19/52: Baby Potatoes, Baby Peaches, Baby Princesses

And just like that, it's June! Well, these pictures are actually from May... Garden season is really getting busy, and every Lucy-free minute generally gets devoted to outdoor work so there's just not much time for blogging. So much weeding and harvesting and planting! 

John Paul's watch broke and he decided he wanted to save up for a fitness tracker watch (affiliate link!), but he didn't have quite enough money and REALLY didn't want to wait. I gave him a list of extra chores I'd be willing to pay for, and eventually he agreed to weed the garden (my current rate is $1/half bushel of weeds, though the rate is going down to $.50/half bushel now that the weeds are pretty large). He got the watch and has been having a blast finding out the distance from the house to various landmarks around our property (I guessed that it was about a half-mile to the back of the property and I was right!!), calculating how many steps the same distance takes whether walking or running, and more.

Well, then Cecilia needed to save up for her own, which took considerably longer since she gets less allowance. But she was quite motivated! Lots of weeding, which often got sidetracked because she started pulling up volunteer potatoes and wanted to keep the little baby ones and cook them. Then ALL the kids had to help harvest the tiny potatoes, because harvesting potatoes is weirdly satisfying and incredibly kid-friendly. They enjoyed their miniscule harvest and will be REALLY excited when the intentionally planted potatoes are ready for harvest!

We gave the peach trees a hard prune back in... February? March? Before they started flowering, at least. And it was a huge success! So many baby peaches on the trees! Hopefully some of these actually make it to harvest without bugs and our resident bear demolishing them... I'm hoping that since we got no peaches last year, the bear no longer remembers that we have peach trees? Or that maybe the bear has died? We haven't seen any sign of it since we found footprints last spring.

We haven't sprayed the peach trees with anything (though we will figure out some organic pest control methods if we don't get a good harvest this year) and I found a bunch of wheelbug/assassin bug eggs hatching on one of them! These are creepy-looking insects, but very beneficial - they love to eat bad bugs!

We've been enjoying a pretty extensive bloom time from the columbines, which are still going strong a few weeks after this photo was taken! I'm really pleased with how the anemones are doing, too, though with consistent hot temperatures coming I'm not sure how much longer they'll last. Lucy adores them and always has to have a "baby anemone" or "mama anemone" to carry around with her, so the ones with thin stems or short stems are reserved for her and it's awfully sweet!