Uncle Dave and Aunt Barb's Visit

We were so pleased to have Dave and Barb Bayne come from Michigan to visit us in April! The last time they were here in the fall of 2011, Josiah was Clara's age--just six months old. A lot has changed around here since then.

The three older kids (and especially Josiah) remember them from the summertime, when we've stayed at their house a few days on each end of our trip up to Long Lake in Michigan. The kids particularly remember the cuckoo clock and the play fort out in the Baynes' back yard. Anyway, Josiah, Lydia, and Abby took to the Baynes right away. Lydia enjoyed snuggles with them, the girls did push-ups with Uncle Dave in the mornings, Josiah tagged along when Uncle Dave helped Daddy with projects in the back yard, and everyone loved Aunt Barb's stories!

Of course, the kids also often roped Uncle Dave and Aunt Barb into reading to them. Here they alternated page by page . . .

Aunt Barb's stories and information about animals especially stuck with the children. Josiah told us the other night at the dinner table all about guinea hens--how they're ugly, and they're not good layers, but they squawk loudly at any sign of danger so as to warn all the other chickens and animals on a farm; so farmers buy them as "watchdogs." I couldn't remember where he learned all this about guinea hens, so I asked him. "Aunt Barb told us!" he reminded me.

They also loved the story Aunt Barb told about her sister-in-law growing up in the jungle in Africa, where her brothers kept a leopard for a pet--until it tasted blood and had to be sent away. They were enthralled with the story of the Wide-Mouthed Frog, too! No one can tell it quite like Aunt Barb can.

Of course, Jeremy and I enjoyed having them here as well. Not only was it nice to have two extra pairs of grandparently hands to help out, but we enjoyed good conversations, advice, and encouragement, too.

Oh, and I was particularly grateful to have them here in the event of the paint apocalypse! Josiah and the girls spilled a full can of reddish-brown paint/stain on the patio just outside the back door while I was in the shower one morning. Thanks to the quick action of Uncle Dave and Aunt Barb, no one tracked it into the house, there were minimal paint stains on clothing, and most of the paint was salvaged. Uncle Dave carefully scraped up the pool of paint, and he and I scrubbed the patio. I was sure it would leave a big stain, but it's actually hardly noticeable! While none of us enjoyed the clean-up (except perhaps the kids on the sidelines), I know if I was home solo at the time of the catastrophe, we would have had more paint on people, house, patio, and elsewhere. (Thanks a million, Uncle Dave and Aunt Barb!)

Grapes

We're hopeful about our grapes this year! Jeremy must have pruned wisely and well, as they've produced beautifully.

Here are the baby grapes from our green Thompson seedless vine back in April:

This year Jeremy (with a little help from me and the kids) has managed to keep the leaf skeletonizer caterpillars under control, pulling off leaves they've chomped on and squishing the bugs. We bagged most of the grape bunches a couple weeks ago in anticipation of bird problems. (The first year our grapes produced, the birds ate up every single one!) You can see bags around bunches below:

We ran out of bags and had to buy more to cover all the bunches of grapes. This year our two newer grape vines--red ones!--produced. We have one on the western side of the back house fence, and one climbing up the block wall that separates the back yard from the front on the west side. The red grapes are not yet red, but they're noticeably larger and rounder than the green ones. Here's a glimpse of them below:

The girls like the sour little grapes, but Josiah now disdains them (as a toddler he used to gobble them up). Every day I check the grapes to see how much progress toward plumpness they've made. We're looking forward to eating sweet ones! This year we may have too many to eat at once, so I foresee frozen grapes as a nice treat later in the summer.

Mo-matoes

Jeremy convinced Abby and Lydia that big girls like tomatoes (or "mo-matoes," as they pronounce it). Once they turned three, they believed they became big girls--and with a bit of coaxing, they tried tomatoes. Lo and behold, they like them! Abby converted first and reveled in her status as a "big girl" when Lydia, her older sister by nine minutes, wasn't one! But Lydia came 'round, too, and now they gobble as many of the Sweet One-hundred and Sungold cherry tomatoes as I'll let them. 

Thus far our tomato crop has been abundant. We've dealt with the pesky birds, of course, and lost many tomatoes to their destructiveness before Jeremy netted the front and back beds. They still get in and peck holes in some. But most ripen unscathed these days.

Sungold cherry tomatoes 

The girls love tomatoes on salads, in burritos, sliced up with their scrambled eggs . . . They will eat them in the house, and I'm pretty sure they'd eat them with a mouse! On a car, in a tree, they are so good, so good, you see! (Can you name that book?)

