Filling our freezer

I love early summer! We're enjoying all sorts of fruits, and stocking the freezer for later, and the best part of it is how much of this we're doing for free!

First were the strawberries from our own garden. We ate berries each evening when they came in, and then cut up however many didn't get eaten and put them in the freezer. I think we ended up with about a quart there. Not anywhere near the quantity that we typically use in our smoothies over the course of the year. Darn those slugs!

James found a plum tree at work that no one seemed interested in. . . so home came those free plums to be pitted and frozen. The final count there-three tubbies of 1 1/2 quarts each. Those go into smoothies because they're a bit too tart to eat plain.

Peaches showed up at the farmers' market last weekend, and when we asked for a bushel we were told we had to wait until early August when the freestone peaches come in. But then he offered us seconds at two quarts for $5, rather than $7 a quart for the pretty ones. Some of the seconds were bruised, some just had spots on the skin. We only ended up with three that were too bruised to salvage the majority of them. Final count-over 18 lbs of pieces to freeze for $15. Those are primarily for smoothies, but will also be used in cobblers during the winter. We'll continue collecting and processing seconds through the season. It's much easier to do the smaller batches than it was to do the whole bushel+ we did over three days last summer.

Best of all, the wine berries (wild raspberries) are ripe. We made the twins join us to pick them before they went over to their dad's house weekend before last, and brought home a quart and a half. James and I picked another three quarts on Sunday, and James had done another picking trip one evening while I was at kung fu. It looks like something in the neighborhood of five quarts in the freezer, not including all the ones eaten fresh. There's nothing quite like berries that make it from branch to belly in ten seconds! We haven't taken bowls to pick berries on our walks since Sunday, but have each picked and eaten almost a cup each evening. Life is good!

Next up. . .blackberries! (We found the first dozen or so ripe ones last night, so I'm sure James is going to be out picking those while I'm at my sisters. He's the real blackberry fan in the house, but Samuel gives him some good competition for the berries.)

Our own beautiful corner of the world

James and I are enjoying the bursting Spring as we take our walks around the neighborhood. I haven’t had much time for gardening, but we did stop by Homestead Gardens Saturday and picked out a few plants. James got them all planted Saturday afternoon while I was doing my homework. We also picked up hyacinths in a pot for my desk at work (almost too fragrant for the enclosed space!), and another orchid for James’s collection. (Is it fair of me to encourage him to buy another one, and then tease him about doing so???)

Last night was just about the first time I did anything in the garden besides enjoy it. . . I took a few minutes and untangled the kiwi vines and wrapped/tied them further up the arbor. I had taken a few minutes last week to pollinate the peach blossoms (all 7 of them!) with a paintbrush since we hadn’t seen any bees around at that point, and helped a bit with planting peas last month, but James is doing most of the garden work these days.

James will be driving down to Georgia to pick up his special small-cell bees sometime in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully they’ll be well established by next Spring, and I won’t have to hand pollinate the peaches then.

We’ve accomplished one goal: eating something fresh from the garden every month of the year. We had fresh kale and black-eyed peas for dinner last Saturday (and lunch on Monday!) and I just harvested the last of my wintergreen berries. We may have strawberries before the end of the month. There are a few blossoms already. The peach tree and our bush cherries have blossomed. The apple and pear trees, along with the figs, kiwis, grapes, wolfberry, & quince are beginning to leaf out. The blueberry bushes are loaded with blossom buds. We’re going to thin those a bit, but will let them bear some this year.

James cleared the pachysandra from another bed in the front so that he could use that space for growing food.

Our frogs made it through the winter, and we even had a pair of wood ducks stop by for a visit to the pond last week. I was hoping they’d stay around and eat slugs, but haven’t seen them since. (Anyone know where I can buy slug-eating beetles???)

We’re looking forward to showing off our gardens, and are busy plotting ideas to share with my brother Chuck. He just bought another five acres- and has to hurry and get the gardens laid out before that plot gets infested with the equine epidemic that got his first lot. I figure that we’ve got four kinds of apples and four pears and a peach on our 1/5 of an acre. He can have lots more in an orchard in one corner, and still have room for his hops and salsa gardens. And he already has a handy source of manure to enhance the soil! I overheard James trying to talk him into a couple of beehives. . .