Necessities

Necessities are all encompassing nowadays. My cucumbers are reaching for the sky. Today I finally saw a lone honey bee hopefully pollinating my cucumbers. It's rained every day for more than a month and my crops have suffered. I thought about manually pollinating flowers but it's harder to do than one would suspect.

Meanwhile here are my carrots. So far so good; we shall see. Grocery stores don't have everything one can usually get. Neither do hardware stores. One starts to appreciate what is a necessity and what is not. One focuses on seeking and purchasing only necessities, especially since necessity prices have risen astronomically. No one seems to care about the huge rise in prices, even when brought to their attention. Once again big business wins and the poor suffer. I am lucky because I don't have to worry about a job or other mouths to feed. Be Safe, Be Well.

Happy Fourth - Be Happy for What you Have Speak out for what we're all Losing

See what I mean about the bee balm taking over.

The other day I made a peach clafoutis. 

Follow link for recipe.

Burning this elk statue in Portland has nothing

to do with police transgressions or any particular race

marxist domestic terrorists are fomenting

acts of destruction on our people, cities, & private properties.

As our nation's birthday approaches I hope that

mayors, city councils, politicians do something

to save our history, culture and keep all people safe.

Be Safe, Be Well

Flowers from my Garden

Coronation Gold Yarrow

 in an unglazed cassius clay vase made with a pinch method.

good for dried flowers, put in a vase without water

Scarlet Beebalm

in a glazed speckled clay vase made with a slab method

attracts bees and hummingbirds, spreads like crazy in a garden

Be Safe, Be Well

Beans, Carrots, Cucumbers, Radish

Gary built another planting bin which I promptly planted with burpless cucumbers hopefully to climb up the lattice and blue lake bush green beans in the front. We had huge downpours of rain so I had to string para-cord for the cucumbers and place cardboard circles around the green beans to support them temporarily.

These are chantenay carrots which are a shorter growing French variety. I did thin them but they are still thickly planted. We shall see.

The bush green beans already have a flower. Things are looking up.

Here is the first harvest from what we've planted this year. Various peppers (shishito, marconi, jalapeno, poblano) and a few tomatoes. These went into a blueberry salsa. At first I added one jalapeno and they wren't spicy enough. Then I added two more. Oh brother, way too spicy but good.

My icicle radishes were a bust considering the time and effort to grow them. I made red radish pickles with the red radish I grew and they were delicious. I put these icicle radish in a potato au gratin because I didn't want to waste them. Especially since radish are really nutritious. Next time I might plant daikon radish and see how they do. I think radish might be good grated into a coleslaw along with cabbage. Be safe and be well.