A ton of food

 Today marks the day that we surpassed 2000 pounds of food that we've pulled out of the yard! The girls and I processed just over 80 pounds of pears today, and that (plus a bit of kale and about a pound of green beans) was enough to push us over that magic line.

Now we can say quite literally that we've grown a ton of food this year. ;) That's pretty cool. 

Reuben made himself comfortable near the compost pile where we're throwing all of the not-so-good pears.

Rinnah's climbing the ladder to pick the beans off the 12 foot tall sunflowers! Thankfully they're bending down as the season progresses.

Three kiddos tossing pears into the pile.

One of the perks of having a big brother is his big muscles! He's got three little sisters in there!

Picking, picking, picking pears.

It really has been a long time!

We were thinking, as we've worked on putting in our tremendous veggie garden this spring that it's probably been at least five years since we've put in a "real" vegetable garden. Sure enough, this popped up in Shuttlerfly's "remember when" today:

Look how little they are!

Digging potato trenches

Keep the boys swinging and we can keep working!

Alium and boys

Last spring these giant allium from my grandpa came up early with the warm weather and then froze. I thought they were done for. It was so exciting to see them coming up again this spring! I'm really looking forward to seeing these bloom again, especially after thinking they were lost.

The fountain continues to be a favorite for Reuben, and Ebenezer regularly joins him. They both come in soaking wet!!

the swing

We finally figured out a new place for a tree swing. We've missed our old one since the elm came down. This one hangs in the big maple on the west side of the yard, and has required some reworking of the garden underneath it, but that was always one area that needed some attention - a few random hostas, and overrun with ferns, myrtle, and snow on the mountain. I've moved a few things in along the edges, but this may be the impetus to really pull something together and give it some shape.

the fountain

Eben has discovered the joys of Reuben's water feature! It's so neat to us that Reuben is still, three years later, so very into his fountain.

Can't think of a better way to spend the first day of summer!!

Pumpkins

This was not a year for planting anything, but we appreciated a few volunteers. The front garden between the driveways sprouted a mini-pumpkin vine, and Reuben and I (with some help at the end from Gloria) picked ten mini pumpkins yesterday. The vine dried up early - not sure why - but we've still got 10 babies fully orange on there.

 And, courtesy of my phone without any intention on my part, here's a photo of the larger pumpkin plant (still green) a little further down, next to the dill that seeded itself last fall. We've enjoyed that fresh addition to our lunches here and there, and also found "Carrots" the caterpillar, which just over the weekend formed his chrysalis.

Syrup

Even when nothing is growing in the garden, there are still opportunities to take advantage of its productive opportunities. We've been tapping our maple trees, and those of two or three of our neighbors since Reuben was a very small boy. It's now become one of his very favorite activities of the whole year, and he takes the work very seriously.

Tapping the trees - we use old milk jugs to catch the sap.

Matt's been using a three-pan system for the last two years. This makes the whole process go a lot faster, and he's been able to get a lighter syrup for the finished product, too.

Just to the left of center you can see a big cylinder of ice he pulled out of his holding bucket, using the Native American trick of just freezing off the water and getting a head start on concentrating the sap to get to the proper sugar content.

The whole rig in all its glory. Those cinder blocks are slowly crumbling - every year it's a little more "riggish" and one of these years he's going to have to purchase some new ones! (These are all still left over from the demolition during remodeling at our church years ago.)

Reuben's beloved job is to feed the fire.

 And the finished product from the first boil: nearly two gallons of beautiful, pure, home grown and home made maple syrup!

Weeds

Gardening is great for analogies, and as a mother of nine children, every time I'm out weeding my gardens, I can't help but think of the work that I do every day as a mother.

Sometimes the weeds I pull up are just little things that I grab as I'm walking by. These are kind of putsy to pick at, but they come up easily - the whole root and everything in one little tug. Some of parenting is like that. "Oh, no, Evania, scissors are for PAPER, not hair." Once, done. I don't expect I'll have to repeat that one again for her.

