First Harvest / Lammas approaches

Being here in Maine, it is much easier for me to appreciate this holiday, as we really are just beginning the big harvest season. We would likely have tomatoes and such had the garden gotten started earlier, but they are fruiting and will ripen soon. there are peppers and cauliflower, we have been eating lettuce and broccoli and peas... and herbs, oh my!

My little garden here at the trailer park -- several planter boxes and pots with trees waiting to be transplanted at home are outdoing themselves! I have an oven load of herbs in drying by the propane pilot light (parsley, basil, oregano, two kinds of sage and rosemary; I have a jar of parsley and a jar of marjoram from earlier and a large jar of St. Johns wart from along the road; the flowers on my single plant are just past prime and I am going to let it seed, to make sure I have some for home.

And the blueberry patch along the roadside -- which I had thought for sure would have been picked dry -- proved me wrong yesterday when K suggested that we stop for a look. I don't think anyone else had picked since I did, so today I brought a friend back and we picked until her allergies called a halt. plenty of berries for both of us and there are a few yet to be picked on the way home from work later this week.

We can add "fox" to our list of local wildlife that we have spotted; we saw one crossing the road in the dark on the way home yesterday evening; we were on a deserted road, so K swung the car over to the "wrong" side of the road and shined the headlights to follow the critter so we could make a positive ID.

And I have more flowers to get out of the camera and into the 'puter and list... but that will have to wait. I need to bathe (washed Brandi today and I need to make sure I am not coated in Adams. I am hoping that she is done with her heat cycle... in any case she sorely needed the cleaning and attention to her rear where it seems a flea (I almost think she is THAT sensitive to them!) has caused her to start getting scabby places again. She had been worrying her rump -- a change at least from licking her "parts" which was her main occupation while she was bleeding heavily. But now she is -- for the moment -- once again a clean doggy, though not yet quite dry. She will dry over night I am sure and I am not worried about the temperature as we are after all having summer even here in Maine

My cross quarter celebration next weekend will likely include a long session of picking blueberries at a "pick your own" place with friend A... we were discussing it while in the wild patch today and have made a tentative date for next weekend. I have yet to find where we are going, though there are plenty of pick your own blueberries around, just none REALLY close... I am looking forward to getting the freezer set up -- hopefully soon. I can hardly believe that it's only a bit over six weeks until the one year anniversary of my trip to Maine last year.

Anxious to spend more time at Common Ground Fair this year, and I am determined to buy myself a sythe there.

But for now those dreams will have to wait, the bath and bed (and a couple of baskets of clean clothes to be put away) await.