Yesterday I wandered around the garden with a basket in one hand and a cup of tea in the other, just checking on how everything is doing.
I was happy to discover that my mint hasn’t started blooming yet. That means it’s still the perfect time to harvest it for tea. I always try to pick it before the flowers appear because the leaves have the best flavour then. A fresh cup of homegrown mint tea is one of those little summer pleasures that never gets old.
The apple trees are absolutely covered with fruit this year. So many apples! I think we’ll have to remove some of them to make the branches a little lighter and give the remaining apples more space to grow. These are our late summer, early autumn apples, so they’re meant to be eaten fresh rather than stored through the winter. Somehow they always disappear quickly anyway.
I’m especially proud of my cabbages this year.
For some reason, cabbages and I haven’t had much luck together. They usually struggle to grow, and just when they finally start looking promising, the butterflies discover them and their hungry little caterpillars move in. This year, though, they’re actually big! It feels like a real gardening victory, even if it’s a small one.
Then there was the greenhouse…
What a jungle! But I got a lot of compost material out of it 🙂
The tomatoes have completely taken over. I spent some time removing a few leaves from each plant so the tomatoes can get more sunshine and hopefully ripen a little faster. Every year I tell myself I’ll keep the greenhouse tidy, and every year it ends up looking like a tiny tropical forest.
After all that gardening, there was only one sensible thing left to do.
I sat down in the garden with a slice of cake.
Because balance is important, isn’t it?
Ilze
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Ohh, the cake looks so good! And, I don’t know what it is either. 😋🤭 I’m glad that you are having a green explosion this summer, Ilze, I suppose the deer help themselves to the apples too. ❤️
I don’t know anything about agriculture Ilze. But the cake looks delicious!
Your cake break made me smile, Ilze. Your gardens and greenhouses are bursting with life! I don’t drink tea, but I once fell in love with a pineapple mint plant and brought it home. Oh goodness. It didn’t come to sit politely in its little corner of the garden — it came to take over lol.
You put a lot of time, effort, and expense into your garden, and I’m happy it is repaying you, Ilze. What kind of cake is that?
Ha! I don’t often eat cake but I would love a slice of yours 🙂 ! Your garden has grown beautifully – what healthy, tasty lunches and dinners on the plate in the months to come > your work has truly paid off!