Slow progress, but progress nonetheless.

Alright, after a few weeks mostly spent watering and weeding, we're starting to see some progress. Most exciting is that the cherry tree seems to have set quite a lot of fruit this year. Sadly, neither plum tree got the memo.

Despite a cool and wet spring, the garlic continues to do well and I suspect we'll have scapes by early July.

The potatoes have also all come up (after I feared one whole type had rotted in the ground). The blue caribe are doing well. The Prince of Orange are just barely through the soil. But all seems good.

The wet weather has also meant the rhubarb plants are doing well enough that I could get an early cut. I chopped this and will combine with some frozen saskatoons from last year into pie filling this weekend.

Kale, which I've always thought of as the worst of the leaf vegetables, is now suddenly wildly expensive in the stores so I plants out several rows. It freezes well and I'm hopeful to have enough for stews and soups in the winter.

The lettuce has also started to show up although we're a ways away from salads, I fear.

I should have more to report in two weeks if we get some warm weather and the plants start to put on some size.

Planting completed

Alright, after a fairly chaotic spring, we're back in the yard and pretty much everything is planted out.

While this is a time of hard work, let's start with the fun stuff: all of the spring blossoms. Above, we have plums and below some small tulips.

The saskatoon bushes are also in full bloom.

And the cherries have just started. The cherry tree has a crazy number of blossoms this year so I am hopeful for a bigger crop.

The haskap bushes are still flowering but we also have the start of berries.

The front yard is also full of tulips.

I've spent several hours each day on various projects, including some soil amendments, weeding and seeding. I did stumble across the first of the potatoes to push up a shoot.

I'm also almost done removing the dead canes from the raspberry bushes and burning them. I hope to have the energy tonight to fire the last of them. Then I can get to weeding around the base of them.

I suspect, over the next few days we'll see some more seeds begin to emerge (the kale has just come up). We did have a touch of frost last week and a few of the tomatoes, a basil plant, and some marigolds look slightly scarred. Hopefully, they will come back.

Back yard progress: so many potatoes.

Okay, after several months of disruption, I'm back at home and going hard in the yard. Happily, much of the yard has managed to just just fine without me. As always, the rhubarb out front was among the first things up.

In the back, the garlic that we planted in the new raised beds has also almost all come up. I collected some compost from the city this week and top dressed these beds before planting the rest of them.

The bulbs are up, with the dafs being first. This little bee was tuckered out and was having a nap in one of the flowers.

I usually do some stunt gardening each year, such as melons or or weird variety of corn. Given the state o fthe world this year, I decided instead to put in 50 potato plants. They are a mix of Prince of Orange (which did amazing last year) and blue caribe (of which I had some left over seed).

Clearly the seed potatoes were good and ready to go into the ground! I also put the rest of the back yard (peas, carrots, onions, beets, some cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, butternut squash and lots of basil. The remaining tasks are just some flowers and more tidying up.

I can now turn my attention to the front yard. It will be a mix of greens, yellow bush beans, maybe some more carrots and beets, and flowers.

Spring!

Spring has finally arrived and enough snow is gone that I can get out into the garden again. These daffodils were a pleasant surprise when I started poking around in the back yard.

The dog has been moderately interested in my puttering and providing useful supervision.

The chives are up (the first useful green, as usual) along the side of the house and I have been slowly shifting leaf litter to expose the soil in the beds I'd like to start early so they warm up a bit. We've had 20 degrees already so I hope to get spinach and peas going soon.

I built three raised beds last fall in the hottest area of the garden. Yesterday, I repurposed some old metal conduits and some monofilament netting to make a pea trellis on the western edge. When the pears are done I am hope to train some cucumbers up it. This went up fairly easily with the exception being the monofilament's tendency to catch on everything (especially my shoe treads) resulting in several Gilligan moments of entanglement.

Up next: We're off to the manure piles at the equine centre today for a bit of poop and then I hope to get some pea and spinach seeds in the ground before the weather turns. 

Paneer

We've spent the past month cleaning out the freezer and the pantry of last year's produce and are making progress. For a change of pace, I made some paneer today (under the close supervision of the dog), since the store was out.

A pretty straight-forward process. Getting back to the pantry, we're on track to use up the jam and apple sauce we canned and we're making some progress on the dried stuff. More tomato powder and paste will be on the to-do for next year. Also, more minced and dried onions.

We have pretty much everything out of the freezer except for some garlic scape pesto (more pesto in general would be appreciated). We do still have a lot of saskatoons. I need to find some rhubarb in order to make some saskatoon rhubarb pie filling. And I might get ambitious and use some of the apple pie filling we have canned for some tarts. We'll see how bored I get this week.

The paneer turned out well and is in the fridge awaiting dinner on Wednesday. I had a brief moment of insanity and started looking at greenhouses. Temu-style greenhouses are cheap but the reviews are hilariously bad. Real greenhouses are insanely expensive. Happily, sanity has prevailed and I contented myself with a wander around the seed store and purchased some green bean and pea seeds. 

Cherry Tarts!

A few years back, we bought a semi-sweet cherry tree (I think it was a Juliet) for the back yard. I harvested about a cup and a bit of pitted cherries this year and froze them in the autumn rush.

Earlier this week, I defrosted them and turned them into filling. I then made some tart dough and baked everything today.

Overall, pretty tasty. I think a better option would have been a short-bread crust, the filling, and then a crumble on top. I hope to have enough cherries next year to can some pie filling but if we have extra, I[ll give the another shot.

Last week's tomato sauce from the basis of chilli (which also used dried beans and peppers from the pantry) as well as the sauce for a pasta bake. We're making progress in the freezer and I see we have a whole lot of saskatoons to do something with soon.

Tomato Sauce!

As winter continues, I've been busy using up what we stored from last summer. We still have some potatoes and garlic plus a bunch of frozen items. This push to clean out the freezer is part of a month-long effort to use up what we have stored in the pantry and see just how much we can whittle down our January grocery bill.

There were two bags of tomatoes that I froze in October, mostly because we were sick of eating them and I was too tired from processing to do anything useful with them. I let them thaw overnight and then ran them through this food mill to remove the skins and seeds.

That gave me about a gallon of tomatoes that I cooked down into sauce. Some other stored items I was able to use included some garlic, some dried red pepper flakes, and a bunch of oregano. We had already used up our basil from last summer so I dug out some commercial basil from the cupboard.

Overall, this turned out pretty tasty and will form the basis of two meals this week. I think my next tasks include dealing with grapes I froze and also some semi-sweet cherries. The grapes are probably destined for a small batch of jelly. I suspect the cherries could be used to make filling for tarts or turnovers.