It's fun to see them enjoy our garden produce so much. Josiah likes picking tomatoes, but he eschews the idea of eating them. Jeremy had him taste one a couple weeks ago, and it was torture for Bud. (I admit I am not a tomato-lover myself, so I've never forced them on my kids. While I still don't like our tomatoes fresh and by themselves, I do love them roasted with fresh mozzerella and basil! The sungolds are lovely in a Caprese salad as well.)

Oh-so-good!

The kids' enthusiasm about the garden is fun to see. I'm glad to be supplying the girls with lots of tomatoes these days, though what we'll do in the tomato-barren months of fall and winter, I don't know!

They often compete for the cherry tomatoes 

Lydia on the left, Abby on the right 

These days I usually have to limit the girls' consumption of tomatoes. We had a few days when a combination of too many tomatoes and too much watermelon resulted in some unpleasantness in digestion and elimination, if you know what I mean.

Lydia didn't like the pulp that squirted out on her when she bit down on one 

Abby shows off a sungold 

All gone!

The Garden Proper

Here's my second post in the urban farm series--we'll take a look at our vegetable garden.

We planted many, many tomatoes in our raised beds this year. Initially, we though our seedlings had met their demise in an early February freeze; but several of them revived, so combined with the replacement ones we bought, there's a multitude! We bought mostly Early Girl and Champion, along with a few others--one heirloom, I think, and a couple Sweet 100 cherry tomato plants, and a Sungold (also cherry--quite delicious, I gather). 

Here's what the western raised bed looked like back in late March:

Tomatoes

Lettuce, peppers, cucumbers, and squash populated the other part of the bed

Below you can see the same bed from the patio side in mid-April. The tomatoes have bushed out and everything else is larger. 

And here's another angle on the western bed, as seen from the end nearest the house (also in mid-April):

A week or so ago, Jeremy made a wooden frame on which to hang bird-netting to protect the tomatoes. Here's the western bed in May (see the lettuce bolting on the left, and the squash flowering?):

We planted some potted herbs, and I've loved having them. In the past our cilantro has given us very little time before bolting, so I forewent it this year. We put basil in the eastern raised bed; we've also had a few volunteer basil plants pop up from seeds in our compost! Meanwhile, here are parsley (back pot) and mint (front):

Here's a view of part of the eastern raised bed, where we planted radishes, lettuce, Swiss chard, and basil. Up at the top of the picture you can see a couple cucumber plants. Again, this is back in March. Since then we've eaten up all the radishes (and planted a new batch), and gotten lots of lettuce for salads. Most of the lettuce has bolted now that the hot weather has set in. Our basil plant is looking a little healthier than it did here, and I've made a batch of pesto from it.

Here (below) is the other end of the eastern raised bed, planted with tomatoes. They were so little back in March!

Here is the eastern raised bed in early April, just a couple weeks after the above picture:

Here's a close-up (also from April) of the new radishes coming up (bottom right-hand corner), basil above the radishes, lettuce varieties on the left, and squash and cucumbers intermingled.

A little later in April, we had some lovely radishes ready to pick! I'm definitely a radish convert. We never ate them when I was growing up, but I love them in salads now. The kids love to pick them for me when I'm making a salad for dinner.

Our tomatoes started ripening by ones and twos in later April, starting with the cherries:

Here are the eastern bed tomato plants in May:

Jeremy built wooden frames this year to cage the tomatoes in hopes of keeping our crop from the birds. Birds around here are the worst pests! Unfortunately they still get in (small birds through the top, where the holes are slightly larger, and larger birds through even the narrowest gap below--argh!). But the netting is enough of a deterrent--combined with banshee kids who love to scare birds--that most of the tomatoes are now unharmed.

Our newer raised bed in the front has the richest dirt, as you can tell from the quality of the plants. I think last year was the first season we used this bed. Below you can see lots of tomatoes, some peppers, and some flowers. We planted a couple pea vines on the far end of this bed, but they didn't do so well. We just haven't had luck with peas here. I think it's just too hot, and we'll probably give up on them--at least for summer gardening; but the five we picked did taste good!

Our vegetable garden also includes squash, planted in the usual corner by the bridge to the back house:

Zucchini on the right and back left, spaghetti squash (I think) in the front left

For some reason our squash has not done too well the last few years. Our first year we got a bumper crop of zucchini. I think the second year we had an infestation of squash bugs. Last year and this year, though, we haven't had squash bugs--or at least not many. But only four or five zucchini have reached healthy maturity so far. Birds got the spaghetti squash the plant pictured above produced. Never have I seen them peck through a hard, immature squash like that before! They seem especially vicious this year.

The Master Gardener and Caretaker of the Yard

Though not part of the raised beds, our roses are worth mentioning. They bloomed beautifully this spring. I trimmed them back when the blooms faded, and now they're getting ready to burst forth again. I love them!

This is my favorite color variety in our yard