After the rain

Yesterday was a day for garden catch-up. Amazing what one rainy week of June can accomplish out there-- both among the crops and among the weeds! Things are exploding. I so love this exploding time of year.
My tasks included weeding and mulching with grass clippings (yesterday I raked our whole damn yard-- a whole acre!-- to harvest as much grass clippings as possible), picking the cucumber beetles that are just starting to show up on my squash plants, de-suckering tomatoes, and picking the first peas. The mulching is not my favorite task, but the picking and de-suckering and even the bug killing are enjoyable. And there are few things sweeter than an hour in the garden with my mug of tea, scootching along down the path and picking a weed here and there. And watching the swallows, smelling those glorious peonies, and greeting the Pete-cat whenever he decides to come over and rub against me. It's times like these that my mind slows down enough to let gratitude in. LOTS of gratitude, for all the little joys of a warm June morning in the garden. 
I've been thinking lately about my transition-- which is now mostly complete-- from someone who buys most of her food to someone who grows most of her food, and how it's really going. It is work, to be sure. Work, and a lot of time. But really not that much time. People probably think I'm a slave to the garden, pulling weeds and watering and all that. And in dry times I am out there watering, that's true. But mostly what I'm a slave to is the cutting board, in harvest season. The cutting board and the blanch-pot and the canning kettle. The harvesting is the real work-- not the caring for things. I find that really remarkable. I'm hoping to find my way to better systems for harvesting, to make things more efficient, the same way I've found certain things in the garden that are huge time-savers. Mulching is one. It keeps the weeds down and the water in. It's a lot easier than composting (though I do that, too). 
Anyway, just some musings. A big post with a breakdown of how much work I put in and how much money we save might be in the works. Would anyone be interested in that? 
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