Zucchini und rettich

The gladiolas from last year came back bright purple again, and in a day I will plant found dried bulbs from the tool room and a few tulip bulbs to try for a summer bloom. The rest I will probably plant at the end of November for a spring crop.

The summer garden is still happy and shooting off some little green blobs that will eventually look and taste like tomatoes. The seeds for this heirloom variety came from a friend, Zach. (You can look at his flickr here). 

Thanks to some advice from the Master Gardeners, and now weekly fertilization, my zucchini are doing much better, producing fruit that grows instead of shriveling. I have been using Buddha Grow leftover from another gardening project last year. It contains Bat Guano, Worm Castings, Soy Protein Hydrolysate, Kelp Extract, Molasses, and Yucca Extract and packs a phosphate/nitrate punch! Below are the radishes that roommate Crystal planted from seed, sandwiched between a few onion and tomato sprouts (from seed). The onion stalks grow extremely quickly. 

So, other than watching things grow there has been a lot  of summer happenings, including celebrating Echo's birthday last night by dressing up at home and packing 6-to-a-mini-cooper across the Bay to the Castro Theater to watch Sharon Needles perform Silence of the Trans live on stage! You can read Echo's blog about summer camp in Hidden Villa here. Hidden Villa is an education farm and garden in Los Altos Hills, CA. During the spring it is flocked by baby animals thanks to the husbandry team, during summer it is swarming with children making nature crafts. Sunset magazine just did a typical bourgeois article on how farming vacation are trendy, and wrote about Hidden Villa. You can read the article here. 

Renzo recently made salve in the kitchen. I have a lot of glycerin soap block that I got from the East Bay Depot for Creative Reuse  and am thinking of making lavender soap with the bursting bush downstairs. Sometimes lavender makes me skin break out so I might just save the soap for gifts or to use in our house. Echo also posted a recipe for making magic potion salve in the blog linked above. 

The sun breaks through the bamboo cover on the porch all day, drying out the soil and our skin. Sam and her dance company, Blind Tiger Society, in part, bathing in the rays on a midsummers midmorning. They are performing in a piece mid-August called Sunk in Sleep which resembles Alice in Wonderland. Our lovely Sam being the madhatter, herself.