The weather is hot and humid today, and predicted to become hotter as the week progresses. Not my favourite kind of weather, but the garden thinks it is marvellous.
This morning Attila brought in a small plate of garden edible pod peas, which I enjoyed raw with my breakfast. I am delighted that the season of fresh raw produce is upon us. Attila reckons that within a few days the peas will be plentiful enough to add them to my midday meal stir fry.
The planting is now done. Attila is moving on to prune our shrubs and trees, piling all the brush in the back yard in preparation for filling the last two raised beds. Once the brush is collected, the foundations of hardware cloth and, landscape fabric laid for the raised beds, they will be constructed and the brush placed inside them. Then we order soil, a large quantity, to be dumped on a tarp in the driveway. It will be toted to the back yard and the raised beds by wheelbarrow, over a series of days.
We keep thinking we are done with the infrastructure of the garden. Things change though. The raised beds were inspired to accommodate gardening as we age. Climate change may inspire us to build a greenhouse, or make other changes to keep the garden happy. We will just play the cards as they are dealt.
I am organizing empty canning jars today. They are all over the place at the moment. The full jars are organized on the new canning shelves, but the shelves will not hold all of the empty jars. I saved the original boxes, the empty jars will go into them. I will stack them all in the same place, by size. This will make it easier to find what I want when canning season begins, about a month from now.
Food preservation, in the form of dehydration, is well under way. We dehydrated the last of the spinach, which has now completely bolted. Now the dehydrator is full of kale. The kale being harvested is from volunteer plants, the variety we have seems to spread like a weed, and we keep finding it all over the yard.
Attila is a home body. I am an introvert. We are both quirky, and slightly eccentric, enough so that people can find us rather disconcerting, as our values don’t sit well with popular social assumptions and consumerism. We both love and enjoy people, but need to contact in moderation. Our life is primarily inward facing, we are socially isolated.
It isn’t that we don’t contribute to our community. We do. We do it silently, in our own way, without using money. We do what we can, when we can. We know who we are, we know what we do, if it is invisible to others their judgment is not welcome, we do not entertain it.
I’ve just finished my breakfast. Ginger is snoring contentedly on the couch. I think it is time to descend the stairs to the basement and tackle the empty canning jars!
I hope all is well with you!
Worldly
Weather
20°C
Date: 12:00 PM EDT Tuesday 17 June 2025
Condition: Mostly Cloudy
Pressure: 101.4 kPa
Tendency: Falling
Temperature: 20.2°C
Dew point: 17.3°C
Humidity: 83%
Wind: SSE 21 km/h
Humidex: 26
Visibility: 24 km
Quote
“Slight not what’s near, while aiming at what’s far.”
Euripides
484 BC – 406 BC
Those peonies are lovely!
Thank you Wendy! They are so aromatic, the scent is wonderful!
Gorgeous peonies Maggie! I do love flowers fresh from the garden. We are harvesting our first greens from the cold frames though we took the windows off two weeks ago. Our asparagus is done now and the haskap bushes are fruiting. I have a lot of last year’s berries left in the freezer so time to make some mixed berry jam.
I echo your sentiments about being homebodies. We are introverts too and prefer to just be at home. As social scientists our world views don’t mesh with the mainstream. We are wary and cynical about social media and politics, all of which have degenerated into collective insanity. Pockets of sense, goodness and clarity are out there but it takes some effort to find them. Your blog is one of those.
Sandra, I agree with all that you are saying, and am glad to be included in what you consider “pockets of sense, goodness and clarity”. I cherish those who come here and feel honoured by feedback (comments), assuring me that indeed I am not alone, there are other “pockets of sense, goodness and clarity” in existence.
The struggle is real, I have all but abandoned facebook, my only social media foray, although there are good people there, and a few groups of like minded people, who seem to hold on to their personal integrity despite the insanity. It is degenerating though, requiring more and more of my time to block individuals. I do tease out a few useful bits of information here and there, share what sanity I can (which always seems to be appreciated), and am happy to find there that friends I’ve known for a long time are still alive and thriving.
“social media and politics, all of which have degenerated into collective insanity”
So well stated. I sadly watch people, who in the past would not have fallen into such a dark abyss, succumb. I fervently hope they emerge again, and recover themselves.
The peonies are beautiful! We are having some of our first 90-degree heat this week. It feels good! 🙂
Sandy, I love the peonies, they are worth the ants that come in with them. We were so lucky that they were already planted and flourishing in our front yard when we bought this place. Before we moved here, a neighbour asked us if they could harvest them for a friends wedding bridal bouquet, of course the answer was yes.
After such a cold spring the warm weather is welcome. Enjoy!
Julia and I are happy homebodies, too. All of our favorite things are here at home. Except that occasionally, we do like a good movie on the big screen (Life of Chuck was excellent), and there is a monthly gather of U.U. folks we like. We used to be more active.
Joan, I like that, “our favorite things are here at home”, so true of Attila and I. I think we could probably benefit from venturing forth a little bit more than we do, but we haven’t found anything local that suits us, not yet anyway, we keep our eyes open.