Four Part Harmony

Well, it seems we’ve been busy his past week or so. Since our big heat wave last week it’s been pretty rainy. It’s been kind of cool and drizzly for the most part, though these last few days we’ve had some more humidity and even a thunderstorm or two (rare around these parts). Despite the weather, we’ve managed to keep busy, done quite a bit of work around the house in preparation for Acorn’s arrival, quite a bit of work in the garden, and some other fun stuff too.

Last Tuesday, Doyle and Kadin invited us to a morning baseball game. The Portland Beavers were playing an early 11:00 game, and neither Anna nor Kadin had been to a baseball game before. It was fun while it lasted. Anna wasn’t very interested in staying and sitting on a bleacher bench for very long, what with all the big stadium to explore, and Kadin felt much the same way. So Doyle and I spent most of our time chasing the kids around the stadium, which was just fine. We made it through about 4 innings, which was about what we expected. It still made for a fun adventure.

Here is a picture from Sunday. We got together with a few friends at Rox and Matt’s place for their annual Memorial Day get-together. It was quite a bit of fun, and after a few days of rain the weather was cooperative. Anna had fun playing with some friends of hers that she doesn’t get to see as often. At one point Anna and Zennon were just lounging around on the trampoline and I got a few cute pictures.

Here’s Jubilee, Zennon, Bodie, and Anna all playing some elaborate game that involved tipping the slide over sideways and then bouncing onto the trampoline. Anna really had fun running around the backyard, playing soccer, teeball, hula hoop, tag…she slept pretty well that night.

Among the other things we managed to get accomplished this past weekend, we got almost all of our summer veggies planted. This was quite an accomplishment. Saturday was a nice sunny day, so we went down to the farmers market and got some veggies and a few starts of stuff we hadn’t done from seed. We spent most of the rest of the day working in the garden; got some beds prepped, planted some seeds and a few tomatoes and got everything mostly laid out. Sunday morning after breakfast I did the rest of the planting in a pretty steady rain. It wasn’t too bad though, it was a nice cool rain, and at least it wasn’t blazing hot for the fragile transplants. Most of the seedlings we grew from seed were pretty leggy and neglected. They didn’t get a lot of TLC, but they still seem like they should all be viable. We put in 14 tomatoes, 8 eggplant, 10 basil, 5 hungarian paprika peppers, 3 okra(!), 3 tomatillo, a couple hills of zucchini, and 5 cucumber. We also planted a long row of pole beans. Not a bad couple of days work.

Here’s a view of the spring garden, and to the left of it the newly planted cucumbers. The greens in the spring garden have really taken off with the burst of sun and warmth followed by all this rain.

Here’s a wider view showing both gardens. The summer seedlings look pretty scrawny right now, so I can’t wait for them to take hold and start putting on some growth. We’ll have to hope for some heat and some sun.

Here’s the collard greens (left) and kale (right). Fava beans in the background have some pretty long pods on them now, though it may still be a few weeks before we can harvest any. The peas are starting to work their way up the trellises, and so far the chickens still haven’t managed to eat any of them.

And speaking of chickens, here they are. Still loving their new run and all the clover, weeds, and bugs we’ve been throwing them as we dig up the soil.