Awash in Plums

The harvest has begun. Haphazardly and thank God for grocery stores or it would be a very strange winter ahead. The one fruit tree that was absolutely loaded was the juice plum, I think it may be a Santa Barbara but I’m not an expert. In any event the branches are bent down with fruit and just as they started getting pink I found the deer standing around eyeing them with the same considerate look as me. I hung some sheets on the lower branches and that did the trick. The deer have gone to someone else’s yard and 80% of the tree ripened in 3 days. They are so juicy they can only be eaten over the sink which is fun for one or two but… So I steam them into juice and there is now a gallon in the freezer and 10 pounds of plums making wine in a bucket.

Other than that, there is 5 pounds of rhubarb in the freezer and yesterday the Excalibur 2000 (the dehydrator) came down from the top shelf for the first picking of salal berries. Everything else is hanging back waiting for it to warm up. The slugs are not hanging back and I’ve taken to donning gloves and a flashlight when I let the dog out at 1 am. I go slug hunting while she’s busy and we both go back to bed content.

Summer is closing out

I put up a wildlife cam to see who would come investigate the windfalls; not surprisingly the deer dominated the scene but even they couldn't eat them all so there may be more footage to come. This young male is a frequent visitor during the day as well. He knows he's beautiful!

The fruit harvest is pretty much in - two buckets of apples are waiting in the kitchen for me to sit down and start cutting them up. I'm thinking more applesauce this year than drying. The peaches tasted better this year, more sunshine will do that, but there weren't enough to put up. Something happened in the late Spring between flowering and setting fruit that put almost everybody off. There are still blackberries for picking but the scratches are taking their tole on my hands. But while there may not be much going in the freezer at the moment there is little need of the grocery store with zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, peaches, blackberries, and eggs all in abundance

I did finally move the saddest gooseberry bush ever to a place with more light and more water. It is reconsidering dying but hasn't fully committed. I am slowly, slowly, tackling a garden cleanup. I manage about fifteen linear feet at a time and then ache for a few days, but things are looking tidier, if not exactly beautiful. As I go I'm making a list of what to plant in the bare patches that is both deer and rabbit proof. This mostly consists of lavender and hellebores. A seed and bulb order are going to have to go in soon. I'm planning to grow malabar spinach up the chicken enclosure so they can nibble from the inside. But I'll have to enclose it somehow to keep the deer from joining in and finishing it off...

Before long the rains will be back and it will be time to return to the wallpaper stripping upstairs.