Simple Pleasure #3 ~ The Garden

I know I've said it a hundred times, but summer in New England has been a far more challenging transition for me than winter.  When voicing my plans to relocate, people would always comment on how cold it was and ask if I was "ready" for the winters.  Freezing, snowy, long, etc.  My answer was always, "yes, of course!"  I have a coat addiction so I knew I'd be warm as well as adorable.  Plus, you can always put more clothes on.  No one EVER mentioned the summer.  Heat, humidity, and mosquitos all missed the list of warnings.  No one said, "Hey, your fabulous antique house isn't air conditioned (nor do the windows open, nor are there 3 prong plugs to accommodate a window unit anyway!!")  No one said you can't eat dinner outside because there are so many mosquitos that you feel like you are on the menu.  Thankfully, it is just a season so it passes almost as quickly as it arrived.  

Although hot and humid are my least favorite weather conditions, the garden is thriving.  We got into the habit of weighing our tomato harvest after watching the numbers add up at our friend Jeff's house from his prolific potted tomato plants.  Last year we had 13 varieties of tomatoes for a total harvest of 67 pounds.  What a great return for our efforts and an incredible cost savings were I to purchase those same heirlooms at the store for $6/lb.  This year, Keith started seeds for almost all of our plants in the basement, some as early as February.  He meticulously spritzed them with chamomile tea and peroxide to ward off disease and kept them as warm as possible with lights and mylar blankets.  His hard work has most certainly paid off!  The garden is producing like crazy.  I wish I was in the habit of weighing more types of produce as I harvest it but so far, we've picked 158 pounds of tomatoes!  Yes, you read that correctly.  Ninety one and a half pounds in a 7 day period alone.  OH.MY.GOODNESS.  Now you know why my blog posts are so few and far between!  If you aren't getting married this weekend or fruit flies aren't hovering on you on my kitchen counter then you get pushed to tomorrows list!

Beyond tomatoes, we are growing the following:
2 types of green beans, shell beans, 6 types of potatoes, sweet potatoes, 5 types of squash, 2 types of cucumbers, 6 types of melon, blueberries, strawberries, leeks, shallots, rhubarb, carrots, parsnips, fennel, salsify, celeriac, peppers, asparagus, 10 types of pumpkins, kale, brussels sprouts, and a partridge in a pear tree!

Simple Pleasure #2 ~ Chicks!

It's no secret that I am completely enamored with my little flock and now we have babies.  Yippee!!  We had a hen go broody - what in the world does that mean, you ask?  Well, maybe not you, but my former CA self would have certainly halted the story there.  Just in case you're like me, or the old me, "broody" is when your hen decides she wants to be a mom.  Instead of laying her egg and cackling proudly as she joins her cohorts in the field, she sits on it, in a trance, without eating or drinking for 21 days!  She also gathers the eggs of her friends and adds them to her pile, or "clutch".  Magically, since she has no hands!  Anyway, I tried for weeks to break her of it by lifting her off the nest, collecting MY eggs and shooing her outside, but within a few minutes she'd be back on the now empty nest waiting for another egg.

As the saying goes, if you can't beat them, join them; so we let her be.  It's kind of amazing how all of this works too.  I collected 6 beautiful eggs from all 3 breeds of chickens over the next few days (you can collect eggs for up to a week before putting them under your broody hen.  They don't start "cooking" until she sits on them.  Fascinating!)  Assuming they were all fertilized since "Red" is pretty diligent about his role as a ladies man, I anxiously waited the 21 LONG days for some action.  Sadly, they didn't all make it, but we do have 5 little peeps running around now.  Hooray for baby chicks!

The thing I'm realizing about living where there are true seasons is that they actually make time pass more quickly.  Yet again, I'm scrambling to tell you the latest while the next season is breathing down my neck!  Technically I have a few more weeks, but Labor Day does mark the unofficial end of all things summer so I will bust out a list of some of my favorite things about these last 12 weeks.  And, yes, I'll be wearing white linen while I do so.  Time is ticking for those favorites too.

Simple Pleasure #1 ~ Sweet Peas
This beloved flower was first brought to my attention by my dear friend, Sharon when she grew them in her own secret garden in Palo Alto.  They inspired us so that they were the catalyst for our very first garden party that ended up as an annual event for 10 years.  

Last spring, I diligently planted hundreds of seeds along the fence of the rinding ring imagining their beautiful presence winding around everything.  Well, word on the street is that sweet peas don't like it hot and they cannot tolerate weeds.  That communicates to me they have no business showing up at the Phineas Wright House!  Maybe 3 actually lived long enough to produce a flower.  Ugh!

This year, sweet Keith, started the seeds in the basement (like all good New England farmers do!) and we transplanted the starts into a weed free bed along the garden fence.  Success!  No one told these little ladies that they don't like it hot either.  They peaked in July, about the time I was withering, and I clipped thousands of fragrant stems for weeks.  Hooray for sweet peas!