Asparagus, garlic placement, and dreaming.

The Lady of the House and the Critter both have a cold, and we're holding up but we're all a bit fatigued the past couple days. Thanks to that we don't have as much going on as we'd like during this week. Fortunately the Critter is fine with it, it's the rest of us that are suffering. Above is a photo of how well the asparagus is doing. It's tough to get a good photo of the asparagus because of just how much it blends in with everything else around it, even when we have brought things down to mostly just be ground cover under it. The entire bed of asparagus is doing great though, and I'm looking forward to seeing how well it is doing next year. Thanks again to Kathy Harrison from Barefoot Farm for the gift of the asparagus. I know that the entire house is going to be thrilled to have easily accessible asparagus next year.

One side of the front slope has been very thoroughly cleared thanks to a lot of hard work by Kaya. The last surviving tomato plants are holding on for the time being, and we're going to try to let them hold on until the last of the tomatoes pull through. Soon we're going to put the garlic seeds in the ground there, and see how that goes. My theory on that is that we'll plant relatively early with the garlic seeds, and any time we see sprouting we'll put manure and hay down to keep them warm so they don't die off when it gets hard cold. I figure what we're going to do is plant in a few rows there, and next year put bush beans between the rows of garlic. That should be good for the frankly sad soil, give us enough beans to be happy, and the garlic a good place to develop.

The other thing I've been doing is fantasizing about exactly how cool we could make the terracing project with unlimited resources and time. Ideally I wouldn't just do the back area that you see Below. I'd also do the full curve around. I'd also if I could do it with stone, and intersperse stairs every 15 to 20 feet. I'm definitely going to just get started with the back slope where the best light is, and I'm making that an objective to at least have strongly started by the time the ground is frozen solid. If I can, over the weekend of October 3rd and 4th when I'm renting a bobcat to re grade the driveway, I'm going to use that to get a lot of the hard work done on the slope. Namely if I can get the hard digging done, it'll make my life a lot easier for putting in the retaining walls. We'll see how reasonable my goal is given how long it's taken other people to get this sort of thing done. It may be more reasonable to hope to get it done by next winter. If I don't get started I'll never find out though, so now, to get started.