The garden is planted but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still lots to keep me busy. Like two weeks ago the maple seeds started falling. That means I collected a big bowl and then James and I spent a couple hours removing the seeds and getting sore fingers in the process. All for half a cup. But it’s worth it! James roasted the seeds in our sun oven and now they are ready to add to salads and other things.

We are still enjoying arugula—so much arugula. And have been adding nettles to things. Since it has been 90F/ 32C or warmer every day for a week, we’ve been trying to eat things that don’t require a lot of cooking and heating up the kitchen and thus the house. Tonight we aim to enjoy a cold meal of sautéd nettles and onion with green and brown lentils, couscous, and a dressing that James makes up on the fly, along with a slice of bread baked earlier today in the sun oven.

We’ve been utilizing the sun oven quite a lot these last few weeks. Bread, cookies, cinnamon rolls, granola, roasted maple seeds, roasted sesame seeds for tahini, and roasted sunflower seeds for sunflower butter. I think James is planning on making a pizza in it sometime. And not in the sun oven, but still making use of the sun, sun tea (black tea from the co-op) with a few leaves of mint from the garden tossed in for a refreshing ahhh!

After a very wet March and April, May was dry; so dry the weather people are beginning to whisper drought. We’ve been utilizing gray water from the house on the trees and shrubs, but have to use city water for the vegetables because our rain barrels are empty.

Since we had summer droughts two years in a row, I saved a bunch of leaf mulch from the front yard beds to crush up and use in the garden. Much of the vegetable plants are still too small to get a proper mulching, but all of the summer and winter squash, the bell peppers, the cape gooseberries, the cabbage, the radishes, and the potatoes that have been twice hilled are mulched. In the next week or so I will start mulching beans. But I’m not sure I will have enough leaves for everybody. I’d rather not buy straw, but I will if I have to.

This year, tired of the squirrels digging up sunflower seeds, I started six plants indoors. They got planted out a couple weeks ago and have shot up to a foot or so tall. Except this past week three have gone missing, stolen by squirrels! The three remaining are hiding: with the potatoes, with the walking onions, and with the cherry bushes. Will the squirrels be fooled until they get tall and flower? Do you think they will take odds on it in Vegas?

The squirrels have also destroyed by digging the two tiny tomato sprouts that I direct sowed in the hopes of starting a landrace tomato that would grow in my shorter season as a direct sow plant. I suppose I will have to back up the process a bit and sow indoors in April so I have bigger plants and then save seeds from the earliest producers. And so on. That’s the nice thing about gardening, there’s always next year.

The garden peas are flowering. There are tiny berries on the honeyberries, serviceberries, chokeberry, gooseberries, and currants. Elder elderberry is about to flower. Elderberry Junior is not going to flower this year but is doing really well.

The two varieties of winter squash I planted in an experimental raised bed in my front yard are doing so well they are starting to vine! The ultimate test will be whether they fruit and then ripen.

The garlic is doing great this year and is getting ready to send up scapes. Maybe next weekend there will be scapes to eat! Even the little bubils I planted are doing well. None of them will produce garlic bulbs big enough to eat this year, but I was not expecting them to. I will lift them and dry them with the rest of the garlic when it is time, then replant them in October in the hopes that they will produce full bulbs next summer. I plan to allow one or two of the big garlics flower this year and plant their bubils. Hopefully I will then be on a cycle where I don’t need to pay $$ for seed garlic every year.

The only thing not planted in the garden yet are the sweet potatoes. The plants are super sensitive to cold and don’t even get mailed out until June 1st. So I hope to see them arrive on my porch soon. I have never grown sweet potatoes before, and I am really looking forward to giving it a try!

The chickens do not like the heat. It is a sad thing to see them panting. Elder elderberry has filled in nicely with new shoots galore after a hard prune in early spring, much to my relief. And so, once again provides some nice shade for the girls. Next year they will have so much shade from Elder and Junior they will be beside themselves.

Professor Plum is growing like gangbusters! From a sad little leafless shin-high stump, to a lush and leafy chest-high recovery! James reminds me my chest is not very high, and while I am on the short side, the Professor has more than tripled in height. What a come back!

Reading

• Humor: McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: A Day in the Life of a Woke Third-Grade Teacher, As Imagined by a Far-Right Politician. Because you need to laugh sometimes.
• Book: Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland’s Elves Can Save the Earth by Nancy Marie Brown. The majority of Icelanders believe in Elves or the possibility of Elves. This book is about belief and re-sanctifying the world. Really enjoyed this and my TBR list have grown quite a bit because of it.
• Article: Feral Chickens in Hawaii. Brought to Hawaii by Polynesians hundreds of years ago, the birds have long since gone feral and are causing all sorts of havoc. There is is no way to get rid of them. It is another story of how to live with “invasive species.”

Listening

• Book: Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett. Number four of the witch books. James is continuing to read aloud. Just like Iceland’s elves, we are reminded that elves aren’t necessarily nice.

Watching

• Movie: How to Blow Up a Pipeline. I read the book by Malm last year. The movie dramatizes Malm’s philosophical argument into a fictional story. I was prepared to hate it, but it’s actually pretty good.

Quote

No story is a lie, for a tale is a bridge that leads to the truth.

Barbara Dancygier as quoted in Looking for the Hidden Folk by Nancy Marie Brown