We’ve been getting some beautiful sunsets lately.

In other news, we had the second driest month last month since 2019, I hope this is not La Niña turning off the rain already!

I got a photo of my neighbours’ electricity board post lightning and fire. I’ve blacked out the NMI, those blobs aren’t part of the damage.

They have power partly back now, after almost a month with generators and many extension cords.

I’ve been doing lots of gardening this past week.

I picked 4kg of cucumbers and 1.5kg of green beans today! I’ve made 20 jars of dilly beans and about the same of various cucumber pickles and I’m starting to run out of jars.

The tomatoes, on the other hand, are coming along quite slowly, and so far I’ve only made a few small jars of salsa (as a test batch). I’m hoping the green tomatoes will all ripen soon so I get enough to bottle (as well as us eating as many as we can).

Otherwise, the popcorn is starting to cure on the plants, the sweet corn is starting to swell, the carrots are picking nicely, the zucchini continues to produce steadily and we’ve more leafy greens than anyone could possibly need, thanks to a me forgetting to thin them properly!

The pumpkins are spreading widely around but so far I’ve only seen a few maturing pumpkins.

The #goats are in a section that was previously a trial vegetable patch.

I had grown some potatoes and broad beans, but it’s too far from the house and I tended to forget it, plus it’s very rocky, so I am letting go back to grass. I sowed some cover grass here, and the goats are really enjoying that!

I grow both bush beans and climbing beans in a bed, one row of bush and one of climbers.

The bush beans fruit more or less all at once, so I get a huge pile of beans in about 10 days, then they’re done. We eat quite a lot, but I’ve also made 11 jars of dilly beans for later in the year when we want a crunchy dill-full bean to remind us of summer!

The climbing beans fruit as they grow, so they’ll keep fruiting for many weeks, until the weather turns cold.

The bush beans have finished fruiting, but they still have two important roles at our place.

First, the tops go to the #goats, who really love them. They’re still very green and full of fibre and protein.

Second the roots stay in the #soil and as they break down their little nitrogen-fixing rhizobia bacteria in their roots will die and release the nitrogen into the soil.

Veggies are coming along nicely.

I’m doing a “two sisters” thing with the corn and beans and I was starting to worry I’d planted the beans too soon and they’d stop the corns’ tassels from opening up, but it looks like it’s working out.