Marsh mallow

Here is the root of the marsh mallow plant.

Olive update

The ones in grape must were an utter failure, perhaps because the grape was not already fermenting when introduced.

The ones in brine, which were cracked, had a small window of ok-ness but they got mushy and therefore bad.

The limes and thyme have a lot of murk in them, and retain some harshness. But the flavor is complex and quite interesting.

The ones in honey are quite shriveled, similar to the modern oil-cured olive. They are sweet and tasty

Probably the best are the ones in oxymeli. They have a sweetness to them, balanced with the acid of the vinegar and olive.

Pomes and pollards

10/11/15. Not much going on in the garden, the tomatoes are failing and the coleworts are all eaten by the wurms. Twas a good year for apples though, they are a bit blotched and spotty but very sweet, and I'm liking how the pollard tree is taking shape...

10/18 first frost

The first frost was last night. 25.9 at 7 am

Harvest

Elderberries

Spaghetti squash stuck in the fence

Originally post attempt 8/22

How do you like them

Apples.

July 28 2015

Spuds

A sink full of spuds

And two radish

After

Still more to do

But most of what remains is wanted.

Gone away to war

Come home to weeds.

Not avocado

But figs and strawberries

Using plants

Chief among my advise to people about what to plant is plant what you like, so you will use it.

So I set about to make a tincture from my mint. Into a large pot I put some water and a steam basket, upon which was a cup. On the basket but not in the cup were the mint leaves. The lid of the pot was inverted to direct condensation to the middle where it would drip into the cup.

After a bit, some clear liquid had accumulated in the cup, and the water in the pot had turned to tea. The clear was certainly not plain water but it wasn't minty at all. The tea however was ok, but again, not terribly minty

Impgarth

All the imps in my impyard
Did not the winter survive

Inventory

Radish patch
Taters coleworts zucchini
Sage and pinks, feverfew too
White flag
Tansy and strawberry
Wormwood chive and flag iris
Rose

Bed conversion

Those bricks were got to finish the inside of the greenhouse, but they are the wrong size so they have been piled here for quite some time.

The bed has been reclaimed for te echinacea and such from the upper garden.

Beans and peas have been planted in the upper garden today 16 may

Pix are bed before and after

Plantings may 9

Farthest to nearest: potato colewort zucchini

Current Bloomings

First azalea is out, early tulips. Later daffodils are still going as is forsythia. Hyacinth, wild violets, dandelions, apple, strawberry, alehoof and whatever this is.

Flames

This bed was cleared with fire. Not sure how period that is. It started slightly accidentally but it is interesting. The echinacea seems to be pleased with this, the larkspur not so much. Dandelions and violets are thriving too

Asparagus

Nice big spears!

And a shot of the raised bed with daffodils

Beauty in wood

You might think that by late April it would be ok to be out in the garden, but no. Cold snap, into the thirties tonight.

So this then is a woodworking post.

You make think you can see beauty in a piece of wood, but until you have stood over it for hours, pouring yourself into working it, watching your plane reveal the grain.. Then you begin to understand the beauty of wood.

This slab is 21 1/2 inches wide by 39 long...

Fourth flat

20 cells of colewort. Three plants survived the winter.

20. Basil sown on may3

Daffodils

The sweet pea sprouted
And lupine too
The first daffodils are opening
Winter is finally through

Use age of pollard

So the pillar des tree makes nice bundle of straight sticks. Hundreds of household uses!

Pollard

Time to trim the pollard...

New baseboard

So here we see some new base board, this will provide a nice finished look, and defense against the machine.

Context of texture

Woodworking posts will be winding down now that warm weather waxes once again. But this is one. The goblet box I just finished recently has three different textures, the top is very smooth, the sides have some shallow scoopings from the plane, and the bottom is fairly rough.

Christopher Schwarz has been making some medieval furniture lately, including a fairly common trestle table (which I wasn't aware of when making mine, which is a slightly different type). And he has this post about the textures of finished surfaces: http://blog.lostartpress.com/2015/03/21/there-is-more-than-one-texture/


So this gives a context to texture that I rather agree with. There is more alliteration here though.

New raised bed edging

Made of old split-rail fence

Outside has plastic wood deckin to defend against the string timers if the landscapers


The sloped ends of the rails are removed with two cuts offset from eac other then a blow if the commander. This then meets the end of the previous rail, and the cutoff then can be kept as a glut or used by driving into the earth as a support

Seeding

so, i finally got to sowing some seeds.  two trays so far.  the number is how many compartments in the tray.  this was this week, though i don't remember exactly.  wednesday perhaps?
first tray:
10  charentais melon
5  skirrits
15  round tomato
10  lupine
4  sweet pea
6  petit gris melon

second tray:
6  'flower2008'
6  'b flower'
12 lucy flower (larkspur)
6 foxglove
6 'a flower'
6 unknown, tiny round, like radish but smaller
6 black currant
12 pole bean
12 chard

Third tray(today)
10. Dyers turnsole
20. Sugar snap peas
10. Nivison acorn squash

Snow yesterday

Snow yesterday
Didn't stick
Though northerly cars are covered
More I cannot say

A box for two goblets

Top is poplar, sides and base are pine, stained with a homemade walnut-husk stain.

The wood is Planed and left with that surface, which ha a great feel to it, with slight undulations. The sides are rebated for one another, the base and lid are rebated to accept the sides. They are glued with round-headed nails, as the smallest cut nails I had would have split the box to pieces. Though not quite period I like the way they look.

The warm and the white

Grilling in the snow! 55 degrees f!

First egg today

March 8th and we got our first egg of the season!

Trestle table legs

Done! I might want to remake the top pieces, I don't like the angle of the holes.

Trestle table legs II

Old fence rails shaved down to be legs for the trestle table.

Start
Six passes
Twenty six passes gives a reasonably flat surface, so I flip it over to work on the opposing side. The peak has been lopped off with a hatchet.

Many passes with the plane gets that surface reasonable. Now I'm debating if I want to try to get two legs out of this..

It's three inches wide which would make it One and a half, minus the kerf. The holes in the too pieces are one and a quarter, so that doesn't leave much margin for cleaning up the sawn face. And it wouldn't leave much for the legs to be rectangular...