Focus

I am excited today to begin a little collaboration photography project with Larissa from Stitches in Play.  We are working together, pushing one another just a bit to not only stop and notice but to truly Focus. 

Each week we hope to take time to Focus ourselves and to Focus our cameras.

To Focus on looking and seeing,

to Focus on how we spend our time,

to Focus on friends and family and what's important,

to Focus on what's been there all the along but we just didn't take the time to look.

This week we're focusing on the garden, and boy does my garden need some focus. 

It all looked so sweet and tiny and orderly when I left for the beach. Now, not so much. This bed is a hodgepodge of garlic, carrots, beets, dill, mustard greens, and volunteer tomato plants. I have decided to just go with it by thinning out everything and letting it grow. 

This bed is far more orderly. Kale, chard and edamame. Easy peasy. I pulled the garlic from the other half of the bed and now it's ready to replant with more carrots, peas, lettuce, and beets. 

Some of our strawberries are everbearing, so there are flowers and little berries still. Hopefully we'll get them before the squirrels do. 

Oregano is flowering, as is cilantro. I'm okay with that since they keep reseeding themselves. My herbs are flourishing - they love our temperate climate. 

The volunteer tomato plants are huge and flowering. I have very little hope for tomatoes, however. We were going to plant starts when it warmed up, and we didn't. When these sprouted on their own, I decided to just see what happened. It was warm so late that I think a harvest is pretty unlikely. I'll be buying crates of tomatoes for canning anyway, so if we do get a few then it'll be a happy bonus. 

It makes me sad to thin carrots, but it has to happen. At least Kit was able to get a tasty bite from this one. 

And some harvesting! We have been eating chard, kale, carrots and beets since we got back. So, so good. Kale chips are on the agenda tonight. Or maybe a kale salad. Yum.

Lastly, my chickens seem to have gotten over their horror at the 90 degree temps of 2 weeks ago and started laying eggs again. That was one lean week - We really depend on those eggs to round out our garden bounty. 

Now that I have taken the time to see what's in the garden, harvest what was ready, and thin out the rest, I can focus on where it's going. We want to try and have a year round garden this year. This evening my focus will be on garden books, graph paper, and planning. The more work I can put into it now, the more it will pay off later in terms of food for our family. 

Thanks, Larissa for suggesting this collaboration. It's just what I need right now. 

Comments

[Sarah]

We need to sit down and do some serious garden/backyard planning as well. Putting the pool in has really thrown a kink in things. O_o

[larissa]

Your garden is wonderful. I miss our raised beds full of enriched soil. Your rainbow chard looks so beautiful and yummy. And how awesome is that little red carrot! In the meantime, we're buying all our produce from a local farm - out of a truck parked in a books-a-million parking lot. Love that you're able to grow so much of the food your family eats!