Dill,blackberries, apples and pickled radishes

The dill in the backyard is about to flower and is taunting me to get on with the pickled beets. But the weather has been too fine to spend the day indoors sweating over the stove.

The blackberries are starting to set fruit around the front. We never get much out of these canes and I'm inclined to move them into the back.

The apples are putting on some size with the sun and rain. They have moved from crab apple to plum sized this week.

I pulled the radishes out of one of the beds that abuts the alley and sowed some buckwheat as a green manure. I then made refrigerator pickles with some garlic, vinegar and spices.

These should take a couple of week to pick up and then I'll use the juice (very pink) to pickle some eggs. Eventually I'll so some beets for storage.

Out back the first of the pumpkins has come up. Hopefully this one takes as we have only a few more months for it to put on enough weight to make the bed allocation worthwhile. I have lost so many winder squash to hail over the years I'm inclined to rig some shelter!

We seem to be past the worst of the problems I had with the day lilies last year. Some sort of bug was stunting the flower head formation. There was a little of that this year and I picked off the offenders. Most of the flowers look good, though.

I was out for a ride this afternoon and noticed this new front-yard garden. The owners had a tree removed this spring (you can see the remains stacked in behind) and they turned this otherwise useless strip of grass into a nice bed. Beets, carrots and maybe rhubarb in the distance.

I'm hoping Jess and I will get out and doing some strawberry picking tomorrow at a u-pick near Warburg. Then later this week we'll take some pails in the valley to snag some of the Saskatoons.