My community of gardeners

More than any single thing I’ve ever done, my garden has brought me closer to my neighbors. People stop by to talk when they are out walking, or even driving. Those who already garden come by to compare notes. Those who weren’t already gardening get inspired and start.

Case in point, today my neighbor across the street and I exchanged pea seeds and garlic bulbs (between us, we have about 20 varieties or garlic!).

And my friends Lori and Ken have installed many square feet of garden in their back yard over the last few months. It started with one little square, and very quickly blossomed into a thriving food garden.

It’s so much fun for me to have someone to compare notes with, share seeds with, and (when things go well) share the harvest with.

Going up

Here are the first, second, third, and fourth posts in this series (you can also go to the “bread oven” category, in the lefthand navigation menu). Man, this is becoming epic. Not just in number of posts, but the families are burnt out! OK, the wives, in particular. Jan works on the oven in most of his spare time, and Lori is close to done with Ken coming over here and leaving her with the three youngins.

Fortunately, the work lately has been very tangible. First, the walls of the chamber, starting with the back:

Then, the side walls and the arch of the chamber ceiling. Jan is really getting a feel for masonry in this project, with the jigs and arches:

Three rows of arch, and a cap stone:

There is so much planning and thought that goes into each stage, before the bricks are cut and installed. One concern Jan had was making a smooth taper to the chamber opening, to facilitate cleaning the ashes out. You can see his solution here:

And from the outside, jigs in place:

Once all mortared together, we undeniably have an oven:

But the best part was when I pulled into the driveway one day and smelled wood smoke. I love that smell, and don’t expect it in the summer, normally. What a treat to see that it was from our oven!

There is still a lot to be done, insulating the chamber, building the chimney, and bricking the outer cladding over the entire structure. But seeing a fire in there bought Jan some patience on the home front.

Harvest season

What a fantastic time of year to be in the garden. The winter garden is almost done, with garlic, broccoli, onions, lettuce, spinach, and cool weather herbs, like chervil, parsley, and cilantro. We’re on the tail end of our okra (the burgundy variety started earlier than the green variety, and is now tapering off), and we’re starting to bring in cucumbers:

The first cucumber off the vine wasn’t as sweet as I like, so I need to tweak something. I braved eating one, even though cucumbers are on my list of oral allergens. Once they start coming in heavy, we’ll just pickle them, and I’ll eat them that way.

The biggest treat of this harvest season has definitely been the watermelons. I may be biased, but these seem like the sweetest, juiciest watermelons I’ve had in a long time. Ella agrees:

They take forever to ripen on the vine. And you have to let them be, because they will not continue to ripen once picked. So you wait for the tendril closest to the stem of a given watermelon to turn brown, then pick. Forget looking for ridges on the melon, or the color of the bottom, or even the sound of the thump. If the tendril is still green, the melon will not be ready (ahem, believe me). The funny thing was that the vine up and decided it was done one week, and ripened up every melon at once. We had all sizes of melons, from about 12 inches down to one little four-inch cutie. We gave it to my neighbor, and she said she got four bites out of it. But that it was wonderful!

It’s not all good news, though. My corn plants blew over yesterday. I’ve tried to prop them up, but it’s clearly not working. I guess I need to hill the dirt around each plant next year. What a bummer. The silks had just started appearing, too.