Roofing, vegetables, and gut bacteria

It’s officially summer in my book, even though the calendar hasn’t declared it yet. This is how I know:

 

Those are cauliflower heads on the right. I know they don’t look like the ones I buy at Aldi, but I am proud of them nonetheless. I’m not sure why, but I’ve always been determined to try growing cauliflower. It’s not easy to grow, I’m learning, they are super finicky. But this year I got them out early and we have had a decent amount of rain and cooler weather, so they did produce heads. Although they aren’t perfect, they are a start and I will try them and hopefully improve my technique next year. I have one more in the garden and it looks delightfully happy right now.

This is another reason I know summer is here…. fresh herbs on salad. Yum.

Reason number 3:

 

We rode the bike up to my parent’s house for my friend Sandra’s wedding last weekend. It was great fun, and 4 hours is the perfect long-distance ride in my opinion. The tailbone gets a little sore but it’s manageable. The weather was perfect and Sandra had a lovely wedding. It was strange but quite fun to have lots of Canadian friends in my parents’ backyard (the wedding was held there – it’s the property of Bald Eagle Camp where the groom worked).

The big project in these parts right now is putting the new roof on our new house. It’s forest green standing seam metal roofing. It’s beautiful. But roofing is not easy. Thankfully, we are blessed with wonderful friends, neighbors, and family who congregated over several days to help us. Here’s the first day: The shingles are coming off.

Everyone helped in a variety of ways….

On Wed. we shoveled all the old shingles into a trailer and our new neighbor took them to the dump for us:

Two weeks later, the first strip of metal goes up:

The project is still ongoing, but the roof looks wonderful so far….

Meanwhile in the backyard….

 

For those of you who saw my inquiry on facebook about a brush chipper, this is why. And this is an old photo. Since then we’ve done some chainsaw work back there and the whole yard is full of brush piles. But that’s a good thing.

Also Steve and Robin have been working on the upstairs patio and have replaced all the rotted wood (the kitchen roof/patio floor) with new wood. It looks great. I’ll try to post an after pic soon.

Random wild rose bush among all the grown up honeysuckle and shrubs.

And the garden is so gorgeous right now I can’t help posting more pictures of it.

The tomatoes on the left actually grew there of their own accord. We grew several kinds of heirlooms last year and some of the tomatoes got blight and rotted in the garden. This year there were little tomato plants everywhere. It’ll be fun to see what varieties end up bearing fruit.

A lot of my peas got eaten by little Peter Rabbits. Who deserve to be shot. I have no compassion for garden foragers. But look at the cabbages! I’ve never grown cabbages that have been this happy.

I see some good homemade sauerkraut in  our future. So good for the gut microbiome. That’s my new health word lately. Google it. It’s interesting. 🙂 A local school social worker in Morgan County has a sardines club where students, teachers, and school staff get together to eat sardines. I think they should add sauerkraut to the club menu as well. I think it’s a great way to encourage awareness of how food can effect our physical health and, as a result, our mental health.

And this is just a photo of my latest knitting project. Another shawl in the works. No, it’s not WV colors; I’m not that big of a football fan. The light is a little off. It’s actually purple.