The Garden in the second week of July

Another week of clear skies, sun, and warmth. The garden continues to do well; no more grain has lodged, and to my novice eye, the flax looks like it's within a week or two of flowering. The 'ears' on the Chinook wheat are starting to loose their bright green colour and mellow into gold, though the stalks on all the grains are still green. I look forward to seeing what the colours of the stalks will be when they are ripe -- our friends at the Cascadia Society in North Vancouver planted some Red Fife wheat early enough in the spring that it is well ripened already, and the stalks do indeed have a red cast.

Brian keeps quietly telling me about the 'Harvest Home' ritual, and gradually it's sinking in...
this is the 'corn dolly' he made for an event over a decade ago, still with him.

Georgia stands in the path between the Utrecht Blue wheat and the flax,
showing how tall everything has grown.
I couldn't imagine this, when we started with bare earth in the spring!

A beautifully-composed picture of the sun on the flax, wheat and marigolds
by Paul.

Lynn helps me clip back the marigolds --
it now takes me about 40 minutes to clip about 60% of the heads
from the 250 plants we planted in the spring.

The marigold heads look lovely on one of the Catalonian tension trays
that I made after the workshop at the Urban Weaver Studio with
Josep and Magda Mercader
--- and tossing them onto a tray is faster than trying to place them in a bag.

Paul took this photo of Lynn and I holding trays of the marigold blossoms.

Oliver and I were delighted with the rich plum colour of the fleece
from the solar dye jar we made up last week.

Oliver poses proudly with Brian and Paul, who did a little jamming.
Oliver managed to sweet-talk Brian into letting him have a turn with Brian's accordion --
a budding musician with promise!