A Little Lily Goes a Long Way

With Liam gone to sleep away camp for three days, Seamus at the cottage with Grandma, and Alistair napping, I was free to spend a bit of time exploring my gardens.  I have lots of beautiful and delicious things growing.  Unfortunately when I get behind in my weeding some can actually bloom and disappear before I even notice them!

As I was checking things out, I realized how low the water level in the pond was.  As I prepared the hose to add almost a foot of water, Ian pointed out that I would be drowning all the gorgeous water lilies that were currently in bloom on the surface.  No problem, I said.  I suited up in Ian's hip waders and climbed into the mucky mess to harvest several buds which I included as the bonus item in today's CSA baskets.  They are incredibly lovely.

The rest of this week’s CSA basket included: green and butter crunch leaf lettuce, a head of red leaf lettuce, chard, baby turnips, Parisian carrots, jalapeños, a head of garlic, a tiny yellow zucchini, strawberry spinach, rosemary, summer savory, dill, sweet basil, flat leaf parsley, kale, red onions, chocolate mint, apple mint, oregano, sage, daikon micro greens, wasabi mustard micro greens, red clover micro greens, raspberries and a dozen farm fresh eggs.

I was particularly proud of the Parisian carrots.  This was a special shallow growing variety of carrot, perfect to grow in my pallet gardens.  They turned out amazing!

I fed some carrots tops to Nugget the hamster so he could share in my bounty.

Do not worry hamster lovers, I did not let Nugget eat all of these!  I gave him a bunch,
let him drag a few into his house for a snack, and then removed the leftovers.

As an aside, Nugget is doing very well on his farm "holiday".  We have established a routine whereby he exercises in his ball for 15 minutes each morning and then scarfs down a gourmet breakfast.  For example, he has tried sweet pepper, apple, clover microgreens and a raspberry.  He liked the microgreens and refused the raspberry.  There is no accounting for taste, I suppose.

Also special in the CSA basket this week was the strawberry spinach with scarlet red "berries".  The berries tasted weird - very much like spinach but with an odd texture.  Certainly interesting.  I am looking forward to hearing what my CSA families thought of them.

While I am doing well keeping on top of my vegetable gardens, my flower gardens are getting away from me - especially my pond garden.  My pond garden is my passion project that I just never seem to get around to.  Right now it looks like a jungle.

During my explorations I realized that there are heaps of black raspberries growing in there that are dying for water.

There are also heaps of weeds...

and a weeping mulberry tree that is no longer weeping but instead looks like it is crying "Hallelujah" while swaying back and forth and waving its branches at the Sun (see what I did there?).

Once out of the pond garden, the hidden produce was a little easier to spot.  We have grapes growing gangbusters,

an eruption of cucamelon vines,

and about a billion teeny tiny pears.

There certainly is a lot going on on the farm at this time of year.  There is not much I can do but keep trying to keep up with it all...and enjoying my hidden treasures when I find them despite all the weeds!