Starting off June with quite the show of nature. The bees investigating the pomegranate blooms and lavender, a new mama sparrow carrying her dinner to four new checks, new swallows, and the butterflies dancing over the wild flowers in and around the garden.
The garden has transformed and we are actively picking potatoes, chamomile, onions, garlic, spring greens, mint, strawberries, spinach, plums, peaches, zucchini, and mulberries. We have loads of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, and eggplants filling up the rows. And the melons, beans, popcorn, watermelons, mountain tea, and carrots are coming along nicely. If you ask Art, the cherries and peppers are the biggest disappointment so far this season. But we have planted jalapenos and they are doing well.
It's been a rocky road in the chicken department. A few days after my last blog post we lost 11 chicks and 2 hens in less than a week. We did go on the offense and Art engineered two live traps to capture the predators. And so far three predators have been caught. We have a new mama hen that are hatching now. It's her first time. I counted four baby chicks this afternoon. Fingers crossed our live traps prevent any additional loss.
We've found three turtles so far this month. We had six roaming around last year and hadn't seen them until now. And they love our mulberries. We hope they stick around again this year.
The pomegranate orchard has transformed. We have trees with hundreds of flower buds and some with just a few but overall they've recovered from a late frost that damages a few of the trees. We look forward to see the continued growth and a you pick season!
800 Pomegranate trees and counting.
In other news, we've been busy working on our audiobook catalog. And added Who Is Maggie and Twisting Hercules. Art and I had to the honor of narrating the books and are planning our next project. You can request the titles at your local library or purchase at your favorite audiobook vendor. We do have the MP3 or iTunes files available at our publishing website. KimMalaj.com
Happy Summer Reading/Listening!