My First Lady is the bomb:

Michelle Obama breaks ground for the new organic kitchen garden on the White House south lawn. 1100 square feet is a LOT of kichen garden!

From the WH Blog: Spring Gardening. And here's the garden layout.

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With the exception of a few determined maters, and of course the broccoli which doesn't mind the cold, everything ripe, sorta ripe, vaguely but not quite ripe, has been harvested. And with that, the garden is closed for the year. No winter garden for me as there is a likely probability we'll be moving to the Big City after the first of the year (I know, I know, we've been here before...) and it would break my heart to plant garlic and then have to leave it behind. In all honesty though, I am kind of glad for the break. At the beginning of the season I kept talking about how I'd EXPAND the garden next year, but after making enough tomato sauce to outlast a nuclear winter, I came to realize it was maybe a little bigger than I thought when I planted everything in the first place. Which reminds me, I still have oregano and thyme to cut...

In any case, the good news for you is no garden talk for a while. The bad news for me is I have to find something else to talk about...

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maters:


cucumber:


yeah, I have plums!:


apples:


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Those are some sad little shallots, but it's still a bit early.

PS: Raspberry jam was made today. Still waiting on blueberries (hang on Kate!)

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contemplates the walla wallas...(and is happy to finally be in the sun)


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Forecast for Northern Oregon Cascade Foothills: June 6, 2008

Showers...small hail possible in the afternoon.

Hail? My next door neighbor (read: over the fence gardening buddy) who has lived here far longer than me, and has a garden three times the size, informed me last month that this would be "the year without a summer." Then about 2 weeks later, it almost hit 100 degrees. Yeah, what does he know, right?

Three days later the temperature dropped 40 degrees, and has rained, rained, rained every day since. I'm not growing a garden out there, I'm making minestrone. And now, apparently, I'm going to freeze it.

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You know what I'm doing tomorrow! I also have boysenberries, and will probably have blueberries, maybe next week? Plum, apple and blackberry will have to wait til later in the season - though honestly, with the awfully stupid weather we've been having, I don't know if I'll even get plums this year. That'll really bum me out, if that's the case, because the plum jam was my favorite of the bunch last year.

If you haven't sent your jam jars back, there is still time. I'm going to wait til all the jam is finished this year and send out packages then. And if anyone has any special orders, now would be the time to let me know!

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The cuke, she flowers:


Now if it would just stop snowing and hailing and frosting and freezing so I could put her in the ground! Or at least a pot! I can't be flowering in a peat pot, that's just wrong.

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From this to this in just a little over a month:



In other news, I read a rumor that my strawberry place is open for the season, so there could be jam on the horizon. Now would be a good time to return your jam jars from last year!

In other, other, news, Safeway wrote back. They were, like, helpful and shit. Kinda freaked me out.

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