A Quiet Week

Paige left her work shoes behind.

It was kind of quiet around June’s Corner Garden last week. Paige spent Tuesday, her last day in Portland, with her grandparents and cousins and flew back to Colorado early Wednesday morning. The five weeks she was here went by fast. Steven and I really enjoyed our time with her, getting to know her better, since she has always lived a state or two away from us. And I was certainly happy to have her help around the garden. She really did help a lot. We invited her back for next summer, but we’ll have to wait to see what happens. A year is a long time when you are seventeen.

Before: Yes, there are cranberries under those weeds.

The rest of the week was filled with the usual: harvesting, planting and weeding. I got the next batch of lettuce into the ground; much later than I hoped, but they are pretty far along. I weeded out the beans and celery. Not much longer for the beans! Then I got to the cranberries: the experiment I won’t give up on.

After: I love how the cranberries look now.

I planted cranberries several years ago and have not had a harvest yet. Though you always hear cranberries grow in a bog, they don’t have to. They do need a lot of water and flooding with water makes harvesting easier, but you don’t have to flood them. My cranberry bed does get a lot of weeds. This is the second time I have weeded this season and I hope it will hold out until harvest. This year I want homegrown cranberries for Thanksgiving.

There even are a few cranberries on the plants.