2010-Just last night I heard a flock gathered on the field just next door though I couldn’t see them. Perhaps they were swallows. The harvest dominates the days now, tomatoes, apples, greens and the last squashes needing to be preserved now. The last mowings and the garage paint scraping must be fitted in around that. The weather has been marvelously cooperative though and the only limit to what gets done is my energy. I noticed as I was tossing the fallen apples out of the way when I mowed under the tree that there were none of the yellow and black sugar loving bees that can be such pests at this time of year, especially when I’m cutting up apples outside, None. Is that a natural fluctuation or another sign of environmental harm?
2012-Something I’ve never seen-a flock of two dozen or so blue jays, raucous and marauding, clustered on the trees and houseplants, pecking something out of the dirt. I’ve wondered in the past why I never felt more awe at such a sky blue bird, but in a group like this they were amazing and tropically unusual as a flock of brightly colored parrots.
I’m feeling the need to get involved with plants more, leading me back to experimenting with dyeing wool with them. So far I’ve tried dock root, elderberries, knotweed and achiote (from the supermarket). Poke berries, amaranth and goldenrod in the works.
Pounds of string beans this year though the cucumbers and tomatoes have died back with what I fear is blight of some kind. Making pesto today and minestrone with green beans, limas, tomatoes, chard, kale, leeks, garlic, peppers and little spears of broccoli, all from the garden. The squash was a disaster this year, weakened by drought because I tried them in the front bed which is too clayey to be kept watered. They had slugs, squash bugs and vine borers. I guess its amazing I got the few I did. The cardoons were attracting tons of those striped bees for some reason, I even stepped on one, though there are no apples (or pears or nectarines) this year so I don’t have to worry about being bothered by them while cutting fruit outside.
2013-The same blight killed the cucumbers again, although they were flourishing earlier in the season. The squash may be affected as well. I’ve been somewhat negligent about it in the past thinking healthy plants would fight off diseases given good growing conditions but I’m convinced now that the soil is contaminated and I will have to take some measures next year. The grafted plant experiment was not a success, both the eggplant and the tomato dying completely back early on. The black cherry tomatoes are ripening, slowly, but the heirloom ‘Stripeys” are still green. The sprouting broccoli turned out to be an interesting plant in that it yields a constant supply of small florets for cutting every day rather than the few but large heads of normal broccoli.
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