Harvest Time, Modern Thermal & Haybox Cooking History, Graduation, Best Lemon Cake! Landscaping A Narrow Area

Harvest Time-

We've harvested our first peppers, cherry tomatoes and Lavender! Still lots of eggs and herbs.  Love the lavender, and I left some for the bees-  

Made some bundles to bring inside-

Tomatoes are getting ripe!

Yellow squash-

Lots of cucumber blossoms, Lemon cukes and slicing-

Yellow Gypsy peppers- 

Kohlrabi may be going to seed-

Blackberries are LOADED, starting to turn colors-

Pumpkins in the back, row of green beans and Italian peppers in front-

 Modern Thermal & Haybox Cooking History-
I signed up for emails from Milkwood.net, a Permaculture organization. They have tons of free information! I read this article Milkwood Thermal Cooking photos courtesy their website. There's a fascinating history going back quite a while, you bring foods to a boil and then put them into a hay filled box. Basically a non-electric, heavily insulated box. Some of the photos show you can make an insulated bag with a lid and use that instead. I may look into buying one of the insulated containers, see below.  I'm pricing styrofoam beads and I might make one instead. Good idea for all kinds of reasons! Bring food to a boil, put into insulated container, walk away, come back later, food is cooked!

Best Lemon Cake! 

I made this for 4th of July, amazing. I've made this for decades, recipe here- East 62nd Street Lemon Cake  I garnished with fresh lemon slices! Keeps well up to a week, very moist and not too sweet.

Graduation-
The chicks have been doing really well outside and have gotten pretty big. After about four or five days being integrated with the big hens they started playing in the coop! I thought that was sign that they were getting comfortable being out there. We still have the little condo set up gives them a separate shadier area, but they're using the coop more and more-

Roosting during the day

Up on the top at night

They were so small when we started out!

Landscaping A Narrow Area-

After we added our new stone walkway this bed basically was empty. We had some ground cover, which died during construction. Dave and I wanted to add something, and I thought about getting something taller to fill the space. It's on the north side of the house and gets some sun late in the day.  I found this photo on Pinterest, from Skinny Conifers for Tight Spaces, which got me thinking- 

So here was our blank slate, we had already bark dusted, and Dave waves! 

We went to Lowe's and found quite a few 50% off plants, scored!  We bought three Emerald and Gold Euonymus (only $4.00 each!), one dwarf English Boxwood, one Green Velvet Boxwood, one Cool As Ice Fescue grass and one Emerald Spreader Yew, the large one is a Juniper, sorry lost the tag! I tried to find a nice assortment of colors, shapes and sizes to go against the light gray house paint. All of these can be pruned if they get too tall- 

We had one leftover plant so we added it to the bed by the coop- 

Hens staying cool in the mister, was 100 degrees!