Return of warmth

Garlic for the year

Loving our (mostly) warm weather here in the Northwest, especially when most of our friends are suffering under too-hot conditions elsewhere in the US and Canada. This month’s highlights:

• Our annual garlic harvest. Something about the curing process where a year’s worth of garlic is hanging in the breezy shade for several weeks makes me smile every time I walk past it.
• Our chili peppers are transplanted well from the greenhouse to the food forest once consistently warm temperatures arrived. They seem happy and are now loaded with peppers.
• 

  Little friend, big flower

  My little girl’s sunflowers that she started herself are now 10′ tall. Love the look of amazement on her face when she thinks about that growing process.

• We’ve officially become a family of scythers, with new scythes arriving for my wife and son from a Canadian woodworker.
• The anticipation of our first honey harvest of the year. Good thing, since we ate the last of last year’s harvest two months ago (I mistakenly sold off “extra” jars of honey this winter to a friend…oops!).
• Learning more lessons about the balance of sharing our berries (honey, blue, tay, rasp, goose, and black/red/white currants) with birds and wanting to actually eat some ourselves.