Summer at Northrop

The past month has been filled with great lunchtime concerts as part of the Summer at Northrop programming. Here is who I have seen so far:

Romantica

The Poor Nobodys

Tim Sparks and Phil Heywood

Cafe Accordion Orchestra

Sometimes my lunch buddy has been knitting...

and one time my lunch buddy was my Mom!

Lunchtime concerts are a lot of fun!

Blueberries

Bauer Berry Farm

+ 3 hours

+ This American Life, Radio Rookies and The Moth podcasts

+ sweat

+ a little money

= 7.5 lbs of fresh picked blueberries

From Garden to Plate

Last night was an exciting night for harvesting from the garden. We got our first cucumbers, zucchini and broccoli.

I pulled a few onions and cut a bunch of kale, too.

With all of these ingredients and a few more, I made a miso stir-fry over red jasmine rice, topped with toasted sesame seeds and cilantro. For the sauce, I followed this recipe. It was delicious and felt all the more special since most of the ingredients traveled less than 50 feet from garden to plate!

Mint Iced Tea

After getting a sample of mint tea from the farmers' market AND realizing that my mint was starting to flower and needed to be cut back, I was inspired to make mint iced tea.

I combined cut up spearmint leaves with orange pekoe tea bags.

Steeped for 4 minutes.

Strained it, stirred in a few spoonfuls of honey, added ice and VOILA!

It makes for a very refreshing iced tea.

July State of the Garden Report: Fruit Bearing

The berries and apples are a little slower growing than the veggies, but they too have made progress in the last month. Here is what they looked like in June.

The apples are getting bigger. We won't have a huge crop, but the fruit we have on the trees seems to be holding tight.

The raspberries have proven to me that they need to be pruned. I plan to do that in the fall, but for now the berries are sagging into a little bridge for Jack to walk under.

We have a new addition to our fruit bearing garden. Strawberries! Paul's mom got us three of these ever-bearing strawberries plants. I think we will work on making a strawberry bed in our yard for them in the fall. We have yet to identify a good spot for it, though. Our little yard is filling up quickly!