I keep forgetting to write. Partly because I haven’t done anything interesting, but partly because I get busy with the little day-to-day stuff. We added another small human to our family this summer, so that takes much of my available time and energy at the moment. What I manage to get done is in 10-30 minute snatches while said small human sleeps and one of my older kiddos watches over them.

I finally managed to get my perennial greens out of their individual planters and into their own bed. That is 6 planters freed up -perennial sweet lettuce, perennial arugula, strigolo/bladder campion, salad burnett, and mâche. I also got my Egyptian walking onions into that bed.

Little by little, I have been planting out the things I raised in pots all summer (or acquired at end of season sales). I’ve gotten 1 black currant, 1 kiwi, clove pinks, golden margeurite, echinacea, marshmallow, weld, hollyhocks, lamb’s ear, betony, lovage, 3 hardy orange and one rugosa rose into the ground so far. I still have more betony, weld, echinacea and margeurite, rosemint agastache, false indigo, 4 grapevines (although I may have killed one or two of them), 2 schisandra vines, 2 thornless honeylocust, my seabuckthorn…And then today, I stopped at the garden center because they had a 50% off wagon sitting there, and got 2 white currants, catmint, horseradish and lungwort.

The kiddos specifically wanted the catmint because we lost one of our cats this week. He’s been struggling healthwise for several months, and lost the struggle this past Tuesday. We had to have him put to sleep, which was a super hard day for the kiddos and for me. I’ve never gone through that process before. Jeffers was a very sweet, friendly, happy cat, full of fun and goof, and we will miss him a lot. He was also our best mouser.

They wanted the catmint to plant on top of his grave.

The gardens are producing quite well now. The kids each planted a variety or two of tomatoes. There’s a grape variety, a cherry variety and yellow pear tomatoes. There are also romas in abundance. We’ve been eating the grape cherry and pear varieties, we have a pot of yellow pear tomato jam on the stove as I type this, and I have a whole lot of romas I have to do something with very soon.

Some things haven’t done nearly as well, of course. This, for instance, is the entirety of my corn harvest:

Assuming it dries without molding, it’s enough to replenish my seed supply, so it’s enough, but a bit disappointing from a dozen stalks. I also have two tennis-ball sized watermelon. They MAY have a chance to get bigger, but I wont hold my breath. I’ll start them earlier next year.

My winecap mushrooms began fruiting this past week also. It’s been an extraordinarily dry summer, so I’m a bit surprised they showed up at the early end of their “can take x number of months to fruit” period. No sign of my oyster mushrooms at all, but I think the raccoons ate all my spawn.

I’m continuing to pursue herbal knowledge whenever I have a few free minutes. This summer, I have tinctured saffron and goldenrod each for the first time. I am reading up about lobelia and lungwort, and various other local wild plants. These are my most recent three books:

We are supposed to get a severe rainstorm this weekend, and boy do we need it. Mom and I dug a new hole for a fencepost yesterday, and it was dry as dust more than 2 feet down. We could use a solid week of soft rain. Umfortunately, we’re supposed to get about a week’s worth if rain in one day, so flooding and erosion are more likely than not. All the same, we’ll take what moisture we can get.