mid-july update

we have been having beautiful summer days - sunny and blue with just enough rain for our gardens!

here is the site of my new outdoor kitchen!

jambaloney has been working on it, his contract, and a million other things. he's such a hard worker!

the peas are coming up gangbusters and the trellis that jambaloney built is working wonders for them!

we froze a ton of peas last year and then realized that we didn't really care for frozen peas. lesson learned. this year we will just eat them off the vine, something we love to do, and add them to salads and stirfries during the season. we are really becoming seasonal eaters.

check out these hungarian hot wax peppers! my man is going to have a ton of home-made pickled peppers this year!

these are the thai hot chili peppers - covered in flowers and peppers!

we have learned that to grow peppers in our northern clime we must have a greenhouse! here's a cayenne pepper plant with peppers and flowers!

and look at all the big bombs!

the basil is going crazy!

i love the tags that you see in the pic that jambaloney made for me from extra siding that the previous owner left here. i like to make hearts on all of the tags so that the plants will know that i love them.

here's a bonkers dill plant going to seed and flower. we have been using dill in just about everything and his flower heads will be used for pickling soon - i can't wait to start pickling!

woohoo! not only tomatoe flowers on all of our 80+some odd plants - but little tiny baby tomatoes too! woohoo!

more baby tomatoes - i love them sooooo much!

and broccoli heads!

we've never had broccoli heads this soon in the season!

and potatoe flowers - right on!

here's some fancy baby english roses that the previous owner of Framboise Manor planted.

and baby grapes - i think this will be the year that we finally get some grapes!

here's my new perennial herb garden - it has chamomile, mint, sage, rosemary, lemon balm, bee balm, chives and borage.

here it is again from the other side.

smoked mackeral.

nothing else needs to be said except that this stuff tastes so good and puts smoked salmon to shame. which is good - because we're not allowed to catch salmon here. but we're allowed to catch as much mackeral as we want. really - this stuff is sooo good. we've been snacking on it for the past 2 days - deelish!

here's some tiny wild strawberries that grow all along our road to the river. they are tiny but super sweet! we pick them when we walk down to the river.

we've been going to the river and having dips this past few weeks.

can't stay down too long because the deer and horse flies are miserable at the river at this time of year. but we get bitten to death in order to have our walk and a dip - the river is lovely this year.

well, that's the update for mid-july. we'll be going on sunday to meet our little puppy Katiyja for the first time - we're very excited. and then next weekend will be deadly - we have chase the ace on friday and then our community centre dance on saturday - woohoo! we'll be dead tired on sunday for sure!

hope all is well with all of you. i'm off to catch up on blogs now.