309: mid-summer garden

A few things about this year's gardening, thus far:


First: though he is charming, cute, and much stronger than myself, I'm not sure Ryan is the best weeding partner. For the two weeks I was in New Jersey (with the cutest nephews ever), Ryan left the garden be, aside from watering it regularly, which brought out some fierce weeds. Before we left for Green Bay for the weekend, I spent a bit of time yanking away the scrub, and when he joined me, he pulled up some of our onions, a bit prematurely. Sweet, this little one.


But some of our edibles are simply small on their own, such as this sweet green pepper above. It is lined up next to our first four habanero peppers (one of which, little slivers of which, flattened both me and Ryan as well as Ryan's father--there's a certain cruelty to assuming you can handle this particular pepper, this particular spice, this kick)--all to size, of course.

This year's lettuce was surprisingly not bitter, as opposed to last year's, which we couldn't manage even disguised with market lettuce, little bits tucked away. We knew it was there each time, just as Ryan has known every time I've attempted to slip spinach into his salads. But this year's has been crisp and mild, even a little sweet.

Along with a re-purposed butter container's worth of raspberries, we left two salads' worth of lettuce with my parents, and the above with his parents and house guests.


And tonight, we tasted our first apple from the tree.

Two years ago, we lost our maple (darn that Zephyr and his chewing), so we replaced it with another maple (my choice) and a Zestar (Ryan), and this might be the first year those apples are fit for consumption. We shared the first fallen apple, bite by bite, tossing the remains into our compost pile. A little tart--perhaps next year will bring the "full" batch--but enough to consider them ours.