First Full Day of Summer in the Garden

Today is the first full day of summer and from now on until the Winter Solstice the days get shorter. I am celebrating the solstice with a bum left knee which is very tender and feverish. I'm resting it and taking aspirin. We did forage and weed a bit in the garden in the cool of the morning. Green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, green peppers, jalapenos. We even managed 3 cherry tomatoes which were consumed on the spot. The sweet basil (Italian) was getting leggy so we cut it back pretty severely so that means I need to make a big batch of pesto today and freeze it in ice trays for later use. Not a perfect method of preserving the taste of summer but OK.

On my walk down through the natural area to the garden I have been noticing a rather rotten smell for a few weeks. I thought something must have died but I couldn't locate it. The other day I noticed an odd looking fungus growing where I had left some wood chips last year. It is very odd looking and reminds me of crab claws. On a whim I Googled "crab claw fungus" and lo and behold there is such a thing but its more common name is "stinkhorn". That's the source of the rotten smell.

The photo comes from Mary Holland the author of “Naturally Curious: A Photographic Field Guide and Month-by-Month Journey Through the Fields, Woods, and Marshes of New England” and “Milkweed Visitors.”