Garden of Delights

This morning Attila picked and brought in for me five red strawberries from the ever-bearing strawberry plant. They were sweet and delicious! A few fresh strawberries now and then are all I will be able to get this year, so I will be enjoying them whenever I can. And I feel grateful to Attila for building a frame with netting over the strawberry plant, so that the squirrels, chipmunks and birds could not get to the ripe strawberries before we did. The netting is very effective. Yesterday morning I watched a small black squirrel attempt to get through the netting to the strawberries. He failed to gain entry, and after many attempts, gave up and started digging up another part of the garden. So this morning I got to eat those strawberries. Me five, squirrel zero.

Attila also thinned the Swiss chard, and the beets, bringing in the pulled plants for my breakfast. Also from the garden this morning, two small basil plants that were thinned, and two garlic scapes. All of this made a wonderful breakfast, sauteed in olive oil, with onion and an egg.

But there was more to come from the garden. Another four pounds of rhubarb were harvested this morning. Two pounds were transformed into a Rhubarb Upside Down Cake, and two pounds were packaged, labelled, and frozen.

Thank goodness for weekends! Attila is crazy busy, as we’ve had no rain recently, so the garden must be watered, and it is a big job. He is also working on installing an evestrough, so that he can fill his new 1000 liter rain tank when the next rain finally does arrive. First though, the fascia had to be painted, and then waited on until the paint dried, and only then could he begin the installation of the evestrough. With any luck he will complete the rainwater collection system by the end of the weekend, so that when next week’s predicted rain arrives there will be some good water stored to garden watering during the next dry period.

Attila is doing all this work in the garden and on the water collection system in the heat and humidity. He seems to tolerate heat very well, and seems energized when the weather is like this. I am the opposite, losing energy quickly as the temperature rises. So I am concentrating on indoor activities today, and will again tomorrow, when it will be even warmer out there!

I am tackling our seed collection today. We have seeds collected as far back as the early 90s, when we first met and got together. Some seeds Attila brought into our relationship, they are even older. Our first joint planting project all those years ago was Morning Glories, and we still have some seeds from those first beautiful blooming plants. For more than 25 years we have collected seeds from our gardens, and seeds gifted to us by other gardeners. The are stored in all kinds of envelopes and packets, which are in turn stored in all kinds of boxes and bins, in no particular order. So today they are being sorted, provided with new envelopes where needed, and be will organized and stored according to type of seed. It is a big job. I am creating this entry as I take a break from it, because I got to feeling overwhelmed. Best to tackle it in stages I reckon.

Worldly

Weather

HEAT WARNING
22°C
Date: 1:00 PM EDT Saturday 20 June 2020
Condition: Mainly Sunny
Pressure: 101.7 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 22.1°C
Dew point: 18.4°C
Humidity: 79%
Wind: S 17 km/h
Humidex: 28
Visibility: 24 km
Today: Mainly sunny. High 32. Humidex 36. UV index 9 or very high.

Quote

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
1803 – 1882