But sometimes it's a much bigger job, and MAN is it crazy how quickly some of those things can grown! And once that root is down in there, you can pull all you want, but unless you go after it with a shovel, you don't stand a chance - it will be back just as strong next year (or later this same summer!) And even if you DO go after the big ones with a shovel, the odds of you getting the entire root are not very good. It will be back. And you've got to keep watching, and when you see it sticking its ugly head back out of the ground, you've got to go back after it again and again and again until it finally dies.

Burdock is one of my top five hated weeds, right up there with creeping charlie, thistle, and the beautiful purple wild flower that takes over and chokes out other plants and refuses to die. And that leaves one more slot in the top five open...I guess I'm undecided what should be in that spot! There are a number of contenders depending on the season...

And some just never seem to die.

Just as I have a tendency to fall back into the same patterns of sin again and again, I see it ever so clearly in my children. The weeds that don't get pulled out right away have roots so deep that no shovel of mine is ever going to pull it out. Oh, on those nights, how I pray for the Roundup of the power of God to pour down on those weeds and watch them wither away, because some of the "weeds" growing in those little hearts have roots that are no match for even the most skilled human gardener!

What I've found is the best thing to do at that point is just to simply keep at it. Pulling *part* of the plant weakens the plant, which slowly, ever so slowly, weakens the root. Pulling up the immature plants prevents the disaster of a weed going to seed. That burdock up above might come back (though I think I got enough of that one we might be okay for at least a few years!), but it's not coming back as anything other than itself! No baby burdock surrounding it this time!

But in the meantime, the work of the weeds also has the potential to be a great connector of me and my children. Especially among the younger set, and often even Leah, too, I have eager helpers, and pretty dependable, too, I must say.

Rinnah and Evania are here helping me pull out an edible weed from the vegetable garden. It's a win-win - they have something to bring to the front yard for their game, and I lose the weeds! Reuben has learned to distinguish this yellow-flowered clover, and will very deliberately pull up just those. It's great for me - he makes slow, but real progress, and it keeps him  happily engaged near me in an activity that it outside!

These precious summer days spent outside together are irreplaceable.

Early June garden tour

These late May, early June days are some of the best for the garden. I tend to hit the garden with full vigor in the spring, so find that my spring bloomers tend to be the best developed. The last year or two I've been trying to be more intentional about filling up the later summer with something other than yellow daylilies, but this season is still when the garden shines its brightest.

Starting earlier in the day, the fountain was putting in some time. I'm looking forward to developing the planted areas of the fountain garden to provide more physical and visual cues for where people are and are not intended to walk! I'd love to incorporate some more permanent (and less tippy!) seating options over here as well.

 It's wonderful that this is an activity that Reuben can share with his sisters!

 

Later, after the kids were in bed, Matt and I were able to spend a few minutes outside.

The garden up the hill from the small rain garden:

These yellow iris are glad I pulled some of the myrtle out from around their toes last year!

Looking up from the rain garden to the yellow iris at the top of the photo. I like how the yellow bookends what's happening in between.

Moving up the path from the lower to upper yard, on one side the coral bells are blooming alongside the blue flag iris.

The gooseneck is an invasive one! I try to keep it to the south (right) of the stepping stones, counting on the concrete stones to create something of a barrier. This motley garden relies on hardy plants, but that also means we can be somewhat ruthless keeping them in place. Looks like I have some pulling to do!

Moving into the large garden by the old elm and big maple, the large red root beer iris I planted last fall have decided to go ahead and bloom this year! These will be so pretty after a few years of settling in! These are like little sentinals at the entry to the path that leads through this garden to the yellow slide and the G² office entrance of the house.

You don't get a good view of the swirling pattern of this portion of the garden from the photo, but you CAN see that the gas plants took pretty well to their transplanting last season! The three smaller ones at the beginning of the spiral took it a little harder, but they may still come into their own over the next few years.

