We have reached that point in the season when our focus starts to shift from planting and tending to harvest, harvest, harvest. Big sister A helped me bring in some more yarrow this week for drying.
The bee balm - behind her on the left side- has grown fabulously! I need to get to work harvesting and making medicines with it as well.
The kids have been scouting around looking for tree house locations and generally playing in the woods a lot more than usual.
That has led to some bee stings or hornet stings, neither Brother M nor Miss L have been quite sure what it was, but they were each stung 2-3 times this week! Hubby was stung last week as well.
We are having a heatwave this weekend. Mid 90s! Time for ice cube air conditioning. The bunnies have no trouble with the cold. The heat can be deadly though. I try to be as kind as possible to them any time temps reach above 90 degrees.
Their enclosures are all under tree cover and shaded the majority of the day, but it is still important to make sure that they have plenty of water. Some times they lick their ice cube air conditioning and some times they just lay near by. We keep evolving in our approach to this. We used to use frozen water bottles, but they melted too fast and the buns chewed them up. Now we use freezer jam containers and just give them the actual ice cube.
Last year at the plant fair someone recommended white cherry tomatoes. Wow! They were right. They are my new favorite cherry tomato variety.
I tried to keep it simple this year with the new baby and also not knowing how things would do in the high tunnel. The cucumbers are going crazy though. I have never had this kind of success with them before. I am going to have to do some kind of pickling. And bonus, since I control their water supply, they are much sweeter than usual. Note to self - next year they will need a much taller trellis in the tunnel.
Monday's harvest:
Heavy rain knocked down a couple sunflowers so we brought the blossoms in to enjoy.
The kids were excited to point out that we already have some basketball size white squash. I have not done anything with the squash bugs this year. It has just not been a priority. But my "keeper" varieties seem totally unphased by the bugs so far. I don't even know what the exact name of this kind is... I just keep saving their seeds and replanting them.
I have probably already raved about anise hyssop. I love it! It is a pollinator magnet. I planted more along the main garden fence this spring, and I need to spread it around more in the orchard.
This is kinda gross, but I think it is important for our family memories. In this photo is one week's worth of dogs blowing their coats (2 brushing sessions with each dog) = a fleece worth of down underfur. It shocks me every year. Another week or two before they will be mostly done blowing off their underfur. Icy's about done already and Shark still has a lot left to come out.
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