It was a busy week and I had a busy day ahead of me. But that busy day brought me very close to the sea. So I decided to leave early and gift myself a few happy moments…

Last week:

This week:

Things are growing so fast! I’m looking forward to harvesting some of it (I hope I will be able too)

The tomatoes are not doing so well. We’ll see what happens next.

A reader at my Dutch blog recommended this BBC-series and the accompanying book to me. I started watching one part and ended up watching them all. I love her garden. Last winter I was thinking about combining vegetables and flowers in my garden, but I didn’t take enough time to investigate and plan. But I think I will this year. I do love the feel of a “real” vegetable garden, but mine will never be, so maybe shaking things up might be fun.

Meanwhile in the front yard…

Before:

And after:

Not finished yet, but still such a big improvement. We’re hoping the sedum will grow out and cover all the soil, preventing the weeds from coming back, making it a bit easier to maintain.

Joining Soulemama’s and Heather’s garden notes today 

Right now I am…

:: feeling a bit lonely. I’m not alone in the house, but my husband is away on a business trip and I miss him. He’s not even in the same time zone anymore (I’m 5 hours ahead of him).

:: smiling because I think it’s wonderful that after almost 24 years of marriage I’d still rather have him around all day, messing up my schedules and my home, than having to be without him for a week (and after that another week and another – oh my, this is going to be a very different month!)

:: enjoying a little breeze coming through the open windows. Oh, this summer! It’s wonderful!

:: hearing birds discussing who gets to sit on the highest branch of the cherry tree

:: thinking about the things I want to do today

:: and reminding myself of the things I have to do first

:: wishing you all a great week!

Last week:

 

This week:

Regular readers may think we ate a lot of endives this week, since they’re all gone. I wish. They started seeding, so I had to take them all out. I only managed to save one meal. Oh well.

 

Yes, It looks beautiful, but I didn’t mean that to happen. They went from too small to this. But since the nice summer weather we’re having is the main reason for it, I’m happy to let it go.

Some of the tomatoes are doing still fine, others are not. It’s blossom end rot. I’ve been taking out the rotten ones, watering more thoroughly and adding (biological) fertilizer. I’m hoping for the best.

The strawberries decided this summer was worth a second round. I don’t really take care of these plants (besides watering), but they came back on their own this spring and are producing quite nicely (tiny, but tasteful strawberries). That’s my kind of plants 😉

Joining Soulemama’s and Heather’s garden notes today

Right now I am…

:: so grateful for the real summer we’re having, after the coldest, wettest May and June in decades
:: feeling my muscles hurting from the yard work I did yesterday
:: but smiling every time I see that little corner of our yard
:: tired after a night of not sleeping very well.
:: hoping the neighbours’ cat(s) we are babysitting will not escape again tonight. That’s what kept me awake, worryin. We caught the little one, but the other one just wouldn’t come back. I do understand that though. How can we explain to them that they have to stay inside until their family returns?
:: going back and forth between depression and hope. Hope will win. It usually does. Eventually.
:: ignoring one thing on my todo list that I need to get done as soon as possible
:: wondering why I still don’t like using the phone, after all these years of being an adult and just doing it when needed
:: thinking I should get to it right now
:: loving that picture. Those flowers have the most beautiful color I’ve ever seen
:: hearing the wind outside (and cars, but I’ve learned to ignore them)
:: wishing you all a great week

Last week:

This week:

Some notes:

I harvested the last of the radishes and the spinach and filled the empty spaces by planting out leeks.

The lettuce is almost gone. The four seedings I planted did well, but only one of the seeds came up.

We’ll be eating a lot of endives the coming weeks.

Tomatoes! Lots of them! Looking forward to making soup and sauce.

The beans are growing so fast, you can almost see them grow. The plants that is. No beans in sight. I hope I wasn’t to late sowing them.

The kale and broccoli is being eaten again. I hope the coffee residue will help. Sharing with nature is okay, but I’d like nature to share too and leave some for me (the last two years all my kale got eaten).

I’ve been reading through the archives of some of my favorite blogs lately. I love doing that (though it’s very time-consuming and I have so many other things to do…) and it’s always very inspiring.
I feel like this blog has been on the backburner for a while and I want to change that. I love Heather’s daybook-like posts and I thought I’d try that too. So here we go.

