Wow, the days have been in the mid-to-high 70’s with fog until 11am or later. Today it may have gotten up to 101 degrees. I fertilized today and in the morning we will hopefully water twice as long as we’ve been doing lately. My 2nd-year Seascapes have 0 flowers. The green, yellow, and purple beans are delicious.

I sold some kale and pears this week (to a local juice company) – the day after I had started new kale seeds! The Red Russian kale has pretty much been destroyed by aphids (and their predators), and the dino kale is starting to go. It’s time for a new bed of greens. I’ve also got a lot of broccoli seedlings to pot up. The juicer said he’d love to take all of my kale every week. I’m not sure if it’s financially worthwhile for me to grow “for” him. I way undercharged since I figured this is sort of a wholesale thing. The way that we were put in touch with each other was througha gleaning organization that I emailed because I don’t have time to pick the pears! Tomorrow is probably the last day on which it’d make sense to pick pears (because of this heat). I wish I could’ve gotten out there to pick pears every day. Also, I’ve been wanting to buy a new dehydrator and still haven’t picked the right one. I wish we had the time and gumption to build one ourselves. (Z’s back has been out again the last few days, and with the need to prep beds, he’ll need to get on the tractor, at least to mow for new beds)

I’d really like to get some cover crops planted, but I feel that we need a new watering system. We use sprinklers that are on these little 2ish foot posts (which are all bent from our hard soil)

The neighbors built an “eff-you” fence. That’s what a friend of mine and I call it, anyhow. I figure that it’s either because they don’t want to see our butt cracks, or they don’t want us to see when their kids are playing on our side of their house, or they don’t want their kids to always be coming to the fence to look for my kid/produce from our garden, or they don’t want my kid to play with their kids. 😦 One could look at it in an unrelated way such as “or maybe someone gifted them some redwood fencing slats and then when they ran out they just continued with that hideous, kinda-seethrough bamboo or whatever that is.” It’s been 2 weeks since the mom texted me back about setting up a playdate (with an “i’ll let you know.” I know they are busy and our schedules haven’t lined up, but still… I feel sad and confused, and rejected. Believe me, we’d move if we could really afford it. It looks like our place is worth about $200,000 less than a more-ideal home with some land that would have certain better features (and there are few of those places on the market).

Today we had a nice visit (at her place) with a neighborhood flower farmer who I met through the community ed flower class I took this spring. 🙂 She had a “certified organic” sign on the property. Awesome!

Still no progress on the selling-cut-flowers thing… no time. I’ve been doing too much facebook/politics and a lot of parenting stuff and health stuff have been taking up garden time.