Successful end to the terrible day :-)

Kevin is feeling somewhat better.

The flood water has mostly drained away, save for our redneck pool. Now, we are not red-necks. We don't have an old washing machine sitting on the porch. We don't have a tire-less 1974 dodge charger in the driveway, serving as a chicken coop. We do have this:


Amazingly, my 12 year old Claire started. For those of you know her well, this is completely out of character for her ... reminding me again to not hold on too tightly to my perceptions of my children ;-). I'm also quite shocked, given the amount of rain we've had to far this summer, and the colossal amount that came down yesterday, that this is all that's left. Our property is clay based, with little topsoil, and the drainage isn't great.



Next, I sent Iain outside to harvest dinner for our 100 m dinner. In this case, rather than 100 mile, we have a 100 metre dinner. Had I used lamb, it truly would have been. This is what we came up with from the garden.


We have early beans from our Scarlet Runner plants, summer squash and zucchini from the side of the house, onions (planted by the previous owner of our property in a long-defunct garden, we harvest them out of the lawn at the back :-D!), and fresh parsley and rosemary from the planters on the front railing. All I added was a bit of fresh ground black pepper, and it became:




Now, if could just figure out to grow wild rice on the property, we could have used lamb, and made mint tea from our mint plants, and everything we ate last night would have come from our measly 3.25 acres. I love this challenge, but what I particularly love about our gardens this year is that I've finally figured out I don't do vegetable gardens. Every year that I've planted a huge vegetable garden, we are unsuccessful. The weeding kills me. I stop. By July, the only thing growing are metre high weeds. I didn't grow ANY vegetables two years ago out of frustration, then last year we started again on a much smaller, and more useable, scale.

At the moment I intersperse flowers and veggies in our regular gardens, plus have three square foot gardens containing flowers, beets and tomato plants. If I get everything weeded, I'll put some photos in. The scarlet runners in particular are beautiful, and serve more than one purpose. They are climbing up a tent of 6 bamboo poles and give a focus to one of our gardens. The beans they provide are tougher and must be picked young, however I'm much happier about weeding them when they're not in a typical garden. And I LOVE growing zucchini and summer squash now ... I hope to get lots of REALLY big ones (the kind that jokes are based on) because here, they get tossed in the chicken pen and are a real delicacy for the birds.

Lastly, a photo of some of the sour cherry jam, sour cherry jelly, mint jelly and sweet cherry chutney Kev and I put up last week. No comments that of the "preserves" we made, there are jars of each already open in the fridge. So much for waiting until winter to savour the summer's bounty! We also had a surprise visit from our 4H friend Amanda last night with raspberries from her grandma's garden, which I'll do today. It's somewhat out of necessity that we make this stuff ... it's very difficult to find jams and mint jelly that don't contain high fructose corn syrup (glucose/fructose on the label, for those who are curious), and I have two children that don't do corn.


All for now!