The garlic is in

The garlic got in a little late this year. I'm counting on a late start to winter; which has been the norm around here. There are 250-300 cloves planted. We're going with three varieties (all hard neck): Georgia Fire; Music; and German Hardy.

I only planted the left half (southern) of this bed. Our plan is to plant determinate paste tomatoes on the right half. The bed is roughly 4'x30'.  

Rare Family Photo

There are plenty photos of us, but not often are we all in the same shot together. Meg says the light's not good, but I'll take what I can get.

Thank You Lou Reed

Very grateful he lived.

Billy Bragg

I caught onto Billy Bragg late. I remember listening to him when I was growing up in the 80s, but I was a kid and his music didn't strike a chord with me like some of the other more trendy/daytime Mtv bands of the time. However, towards the later end of my twenties, when I started to become aware of what the hell was going on with my life and all the little isms that are a part of it, I stumbled across an album of his that started a tirade of collecting and listening. His music since then has had an influence on and given a voice to my moral compass.

This past Thursday Meg and I got to catch a show. The dude is incredible.

The Potato Harvest

Since we've been together, Meg and I have had only one good potato harvest. The rest have all been crap.

However,

this year was not too bad. I give credit for our success to Jude. This was the first season that he has been old/able enough to help from beginning to end. He took part in the planting, hilling, and harvesting.

Our literary influence this year was Two Old Potatoes and Me.

The Garlic Harvest

This was our garlic harvest over at the community garden this year*. There are two varieties here and both are hard neck. The small bunch on the right is Georgia Fire. Maybe 10% of what we planted actually came up. We won't eat any of this and just plant it later this month. The big bunch** on the left is German Hardy. This is the third season we have planted this garlic from bulbs we bought three years ago. This stuff is awesome. We would be tempted to just plant this variety only since it does so well, but we like to have variety; so we will continue to invest maybe half to two-thirds of our garlic patch to this stuff and the rest to others.

What we'll be planting this season will be ~60 sqft of of the German Hardy, just a few square-feet of the Georgia Fire, and ~30 sqft of Music. The Music garlic will be a new addition. It's all we had when we lived in Downingtown and if we would have known how difficult it would be to get planting bulbs, we would have taken some with us when we moved. I predict that it will be as successful as the German Hardy. Fingers crossed.

*Yes, yes. I know garlic was harvested a while ago; but I have a lot of catching up to do. Who says that this stuff has to be in order?  :)

**Don't let the photo fool ya. That wheelbarrow is a Jackson (it's deep).

Best Paste Tomato Year Yet

We planted ten paste tomatoes in our community garden plot and we will probably harvest 100 pounds of fruit. The two bags in the photo are from the first harvest, which yielded 30+ pounds. The second gave us 42 more. We planted two determinate varieties, one called Margherita (I think that's right) and the other is just plain ol' Romas.

In terms of end product, the first 70+ pounds gave us 30 quarts of juice that was then cooked down to 15 quarts of thick sauce. Next year we may plant more, but first we will want to invest in a pressure cooker.

Our New Addition

This is our Daughter Wren. She just joined us on July 2nd. 

Hello

I love this song.

To all of you who have been a part of our lives through this blog, we miss you. 

To all of you who leave advertisements on our comments, you're assholes.

<3

poem from the garden

tan lines

left home

without 

a watch today

remembered

a sandwich

ham and swiss

on pumpernickel

with mustard

and mesclun greens

a patch of purples 

and greens in

a postage stamp garden

planted at the end of summer

when the sun still sings 

on necks and arms

kelly r. allen