Week 7 Berries and Flowers

Sunflower smiley face.

Chris, Lisa, and Mary are productive pickers. Lots of stories are told in the blueberry bushes. A glorious day.

Red and orange beets.

Colorful radishes.

Sweet onions.

Curly kale.

Flat leave kale.

A bountiful cart full of nutritious food.

Lunch time. Iced coffee time, too.

Anna made a delicious "fresh from the garden" pasta salad. Only the olives, feta, and pasta weren't picked just then. Soooo good. 

A variety of peppers.

Dad planted many roses that Mom loved.

Such a clear white rose. Delicate looking.

Many colors: yellow-orange-tangerine-melon.

This rose seemingly changes
color before your eyes.

Sometimes looking white, sometimes
looking yellow on the inner petals.

Even the bee is treading lightly on the
delicate rose. This one has a yellow blush to it.

Old fashioned roses, what a fragrant beauty.

So many pretties.

Yarrow to the left, foxglove at the
bottom, join in with the roses.

This rose is almost is too perfect to look real. 

Dad loved sweet peas. The backyard always smelled delicately scented. These are from seeds
we saved last fall from plants he planted last summer.
Memories.

Roses, butterfly bush and another flower we haven't
been able to identify. Little surprises keep popping up. 

Roses and Chinese Astilbe.

4 boxes heading home. A wonderfully fragrant car.

Sweet peas nestled in with lavender, kale and chives.

Guess what? An actual butterfly on a butterfly bush.

A butterfly bush has a tubular flower, perfect for the build of a butterfly. This one snacked for several minutes. I was thrilled!

Week 6 Family work day, too.

Nick is good with tools and was kind enough
 to start our pallet table for us.

Room for plants to grow. Florencio will keep it watered for us
after we plant it with plants from Lisa's yard.

Our old fruit stand that served us well in the 1960s and 1970s.
We decided to "help it" fall all the way down. Jared and Nick think about the demo work.

The fruit stand is down and parts being hauled away.
Jared and Stephanie work in the rain. What a family.

Picking raspberries in the rain. Nothing slows them down.

Week 6. Straight neck yellow summer squash.

Black plastic mulch heats up the soil for speeder
production. Squash like warm soil.

Florencio harvests and washes lettuce.

Small zucchini with LARGE 
blossom still attached.

Beautiful Red Sails leaf lettuce.

Orange beet sneaking up out of the soil.

Red beet can't decide if it wants to grow 
above or below. Might be a hard spot in the 
soil right under this one.

Onions.

A happy sunflower that came up all by itself. When plants
do this they are called "volunteers".
A bird probably "planted" it last year in this spot.

Silvans are loaded! Laurie H. (box 4) made our picking
stands for us. Less bending needs to happen now.
A good thing.

Carrots, yum.

Young Chinese Cabbage.

Red Brussels sprouts. Little guys right above
where the branches hook on.

Green Brussels sprouts forming. 

Purple cabbage.

More volunteer sunflowers, but we can't stand removing them.

Red and orange beet tops. Yummy to eat, too.

Chinese astilbe (we think) that is
so pretty in the bouquets.

Toasting with a "cheddar" cauliflower and the day's iced coffee.
Berries and roses make the table!

Lisa and Anna feed us well. Peanut butter brownies for
our afternoon pick me up. Oh my gosh.

Berries and cheddar cauliflower.
And no, it doesn't taste like cheese. :)

My great nephew loves everything!

Week 5 Berries!

He went to the greenhouse to get trimmers and came back
with a snack, too. Multitasker that he is :)

How to eat a tomato AND harvest tarragon???
Of course, free up your hands and keep going.

How to count colorful carrots?
As a group and out LOUD  :)
What is it about number 16 being left out?

Snapdragons. Little kids of all ages
like to play with these. :)

Anna's lunch today. Penne pasta with
asparagus, basil, onions, tomatoes. She even delivered to the potting shed!
Raspberries in the background may become dessert.

The first raspberries for the harvest boxes. Sooo delicious.

Thyme. This will be wonderful dried and used in the fall/winter
in soups. Falling leaves, rain, fire in the woodstove, homemade soup. Ahhh. I can almost smell it.

Sylvanberries. In the boxes for week 5.
1st blackberries to ripen.

Grams helps harvest the curly Kale.
She likes hers steamed with
balsamic vinegar.

A "potted" little
flower. Ahhhh. :)

A cutie pie with her milk.
Flowered raincoat was useful today.

This year's newest addition, developed at OSU, this is a baby 'Indigo Rose' tomato. Purple on the outside, red on the inside.
Bred for high levels of antioxidants.
Read more here:

http://extension.oregonstate.edu/gardening/purple-tomato-debuts-%E2%80%98indigo-rose%E2%80%99

Harvest box headed home.

Red on the outside, orange on the inside.
What are the carrot breeders thinking!

Blueberries starting to ripen.
Sunshine will speed this up.

Birds are snacking on them already.
See the empty stems?

Netting to try and keep the birds away.
They figure out how to go under.
Sneaky like that. 

Netting on an entire row. Tied down underneath, too.
Florencio will win this battle!

Grapes set first on a cluster, then they bloom. Each little bump will grow into a grape, hopefully.

First boxes with berries. More to come. Yummy.