High Park Fire, 10: Gardening, such as it’s been this year

This has not been a great year for gardening. Our raised beds got built a few years ago. We didn't have the repeated hailstorms pounding the tomato plants into green pulp before they had a chance to get started. There's been a drought, but the water's been applied regularly, if judiciously (none extra for the … Read more

Gardening, such as it is, 2011 version

Ah, gardening. I still haven't adjusted to making it work in clay-soil, semi-arid conditions. We do keep trying. This year we ended up with LOTS of tomato plants and we managed to keep them from being shredded by hail, which is a major accomplishment. The plants are happy in the raised beds. (They get water; … Read more

Garden update, plus a bit on fiber (more to come)

Wow, it's been busy around here. Book progress The art director did a few days' worth of photos before I arrived to share the work. She did the pictures of the items made with various types of fibers. They're standard shots that don't include really technical fiber stuff. Then I was there for five days … Read more

Green tomatoes

We've had a hard enough frost to blacken the vines of the tomatoes and squash. Because of the repeated, late starts, most of our crop hadn't ripened yet. This is about four times as many tomatoes as we've had ripen on the vine this year. As is evident in the raised bed that can be … Read more

Garden harvest, just a bit

We've been on the edge of first hard frost for over a week. It's predicted yet again for within the next forty=eight hours or so. Sooner or later. . . . Meanwhile, the raised beds offer promise for next year. We got some teasers out of them this year (well, out of the two we … Read more