I need to start taking more pictures. Looking back on my photos from this weekend it’s food and fire. Which would be the highlights of these few days for sure.

On Friday I had a craving for fries, but there’s no way I am going to a snack bar on a Friday afternoon, when it’s hot and when school vacation just started. I picture waiting lines going well outside the shop. So I baked some potatoes, we made mayonnaise and ate it with lettuce from our own garden. I need to remember that this is so much better than fast food.

We ended the night sitting by the fire until after midnight. What is it about fire that you can keep staring at it for hours? We all love that. The girls say they love the final glowing coals part the most. It is beautiful, but impossible to photograph.

On Saturday we took advantage of the cloudy weather. Theo painted the last part of the garden shed and I did a lot of chores in the garden. I even (finally) weeded the sitting area.

It took me a while to sort through the last of the spinach. It started seeding, so I took it all out. The edible parts, combined with a bit of (not yet full grown) endives, made a wonderful filling for a crustless quiche. It was inspired by Heather’s, but very different, I guess. I added meat, and made it without cheese or milk. I didn’t have any gluten free plain flour, so I used a bit of bread mix that I did have. It worked like a charm.

We ended the night with a fire.

Sunday it was hot and sunny, but we really wanted to finish some things around the house. I cleared a bit of the front garden that we want to make easier to maintain and Theo hung some screens. We were tired and hot and I forgot to take pictures all day. We had a little bbq and again some lettuce from the garden. We crashed early and I still need to do the dishes.

Today I started a new schedule, hoping it will make my weeks a bit easier and my days more useful. So far… well… Not really. I moved my grocery shopping to Wednesday, but I ran out of a lot of things, so I had to make a quick run today too. Of course I realized afterwards that it would have been much more efficient to shop for nine days now and start doing the Wednesday shopping next week. I also designated two hours to help one of the girls with her studying, but we need to get used to that. We just had a major discussion about a problem she should try to solve on her own until I have time to help her. I knew homeschooling was hard but starting it at this age (20 – it’s not really homeschooling, just helping her with some courses until she finds a job) is almost impossible. I’m not a teacher. But we both try.

On my todo list today (apart from washing those dishes): do taxes, work out details of travel plans and book boat, flight and stay (more on that later), cook diner.

Last week:

This week:

 

Some thoughts:

Things keep growing fast. The corn is doing great.

I love that we still use the backyard for barbeques and enterntaining. It’s different to see vegetables instead of flowers and I guess not everybody understands why we do this, but I love it.

I have been harvesting. Finally. We ate lettuce, radishes and spinach from the garden.

It still feels great to be able to take pictures of myself harvesting (I have always loved those on other blogs).

We don’t have many bugs, but snails, yes. We do have those. But it’s manageable (they stay away from the broccoli and the kale since we started putting coffee residue around the plants).

Also, I try to keep in mind what I read somewhere: if we want to grow vegetables the biological and natural way, we need to be prepared to share with nature.

To remember for next year: something went wrong when I moved and replanted the radish. I grew very strong plants, but got no bulbs. I think I planted them too deep.

I was going to write a long blog post about how much trouble I went through before this simple cardigan was finished (in short: wrong pattern – frogging – long search for right pattern – not enough yarn – only one ball extra in yarnshop – still not enough – making do), but somehow I can’t find the words. It all seems so insignificant. After all, I ended up with a cardigan that I love. Isn’t that what counts the most?

Last week:

This week:

Oh my, things have grown so fast!

We also added another raised bed.

So now the whole garden looks like this:

The only thing left to do is building a deck (bottom of the picture), but that will have to wait untill we have enough time (and money).
Oh, and I meant to clean up the weeds between the stones before taking a picture, but… well, I didn’t.

 
I moved the broccoli and the kale to the new bed. I do hope they will survive it…

The endives I moved last week are doing well.

And the beans are growing faster then I’d ever imagine they would.

The first tomato I spied…

I need to plant more basil. I use a lot of it, dried and fresh, and I would love to make some pesto.

I did harvest a little bit this week too (yay!):

Radishes

and strawberries.

Just enough to share with Theo (luckily the girls weren’t home) and eat half a sandwich with them. Not much, I know, but oh that taste…