Stamps-With-Foot’s Garden

Seattle has suffered through a weeks of freezing fog, stagnant air, flu season, and intermittent rain. The weather has me longing for long September evenings in our back yard….

2012 was a great year for us outside and in the yard. Stamps-With-Foot had her greening thumb put to work and our garden was crazy plentiful, in part because of her planting of mutant green squash and her nightly wine sipping/watering regimen. She moved dirt, turned the compost, picked berries, planted, harvested, pruned, cut bushes, dug in the dirt, and even removed a slug or two. I was very proud of her!

That hard work and spent energy was put to good use and we traded our bounty of veggies with the neighbors, she froze raspberries and blackberries that we both toiled over and my sweet wife made countless spinach and arugula salads from plants that we grew. To top it all off, she turned some of our tomatoes into chutney that was canned to make Christmas gifts. She is turning into quite the little homesteader.

Our Summer Garden

It has been a sweet summer in our small garden.  Stamps-With-Foot has really stepped up and has been planting, weeding, watering, picking fruit, staking dahlias and has even once turned the compost and added chicken manure.  I have been both shocked and impressed.  She even talked me into having some corn planted in the raised boxes this year.  She bought the starts, planted them, made sure they were well hydrated and is now about to harvest 15+ ears of yellow sweet corn.  Her squash has been prolific and we will have more soybeans this fall than we will know what to do with.  Happily surprised at my bride’s greening thumb…

So far this season, we have harvested 25 heads of garlic, 10 sweet yellow onions, 30+ yellow and green squash, a few Roma tomatoes (still very early in the season), 4+pints of raspberries (late summer crop just starting), 3 pints of wonderfully sweet blackberries, figs, apricots, 1 apple (more to come), a gallon+ of cherries, spinach, 5 beets, more Swiss and rainbow chard than I care to remember, 2 pints of small strawberries, a pint-ish of blueberries, and we have supplied three households with rosemary, sage, pineapple sage, thyme, basil, Thai basil, Moroccan mint, and spearmint.  We have been trading produce with some other members of our family for eggs and with two sets of neighbors for veggies and flowers.  Stamps-With-Foot mentioned the other day that she felt like Marie Antoinette with her little Austrian Hobby farm in the shadow of Versailles.

The amazing amount of flowers (except for the lavender and roses) have all been cared for by my sweet wife and a neighbor from across the street.  Both front and back yards have been perfumed since early spring.