wiredfool

1 hour.

2 glass doors.

3 little birds.

All hit the glass, all survived after being really shaky for a while. They could perch rather quickly, but flying took a good 15 minutes before they were ready to launch. Given my previous experiences with cats and injured birds, I made sure that they were off the ground during this process. I put the first one on the perch of the hummingbird feeder. He wasn’t quite close enough to feed. The second, I held and tried to feed it a little sugar water from the feeder. It was holding on to my wedding ring as hard as it could, then fluttered to the branch where it sat for a few. The last one just got a branch, and no food, as we only really feed the hummingbirds.

So. June was a real mixed bag. Specifically, really cold and wet for the first half, trending to really damn hot for the last few days. The hot weather stuff planted early wasn’t exactly happy with the conditions, so a lot of it needed to be re-seeded, at least for fill in.

* The peas are just now starting to bear, we’ll have a harvest soon.
* The chard is nuts, starting to bolt in places. The salads, similar. Kale is well bolted by now.
* Potatoes are looking good, March and April are about neck and neck, with May’s significantly behind. The first two month’s worth are flowering now.
* The things that were seeded May 15 are somewhat happy, some of the carrots and parsnips came up, since reseeded to fill in.
* The bush beans came up (planted 5/15), were eaten by slugs, and then hated the cold weather. Beans that were planted 6/1 sortakinda came up when the weather got warmer, and now the ones that I planted as fill are coming up after being in the ground about a week.
* Squashes (summer, winter, pumpkin) mostly came up, needed fill planting on three hills, and are now all growing like mad with the warm weather.
* Corn. Didn’t like the cold. Reseeded, have been expecting it to come up, but it hasn’t been.
* Basil. Transplants didn’t like the cold, I should have covered them. Then the slugs ate them.
* Sunflowers planted 6/1 germinated well and really took off growing when it got warmer.
* Quinoa, germinated reasonably well and quickly in the cold. It coul dprobably do planted a bit earlier.
* Lavender seeds germinated, and growing really slowly. They probably should be done in little pots, then transplanted out when it gets hot.
* Tomato transplants went in 5/25 and stayed under row covers at night and during cold days. They look very happy with that treatment. The covers have been off for a couple of weeks, and they’re solid.
* Brassicas (cauliflower, broccoli, brussel sprouts, parsnips, turnips) have all had spotty germination, probably due to not keeping the seeds moist enough. (actually, that’s probably a pretty common issue). The ones that sprouted seem to be doing well, and the ones that didn’t have been replanted. They have a really wide growing season, so this will just mean that we’ll have a few ready to harvest a few weeks later.
* Onions probably need a lot more water than they’re getting. And they need to be protected from kiddos.
* I’m not sure that the leeks are growing as fast as I think that they should.
* The cilantro sprouted well, the sets we got are already well on the way to bolting. Basil hasn’t sprouted, it’s probably still too cold.
* Parsley has sprouted, and remarkably well, considering that the last time I did it, I got one or two plants total.

* We lost our one cherry. We still have 3 apples on one tree, and a couple on the other. The other three trees didn’t set fruit.
* The raspberries have set a bunch of fruit. The blackberries… a ton. We’re getting a few good salmon berries, and they’re far tastier than at the old place. Though, the kids get most of them.

Another old shot.

This is an older shot from April that I didn’t push out at the time.

Seen on Chase Jarvis’ Blog: Ira Glass on Creativity.

The take away– you have to work at it. And there is a stage (or, at least, there is if you’re progressing) where your taste exceeds what you can produce, and you have to keep working through it, pushing it forward.