wiredfool

To start with, there are three of them now. Not that I’ve manage to post about the baby here yet. He’s getting to be a charming little alert 2 month old, with occasional cranky patches. Just about what he’s supposed to be like.

Tim has decided that english is an acceptable language, and now has hundreds of words. This started Tuesday, September 22nd. It started with the names of his brothers, and now it’s almost anything that we’ve talked about to him. A switch flipped, totally and completely. His 60-80 words of Timish, with it’s own consistent grammar is mostly gone. There are only a few words of that left, but they may be the ones that take a while. It’s very strange to have a toddler that can talk.

Ben is well on his way to reading. Sometime in September, he decided that other people could actually teach hiim something. This was conveniently when kindergarten started. We’re now 1/3 through Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons, (Engelmann). It’s a Phonics based approach, with a big section at the front that explains the methodology and what to do. And looking at it, it all makes sense from a psychology and machine learning point of view. And best of all, its working. He’s excited about reading every night, and he’s to the point where he’s moving from sounding out the most common simple words to just reading them fast. He’s trying to sound out words that he sees ‘out there’ — sometimes it works, sometimes it’s not something he’s seen yet.

Mid october now, and the garden has had it’s first frost — this one killing off the remaining squashes. Garlic is in in the beds that had favas and corn earlier, and a few of the beds in the main part of the garden have been seeded with cover crop. There’s still a bit more cleanup to go, but there’s very little harvesting left to do.

A couple short months ago, we were at the tail end of a long, hot, dry spell, 3 months of above average heat and no rain. The yard wais crispy brown, and even the weeds were dead. Then the rains came back with cooler weather, stunting the tomatoes and starting a second spring around the garden. Trees that had trouble with the dry weather put out new sets of leaves, the blackberries plumped up, and the lawn turned green again.

As for next year. I think that the tomatoes could do with either being farther forward to catch later in the day sun, or of course, safely plopped in a greenhouse. Peppers really need the greenhouse. If we don’t do that, we should inprovise a plastic row cover of some sort. The tomatillo didn’t set any fruit. It’s the first time we’ve had one fail.

5 zucchini plants is really excessive, especially when you have a couple of weeks in August where they’re ignored and they have rain. 3 would do us in peak times. The pattypans did well enough, but they seemed to be incinsistent producers. 2 butternut squash plants produced 14 fruits, and that should do us for a good chunk of the winter. 5 pumpkins may be a bit much, but the two that came off the pucchini are worth all the effort. They’re long and thin as pumpkins go, or long and fat as zucchinis do.

The beans did well enough given the peak time was when we didn’t have the time to harvest.

The sunflowers were excellent. We had bunches of cut flowers anytime we went out for them and we barely dented what was out there. The big ones grew to 10 feet or so with foot plus heads, the little ones ranged from dandelion sized to a 9 footer. They shoudl probably move, but I’m not sure where to.

Tentative plan now is to put other crops where the squash were this year, move them to some combination of the main garden bed and the tomato bed. Move the tomatoes to the interstitial area where the squash was this year, transplant the strawberries that are invading the sprawly bed into the ex-garlic bed, and put potatoes in the sprawly bed. That opens up a bunch of the main beds for something else. We’ll see how well that plan holds up.

In the nearly 10 years that I’ve ben running this thing, I think I’ve only missed a month here and there. Well, it’s been two now, and even thought there’s a ton of stuff to write about, I’m just not inspired. Soon, really. I know that there’s stuff in my mind that I need down before I forget.

Things are looking good for most of the garden, with the possible exception of the potatoes which don’t seem to be real happy right now.

– We may get our first ripe tomato before August. It looks mostly ripe now, but I’m willing to wait till it’s really good and ready. And then, the flood.
– Blackberries are trickling in, we got the first on on 7/22, and there’s now a couple every time we look.
– The raspberries are fading fast.
– Zucchinis have crossed a line. A week ago, we were gathering 5 baby squash for a meal. This past weekend, we got one that we had missed the previous day, and that was enough for the meal. Now I’ve picked 10 largish squashes in the last 24 hours. We’re now looking at the neighbors and wondering if they like squash.
– Patty pan squashes are just coming on.
– We’ve gotten a couple of nice handfuls of strawberries the last few days from the everbearing ones, and a lot more blossoms on them, even some fruit on new plants started from runners.
– We’ll probably be eating green peppers here soon, as there are some good bell peppers coming on.
– The giant fair zucchinis are growing well.
– We’ve got 7 or 8 good sized pumpkins on the vines.
– Sunflowers should be blooming soon. The biggest are well taller than me, and the smaller ones are well taller than the kids. They can hide in the sunflower rows.
– Favas are done and pulled up, we got one last meal of them. Some of them looked like they were sending up new growth from the old roots. I think that we could get nearly perpetual fava plants in this climate.
– The sweet onions are pulled up, and we should have done it sooner. Some of the onions used up the bulb to send up a flower stalk.

