flower power

considering that flowers aren't really the focus of my gardening efforts (i'm all about the food, ya'll), i do have a few scattered about the yard(s), and can't help photographing them! i love all the bees and butterflies they attract, and appreciate the splashes of color from spring to late fall. feast your eyes upon all of this summer color...


cosmo between the edamame and the black-eyed susans


my zinnia circle (in our old yard)


a small poppy, in my mixed flower bed (old place)


a surprise, unknown flower in a butterfly mix


two varieties of cosmos


i hesitate to show these, because the color is nothing close to the real thing.


these morning glories are more of a deep, velvety purple.


cosmo admires his namesake


cosmo eats a cosmo


love-in-a-mist


mixed flower bed


cosmo checks out a bumble bee on the purple coneflower


dewy lotus (from the farmer's market)


lotus glows


a variety of cosmos growing along the creek down the street


cosmo harvesting cosmo seeds


dwarf sunflower (old place)


full sized sunflower!


nature's geometry


this is a Datura wrightii or Sacred Datura (new place)

the huge flowers open up at sundown


they bloom all night, and into the next morning


our landlord planted these zinnia's before he moved


they have been a real draw for butterflies

while we were away...

the garden exploded! we are now maintaining gardens at two locations: our old place, and our new place. luckily, they are across the street from one another. we came home to beans galore, more husk cherries than cosmo can eat in a setting (more on those in another post), and cherry tomatoes out the wazzoo. the tomatoes that cosmo started, in his little dixie cup at pre-school in the spring, the ones i planted in our new back yard in april? a jungle i tell ya! man! woman! child! all are up against THE WALL OF TOMATOES!



photos don't do it justice. we have to send cosmo into the tangle to harvest!



i pulled up most of the potatoes. the yield wasn't quite what i expected, but it was a lot of fun digging for them. like a treasure hunt.


the carrots blew me away. lots of them, and bigger than last year. we even harvested our very first cabbage!



carl made a delicious braised cabbage with poppy seed, and we roasted some of the carrots and potatoes. yummy.




last night i made this velvety carrot ginger soup, which couldn't be easier to make:

carrot ginger soup

2T butter
1 T finely mince ginger
4 medium carrots
3 cups stock or broth
1 cup milk or cream

sauté ginger in butter, add sliced carrots, stir-fry for a few minutes, add broth or stock and cook 'til the carrots are very tender. purée in a blender or food processor, then add some milk or cream, warm and serve. (adapted from superfoods, by delores riccio).

the fall garden in the new place is growing like gang-busters. the soil may not look like much (kinda crusty, not a lot of organic material, or worms), but the landlord says it's "river-bottom." not sure what that's supposed to mean, all i know, is the plants like it here. could be all that full sun too.



the lettuce, arugula and cilantro are all mature, and ready to eat. the tomatilla plants are loaded, and the bush beans already have blossoms. the peas got munched by rabbits, but i have protected them now, and hope they can recover. even the leeks are beginning to fatten up.



we also harvested our first peppers: sweet red peppers (carmen) and one hot paper lantern. we haven't tasted them yet, but aren't they gorgeous?

not exactly three sisters...

my current favorite garden view:



featuring, edamame (front), tomatoes (middle) and pole beans, dutifully climbing their trellis (not to mention offering yummy green beans).

fall garden '09

this year, thanks to teresa (or her husband?) i am getting the fall garden started early. we are moving to a different house on august first, and were told that we can start gardening there any time. since it is just across the street from our place, i have taken advantage of that offer.

cosmo came home from pre-school (in the spring) with a bunch of tiny tomato starts in a dixie cup. i already had all my tomatoes in, so we planted his in the new yard. i didn't expect much from them, but they have really taken off (they are currently twice the size shown in this photo)!




i also transplanted some of the (very slow growing) leeks over there, and recently, four tomatillo plants from jack. the soil in the new garden seems good, but it appears to be lacking in organic matter, so i have been throwing compost in with everything i plant, and perhaps i'll do a cover crop in the late fall or early spring.

yesterday, with some rare time to myself, i cut a path in the new garden space, and planted beets, lettuce, bush beans, basil, cilantro and peas. hopefully i can find some broccoli plants at the farmer's market, and maybe a dill or two. i will probably plant arugula and carrots within the next few days.

last year's fall garden was a big disappointment, but i think i just started it too late. can't wait to see what happens this year.



