes are struggling with the limited sun as are the peppers and eggplants. Sigh.

Front yard garden

All this is why I started the front yard garden, which I created by layering organic materials on top of cardboard, as you can see the squash and the pumpkins like it, the watermelons were planted later and are a bit slow to get moving.
The two pepper plants placed in the flower bed are doing great, they get full sun and my husband squirts them with the hose every time he waters his carnivorous plants.  They were supposed to be the two jalapenos, but I somehow got the plants mixed and it appears that one is cubanelle.  This means that one of the ones in the back yard is jalapeno and I may have a bunch of peppers that appear to be sweet frying peppers that may be "Muy Pica!" due to cross pollination.  Oops!







This Italian squash is almost 10 inches long. I swear it wasn't there yesterday!

The blackberries we planted this spring have just a few berries on them, we weren't expecting any this year, so they are a little bonus.

This doesn't look like much but they are oooooooooooooh so cool!  A cultivated variety of raspberry that has gone wild  and provides a border to much of the property, we do nothing but mow to keep them under control. They produce enough berries to send kids out there on a mission to get enough for a recipe, they can sample as many as they want, as they fill my measuring cups and then repeat it every afternoon for about three weeks.