Nap time for Felix (and Michael) gives me a chance to look back on this past month.

The columbine came out in early June. It has been sparser this year, perhaps due to the hot, dry weather we’ve had.

A few days ago I finally made it to the boat landing on the St. Croix. My snow-shoveling injury is mostly healed. Yay! Water level has lowered to where it was most of last year. Drought persists.

Our snowy winter helped subsoil moisture. The fruit trees flourish. The mulberries produced enough this year to entertain Felix and fill all of us with sweet, black fruit.

Michael planted the big garden, mostly in onions, by the beginning of June.

By late June the weeds had taken over. I think it was the weeding that finally helped my hip to heal. The big, leafy plants Zeke is nesting in are some type of brassica (cabbage family) that came as a “bonus” with our other seeds. It is a bit too fuzzy to eat raw, but has a pleasant flavor. I hope to have the energy to experiment with it soon.

Speaking of experiments, Michael remembered reading about elderberry blow (blossom) wine in Euell Gibbons “Stalking the Wild Asparagus.” We had guests visiting a couple of days about a week ago, giving us an excuse to sit and visit while processing the blossoms. Last night we removed the blossoms from the wine. It smelled marvelous.

We’ve been snacking on radishes.

The jalapeños won the first pepper contest.

The asparagus blossoms fed countless bees.

Michael has been replenishing our wood pile.

Raccoons reduced the size of our duck flock.

And so Michael has been feeding the vultures and eagles. The soy beans finally germinated after the rain. We hope they can catch up with good growing weather.

We need more rain. Our front yard still sports cracks. Glacial till contains a lot of clay.

We reduced our flock by eleven, spread over 3 days. They are mostly done growing out feathers from the springtime molt. But not totally. We spent two early morning hours (before heat and flies set in) doing the outside portion of the harvest, and then until 2:30 pm removing fine feathers, boning and packaging. 4 ducks result in about 10 pounds of useable products. I say “product” because about 2 of those 10 pounds is skin and fat. Great for sausage making or for rendering into duck fat. The kind that makes fabulous fried potatoes or scrumptious sautéed vegetables. We started our duck harvest early this year as we have to reduce our flock from 57 to 27, or fewer. Another 5 days of hard duck work lie ahead. We also have 22 more chickens to process: 5 broilers and then a number of old hens and new Golden Laced Wyandottes. The need to rotate laying hens is a reality of having eggs.

Some of those eggs went into a tasty cake my daughter made for the Grand Girl, who is now 6! School means she has graduated from her favorite color being yellow to being pink and her cake choice going from a triceratops to a unicorn with hearts.

The other daughter grew tired of battling tangled (if beautifully curly) locks on the Grand Guy and let me give him a trim.

And that other Grand Girl has mastered ladders and slides like a boss.

Gardens and flocks and wood and Grands and physical recovery filled our lives in June. We have yet to add construction to that list. Soon. Soon. Yes. This is a lot of work. It is also so much fun.