Summer is going so quickly and the weather has been so strange this year. A foot of snow in mid April after spring like temperatures in February. Rain and more rain in early summer, making putting in a garden a challenge, then hot and arid. Then the rain returned, along with insect pests in the garden, first Japanese beetles eating the leaves off of the Raspberry bushes, then they were joined by bean beetles and together, they decimated what remained of the first bean crop. Then the blister beetles arrived and defoliated some of the tomatoes. I hand picked them, dropping them in soapy water then sprinkled diatomaceous earth on the ground around the plants to try to kill off any that escaped to earth during the hand picking. The plants are alive, not putting out new growth, but fruit is ripening.
The tomatoes are being frozen whole but there are so many in the freezer now that I will pull them out, slip the skins off, and begin canning them this week when the rain resumes. The cucumbers that I planted this year for pickles are small and greenish white, interesting mild smooth flavor raw. Most of them are being lacto fermented into sour dills thick slices. Maybe a jar or two of spears too.
The silicone nipple lids and glass jar weights make the fermenting so easy.
There were two partial days off the farm this week in Colonial costume working with children, demonstrating the fiber arts and teaching drop spindling. Working with kids like this rejuvenates me.
Today, since it stayed dry yesterday and since tomorrow we will resume deck destruction, to take down the rest of the framework, I tackled cleanup. One task that I had promised eldest son that I would get done, was to move the scaffolding that we were not using for the deck back into storage. When we built the house, instead of renting scaffolding, we purchased it, knowing that it would be used repeatedly with staining the logs and other jobs. On occasion we have loaned some of it out to friend. Most of it was stacked against the house at various points and had been there for a year. It is now back in the back of the huge garage until needed again.
More the rotting deck wood was burned off in the burn barrel while I was working outside.
There will be another burn tomorrow, I am sure. To finish the jobs that I said I would get done this week was to stain the logs that were stained during construction then hidden behind the deck. They got a coat of diluted stain today and will probably get another coat, less diluted tomorrow. After tomorrow, we get another round of rain, so I will have to hope for a dry couple of days to get a third coat on before the new deck goes up.
This is the last day lily bloom of the season and for some reason, it is lopsided. This one is called Sear’s Tower and gets quite tall.
Last night while we sat on the front porch in the cool evening, a tiny ruby throated hummingbird visited the feeder. That is the first one I have seen that really had the vivid red throat. This morning, another little hummer decided the feeder was all his/hers, came for a drink and then sat on the crook neck to guard the feeder, not letting any of the others near it. It guarded for about 10-15 minutes, feeding then guarding, finally flew off. The photo isn’t great, taken from inside the house through the screen and enlarged, but you get the idea.
The header photo and the teaching photo were taken at the Wilderness Road Regional Museum camp and used from their site.