July on the way out. . .

 

Yesterday's harvest is somewhat typical for this time of year. The cherry tomatoes are just starting, and the summer raspberries are on their way out. I'm picking the zucchini early because I've had such trouble with rot on them as they grow larger. I'm pretty sure this is related to our inordinate amount of rain. Green beans continue to dribble in, though with a couple of days harvest we get enough for a side at dinner, and several days gives me enough to freeze for the future. The blueberries have been fairly steady, with the early ones just about done, but the later varieties now starting to earnestly bear.

All as it should be. I do forget, from year to year, how slow the harvest season is to get going here. The peaches won't be in until August, and the apples late October.

The primo-cane bearing raspberries are in full bloom right now, and it's amazing to see the variety of bees that are attracted to their sweet nectar.

I sent the image on the right to a horticultural friend who knows more about insects than I do. That's a small bee. . .maybe half the size of a honey bee. . .and it's iridescent black. Really a handsome species, but I have no idea who it is. My old knowledge tells me that honey and bumble bees are the best pollinators, but it will be interesting to see if my friend knows anything about this guy.

Other things of note today:

I'm pretty sure this hydrangea was blue last year. So I'm wondering if something acidified the soil around it to make it pink? Or is this just some sort of daft dog-lady illusion? I's a joy to look at closely, regardless.

Another hydrangea surprise. I have several of these along the back of one of the beds here. I don't remember it showing pink before. More pink! I do remember  it being white. So here's a thought. Maybe there's a pink fairy that's testing my sanity. I'm not complaining, of course. While I don't go out of my way for most pinks, these are quite agreeable.

The cherry tomatoes. Those stakes are 8' tall. They are filling out well, and their fruit has been developed from the bottom up. Lots of bending over in the garden, as usual, which will put the new spine to the test.

The apples are coming along beautifully. These are on the tree that has slightly larger fruit. . .Macoun. It made for wonderful sauce, pies and dried slices last year. I AM looking forward to that, though as my mother used to say "Don't wish your life away. . ."

Lastly, a revisiting of the double-file viburnums. I thank the former owners and/or the landscaper they hired for planting these beauties. Because my expertise is all centered around food crops, I would not have know to plant a mass of these along the side of the house. They just keep giving. I posted the ranks of white flowers on them in previous posts, but I don't remember the berries being quite so lovely in previous years.

I'm thinking that the birds will love these, but I'll need to look that up. 

It is funny how memory does and doesn't work. My gardening journal (an old-fashioned one with paper and pencil entries) helps me go back to see when what happened in a given year, but I don't tend to include things like the Double-file viburnum berries. As frustrating as my poor memory can be, it is absolutely wonderful to experience something like this anew. . .it gives that sort of burst of feeling. The intake of a sharp breath. The increased heart rate. "That is so beautiful, and I am so lucky".

Hot and humid with a chance of raspberries and green beans

Oh my dear sad Maine. It is hot and humid and nearly unbearable outside. Mornings find me racing home from Jasper's walk to do everything I can in the garden before I slink into the house to hide from the heat.

What have we done, oh Humans?

But. The flowers go on. As do the raspberries. . . and the green beans are also bearing nicely. Tomatoes have set fruit but there is no sign of red color just yet. 

 It is definitely the season for the Day Lilies to shine. We have everything from the demure orange wild type to the wonky "look-at-me"s. The hydrangeas are also starting to come into their own, but they will (I hope) be plugging along well after the day lilies are spent.

The vase is one of John's Grandmother's cut glass vases. Tall, cylindrical and very heavy. Classy, I think.

Hostas also continue to bloom. The image on the right is backlit, so you can't see it terribly well, but it's a favorite bud vase type. Tall, narrow, embellished with botanical icons.

And speaking of vases that I make, the weather has me retreating into the cool of my studio. I've been slow to get back to making, but it's amazing the work that accrues if one makes a piece a day. . .maybe two pieces a day. 

Anyone who has read much of this online journal knows that glazing is Not my favorite aspect of making pottery. I bristle when it takes me longer to glaze than it does to make the pot! I LOVE making the form. . . getting my hands and brain immersed in that process. Seeing if I can bend the clay to my will, or if she will have her way with me.

But here's the thing. With these last (accrued) pieces, I spent a lot of time with glazing. I estimate that the glazing took me 3 times as long as making the pot did. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the glaze looks a lot better than it previous batches. There is still an unexpected aspect to opening the kiln. But this time it was less of a groan, and more of an "Oh! That sort of worked!"

Example 1. A dish made from a Striped Maple leaf. Bark brown and Arctic blue glaze, fired at cone 5.

I'm measuring the temperature in my kiln on various shelves using sentinel cones. It turns out that the arrangement of the kiln shelves makes a big difference in variation in temperature from place to place in the kiln.

