This summer, we took three months off, rather than two months. And it was a wise decision. Not only were we ready and willing to start again, but by this time we were excited!
Plus, our dear Brie, who used to live here, was back in town for a few days.
Here she is, preparing the patio for Thursday evening’s commencement, Rebecca in background.
Plus, it was our dear Dan’s birthday. 26 years old! He had wanted an introspective birthday. Sorry, pal. But he did get a solo walk in Griffy Lake woods before the start of the party. So He grinned and let it all happen on schedule and with his special birthday song, of course! Also a birthday cake.
Plus, given that we have a plethora of unripe tomatoes (we got them in slightly late, and it’s not been hot enough lately for them to ripen),
he decided to fry up some green tomatoes in cornmeal for his contribution. Yum.
Meanwhile, as usual, the two tables were loaded with food for the 25 folks, all total, who showed up, including seven girls and boys, ranging from the age of one month to teenage, most of whom tended to sneak cupcakes while playing hide and seek throughout our extensive gardens.
“Asiri,” I commanded to one of the girls: “Make sure the kids don’t step in the garden beds!”
“Oh we don’t!,” she replied. “That’s the RULE.”
From now until mid-June 2018, the weekly dinners will be held on the patio until it gets too cold, then back inside, one of the three living rooms in one of our three homes — unless of course, someone else in the hood wants to host one!
I totally forgot to take pictures of Tuesday evening’s GAV work party. Just know that we had several projects going, including digging a trench, and clean up of unwanted plants. Two young visitors, Peyton and Christina, who live in Bloomington but found us through the woofer website, came to meet and to join us. And returned two days later for the dinner. YES! Welcome to the village!
I did get pics of our two compost buddies, Dan and Sam, here all geared up:
Ye gods, how do you start that thing?
It took awhile, like twenty tries? Thirty? Forty? Until finally . . . yes, here goes, sawing through the brambles to make more compost.
They had already tried the new (to us: from Habitat restore) mulching machine.
Thirty tries, and the machine kept breaking. See it? On the right of photo below.
O.K. From now on, use the mulcher only to chew up leaves.
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Oh, and BTW: Rebecca came in the other day to tell me that I shouldn’t have given the long old string beans to the chickens. That those are heirloom “string” green beans, and she wants to save them for SEEDS.
“Oh!” I responded, “you mean that’s why I kept having to spit out strings when I was trying to chew them?”
“Yes! Haven’t you heard of ‘string bean parties,’ where farm women used to sit around together stripping the beans from the string beans?”
Nope. Completely new to me.