Seeking Shangri-La

Wild Strawberries

2010-05-06T23:29:00.011-04:00

I was walking through the yard the other day when something caught my eye. Something red, down there near my foot. I bent down for a closer look and found . . . . .

Little wild strawberries! Last year I found some of these in my yard, but they were bushes along the fence. These are basically growing in the field of weeds that is the, uh, "lawn."

How cool is that?

No wonder that little bunny keeps coming into our yard.

I wanted to show the fencing that keeps Peter Cottontail out of the garden.

One side has tall fencing:

You can see it there on the other side of the bean and pea patches. That goes around almost two sides of the garden. The other two sides have much lower fencing:

Disregard the lack of tan, etc., but what I was trying to demonstrate in this photo is that it's a little bit higher than knee-height. So you can just step over it. But no Brer Rabbits can get in. Or at least they haven't yet.

The beans look great in their mulch bed:

And here in this shot you can see that i actually did get some newspaper down beneath the mulch in the pea bed.

Here's a closeup of the newspaper peeking out. I just used one sheet, folded in half. Hope that's enough.

And the cucumbers are popping up too!

Sprouting Pride

2010-05-04T21:17:00.013-04:00

There is a certain feeling one gets when one sees all of the little seedlings sprout. A feeling of pride, and accomplishment. And after three years of trying this stuff, of . . . relief, honestly.

This is what I saw this weekend:

The peas are growing :) All around the jury-rigged pea trellis. You can notice very clearly that the two front rows are growing much more hardily than the two back rows. We will see if that changes.

These are the Top Marvels (I think i called them Modern Marvels before. They are Top Marvel peas.) They are looking great as of 5-2-10. They have come up in droves and are smiling at the world.

Back here on the back are the Sugar Snaps. These are the ones that never took last year. Now, granted, I was trying to grow them in May, June, July, and August - months that peas don't generally like (I now know.) However, in comparison to these Top Marvels, they aren't looking too happy, are they?

Take a look at the bean patch:

All the pretty looking sprouts raising their heads and poking out. Here's what they look like up close.

When they first come out, you can see the shape of the actual bean pod still as they unfurl.

But as they get larger and grow bigger, they grow a great big leaf, to aid in photosynthesis. Later they will flower, like last year, and develop bean pods. I read last week that I should plant a new set every two weeks to ensure a constant harvest. I'm glad to be reading these sorts of things. Because of my job I can't get all of the information I need all the time. I did not realize that I would need to be replanting lettuce and beans. I know this year. Zucchini, on the other hand, you apparently don't need to replant. It just overtakes your garden and produces enough for a neighborhood.

Speaking of zucchini:

I planted three seeds in this hole so will need to thin it out. There are two plants growing about 12 inches away that I will also need to thin out. I hope the zucchini does better than last year! With everyone complaining about how they have too much zucchini, I am going to feel like a total failure if I can't have an overabundance of zucchini. I can always bring it to church.

The cucumber seedlings look very similar to the zucchini:

Same shaped leaves.

Before I closed up shop for the day, I mulched the bean patch and the pea patch.

I protected all of the pea shoots first before putting a 2-inch layer down here (approximately.)

For the beans:

Same thing, basically. Actually I meant to put down newspaper first, but only accomplished this in the pea patch. I want to mulch the rest of the garden to keep down the weeds as well. Need more mulch!!

Weeds weeds everywhere

2010-05-02T15:45:00.014-04:00

Already this year a lot of time is being taken up weeding. But, as you can see, there is a lot of square footage in this garden.

There are many different types of weeds encountered here. I am not good at identifying them but I would love to know if anyone else can. I have noticed from year to year that the types of weeds change. Once I eradicate a certain type, another type becomes more prolific. This year, we have the following:

This grass. I wish it would grow in the actual yard. When i yank it up, i throw it over into the yard, hoping it will take root there. All i really have in the "yard" is crabgrass, patches of dirt, and weeds. But unfortunately not this particular one. Which i don't want in the garden.

There's this one, which looks like an herb, doesn't it? I wonder if this is a remnant of something the gardener before me planted, before I came onto the scene. The garden layed fallow and became a jungle for a couple of years in between the last gardener and me. But there is something fragrant and tasty-smelling when I weed, and I have always suspected this is it.

It grows up to look like this:

I mean, it sort of looks like something you would munch on, doesn't it? (I know the bunny thinks so.) It is hard to pull up, has a deep root system with thick, ropy roots along with thready shoots, that, if you don't pull up when it's young, turn into woody substances.

Then there's this one:

It looks like lily pads, sort of, and is an invasive vine. It's very easy to pull up. It has little purple flowers but the root system is not deep and it's thready.

This one is easy to pull up but pops up all over the place. Before I was familiar with it, I thought it was one of the plants I had planted, like a pea or something (last year.) Now I'm wise to it. Not sure what it actually is, though.

Then there is this:

This is a seed pod dropped all over the garden (ALL OVER IT) by some tree in the vicinity. It looks sort of like a feather, doesn't it. A beautiful piece of nature's handiwork. On the left hand side you have a lighter than air, papery substance made for the express purpose of taking flight. On the right hand side you have a seed encased in a pod. It lands in my garden, plants itself, aaaaand:

The pod begins to disintegrate. The seed germinates. And a little tree begins to grow.

And then I yank that sucker out.

But there is no way I can ever pick up all the pods laying all over the garden. Lordy.

Anyway, if you know what any of these weeds are, lemme know!

The Bunny is Back

2010-05-02T15:38:00.003-04:00

It's hard to get a photo of him because he is so sneaky. But he doesn't scare easily. Or else his absolute stillness when I photograph him is a defense tactic. Instinct, if you will.

