For all the locals, isn’t this cooler weather nice? That heat wave was too much! Even though it did scorch some plants, it made our tomatoes and peppers very happy. But this weekends cooler weather allowed us to do some spring harvesting. We pulled up lettuce plant after lettuce plant….anyone want to come over for a salad? Dinner’s at 6:30 tonight!

We also harvested the rest of the hardneck garlic (the same garlic that I used a few weeks ago for Orangette’s green garlic & spinach soup). Scott pulled it out of the ground and just let it lay in the sun for a day or two, then yesterday cut off the leaves and put it in a box outside to dry. The hardneck made this garlic too difficult to braid, so we are going for box storage for these guys. We planted the single cloves back in January and we are now blessed with 47 large bulbs. Let’s see how long it takes us to use them up.

I also spent some time up in a ladder this weekend harvesting cherries. Looks like the birds were generous enough to leave us plenty for eating and some for freezing. We didn’t freeze any last year, only canned the jam, but since we have plenty of jam left, I thought I’d go for freezing this year. Being high up in that fifty year old tree, with limbs covered in lichen, the evening sun pouring through the leaves, I felt like a kid reaching for those shiny red jems. One for the basket, two for me. I could harvest cherries all day.