good 'n planty

Today was forecasted to be super hot so we met at the garden a bit earlier than usual. Fortunately, there wasn't a lot to do: Pam watered, and I followed her with hay to mulch, then I took some pictures, helped harvest and retreated to the indoors. We harvested fennel today for the first time and I'm so excited to cook some up this weekend.

Enjoy the pictures, I'm gonna go sit in front of a fan for a while.

I may be preaching to the choir, but if you are out-of-doors at all this summer, you'll want this in your medicine cabinet. I am extremely sensitve to poison ivy and once spent (what felt like...) an entire summer with a swollen face and itchy eyes. My skin has some sort of GPS for poison ivy, I seem to get a rash if I'm within 5 miles of the stuff. As an adult, I've learned that a few minutes in the tub with a dose of tecnu before, after, or even catching a glimpse of poison ivy keeps me itch-free.

Tecnu,  4 oz. Bottle, $5.10, Ben Meadows

The garden's looking very lush- lots of things growing below the ground, on the vine, or blooming!
I know that saying zinnia's are my favorite flower is a bit like saying Van Gogh is my favorite artist (a personal pet peeve shared by a friend of mine and myself: when someone counts Van Gogh- or as he says "any one of the four Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" as their favorite artists, it's likely they just don't know of any others...). But zinnia's remind me of fancy old ladies all dolled up and ready for a night on the town, they are classic and gaudy and just my style.

I had a special guest with me in the garden today- my awesome nephew Julian! This kid is no stranger to gardens: his mom and aunt are proficent gardeners in Kentucky. In fact, soon after he was born, I went to Kentucky to visit my sister and meet her new baby, and at one point she handed him over, picked up some gardening tools and headed out to her garden- so while she worked outside with my mom and our other sister, I stayed inside cuddling my teeny new nephew.

When we showed up to work- everything was done! It was an early day and everyone had already gone home, so instead of getting to work, we walked around the garden a little. I showed Julian the neighboring children's garden, and we hung out by the chickens for a while, trying to convince them the leaves we poked through the fence weren't poisonous. They never believed us, and kept making those suspicious "I don't know about you...." noises that chickens make.

Today was super fun- I had a little "mission" that made me feel like I was in some sort of farm-themed video game. Pam gave me missing parts that I had to take to the corn crib where we keep our supplies, repair the cart with the parts, then climb into the loft and drop 2 sqaures of hay and bring them back to the garden using the fixed cart. I spread the hay in between the plants to keep them moist, and also on the pathways that I had previously weeded with the aptly-named "shuffle-hoe" - to keep weeds from growing in the paths.