Garlic and sunny wheat

Garlic harvest: this was easy enough and now we have a big mountain of garlic. The soil is hard as rock, so I loosened it up with the pitch fork and yanked out the developed bulbs. I have to trim them up tomorrow and decide what to do with them....pickle some in soy sauce, maybe mash and freeze some for easy use, hang some so we have fresh garlic and who knows what else.

It was a nice day to be outdoors but we worked mostly in the morning and the evening when the sun wasn't so strong. I sprayed the tomato blossoms with some unknown substance to promote the tomato growth - I do so many things without understanding them. sigh.

I walked up and down the rows of wheat, pulling out tall grassy weeds that will choke the combine and add unwanted seeds to the grain bin. Rustling between the drying stalks of wheat under a strong early summer sun is somewhat satisfying and peaceful. The harvest does not look great - the grains are small and uneven because of the cool spring and heavy rains. In spite of the required spraying, there is significant insect damage and some sort of rust on some of the plants, because we did not do the late crop spraying. There are still some green stems among the wheat rows but the harvest will be within the next couple of weeks. Something about anticipating a harvest is rather exciting - an end to a cycle, a conclusion of a long event, a celebration of a project.