s e v e n i s a j o u r n e y

How mutant do you like your carrots ?:

They came out of our very own garden, that Stephen built, and Kerry helped us plant. (I suspect the weird shapes were the result either of overcrowding or too much nitrogen.)

In the interest of full disclosure, although the mutant carrots were from just last night, the photo above is of the garden in January, when we took out the first carrot thinnings. We have since had several weeks snacking on sugar snap peas, weeks of all the strawberries we could eat, a tomato-lanche, some lettuces, several actual full-sized bell peppers, a bunch of wax and cayenne peppers, assorted herbs, and a couple more carrots each the size of my forearm (feed a family of four with one carrot, seriously).

Although the garden spent several months in amazing lush good health, it’s currently becoming something of a sea of corruption, overrun with green shield beetles, little midgy fruit flies, strange caterpillars, and various wacky molds and fungi. Partly this is the weird weather we’ve had this year — long long dry followed by very wet — partly it’s the fact that we were taken by surprise by the amazing rampant growth and planted stuff too close together. It was physically impossible to even get to most of the tomatos, and they really didn’t get enough ventilation all packed in close together. And partly it’s because we just couldn’t keep up with the maintenance — pruning and thinning and getting all of the split or bird-pecked tomatos off and away. All-in-all, though, it’s been a tremendous success, and Stephen’s already built three additional boxes to spread things out and plant more for next year.

While I’m posting photos, here’s where the conservatory is at: not done, but getting there.

And because we’re always posting photos of the alpacas, here are a couple cat shots. Jake in his favorite spot on the beanbag:

And Azami, tucked down into the box of comforters my mom sent us (Azami sez thanks, too !):