Filed under: living while not working, nature, stuff, thoughts | Tags: buy local, csa, csa local harvest, csa new hampshire, organic, produce
My CSA joy abounds again this week, with more color and variety as the summer harvest gets into full swing. I left the organic bread (Wheat) from Abigail’s Bakery out of the picture, as well as the raspberries we received!!
This week brought a bag of red potatoes, a large head of broccoli, two heads of ruffled lettuce, a gorgeous bunch of young carrots, three summer squash, traded my tomatoes for a nice bunch of beets, a bag of mixed greens, a bunch of kale, and five cucumbers!
WOW!!! I’m going to try grilling the beets, as the salad turnips grilled were spectacular.
This is already week six out of eighteen – I can’t believe time goes by so quickly.
Filed under: living while not working, nature, thoughts | Tags: garden peas, growth, peas, peas flowering, surprise
Last week, when I wasn’t looking, the peas started flowering…
They took my breath away – these unruly, grasping plants that have grown out of dried, hard balls of pea. Now they have all reached the top of the trellises, and wave about looking for more to grab hold of. These are indeed growers, survivors – but not scary like the vine on the garage in Medford that knew exactly where to go next, just waiting to cover everything – the house, us, the cars – everything. These are climbing, grasping what they find and holding on, but still frail in their standing.
They surprised me again today, these peas, with pods – honest-to-goodness, recognizable, edible pea pods, extending out from the flower blossom in slow growth.
Filed under: living while not working, nature, stuff | Tags: csa, joy, organic, produce, support local growers
Third week of this summer’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), and I finally remember to catalog it somehow. I’ve found that the joy I get in participating in this CSA is difficult to translate. I don’t feel like anyone ‘gets it’. Whatever. I do enjoy the whole CSA thing – supporting local growers, buying organic – immensely.
This week I received one cabbage, three garlic, a huge bunch of salad turnips, two heads of lettuce, four bunches of broccoli crowns, three squash, an organic loaf of Plentiful White Sourdough from Abigail’s Bakery and I traded my three tomatoes (Yuck – my mother’s not here this week, so no way….) and got a gorgeous bunch of beets with nice leafy greens. Woo hoo.
Filed under: living while not working, nature, thoughts | Tags: bulldozer, giant propane tank, landscaping, ledge
This is what happens when your husband makes friends with your landscaper…
and both of them have a thing for heavy machinery.
I admit, I love uncovering more of the gorgeous rock we are living on. My concern is with the gaping holes they leave when they run out of ledge, but still have rental time on the bulldozer… My other thought is, is this really what we want to highlight in the yard?
Filed under: living while not working, nature | Tags: garden, growing, peas, plants, tomato plants, vegetable garden, zucchini
I’m the contrary one… the garden is surprisingly cheery. The bare pictures from just over a month ago are quite a contrast to the state of things yesterday…
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| main garden bed: eggplant, broccoli, beets, peppers, tomatoes and peas | side bed: zucchini, pumpkin, asparagus and brussels sprouts |
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| a perfect green pepper, 1″ high | pepper flowers |
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| tomatoes | tomatoes |
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| zucchini:female flower & small fruit | zucchini plant |
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| my wall of peas | peas |
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| pumpkin | lone-surviving broccoli |
Filed under: living while not working, nature | Tags: astonishing, beauty, Biblical rains, hummingbird, hummingbird rescue
During an afternoon torrential downpour, about two weeks ago, my mother noticed 
something stuck on one of the hummingbird feeders. Turns out that a baby female hummer had gotten a wing and half of herself jammed in the space between the feeder and the ledge. My mother helped to get her unstuck, and we put her in a dish on top of the hot tub. Then the skies opened with violent rain, and I was afraid she’d drown in the dish.
After a quick google, I went in search of an eyedropper to try to feed her. I finally 
found a watercolor paintbrush whose handle is actually a chamber for water. I filled it with some Oriole nectar. When I went back out the tiny girl had fallen or jumped so that she was behind the hot tub, under the deck railing. I contorted myself so she could feed out of the tube, and to my great surprise, she did! It started slow, and she was shaking, but she did drink, and she did open her eyes, but she didn’t look old enough or strong enough to make it off the deck, never mind to fly on her own.
While this tiny bird drama unfolded, an adult male kept hovering about, and when not flying around, he sat on the bird feeder close by.
After she had eaten and moved her head away, I turned to kill a small wasp that had 
crept through the deck boards, possibly drawn to the nectar, but big enough to do damage to a bird not much bigger than a quarter.
As I stepped on the wasp, the little hummingbird flew straight up by my (astonished) face and into a tree right above the deck!
Fast forward to today, about two weeks later… I was outside photographing the 
gardens and was sitting on the deck steps with the camera and heard the familiar “whup whup whup” of a hummer going to the feeder. It was this small girl, and to my delight she stayed on the feeder for about five minutes, then moved to the forsythia bush where she stayed for another good while.
I have no way of knowing for sure, of course, whether this is my same girl – but I will think it was.
