The peas are coming in.
About every three days, I can go out and pick a basketful of nicely filled pods from the shell peas, and end up, after a nice relaxing session of shelling them, with about a half pound of peas to freeze. We got more than one meal's worth this year already, which was my goal - and maybe my only goal, since shortly after planting them I convinced my family to start eating Paleo, which really is pretty anti-legume. So the peas will be for special occasions - and worth every bite. I don't care what Bird's-Eye does to them, they just can't produce frozen peas remotely as good as the ones I get out of the garden.
Anyway, I have a mild bone to pick with my daughter on the subject of peas. She likes them too - but prefers snap peas that she can eat directly off the vine. A few years back, that's nearly all I planted, and she ate her way through the harvest. Which was fine - and the two squares of snap peas I planted this year are all for her.
What I didn't realize at the time, though, was that she shared the peas with the dogs. And that they are absolutely addicted to pea pods. I know it now. I sat down with my basket of peas to shell the other night and got started, only to find my lap - already full of containers for peas in various states - now had two canine heads resting on it. Giving me puppy-eyes in the worst way. And I could not make them go anywhere else until I was done and had dumped the empty pods in the compost bucket. Oh, they had a few pods. Not nearly as many as they thought they needed, but I couldn't not share.
I think the strawberry netting is working. I'll know for sure tonight when I go out to see if the two nearly ripe berries I saw yesterday afternoon are still available. But because I've netted the strawberries, something is eating the raspberries as they ripen (actually, they're either really good at timing things or don't care as much as I do about sweetness - they get them within hours after I think that they're "almost ripe"). Toads. Well, not literally; it's probably squirrels or birds, or the flock of deer (I've refer to them as "Hell's Grannies") that have been spotted wandering the neighborhood this spring, casing the various garden plots. In any event, the 3 raspberries produced to date have been reduced to some red debris clinging to the canes.
The butter lettuce has bolted, and the loose leaf lettuce is threatening. We might get another day out of it at most. But we do not despair, because the zucchini is flowering (madly, I might add - I don't think we have any vacations planned, but a few more weeks, and I might become afraid to sleep at night). The cukes have taken off over the past few days, and even the canteloupe is showing some promise.
I can afford to ignore all of them for a few days more, fortunately. Because I have more peas to shell (locked in a windowless room without the dogs, if need be).
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