Such a fun variety of colors and textures - the large, flat, lobed purple leaves in the front, the serrated glossy foliage of the gas plant, topped by the stately white columnar clusters, next to the fine grained slim lines of the chives, topped this time of year with their tiny purple globes. The dead elm provides a nice backdrop.

This garden around the base of the cottonwood is always one of my favorites.

And the peonies have all burst into flower after those first two started last week!

Nothing like a profusion of old fashioned peonies to transform an ugly, peeling, old shed!

And into the vegetable garden, which is apparently going to have a mostly fallow year. And that's okay. With Mira back in the hospital, I had Owen help me put up the two tomato trellises. How nice to have a son who's strong enough and big enough to take Dad's place in some things!

Also, in the front of the photo, you can see the potato sprouts greening up. These are the last of last year's harvest that we didn't eat because they were beginning to look like little aliens crawling out of their box in the dark basement! We thought it wouldn't hurt to put them in the ground, and apparently they took to it quite well!

And, lastly, the garden on the north side of our practice retaining wall between the blueberries and the vegetable garden. A bright hosta, some root beer irises, and basic orange daylilies for later in the summer. I really enjoy the part of gardening where you split and transplant,and it looks mediocre for the rest of that season, but the next year, it's lovely, and in two more years, it's bountiful!! How could you not enjoy being a part of this!

Thinking about Eden is one small piece of what makes me look forward to eternity. If, before the Fall, Adam and Eve spent their time working in a garden that must be a little bit of what paradise must be! And we get to be part of that in a tiny way when we garden here in our short time on this earth.

Great-grandpa's allium

We're short a few allium heads.

 No, Reuben was not the culprit. Evania freely 'fessed up to the fact that she had pulled them off. I'm grateful she did not take all of them...and perhaps without putting their energy into flowering, the headless ones will divert energy to the bulbs instead and *next* year will be even showier.

"Next year" is one of the best things about a garden.

Another great day to spend outside around the bench and slide!

Gabion wall

 It just occurred to me that I can write back posts with the date function so as to not forget about significant garden memories, like this one! So, I'm writing this 7/30/21, but posting it for five years ago when the work actually happened...

Matt and I have always thought gabion walls were really cool. So, when the city decided to do some work on our street and put in a parking lane which required demolishing the regional trail AND the colored concrete edging (both of which were replaced 8' further in at the end of the summer), we asked the crew if they would give us the slabs, and they did! Then it was just a simple matter (ha ha!) of smashing up the slabs with a sledge hammer. :)

Thankfully, Matt's not the only man around this house! At eleven years old, Owen's got enough oomph inside of him to get quite a lot accomplished.

Looking back at this photo I love the pretty nodding wild onion in the foreground! :)

While the smashing was happening at the end of the driveway, the digging and pounding of rebar and the building of the 4x4 grid with 2x4 mesh behind was coming along. The goal with the wall was to create an edge to the front yard to make it easier for the kids (ahem, Reuben!) to know where to stop and where's too far.

And then the exciting part began! All summer as we were working, we jokingly called this the "man quilt." As a quilter myself, I had often laughed at a comic I saw once of a man lamenting to his wife that all she does is buy big pieces of fabric, cut it up into small pieces, and then put them back together into big pieces again! Well, that's what we were doing here. Smash up big slabs and concrete and then put them back together into a different (but much more interesting!) sort of slab. Yes. I do love quilting, particularly, I've learned, scrap quilting, and this Motley Garden is no exception. I thrill at finding ways to work with what we have to make something more than what it was before!

Another delightful piece of this project was how interested Reuben was in the process. It's hard (and still is five years later!) to engage him and help him be a part of what we're doing, but this was just the right variety of repetitive task that grips his interest.

He loves filling the wheelbarrow, here with help from two and a half year old Evania.

And then these three fill up the wall!

Isn't it pretty??