Happy Saturday!
Taking a break here from the telling of my China adventure…
Today will mark one week since I arrived home from a 3-week trip to China. After one day of total rest, I was back to work on Monday. I was surprised by how quickly I was able to return to my normal tasks, a huge thanks to my co-workers for covering my workload while I was gone. There were definitely catching up to do but everyone had been so forth-coming in sharing all that’s been going on that I felt like I was there, re-living the weeks through their eyes.
The day after I returned, I began to feel under the weather. I felt like a cold was manifesting but it was trouble. It’s like feeling a sneeze is coming but it seems to be taking its time to come. I still feel under the weather but, perhaps, I’m mistaken my exhaustion for illness. I really saw myself for the first time in the mirror last night and noticed the huge bags under my eyes. This is what I get for barely getting any sleep for almost an entire month. Hopefully, I can get some rest this weekend without my mom barging into my room to wake me as she’s been doing the past week at 7 AM.
The garden was somewhat of a mess when I returned. I was a little afraid to look at it at first and have been cleaning up a little bit each day. There is still a small section which I have been putting off on cleaning, at least until I know what to do.
The first thing I did was with removing leaves from my radish bed in the back garden, to return air and light to the winter carrots. Radishes, especially the large kind, require consistent removing of the leaves that touches the soil. I think, this way, it encourages root growth and large roots are what I’m going for. I grew daikon radishes in the same bed last year with great success. I think the compost bins in the middle of the bed may also had contributed to the success.
The next thing I did was pruned back the Roma tomatoes in the front garden. I gave it a hard prune before I left for China and now, it’s grown back and more. It makes me feel like the plants are mad at me for pruning them so severely that they had decided to grow and grow until they suffocate everyone around them. I was glad to one of the brussel sprouts escaped from the tomato plant’s domination.
Harvest season is definitely happening right now. Even with the shorter days, the cucumber and tomato plants are still producing though I am thinking of cutting down a few of the plants this weekend. I harvested some of the largest broccoli heads I’ve ever seen in the garden a few days ago. The thing is these are not heading broccolis. They are sprouting broccolis, as in broccolinis. I harvested the main head in spring and even then, the head wasn’t this big. The broccoli was tender and tasted a little nutty, by the way.
Oh, and look at these sweet potatoes I dug up two nights ago!
I installed terracotta spikes in between the sweet potato plants and the roots of the plants broke it into pieces. I wasn’t going to dig up the sweet potatoes but I had to remove all the terracotta shards before I cut myself. What a surprise!
Anyway, thanks to Natalie for hosting WeekendCoffeeShare and I hope you have a wonderful week ahead.
