Full circle

This marks the completion of cycles. We have been in Maryland a year now. I have finished a year of school and Ben has been working at the brewery a year. We have also just finished the wheel garden, fully completing the flower design. I had the month of August off from school to finish our various projects. We held another workday to lay the final layers. I finally got all of the poor plants out of the greenhouse and into the ground, and things are growing and flowering like crazy! Its hard to show in a picture because the camera doesn't know what to focus on. I have been busy harvesting, making pesto and tinctures and drying herbs for tea. The cooling autumn breezes are blowing through and the plants are soaking up the last of the summer sun. I love living out here!

summer storm!

Right after my last post, we had a whopping summer storm that flattened the sunflowers with one fell swoop. It was actually a tornado, and it downed tons of trees and knocked our power lines down for a couple of days. It was the day before a final for me so I was studying by candlelight that night. The teepee also got flattened and some tomatoes got discombobulated. Nature made it's power clear and I was humbled by it. Fortunately most of the plants were too low growing to be affected and summer growth continues without the soaring heights of the sunflowers.

garlic and sunflowers

Well we harvested our garlic, around 100 beautiful bulbs of the variety "music."  We cooked some up with our home-grown kale and its delicious!  The plants are going crazy this year with all the rain and the sunflowers are like trees towering over the other plants.  

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