That's not a great thing, since it means that I can't stack shelves over each other when I need to glaze 2 large pieces. Still. It's good to know, and will prevent the devastation of overheated glaze that pinholes and makes the work worthless.

The bowl to the right is one I really love. It's my biggest successful bowl to date, which started with 4 pounds of clay, and measures about 9 inches in diameter. The glaze was an overlapping dip technique. Worked well, I think

This is a slightly larger version of an earlier mug. Now it's a set! The glaze is Coyote Green Matt, and the brown drip is made with a rim dip of Ancient Jasper. The Ancient Jasper has been a recurring theme, as many of you will note, in my work. It's a funny glaze. If the rim is just dipped a tiny bit, it runs down the piece and mingles with the base glaze. It also does a great job of highlighting texture in a piece, since it sinks into the low spots.

This last piece is hand-built, and inspired by a book by potter Frances Palmer called In the Studio. I've had the book for ages, but was able to read it from cover to cover during my recovery. The impressions were made by a lovely little weed that I picked up on one of our evening walks. I also made a bisque stamp, so you may see this motif again!

The State of The Garden

Visitors start coming in tomorrow, so I wanted to slip in an update to the state of things outdoors here at Highland House. 

 I have been encouraging white clover to take over our lawn. By encouraging, I mean I haven't been doing anything to encourage the grass. . .no fertilizer or herbicide for 3 years now. Clover prefers soil with a higher pH, and it's a fairly aggressive colonizer. But grass, with it's intercalary meristerm (are you impressed that I remembered that?) is also a wicked good competitor, especially if the area is mowed. We do mow because we like the walk-ability of it, as well as the fact that mowing discourages ticks. But. Look what our "lawn" has done. It is full of honey bees, too. John and I watch them from the patio every evening. We had poor pollination on our apples this year, and I'm hoping that this cover crop will help next year. Truth be told, though, I think it was the cool rainy weather during pollination, rather than a lack of bees. We also have a ton of bumble bees, who are also big players in the pollination game.

The blueberries are starting to blue up a little bit. I had a couple of ripe ones the other day, and we'll have to compete with the chipmunks for the honor of consuming them. But last year we had a decent crop, even while sharing with our cheeky neighbors.

The apples, though a little sparse, are also coming along well, though our Macouns and McIntosh weren't ready to harvest until October last year. I love watching them. I wander about in the yard at least once a day, and check on everyone.

The peaches are also coming along nicely. We harvested last year in late July, so they may not be far off. I don't know what cultivar they are, but they were way tasty. 

I have also planted 2 Stanley plums. It was a bit of a mistake, really. I had intended to only plant one, but it was devoid of leaves for my fall planting last year (due to smoke in Oregon where it was grown). It was late coming out of dormancy, so the company sent me a replacement. 

We're a couple of years off from any crop, but I have a plum cake recipe that will be Very Happy when they do finally come in. Plantspeople (as opposed to the old "Plantsmen") are such optimists. While I realize that I may never see my Dawn Redwood mature fully, it doesn't even occur to me that I might not be around for the plums in a few years. Smile. No guarantees, of course, and maybe it's just because plums are FOOD, and I'm not willing to consider not eating them

The Kilarney raspberries are in. I'll have a really decent harvest tomorrow, just before the company gets in. I was ready to pull them out and replace them with the primocane bearer JoanJ last year. They were small and flavorless, and quite light in color. 

The crop looks much better this year. Abundant, for one thing. The color is still light, but they are decent sized and quite tasty. They must have heard my threat.

Ornamental activity includes the ongoing forget-me-nots. They are such little heros. Their sweet little flowers may make some underestimate them, but they are formidable competitors. I have some involved in a Darwinian struggle with some volunteer ferns (also easy to underestimate), and it's not clear who will win. The ferns are also having a go with my mint, of all things. Who give mint a run for its money? Don't mess with mint. . .

I do absolutely nothing with this clematis, other than occasionally straightening that little metal support, which is still leaning against the wall where it was when we bought the house. I don't prune it, dead head it. . .nada. And so far, for 3 years, it just comes back and grows and blooms in the sun. Talk about optimism. Oh that I could require so little care. . .

The hydrangeas are just getting warmed up. The smaller white ones are really pushing the blooms now, and the foliage looks healthy.

Rhubarb continues on, though it's showing some signs of tiring. Some of the lower leaves are wilting (some have lawnmower blight), and surprisingly, I'm not seeing any flowers. That's not a disappointment, of course, but it's a little surprising. I should make a cake for the visitors.

Lastly, the asparagus are in full feather as well. These fronds make such wonderful additions to floral arrangements, which I try to keep in the house this time of year. The weather was exceptionally humid today, though not terribly hot. Thank goodness. But having blooms indoors with me is just a balm when we close the doors and turn on the heat pumps. We'll throw them open in the morning, and enjoy the air, and the easy transit between indoors and out for as long as we can.