The summer flurry

Calendula blooming.

How many cucumbers do you count, how many cucumbers do you count...

The garden is so good right now. The deer are staying out: I'm going to bed each night without feeling the need to cross my fingers, and that is a good thing. I've picked enough green beans to eat for dinner twice, and that is also a good thing. The tomatoes are taking the longest to recover, because the deer got all the lowest, closest-to-being-ready clusters, and all most plants have on them is teeny higher-up fruit that are going to take awhile to ripen. Sigh. But, meanwhile I am picking raspberries like my life depends on it. Meanwhile, I am getting cucumbers and broccoli and OH MY GOD the greens.
Sunday I roped a few friends into picking raspberries, (beware the friend with a large garden who offers you the "fun" chance to harvest their produce for them) and after they left, committed myself to picking the rest of the row (which hadn't been harvested since Friday; they were loaded) with my head to the phone, talking to my mom. Then out of nowhere popped one of my favorite youngsters in town, who's eleven, I think, stating that raspberries are here favoritest thing in the world and "may I have a berry?" A BERRY! CHILD! I gave her the bowl and she picked those bushes CLEAN. And then I sent her home with a quart. My goodness. Girl has perfect timing, doesn't she?
There are three gallons already in the freezer, and I do believe some jam-making will be necessary before the month is out.
Saturday, I had spent almost the whole day out there harvesting something else: the garlic. I had about 24 feet of row, which turned out to conceal 47 HUGE fat heads of fall-planted garlic, and another 65 heads of smaller but still very nice heads of spring-planted garlic. Andplusalso, 10 pounds of "volunteer" potatoes, leftovers from last year's incomplete harvest, apparently, which I had let grow amidst the garlic. Delightful. This is just the time of year when what my kitchen really needs is ten pounds of little, yeller German Butterball potatoes to make into a few batches of potato salad. 
Other things I have done in the past week: made basil pesto, made arugula pesto, ground up half a pound of hot peppers with kosher salt to ferment into hot sauce, shredded and frozen zucchini, eaten the first-ever Strain Estate apple dipped in honey and granola. 
It's a good, very very busy season. Meanwhile I am spending on average two hours per day painting the house. Meanwhile I am tiling the backsplash. Meanwhile I am also supposed to be earning a living doing something. OH LORDY. And on that note...
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