Sandy Strauss
I’m not sure when it last rained. Storms have passed by us, and we’ve had at most a few sprinkles. The ground is so dry in the backyard that there are actually cracks, and the vegetables and fruit were drooping. I hate to water, but everything was looking terribly stressed, so I did.
On the other hand, we haven’t had to do a lot of mowing. I did mow today, just to take down the taller weeds. All the heavy-duty weeding/edging I did yesterday makes mowing easier. This morning I mulched the areas I cleared yesterday heavily with the leaf mulch we got from the neighbors. I had done a couple of other areas already the same way, and it has been very effective at keeping the weeds from invading the beds. The garden looks better than it has in a long time–except for the lack of rain.
The backyard needs attention. I did do some trimming and tieing up plants today. Everything has gotten dense enough that there are barely any weeds. The worst thing is that I have to keep working to dig up residual black-eyed susans. I moved all of them out and down to the area where the vegetables are behind the shop, and also into the box around the Canadian cherry out front. I suspect it will be a bit like the lemon balm that took me a couple of years to remove from the back. It smells great, but it is SO invasive.
I need to sift some compost for the backyard garden and spread it–the soil seems to have gotten to where it doesn’t seem to have much organic stuff. I hope to do that on Monday, since we’ll be occupied for the 4th tomorrow. Once that’s done, then the leaf mulch will go on top. Perhaps that will help to hold the water in better. I would love to move some plants around, but this is really not a good time. I still need to do some work out front. It has been almost totally neglected so far, and the suckers around the cherry are looking like they may devour the tree!
We still had lots of yellow squash after making the relish and bread a couple of nights ago. I’m not sure why folks make the jokes only about zucchini–yellow squash is just as prolific, if not more so. Anyway, this morning we used a bit more to make yellow squash muffins–very moist, not too sweet, and terrific with honey or some of our strawberry jam. Huge recipe though–18 muffins. I think I’ll freeze some.
This evening, I made raspberry jam. We’ll be making some more when Julia comes up later this month. I’ve been freezing some since it doesn’t really matter if we are making jam with them. I’ll bet it will be good on the muffins as well.
By the way, I thought I should share the website that I’ve been using to guide the jam making. It’s really good for anyone–lots of detail and pictures–but especially good for beginners. Here is the main page for canning and freezing: http://pickyourown.org/allaboutcanning.htm. There are links to just about anything you want to know, including links to in season recipes for pies and other things as well. If you are interested in finding places to pick your own fruit, just go to the home page (http://pickyourown.org) or click on the “Find a farm near you” link at the upper left of the canning page.
It’s looking like we’re going to have lots of spaghetti squash. This is a new thing for us, and it’s good stuff, but we certainly can’t keep up with it. I did find some simple instructions for freezing it, so we’ll probably do that. I didn’t think it would freeze well, but the posting says it actually freezes quite well. I guess we’ll find out…
Hoping the neighborhood fireworks die down soon. It sounds as if there are some illegal fireworks out there–great big booms. It’s not just the noise, though. There are a lot of kids out there, and I’m really afraid someone will get hurt. Zeke, our white cat, is still out, and I suspect he may not come back while all the fireworks are going off. I suspect he is down by the shop where he feels safe. It hasn’t hurt that Dave put a bee sign up warning anyone who might be tempted to mess around behind the shop that bees do sting to protect their hives. We really haven’t had kids going back there anyway since we got the bees!
Much as I love being in the garden, I think I’m ready for a little break tomorrow. Happy Independence Day and hope that you have a great day doing whatever you are planning to do!
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