The last two weeks in the yard have been pretty quiet, involving weeding, succession seeding, and a battle with some ants in one of the garden boxes. The rhubarb out front has recovered from last year's drought enough for me to take some stalks.
I've made strawberry-rhubarb pie filling before but I've never tried it as a jam, so I found a recipe online and some frozen strawberries and away we went.
Maybe a bit sweeter than I might like my jams, but it definitely tastes good. Texture is basically a soft spread, not all that different from stewed rhubarb. Might be good on pancakes on a cold, winter day. I'm going to try Saskatoon-rhubarb jam later in the season. Sounds gross but the pies we've tried with this combination are amazing.
The flowers we bought seem to be doing very well in the planters and pots. Keeping them wet in the early heat is quite a job.
The raspberries are all in bloom, to the delight of the bees.
The chives have also flowered like crazy out front beneath the plum tree.
In more exciting news, it looks like the plum tree has set a small number of fruit after a very pretty blossom this spring. Hopefully it will see these through to the fall.
I was wandering the back alleys of the neighbourhood the other morning and noticed some of my neighbours have put up this lovely grape trellis and plants the base on both sides with a huge strawberry patch. Very pretty!
This week, I need to do some thinning of the carrots and the beets and hopefully harvest some lettuce for salads.
