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Showing posts with label rhubarb. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rhubarb. Show all posts

Sunday, 9 June 2024

Early June

We’ve had another week close to home working in the garden. Between trips to the garden centre, when weeding filled the day, sore muscles made the next day a chore. The vegetable plants will go in the garden this week.


On lists of healthy dietary must haves these days, kale often makes the cut. I planted kale last June and left it in the garden late fall. Well, fall became winter and those six kale plants weathered the worst Prince Edward Island could throw at them. This spring, when I expected mush where the plants were located, healthy plants greeted me. I swear, kale will be the last plant on earth after the apocalypse.





Garlic, planted late October, will be ready next month 





and rhubarb is plentiful, enough to share with friends. Rhubarb contributed to a great birthday cake recently.





In the flower bed, the nine bunches of peonies we are tending are in bud, waiting for a wind storm to bloom, at least that’s what always happens. They are our favourite blooms though they only last a few days every year.





Under the patio deck, a new generation of robins learned the sad truth about crows raiding nests in the area. The robins abandoned this beautiful nest after the crows ate their eggs.





When we did walk the boardwalk this past week, Dame’s Rockets had popped up along the shoreline. 





Ferns are unfurled now and are a welcome addition to the greenery. Chokecherry trees are in bloom and the trail is lined with them.





Meanwhile, a mama Red Squirrel was in a feeder, taking time to eat before returning to her babies.




It was a busy week but a lovely one in June.




Tuesday, 23 July 2019

Berries and jam

After a cold spring which put the growing season back by two weeks, strawberries are finally ripe. I’ve spent some time with our daughter and the kids at the u-pick. The berries are delicious, so fresh and juicy. The kids have eaten pounds of them over a few days.


It was fun to watch them learn the art of strawberry picking, such as checking the berries are fully ripe before you pick. They soon learned the deep red ones are the juiciest and to avoid any which are overripe. 





Owen, at two, learned to pick the berries and how to take off the green leaves before he ate them. We should have weighed him going in and coming out of the patch.





My husband and I ate some fresh and then I made jam. Three bottles were a lot of work on a hot summer day but I didn’t have room to freeze them and I couldn’t stop myself from picking so many.


I also picked the rhubarb in our back yard. Again I made jam, just three bottles. One granddaughter likes strawberry jam, the other rhubarb. I invited them over to make tea biscuits with me and we sampled the jam. 


The oldest, Sylvie, said as she finished her fourth biscuit, slathered in rhubarb jam, “I’ll have to take a bottle of that home with me.”


To which Caitlin replied, “And I want strawberry.”


It will be a busy few days around here making jam. We’ll try a combination of strawberry rhubarb this time.