in other news, the garlic is out of the ground! some of the bulbs were smaller than i'd hoped, but overall, they did well. most were too small for seed garlic, so i'm getting more to plant in october (double what i planted last fall). right now, the garlic is hanging to dry in our shed (where we store things like empty boxes).



we also tasted the first of our ripe cherry tomatoes this week! they are yummy, and those plants are loaded!

daisy envy

last spring, EARLY spring, i started some daisy seeds indoors. i adore daisies, and wanted tons of them in our garden. the seeds did great, and i had enough plants to give away, and so, lara next door got one. it occurred to me, when i saw daisies blooming in other people's garden last summer, while my plants were still tiny, with no buds, that they might take a year to get established, and bloom the following year.

this spring, i noticed one daisy plant come up from last year. one came up in lara's garden too. here is hers:



here is mine:



not that i'm bitter. no. not at all.

gardens grow

as soon as i finish writing this, i'll need to up-date again immediately, with fresh photos. these are so dated! we have had so much rain and warm weather, that the plants are growing inches every day, right before our eyes!

first off, let me say that this is the year of the lettuce! our lettuce, all 4 varieties, did remarkably well this spring, and we still have some that has not quite bolted.



we had heads, actual heads of buttercruch, and a variety of romaine (i guess, i don't know the name of this seed that i saved from a neighbor last year, but i love it), plus some thin leafed heirloom, and black seeded simpson. at first i thought it was the pricey fox farm all natural plant food i gave them, but i heard from other local gardeners that their lettuce did exceptionally well too. we have been enjoying delicious salads every night for over a month.

spinach, not so much. it just bolts so damn fast! i did manage to harvest two huge bowls, which, of course, saute down to nothing, but delicious, nonetheless. arugula has been wonderful, and i just keep planting it, and harvesting a round or two of leaves before they bolt.

the yummy peas have come and gone. i have ours planted in a spot that is okay for spring stuff, and they had a good start, but it gets shady when the trees fill in, and i credit our somewhat skimpy pea harvest to lack of proper sun. still though, cosmo snacked to his heart's content (and so did his parents).

the husk cherries are going nuts, and have tons of little lantern fruits, all tucked away under the broad leaves. the flea beetles like them, but don't seem to be doing too much damage.


we have peppers, from those little babies i started from seed! i am so proud. the peppers are way bigger now, than shown here, and so are the tomatoes--all of them completely loaded with green fruit.

i've got potatoes, hilled with dirt and straw, hangin' in there, despite the persistent attack of the flea beetle, and the pole beans have reached the top of their trellis this week, studded with lovely purple bean blossoms. the edamame is not only in the ground (june 6), but now has a second set of true leaves!



we have eaten broccoli from our garden, and have two cabbbages trying to form heads, while i hand pick those pesky cabbage worms off their leaves.



i tried covering them with floating row cover, before the moths could get to them to lay their eggs, but it didn't work. now i fear that if i cover them, i will trap the caterpillers under there, and won't notice the damage until it is too late. instead, i just inspect them VERY carefully, once a day.

but i am realizing that i'm just the kind of gardener that likes to fuss over my plants. i don't mind weeding, it allows me to spend time in each bed. and since i want to look at them all the time anyway, why not look for pests that might need to be removed? i love to walk through the garden just after a rain. everything is so green and lush. my farmer friend, shaun, says that's because there is nitrogen in rain water. maybe so. but this growing stuff?...it's pure magic to me. i am utterly astonished. every day.

one last little surprise: my butterfly plant (weed?) came back! i guess i didn't realize it was a perennial. so lovely.

what kind of season are you having?

self seeders

so, we had this little pot on the back porch. it once had parsley growing in it. i had it indoors over the winter, until the plant died, for one reason or another. once the weather warmed, i noticed a lot of life in that pot. tons of little seedlings were taking over. they were not parsley. i didn't recognize them at all. they didn't look like any of the common weeds around here nor any think i'd ever planted. mystery.

a few weeks ago, i saw someone at the farmer's market selling sweet annie seedlings. they looked just like those mysterious plants on my porch. then, i put it all together: i had hung the dried sweet annie, that shawn and denise gave us last year, out on our porch light.

it had been inside all winter, but had lost its fragrance, and was beginning to annoy me. i hung it outside in the early spring. the seeds had blown down, into that pot, and sprouted. voila! sweet annie in a pot.