Gardening

Things are slowing down and life around here is getting calmer.  Niece (LBB's daughter) decided to go back to CA to her husband  and Nephew #2 (BBB's middle son) went with her.  They left this morning, driving.  I'm glad Niece will have someone with her, she's has what they refer to in these parts as a high tense personality and has never ventured more than a few miles from Orange County on her own.  (LBB was in Vegas when she decided to come here and flew out to CA to drive with her.)

Nephew #2 hasn't been getting along with BBB on the construction front and that was creating some tension, so I'm grateful he made the decision before I had time to make it for him.  He's a great guy when sober, but that wasn't happening often enough to suit me.

BBB and Nephew #1 are going to move the camping trailer up the hill to the house site since there is water, electric and septic there now and will live in it until the house is complete.  That sounds absolutely enchanting to me, since my house has been full to brimming over for six months now.

The garden is coming along great.  I've always done a salsa garden, but have never done one on this scale before.  It was such a mild winter I took a risk and started everything early, (by the way, I ordered a staging table and shelf for the little greenhouse from fourseasongreenhouse.com back in January and they still haven't arrived.  At this point they won't even acknowledge my emails or calls)so we have been eating salad out of it for some time (lettuce, spinach, broccoli, beets, cabbage) and last week I picked cherries at a neighbor's and made pies.  I think it will really help with the grocery bills as we all love fresh fruits and veg.

This year we have lots of tomatoes, peppers (sweet and hot for spaghetti sauce, jalapenos for salsa), tomatillos for chile verde and green salsa, onions (red, yellow, Texas Sweet, and bunching), garlic (when I went out to the farm last fall I braved the snakes and dug some of the wild garlic up to transplant here since it has such terrific flavor), melons (Swan Lake, Haogen, water, musk and cantaloupe), purple hull peas, corn, pole beans, cucumbers, several types of squash, and I can't think of what else, in the garden, plus we've started a small orchard (peaches, nectarines, plums, apples, and apricots) and planted raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, grapes and muscadines. I'd like to try growing watercress on the one of the ponds, but haven't had any time to research it this year.  Maybe I can add that next year.

I've already put up 20 quarts of pickles and frozen lots of squash for use next winter, plus we'll have the spaghetti, acorn and winter squash which won't have to be frozen.  As well as for eating fresh I plan to can spaghetti sauce and salsa ready-to-eat, plain tomatoes, and make tomato juice.  I wish this climate was better for a root cellar, but I'll just have to make do.

There are several good pictures of the garden and backyard I'd like to add to this, but Blogger just won't cooperate right now. Maybe next time.