Strawberry season!

Around two weeks ago, we began to notice ... that we might actually see some strawberries this year. I'd planted strawberry plants last spring and spent a lot of time last summer weeding around them and expanding the area in which they were growing, so the runners that came off the first sets could actually put down roots and grow.

So... around 10 days ago, clumps of berries on our plants, starting to turn red:

We picked maybe a cup or two of berries, and they were juicy and delicious. It kept/keeps raining, and it seemed likely that the remainder of the berries might not make it -- that they might rot on the vine. A lot of the berries were hanging very low to the ground, or were just laying on the ground. But then we finally had a few clear days and last weekend, nestled among the plants, we discovered we had what I consider a bounty of berries!

By Sunday night I had picked two small-ish but heaping colanders of berries. And some more that we ate before I could take this picture:

We ate them plain, ate them mixed in with yogurt... and Evan made strawberry ice cream! I'm going to cut this posting short so I can go have another small bowl of it before bedtime...

Garden planting countdown

After a rush of work on the garden last weekend, nearly everything is planted, and some things that I planted over two months ago are starting to look really promising. Like the pea plants:

Outside of the peas, of which I have four rows, this year I'm planting a lot more of a little. For instance, two eggplant plants. Two pepper plants. A length of beets that might span 18 inches. A short two-foot row of red onions. A longer row of yellow onions. Three feet of spring onions. Etc.

Even so, we had to expand the garden quite a bit -- maybe by 1/3rd, in order to account for my overzealous plans. I think I'm maxed out now, in terms of garden size.

Even though a neighbor came by with a huge tiller behind a small tractor, to dig up a new swath of garden, that soil still required a lot of tending before we could plant anything there. I had to turn the soil over and break up clumps of dense matter that was speckled with clay. Then I worked in some mushroom soil, and pulled out the roots of the sod that had been torn up, so it wouldn't re-sprout. Here's the view of the entire garden area, around mid-last weekend:

Evan builds a bridge

So, there's a stream in the little woods behind our house. We like going to the woods, but carrying a 2-year-old across the stream, via a "bridge" of a couple of large stones, to get to the main part of the woods, was becoming less and less fun. So, Evan decided to build a bridge.

This project had the good fortune of not taking twice as much time as we planned. In fact, pretty much all of it went as planned!

First, Evan measured the width of the stream, got wood, and built the frame in the shed/ garage:

Then we loaded the frame and pieces for the walkway of the bridge in our old truck, drove everything down to the woods, and carried the pieces into the woods and scrutinized where to put it, exactly.

We settled on a position; lugged all the pieces in place; and then Evan drilled the rest of it together.

Voila! Now Nate has a bridge that he can throw sticks off of. And I don't have to worry about falling face-first in the mud while trying to carry him across the stream...