Last week started off with a bang! I told Joel that I wanted to BBQ for the 4th of July since we were having a few friends over, but unfortunately we didn’t have a BBQ. Crazy, I know. So Joel, being crafty as he is, built us one on a whim! Pretty cool, I think.

It was pretty low to the ground, but got the job done. He has since been working on a more normal sized one, which is pretty exciting! I love grilled veggies and meats. I’ll show you once it’s all finished, I may even turn it into a post.

All the warm weather we’ve been having has brought blackberries! They’re not ripe yet, but when they are we’ll be in the blackberry money! There will be literally thousands to pick, and I can’t wait! One of my best memories of summertime as a child is picking bowls full of blackberries and bringing them back to Mom who would turn them into blackberry cobbler. I will definitely be doing that once these are ripe!

On one of our days off last week we had the opportunity to go hiking around the the Illinois River here in Southern Oregon, and it was amazingly beautiful.

With it’s steep cliffs and rock formations it reminded us of Yosemite in a way. So nice to have this fairly close to home! We hiked down to a super awesome swimming hole where we spent the afternoon. Definitely not a bad way to spend a day off!

Back at home the garden is sure growing! The pole beans have grabbed onto their respective poles and are climbing like crazy. So fun to watch day by day!

There is also an abundance of teeny tiny baby squash forming, and their tendrils are attaching to the deer cage around the permaculture swale bed. Not sure we’ll be able to open it up anymore, but that’s ok. This will be a spaghetti squash someday!

Speaking of the swale bed, I got a comment or two on that post wondering how to deal with rainwater runoff during storms. Joel dug a runoff ditch that goes downhill from the bed. We’ve actually had several thunderstorms this past week and it seems to work pretty well!

The sunflowers in the swale bed are starting to get tall, growing out of the cage as well. I can’t wait until they’re huge! I love sunflowers.

The amaranth is also growing really well. It’s such a gorgeous purple color! It’s a really cool plant because you can eat it’s leaves raw when they’re young as salad greens, then cooked when they’re a bit bigger like chard, then they also produce a grain similar to quinoa that is highly nutritious. I’ll probably do a whole post on amaranth one of these days as it’s a great permaculture garden plant. It can also be quite beautiful!

That’s about it for this week! I hope you all are having a wonderful summer, that your gardens are growing, and that you’re in an abundance of fresh fruits and veggies! To me, that’s what summer is all about. Now go find yourselves some amaranth and swimming holes!