End of June Harvest

The summer has begun.

Parsley is lovely.

Today was the first harvest of peas.

I picked a full strainer.

which yielded a large bowl. Dinner today included

peas, rice-a-roni, chicken francaise, new potatoes.

Next to be picked was red currants.

This is the second year for the bushes.

The yield from three bushes was three cups.

Now it's time to make jelly.

After cooking them a bit, I drained them using

a coffee filter. It came to one and a half cups.

I added the same amount of sugar and cooked.

When it jelled, I had three half-cups.

Wonderful red!

Then I picked the black currants.

When cooked and strained, I had four cups.

This gave me four and one-half cups of dark purple jelly.

I guess I've had a day!

Keets and the Mirror

The keets are growing. They have been in the pen - (as opposed to the diningroom table or the porch in boxes) - for a few days and have gotten used to leaving and entering. We kept them in for a few days, but yesterday we moved their water and food outside, so they go in and out at will.

They continue to be very nervous, and if anyone appears, they crowd in.

They are not very bright, though, and if you hide behind a lattice, you disappear, apparently. Sadly, my camera does not do well at a distance. We'll see what D can get in the next few days.

They are definitely not the prettiest birds on the planet.

One of the articles I read suggested they like looking at themselves in a mirror.

D tried it. When they discovered it, they stood in line and took turns checking themselves out!

In a few more days, we will let them wander a bit farther.

We've had quite a bit of rain, but that makes everything but the lawn mower happy!

Isn't this a lovely flower?

Never cultivated for its flower, though.

But the pea flower is wonderful as it grows.

And the peas are growing happily.

Butterflies are visiting.

Can you spell that J word hot pepper?

Jalapeño.

How about the little bit word that sounds like a liquid first course?

soupçon

Hey - I figured out (with help from google) how to get the strange characters needed for some imported words. You go to START, in the RUN box type CHARSET, select the characters you need. Save them somewhere, and copy/paste into your blog.

There may be easier tricks, but I don't know them.

Peas and Peppers

When my brother posted his pepper pics, I had to check mine. We are much farther north, and usually two to three weeks later in the spring, but I was delighted to see flowers and peppers on the "cherry bombs".

So --- as long as I was out there with the camera, I got a couple of other garden pics.

The turnips are looking very happy. (D likes turnips in stews. And it's so easy to make a huge pot of soup or stew, and freeze 5-10 one-person servings for lunch. Right now the freezer has chicken with bowtie noodles (farfale), kale, mirepoix, barley. There is also lamb with mushroom and barley (and the ubiquitous mirepoix). And there's pork with everything. He often has soup for lunch with raisin bread.)

The peas are blossoming like mad, but no pods, yet. The peas, beans, peppers, beets, kale, cabbage, brussel sprouts are all in a large garden enclosed by an 8 foot fence. The fence was buried one foot to try to deter the woodchucks. And it's that high to deter the deer.

No matter how far apart we put the rows, picking will be a pain -

I like to pick in the morning, and I'll get soaked by the dew on the plants.

And the rows grow so close together that a stool is not very useful, so it's a lot of bending.

Oh, but nothing is better than peas right out of the garden.