June is an abundant month in the garden. I will pick Royal apricots, Red Flame grapes, blackberries, Green Gage plums, Mission figs, Dorsett Gold Apples, white alpine strawberries, and Early Girl tomatoes. I will cut green onions, Swiss chard, oregano, chives, tarragon, and the first of the Genovese basil. I’ll can apricot vanilla jam with…
My white Saint Theresa hydrangea changing to pink–though it’s supposed to not ever change colors, since it is a white hydrangea. I gave it some soil sulphur last week to lower the ph in hopes of fixing the problem. Last week’s goals were tossed out the window when I ended up reading. Winter borrowed…
I picked 9 cups of blackberries from the garden. I picked the first of the figs, apricots, and apples from the garden. I picked two small tomatoes from the garden. I picked lettuce from the garden. I collected green oni0n seeds from the garden. I saved water from the shower, from rinsing garden produce, from…
Five weeks ago, I made new chore assignments at our house. After a month, it was apparent that the new chore assignments were not working, so I made some changes, and the new assignments are a much better fit. We added a few new chores into the mix, and Ivory, who turned 3 in April,…
Temperatures are climbing back up to normal this week and we will see 100º by Saturday. Therefore, my garden work needs to be done early in the week. I worked hard last week to remove caterpillar-infected leaves from the grape vines, but I still have many more to tackle. I read on the local nursery’s…
With the continued beautiful, unusually cool weather that we had last week, I was able to save money by not needing to run the air conditioner, only running a few fans for a little while, and reprogramming the drip and sprinklers to not go on for several days last week. Temperatures will return to…
The blackberries above grow in a space only about 12 inches wide next to the wall. This is the side of the house that has the air conditioning units, and it was a slope when we moved in. We cut it back, poured concrete, built a wall, and brought in new dirt to go next…
I cut flowers from the garden to bring indoors. I picked a couple of handfuls of white strawberries and 19 blackberries from the garden. For the strawberries, this is a large amount to have ripe at once; it’s usually just a few here and there. Since the weather has been 10 degrees cooler than normal,…
It’s not often that I have a good supply of lettuce from the garden in May, but thanks to a later planting of lettuce (I sowed every couple of weeks including some later than I have in years past) and some unexpected cooler weather than normal, I still have lettuce in the garden now….
This last week was the coolest first week of May that I have ever experienced here in Las Vegas. A snowstorm blew over us to the Rocky Mountains, bringing to us a week of clouds and cooler temperatures. Friday was the coolest day at 63ºF, more then 30º below what it was just recently. Consequently,…
Larkspur. These reseed themselves in the garden every year. I tried last week for a shortened to-do list for the week, and still, it didn’t happen. It reminded me of this quote from C.S. Lewis. Interestingly enough, my children picked this video to watch on Sunday, which was a great thing for me to see in…
I harvested artichokes from the garden. I made a couple of large pots of soup the first two days of the week. We had soup and salad (with lettuce picked from the garden) every day for lunch last week. I cut Swiss chard from the garden. I collected green onion seeds from the garden. The…