Abundance

It's been a foggy cool summer here in northern California but our family garden is growing riotously in spite of the weather.



I share the garden with my sister-in-law Tiana, my mom, and my sister Leandra. Tiana and I usually like a structured, well-kempt sort of garden with mostly veggies, but this year we've given in to chaos and flowers and it's really beautiful! Plus the bees are loving all the blooms and we've had plenty of cut flowers (which came in handy for the flower arch at Leandra's wedding.)

It's been such a pleasure to get into the garden lately, always some hidden little treat to discover.





The cool weather has slowed the ripening of the tomatoes, but we've finally got some yellow cherries.





The cucumbers are finally (after three failed plantings!) coming along.



And of course we've got more lavender than we can possibly harvest. Good old lavender, dependable no matter what the weather brings. Tiana's been making lavender hydrosol and I've been stuffing little sewn toys.



We dug some shiny new potatoes. Finn thinks they're delicious raw.



Finn's finally able to hang out in the garden without needing all my attention. He still likes to put things in his mouth, but now it's usually tomatoes or peas rather than rocks. And only once was it a snail! Of course kid-friendly play areas help.



And it's a good thing he's washable!

We're Getting Bees!

We had our first class yesterday and my head is spinning a bit with all the information.


Our teacher, the "Outlaw Beekeeper" of Sonoma County



By the end of the season, we could have 80 pounds of honey. To get that honey, the worker bees will have flown 4,400,000 miles (that's more than nine round-trip visits to the moon) and visited 160,000,000 flowers! Whew!



Our queen and her brood should be ready to come home with us next week.
Do you see the queen?



We all held one of the bee-covered frames; it's surprising how calm the bees on the frame are, but with other bees flying all around, it was still exhilarating and a little terrifying.


Tiana and Leandra hold bees for the very first time

Have any of you kept bees? Any advice for us novices?

Dirt under our fingernails

Spring has already arrived in our blessed part of the world and today we finally got out into the garden to give it some much needed attention. Turns out Finn is a pretty natural gardener: he went right to work pulling some of the dinosaur-sized weeds that have been growing up all winter.







(It's a good thing these "weeds" are edible!)