Update #7

The weeds were getting ridiculous so this weekend I pulled as many as I could. It was more fun than I expected and Aubrey obliged by playing in her swing on the lawn, or napping inside. There are still a lot of weeds left, but I made some headway. Also, Jason cleaned out the rain gutters, which also had weeds growing in them. So we got a lot of dirty work done this weekend.


Here's the birch tree as of yesterday.

Now that it's as leafed out as it's going to get this season, we can see which branches are dead and can be trimmed this winter. But in the winter, all the branches look dead, so we took a bunch of pictures to refer to when the time comes to get chopping.


In other news, it's been hot and humid. Jason mowed the lawn yesterday and came in drenched in sweat, and remarked that he felt like he was back in Texas. So we reminisced about that time in our lives when we were perpetually drenched in sweat.


We harvested eggplants!

They were about 7-8 inches long, the same length they were at the farmer's market that Aubrey and I stopped by on Tuesday, so I suggested we pick them. I'm not sure how many Jason picked, but it was enough for dinner: a delicious sweet Asian eggplant dish with ground beef and rice.

We've also been harvesting zucchini, maybe two per day on average.

You might be able to tell that we've had to pull a couple of plants that died, on the left side of the photo. Not sure why but it could be that they got too much water, being at the bottom of the slope and not having much drainage.


In addition to eating zucchini and yellow squash for dinner a couple of times per week, we made zucchini bread, which was really good and I want to grate some zucchini and freeze it so we can make it again this winter. And we made a second batch of relish. It was more successful than the first; all of the jars sealed, as opposed to just one in the first batch, probably because we wiped the rims clean, heated the jars and lids (ran them through the dishwasher) and used a water bath.

This photo shows a volunteer squash/melon, the pepper plants, and a tomato that is working on ripening.

The squash/melon has grown to about 4 feet long, and has had a couple of blossoms but I don't think it will fruit because there aren't any other blossoming squash/melons around.

Some wildflowers in the foreground, and the pole beans in the background.

The wildflowers are in constant bloom and are really nice to have, not only to look at but also to attract the bees which is probably why we are getting lots more zucchini this year. And we both agree that the pole beans are by far the healthiest, fastest growing plant in the garden. Apparently there are no bugs in the vicinity that like to eat pole bean leaves.

The hydrangea are also doing great.

Lots of big flowers on those little bushes! I'm looking forward to seeing the bushes come back bigger each year.

Here are the violas. Notice anything missing?

That's right, the violas are no longer with us. They seemed to be totally dead so Jason pulled them out. Maybe the heat got to them? Or maybe they are only supposed to last until August? They did great until mid-July, then started to go downhill. One basket is still doing okay, but looks pretty tired.

Below are our herbs, from left to right: mint, pepper that got planted late and the sprouts were immediately eaten by something (the one tiny plant you see is a weed), basil, rosemary, mystery squash/melon, and two basil plants in front that we just planted, mainly just to fill up the pots that I picked up at a yard sale. We've got a blue pot theme going.

I'm making lavender oil, which simply involves crushing up lavender leaves and flowers and putting them in a bottle with olive oil, then shaking them once a day for a month. And hopefully, when I open the bottle at the end of the month, it wil smell more like lavender than olives. That reminds me, I haven't shaken the bottle yet today.

This past weekend, in addition to weeding, gutter cleaning, and mowing, we made black raspberry jam!!! We started with 15 cups of berries that we had frozen.

We wanted it to be more like jam than jelly, and were okay with having some seeds, so rather than just use the juice, we took out about half the seeds. We tried a couple of methods, including a potato ricer, and this combination of a pestle and small sieve. They both worked pretty well.

I almost put the seeds in the compost but luckily Jason reminded me that that is a bad idea. We would have had a very thorny 2011.

The 15 cups of berries yielded 7.5 cups of absolutely delicious jam.

We had to divide the jars between us and label them, because one of us is likely to eat the jam faster than the other, which would not be fair to the one who spent a lot of time tending the berry patch.

Aubrey helped Jason with the watering (it was set to "water only", so no fertilizer was being sprayed at the time).

Otherwise, we are doing great, and thinking of you! Hope we can Skype one of these mornings.