Garden Diary - July 5

On Canada Day we spent a full day working in the garden; we installed our new rain barrel (which after only one rainstorm is quite full - we're harvesting rain from a fairly big area - 400 square feet of the back half of the roof). We also now have 6 more self-watering planters (with peas, Aztec spinach, mesclun greens, radishes, beets, and likely some other seeds I've already forgotten). We've also got a self-seeder tomato in the planter in the backyard - hard to say which it is of the three varieties of tomatoes that grew there last year, but it seems to be getting along fine (although slower growing that the tomatoes getting full sun in front).

We've started harvesting strawberries - I've already had about a dozen, which is 11 more than last year. There have been a few early raspberries. And the greens are well enough advanced that we can start gathering a few leaves from each plant to add to pasta or omelettes; my favourites are the red mustard giant (strong mustard taste, distinctive burgundy colour and doesn't get eaten by any bugs) and the dinosaur kale (dense thick leaves that hold up well to cooking, unique elongated leaf shape and bumpy texture). Yesterday we tried a few leaves of the stevia; they really are sweet (although they don't taste like sugar; I'll be interested to see if the taste changes once they are dried and if they can be directly substituted for sugar).

I pruned the forsythia in front down to size, and also trimmed the hedge in back (now that I at last have a ladder I can trim the hedge from top to bottom!). And I've weeded the driveway (yet again) - I need a longer-lasting solution for discouraging weed growth - I'm considering the polymeric sand sold for filling the spaces between interlocking bricks.

And today I have, at long last, finally hung up laundry on the clothesline. Why has it taken me over two years to do this? A combination of rainy days, a tendency to do laundry in the evenings, and not enough time spent around the house to see it through until it's dry (although I must confess there's some element of laziness in all of this too).