Summertime Photo Tour
It is certainly summer! Because of the degenerative condition that is affecting my spine, I have been learning to ask for more help. It’s not a bad thing! A volunteer recently helped with weeding around our garlic patch in the Tiny Food Forest. These are quite the striking before and after photos. Looking really good!
The Tiny Food Forest is certainly filling in. All those perennials are making quite the dense understory. From June to July, you can really see that space mature. The elderberry is in full bloom—gorgeous!
In the understory, you can see: oregano, lemon balm, thyme, sage, peppermint, and strawberries. There’s orach that’s gone to seed; it’s not edible now, but I think it looks kinda cool and it we let it self-seed to give us more early spring greens next year. In the overstory in this Tiny Forest, we’re slowly establishing: elderberry, plums, and hazelnuts. There’s also a Rocky Mountain Maple that doesn’t provide any food, but it’s a local that provides shelter for birds and shade for some herbs beneath it.
We've planted some flowers in those old tires that mark the corners of the food forest. Why tires? I experimented with those a couple years ago, growing potatoes in them. I think the car tires weren't quite big enough to grow potatoes. The soil in those tires got pretty warm because it was such a narrow column—a little too warm for getting good, good sized potatoes to grow in them. We had quite a few fingerlings. They were great, but not worth the effort. So this year, I'm just using those tires as flower planters to brighten the space and feed the bees.
Here you can see our new trellis garden. John built a beautiful grape arbor with benches along the path to our front door. There are a few tall perennial marshmallow plants at either end of that path, anchoring the space. And then the grape vine itself has taken off, growing up onto the trellis. We’ve seen plenty of blooms on it already and look forward to some grape clusters soon.
Here's the front view of that grape arbor trellis garden. You can see some mullein that's gone to seed. Some people think it's a weed, but I think it's pretty. We also harvest it and use its leaves to create infused olive oils for our hand salves. Just to the left of the mullein, there are some org blooms. Those are allium. AKA Onion blooms. I let some of them bloom every year just because I think those spherical blooms are so pretty. Those aren’t decorative alliums. They are actually edible onions; they make small, tasty yellow onions. But I do let some of them go to seed like this, just because they look cool. If I let them go to seed, they'll also create a bunch of little “bulbuls”, which I scatter in the fall and they'll grow more onions all over the place. However, if you let an onion go to seed like this, the bulb itself down below won’t get very big. So we won’t harvest the bulbs off the plants that have gone to flower like this.
We’ve been busy with a lot of projects around the grounds, caring for the house and mature trees in back. We are thinking of selling soon—not this year, but possibly in 2025. So, John has been up in our spruce and fir trees, thinning out dead branches. He makes me nervous, but he also has a lot of fun climbing up there.
As for food harvesting, there have been plenty of good eats. As we head into summertime, we’ve had lots of tasty salad greens for a couple months now. There are also strawberries and honeyberries this time of year. I planted root crops pretty early too, so those are just starting to mature. This time of year, I will sometimes “rob” the root crops. If I'm thinning out the carrots and thinning out the turnips or parsnips, I don’t let those “thinnings” go to waste. I pull them as baby carrots, baby turnips, etc. I'll add these to soups and salads all week.
And here's Timber-Cat, way up in our willow tree. She likes to watch us garden. She's become quite the little farm mascot and quite the climber! Thankfully, she’s good at back-climbing down, as well as up. I’m sure not going up there to help her down!