All the hot weather things seem a good couple weeks earlier than they were last year, some of it is getting bigger plants in the ground, and some is the crazy weather.

It’s 96 in the shade on the front (north) porch, and 108 on the south-east corner of the garage, where there’s partial sun for the morning. And I’m not even going to guess what the thermometer in the greenhouse looks like.

At least it’s only 83 in the house, and the one room with AC is down to 72. This is the air conditioner that I bought when Ben was 2 days old and we had a 95 degree heat wave in the city. We have moved it from house to house since, but this is the first time that we’ve needed it on Whidbey.

And, a couple of hours later, the outside temp is falling and the inside temp never got over 83. But now, I need to figure out dinner. And that’s going to be hot.

It seems like the garden is finally coming into it’s own. After a disappointing spring, we’ve now had veggies from the garden for a week straight, while giving away three batches of favas and one of zucchinis.

The biggest sunflower is taller than me, and most of them are taller than the kids. There’s one pumpkin vine that’s taking over its corner of the world (saved seed) and another from the same pumpkin that’s growing a nice pucchini. I guess squash don’t breed true.

The peas are now totally done, I’m going to pull up the rest of the vines soon.

Last night, 7/13, we got the first 5 zucchini for supper. And there’s more out there today. Including a zucchini that’s growing from a vine from a saved pumpkin seed from last year. We’ll see about that one, and probably enter it in the county fair’s largest zucchini contest. I’m impressed by the zucchini, since it’s a good week before we got our first flowers last year.

And tonight, we picked, shelled and froze 4 lbs of peas (that’s frozen weight) and another 2 1/2 lbs of snap peas.

There is nothing half as worth doing as simply grazing in a patch of ripe raspberries.

And now a quick dump from the garden-

– Strawberries are petering out.
– Raspberries are in. Lots of them. A cup and a half made it in to the house tonight.
– Green stuff is going nuts in the sprawly bed, squash, sunflowers, peas.
– One good harvest of favas so far, and more to come. Really tasty.
– Chard and beets are looking good.
– Early potatoes are dissappointing. We dug some tonight and they were few and far between.
– 2 of the 6 sections of climbing beans are doing well. The bush beans look good.
– Half the garlic is harvested, waiting on the other half.
– The peppers and tomatoes are growing well. There’s a good bunch of fruit set on the tomatoes and a few on the peppers.
– It’s been real dry, so watering has been key.
– All the brassicas are looking good, kale, brussle sprouts, cauliflower, and cabbage.
– Looks like we really underwatered one of the blueberries, and it’s leaves aren’t looking good. The rest look ok.
– The wild trailing blackberries are coming on now. Salmonberries are tapped out, and the himalayan blackberries are fruiting now. Huckleberries should hit soon.
– We’ve lost the cherries from the Rainier, maybe from water/heat. There are still some on the Montmorency. There’s still a couple Williams Pride and Jonagold apples, and a couple peaches.
– Some of the corn is knee height, some has been nibbled by bunnies.
– There are a few older carrots, and a bunch of recently seeded.
– The parsnips look good.
– Leeks and green onions look small and good, the tops of the walla wallas are dying off, so we should probably collect them and eat them.

I like our summer routine. We eat dinner at the picnic table on the porch, then wander up the yard to see what sort of berries can be found for dessert. Last night, we (the adults) picked about a pint of perfectly ripe strawberries, the sort of berry that makes all the growing worthwhile. There were also a bunch of plausibly not totally unripe salmonberries that the kids picked. I’ve had a couple so far, and some of them get ripe and tasty, but often the kids don’t let them get that far. They strip the bushes. Tim has taken to calling them ‘sharp num’. Later in the summer there will be several varieties of blackberry, thimble berries, huckleberries, blueberries, raspberries and others. But for now, it’s the salmonberries.

But last night, the first rain in a month rolled in (6 minutes shy of the record for the longest dry spell this time of year at seatac. ) The outside smelled damp and cool and earthy, as it was getting a much needed drink.

The rain continued today, and for the first time, we had a conflict between the scaffolding in the living room and the need to use the dining room table. Not bad for having it up for a week and a half already.