beating the heat

The past 2 weeks have been HOT. Hot by anyone's standards, but especially hot by the standards of a Minnesota girl. But, because Jonathan and I both seem to hate being cooped up inside, we've been braving the heat and having fun outside anyway.

Grandma and Grandpa sent us this great splash table for Jonathan's birthday. Perfect for summer afternoons!

Swimming lessons are going great and today Jonathan even attempted blowing bubbles on his own!

And, of course, I have two tiny helping hands in the garden!

shoes

Jonathan LOVES shoes. He can't say "sh" as part of a word yet, so it just comes out "oooo" or "ooos", but he is always very emphatic about them. He will search out his shoes, bring them to me, sit down, thrust out his little feet, and insist that I put them on his feet. Or he will bring my shoes to me and insist that I put them on my feet. Then he stomps around very proudly in his shoes, beaming like he just won the lottery. We are working on the idea that shoes are for outside, but sometimes the combination of his overwhelming desire for the shoes and his overwhelming cuteness lead us to break the rules!

garlic

Yesterday I noticed the tops of my garlic plants were all mostly brown and that there were these odd growths on the stems of some of the plants. I thought at first they might be flowering, but the growths were not at the top of the stalks, and are hard about the size of chickpeas. The are purplish white and smell and have the texture of tiny, spherical garlic cloves I planted- so maybe they are new sprouting cloves?

I don't know, but I decided to harvest the plants today. When I planted my garlic last fall, I had visions of harvesting a crop of huge perfect looking garlics and braiding them into a beautiful rope that would be both useful and decorative. Most of them are decently sized, a few are tiny and none are huge. And it turns out braiding them isn't so hard, unless you care what the braid looks like in the end. They haven't dried/cured yet, so the bulbs are still fresh with dirt, but this isn't what I pictured! Alas. I guess now the question is whether we eat this crop, or I save it for replanting in the fall..

Garden Update 6/23/10

Since it is too hot to actually go outside and work in the garden today, pictures will have to do!

From left to right (top to bottom) these are:

1) the amazing day lilies a friend from work gave me 2 years ago- LOVE them

2) bean/squash trellis- bean side

3) bean/squash trellis- squash side: 2 of my 3 plants developed a grey fungus thing and had to be cut down completely- alas. I'm hoping the third plant stays heathy and is able to pollinate itself so we get some butternuts!

4) One of my new square-foot boxes. Tomatoes in the back, peppers then basil and then my struggling carrots

5) Yay tomatoes!!

6) Zinnia planted from seed!! Planting things from seed seems miraculous to me. When I buy a plant, I expect it to stay a plant and produce veggies or flowers or whatever. But when I buy a seed, it seems magical!

7) Heirloom tomatoes planted from seed!! Again amazement. And at one point this spring I was going to throw these seedlings out because they didn't seem to be thriving! Now they are waist hight and doing great!!

8) Deck boxes. (Mom these always make me think of you!)

9) 2nd bean trellis and onions. My onions are all laying down as they have been doing almost since we planted them. I don't know if this is normal or not- probably not. But they are producing little red bulbs that are crowning above the soil (and keep tempting me to pick them!)

My potatoes have gotten some sort of purple spotting disease on their leaves (I think I planted them too close together) and so I'm not counting on them. And my garlic is going fine- just not very picturesque.

So far the produce I have gathered:

• 1 gloriously delicious plum tomato
• enough basil to make a good batch of pesto
• 2 onions whose tops got mowed over and had to be picked
• 2 banana peppers