Fast and Furious

Some updates:

First, and most importantly—the BMW is fixed! Yay! We realized last week that the parts were not going to arrive in time for the husband to get to it before we had to leave for graduation. DD#1 works just a few minutes away from BMW of Bellevue, so she picked up the parts and brought them to Spokane for us and saved us shipping costs. The husband stayed up late last night and completed the repair and took the car for a short test drive. I’ll test it out with a few progressively-longer trips this week to make sure everything is okay, but I am optimistic. While I am grateful for a backup vehicle, I do miss having the station wagon for hauling stuff.

I was able to meet yesterday with one of the owners of the organic market—the appointment I was headed to when the BMW self-destructed two weeks ago—and she is very excited about carrying the grocery bags. I promised to deliver half a dozen bags in time for their grand opening next week. (I think they are going to do really well in their location.) I had to move my cutting table out of DD#2’s bedroom while she is here for a couple of weeks, but I can set it up in our bedroom temporarily and get all the fabric sliced and bags ready to assemble.

The peas are up.

The grapes are leafing out, so I can stop worrying about them surviving the winter.

I weeded the perpetual lettuce bed yesterday. We planted an heirloom variety of lettuce there about five years ago. I was too lazy to pull it up after it bolted, and the next year, we were rewarded with more lettuce without having to plant any. I’ve continued to let it re-seed every year. This year, the baby lettuces are trying to establish a beachhead on either side of the row. And in keeping with the barely-controlled chaos that is my garden, a few volunteer parsnips decided the lettuce bed needed gentrification and moved in.

I am going to plant corn and beans today. It rained last night and is supposed to rain off and on for the next week or so. I don’t see any low temps in the long-range forecast that indicate anything close to frost levels, so I may live dangerously and put out the zucchini, tomatoes, and cucumbers, too.

No sign of ground squirrels. Let’s hope it stays that way.

The strawberry bed needs some serious work. I am not sure what to do out there yet, but I am going to have to do something to beat back the quackgrass and a kind of low shrubby bush with poky leaves that looks like a holly. The strawberry plants that are in that bed are vigorous and produce very large, tasty berries, but they need protection against advancing marauders.

The mama robin is still sitting on her nest. No sign of babies yet. Walking out onto the porch is like walking into a war zone most days, because the two hummingbirds like to argue over who gets to eat out of which feeder. I’ve been hearing lots of grosbeaks, but they are shy and don’t show themselves very often. One year, I had a hanging feeder on the porch and a mama grosbeak showed up with three babies.

The baby chickens are quickly learning how to be big chickens. They go in and out of their side of the coop and chicken yard and now get scratch grains and scraps. The Light Brahmas are very cute with their feathered feet.

I had some fresh asparagus in my scrambled eggs yesterday morning. I’d like to sauté up some morels, but I’ve only found a couple of tiny ones. We haven’t had enough rain. Maybe in a day or two they will pop up.