Garden & Food Updates

Between the dump and my secret source, got the Asparagus well mulched. The guy who had been bringing me clippings hasn't dropped off any in a couple weeks, but that doesn't surprise me -- this is the time of year many folks stop bagging and just clip their lawns.




Surprises me the peppers droop in the heat.


Put up a single string to keep the tater vines in line so I could mow without whacking them too:




Mulched the Arugula, Sweet Potatoes, and I think it's Bok Choi along the fence?




Started harvesting my broccoli


Celery got mulched:


Beans are starting to run:


Saturday's Dinner featured peas, onions, and broccoli from the garden...despite a botched transfer to the stone :) :






Sunday featured the first taters of the year, and the first oregano and basil of the year, with peas done up in foil on the grill with the steak:

Peas...and Shepherd's Pie

Picked peas tonight, and into the Shepherd's Pie they went. Lamb for the meat -- haven't used ground lamb before.

Places for the travel bucket list..

If I ever go on the castles of Europe trip...two non castles:

Kew Gardens
and the
Imperial War Museum

Fort Ticonderoga

Saturday, the summer solstice, I decided to cross something off my list I had wanted to do since last year -- see Fort Ticonderoga, which is 5-6 hours away depending just how scenic I make the drive. So after a haircut appointment and dump run, I was on the road about 9am.

Some wooden pallisades being erected -- certainly in it's day wooden pallisades would have surrounded the fort, probably with other impediments to slow down a large attacking force while the cannons did their work.

The sally port to enter the fort (looking outwards)


Mount Defiance, the Achille's heel of Ticonderoga.






Oh! A clay camp oven! I've read of these before :)






The barracks inside the fort were designed to garrison 400 soldiers for the winter. Encamped outside the walls at times the French had another 3,000 men. That's a lot of labor to clear the land and build the fort!

Food Pics!

I'm eating pretty much daily out of my garden now :)

Sunday brunch featured garden lettuce, with grapes, cucumber, cottage cheese, and strawberries. A few raisins would have made this perfect!


Monday night I culled some onions that were sending up seed heads, plus one that a bird had knocked sideways, along with some young peas -- this fried up RIDICULOUSLY good!

Garden Updates...

I built/extended some new beds inside the fence -- partly because I'm getting more soil in good shape that I can work with to make them :) I planted Sweet Potatoes (in front of the Onion bed), Arugula, Chinese Cabbage, and Kholrabi.


Bib and Red Romaine Lettuce -- I'm really liking both of these!


Look at those onions!
I've been eating snap peas for about a week, I should be able to harvest some to shell tomorrow -- too few were ready tonight.


Beans are coming along.


The cauliflower never did much of anything -- the two plants that survived were still little bigger than when planted. I dug up that bed, extended it, and planted Kholrabi here. I have two more bed extensions I'm in the process of building to the right.




I hilled the celery this week for the first time. It seems to have liked it.

ATHS Nutmeg Truck Show 2014

At the Brooklyn Fairgrounds -- I usually remember about it when I'm mowing the lawn and see all the trucks headed down Route 6 after leaving :( It's a show I first went to with my Dad, I think I was 15 or so when they had their first one?











'54 International hauling a...'54 International.

An Autocar between two Macks. Not a bad threesome.

Framingham's 1970 Maxim...darn thing looks like it is in the shape to roll out of the station and hit a hydrant today.


Mack with a cab which lifts up to access the motor, one of the biggest attention grabbers there for the truck nuts.

Want!