Fiacré's spade: The harvest begins

I somehow thought I’d be able to keep up with my blog posts better after I retired, but it turns out not to be the case. I planned to post yesterday afternoon, but when I turned on my desktop computer, it began to boot up normally and then suddenly presented me with the Black Screen of Death, which was even more alarming than the usual Blue Screen of Death. I turned it off and on. Same thing. I was able to get the Task Manager, and after clicking through every option I could find there several times, I finally saw the familiar photo of a misty morning on Hungry Jack Lake. Phew! I spent the rest of the afternoon backing up tens of thousands of files. I hadn’t done a backup since January of 2018. I am always astounded by the number of files on my computer. Really, I should clean them up someday. I can’t possibly need them all, can I?

We had a busy weekend. Hilda’s college friend, Eloise, came for a long weekend. They had not seen each other for 17 years. Eloise is an avid game player, and we had a good time playing Mexican train. She taught us two new games as well. Terry took the fact that he could still learn games as evidence that his brain was still good.

Terry, me, Hilda, Eloise (left to right)

On Sunday, Hilda made roast chicken with vegetables. Although she had to buy a chicken, all of the veg came from the garden. Here is our first harvest of potatoes, carrots, and beets. The tender potato skins wash right off with the dirt. New potatoes are so lovely. We also had zucchini, which is not pictured. I only planted 3 zucchini this year, and already I can’t keep up with them.

Beets, carrots, and new potatoes from the garden

We are harvesting peas and green beans every other day. I am freezing what we can’t eat.

The Queen Anne’s lace is blooming. My heart always sinks a little when I see it. Summer is on the downward slide to fall. When I worked at camp in the summer, I remember feeling like I was just getting in tune with the rhythm of nature when the Queen Anne’s lace bloomed, and I had to go back to living in the city, waking up to an alarm instead of the sunrise and the loons calling. It’s different now that I don’t have to go back to work in three weeks. My summer can extend into September, even October if the killing frost is late. Perhaps over time, I will learn to not be sad when I see the white umbels along the road.

Many other things are blooming as well. In my experiments with native plants, I have found that beebalm (a.k.a. wild bergamot) and New England aster are pretty invasive. I’m okay with it as long as it doesn’t crowd out my other natives. New England aster is good to have around because it is one of the few plants that bloom late in the season. The bed behind the tractor shed has beebalm, New England aster (not in bloom yet), cone flowers, and butterfly weed.

Behind the tractor shed, left to right: New England aster is behind the purple cone flowers, the butterfly weed is orange, and everything else is the rapidly spreading beebalm (wild burgamot)

Among the mixed seeds I got at the native landscaping seminar last year, I have one swamp (a.k.a. rose) milkweed, which is exciting. The only other survivors are—you guessed it—beebalm.

Rose or swamp milkweed

The butterfly and hummingbird garden that I planted two years ago is thriving. When I got the puny plants in the mail, I thought they were just kidding about planting them in a 75 ft² space. They weren’t. It’s good that they are doing so well, but I will have to divide them in the fall.