Tony cooling off- it was hot!
Eliza harvesting holy basil
Ben pouring peat moss


layering

Work day at the garden

Saturday, June 27th we hard a garden workday/celebrate my birthday party, starting at 9am, ending 9pm.  It was a long, fun day.  We worked hard and played hard!  Started with the compost in the morning and ended with a cookout and jam session later on.  We got another quarter of newspaper laid down in the wheel garden and a few layers of manure, peat moss, and straw.  Now we have the north, east, and south directions laid out and a little bit of the west.  I can get some more plants out of the greenhouse and in the ground as soon as I have time to plant them.    We harvested our first garlic and holy basil and made lovely pesto out of it.  Yummy!

laying out the design
Eliza doing a newspaper stomp
fresh country eggs
matt shovelling poo
fresh compost and 'cooking' compost

Its working! 
my favorite weed so far, milkweed
milkweed's cousin, asclepias tuberosa
drying calendula and chamomile
first garlic harvest!

Yarrow that volunteered in the wheel garden
tomato flower!
this is looking at the northeastern curves of the wheel garden 
potato flower
this is my magic rock

beautiful thistles
Our pregnant beekeeper Mae and her husband 

spacesuits
squash-in-a-box
Daylilies!  Its summer!

Growth!

bathtub of flowers
Calendula

garlic scapes!
Viola tricolor (johnny jump ups or hearts-ease)

Wow!  Another month has gone by and it is amazing to see how fast plants grow when it rains alot.  This has been a very rainy and cool spring and summer, which I'm told is unusual around here.  We definitely had our fair share of hot sun too.  The plants have all exploded with growth and flowers and fruit are popping out everywhere.  The daylilies are out, the chestnut trees are blooming, bees are bustling.  I have been enchanted with watching for new things to see every day.  Even the thistles are beautiful! We've got raspberries, kale, basil coming on and soon tomatoes and potatoes will be ready.  We harvested some garlic and its delicious!  I'm so proud of it!  I've been making tons of pesto with holy basil and garlic scapes and lemon balm!