Busy Summer

It's been busy the last couple of weeks- gardening, deep cleaning house and garage, playing with bread recipes, and learning the various rising magic of "dough enhancer", "vital gluten", etc. The last batch came out pretty well! The 2nd version I made 2 days ago was better, I made it 2/3 W.W....

Garden- With the reasonably mild weather (no steady 90's or 100's yet) the garden is growing fast! Spreading last of the manure today. Starting to pick raspberries, the tomatoes are LOADED! Can't wait for them to ripen. We'll have another huge crop of blackberries too this year. Biggest challenge is the huge maple tree and all the shade. Hoping next spring to get an arborist in and do some damaged branch pruning, and open up the area over the garden. The tree is huge, and we've done what we can, safely. We need some sun!!!  I finally gave up on growing lemon cukes (my fave!) on the ground, not much harvest, so I put them in a hanging basket. They're growing great! We had an old garden "Shepard's hook", worked perfect! 

Food- For breakfast- home grown eggs and homemade bread! Now if I only had an orange tree... Ready to start canning soon!

Baby Chicks- The 2 "babies"- Ellie (black) and Buffy (buff) have transitioned out into the coop full time. Rosie, our hen, has been a bit twitchy about it, but is finally calming down. The babies are pretty funny, and entertaining! Ellie (named for Ellie in "Contact") seems to find worms fast, then Buffy (named for the "vampire slayer", & she's a Buff Orpington) who's MUCH bigger, chases her around to take them. More later!