Sunday, as I was walking toward the house from the garden, I decided to take a long cut through the orchard and under the large chestnut tree. On the ground, I spied a chestnut — spiky and green, stem and dried flowers still attached. When I picked it up, thinking it would be fun to share with students, it was heavier than I expected. Inside I went, and with much finger-pricking (the spikes were starting to harden, and needle-sharp!), and expressions of ouchiness, I managed to pry the segments of the husk apart. Two of the three nuts inside were shriveled and empty, as all of them have been since the tree went in. But the third! OH! We have our first, honest-to-goodness, real home-grown chestnut!
Tom suggests that perhaps we have had some in previous years, but the birds or squirrels got them. Sounds plausible to me, we have only harvested about a dozen hazelnuts in the thirteen years of residence, though we find hundreds of shells scattered about the lawns each autumn.
I worked Monday through Wednesday. I was very pleased to find that I very much enjoy third graders! It was my first time teaching that grade level, and it was great fun. Challenging, because I wasn’t ready for their level of development, but I remembered pretty quickly some of the strategies that worked when our children were young, and some of the strategies that work with fourth graders, and it went well.
Sunday Tom and Matthew built, and yesterday Tom and Grant placed and filled (with compost and gypsum – to help break down the silty soil that is the native upper layer in the garden), a second cold frame! We put the glass on it right away, and in a few days I hope to have it warm enough to transplant some lettuce plants from the other frame and plant a few bok choi as well. We have a few more windows waiting for use…
I have harvested most of the remaining cucumbers. There are many more that are still starting out, but as the rains arrive tonight or tomorrow I suspect the leaves will give up and we won’t get any more cukes. I harvested the first Cuore di Bue tomato! The others are still trying to get bigger, and none of the others is even thinking of turning green, despite the fashionable plastic cloches I cobbled together for them. And I picked almost all of the purple beans that were on the bushes. Note to self: pick dark purple beans from dark green plants before dusk. Too hard to tell bean from stem! Any remaining beans can finish developing for seed for next year.
Today I am making the most of my “day off” and doing some laundry, some visiting with Mother, some volunteering, some “hanging out” with Lucky and the birds working in the yard and my office. Which is sadly getting more cluttered over time instead of less. Tomorrow, my car goes in to find out where the oil is really leaking from (it gets into the pan and drips out… from where?). And more volunteering in a friend’s classroom. And tomorrow, it will rain.
This afternoon, however, it is sunny and clear again. Unlike this morning when the clouds lowered in good Shakespearean fashion!
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