He's down there in the right corner, hiding from you. I put up the rest of the fencing this weekend in order to protect my newly sprouted plants from being, basically, his salad bowl.

Cool weather running

2010-04-27T21:22:00.006-04:00

It's been in the 50s and 60s here. for the most part. I know the peas are happy about that. There's another plant that flourishes in cooler/shady weather, and that is lettuce.

So I planted some, on April 25, 2010.

I planted three rows of it. The far right hand row has, uh, sorrel and arugula, i beeve (sorrel closest to the rear and arugula getting closer.) The middle row has regular leaf lettuce, and then spinach as you get closer. The far left row has all mesclun greens.

Here is what spinach seeds look like up close. They look like cilantro seeds. It's weird b/c in all the times I have eaten spinach, I have never come across these seeds.

Like with the peas, I threw caution to the wind and did not obey the spacing reccomendations. I just tossed them into the row all snuggled up next to one another getting cozy and crowded.

This is what mesclun green seeds look like:

Like a bunch of mish mash, mostly. Same thing on the spacing. It's nice to plant seeds. It makes you feel like Johnny Appleseed.

I had to put the fencing back up around the garden because of the little bunny. He's been back already. I will put up a photo to show you how we combat varmints around here. Maybelline of Bakersfield puts up shiny ribbons called "scare tape" to scare away birds. I think I will do that once I plant the tomatoes.

Grow lettuce, grow!

I'm a little late, but I'm a little Lazy

2010-04-19T19:48:00.012-04:00

I'm Ba-aack! And I'm not the only one. The little bunnies are back too, looking much bigger and huskier than last year. I don't know where they were hibernating for the winter but they must have chomped down on some serious root veggies beforehand. I'll try to catch them in action.

Yes I lost heart and kind of fizzled out at the end of last season. This has been mentioned to me. But I do have other time-consuming hobbies. Such as:

I've also taken up the country fiddle. Harder than it sounds, actually.

Ok well back to gardening. Don't want to bore anyone with overexplaining why I am not a fantastic fall - spring gardener. Such as Maybelline. I was shocked/jealous/impressed that when I went out back to finally clear my land for planting again, (admittedly a bit late), I checked out how things were going in Bakersfield and learned that her pea vines are already done and getting cleared out. This shed quite a bit of light on my problems last year with the peas. I mean, I know I don't have a lot of online fans, mostly this is just a journal that keeps records of planting times from year to year for myself. However, I'm embarassed that through all of my lamenting about the peas not growing last year, I never figured out that darn peas simply don't grow in the heat of the summer. They are really a cool weather crop.

I give a pass to my Florida relatives. Anything will grow anytime in that state. Lucky you guys.

Well, we will see this time around if I got them in early enough. I planted them this weekend, April 18, 2010.

First I prepped the garden. The dirt was in good shape but there were serious and invasive weeds that had taken root. I can't identify them like Skippy's Garden does so easily by sight. To me they are all weeds and annoying. I began by trying to rake them up with the hard rake after a good rain but that did not quite work. So I turned to a tool we found in the shed. I think it is a manual tiller. Here it is.

Now when I said "I" turned to this tool, I turned to this tool for approximately 3.5 minutes. Mister Siren took pity on me and put his biceps to work, tilling up the weeds in no time at all.

up the dirt and I plucked as many as I could out. We still needed more dirt. This garden has always flooded b/c it is low. With the help of a friend's pickup, we got a truckload of free dirt from nearby, but contrary to all of our assumptions, it was inadequate. We still need more dirt, and I am worried about drainage.

I should just make raised beds, sort of like demonstrated here,

but I am too cheap/poor . . . so give me another few years.

Now, the "trellis" I used last year was woefully inadequate. See here: It was just an old tomato cage and it did not work. However, that post was from June 2. So I'm impressed it was growing at all. Another thing this photo demonstrates is how goopy the soil in that corner of the garden got last year. I don't know if we have solved this problem with the extra dirt.

This year I made a better trellis, I hope. I read somewhere recently that because the peas have tiny little tendrils, they need something skinny to grab onto, so I wound string around the stakes. The "stakes" are just fence posts that are falling off of the cruddy old ancient fence around my property. We split them up and pounded them into the ground. Well, you can't beat free. We'll see how these things work before I start spending money on future crops.

I also read somewhere recently (Grow! Magazine, I believe) that you can sort of control weeds if you crowd the crops. This works for some crops but not for others. Potatoes and carrots and turnips, for example, will be ruined by crowding, b/c their roots will twist up. But other crhps will crowd out the weeds - bush beans, lettuce, etc. Taking this advice, I threw caution to the wind and ignored the spacing recommendations for the seeds and just planted a bunch in the trench I made. I'm hoping they take off like gangbusters.

Now, I planted two kinds. Sugar snaps (my favorite) and Modern Marvels. Sugar Snaps are supposed to grow 6-8 feet tall, the Marvels are supposed to be shorter. So we'll see which grows better here. I can always put up taller stakes.

I plan to mulch this year to also control weeds. I don't want to use last year's newspaper-mulch method. That was great as an experiment and everything, but I don't think I'll be repeating it. I want nice wonderful paths of mulch and as few weeds as possible. I think that mulch is the secret to that. Along with the truckload of dirt we got a truckload of mulch. It still is not enough. I don't think I'll put the mulch down until the seedlings start to come up. I don't want to make it too hard for them to come on out.

I see all of these perfect gardens with paved walkways and gravel walkways, etc. etc. I'd love to have one of those. I know the first step is to mark off the "areas" where the plants will be. But you know how frugal I am. Gravel and pavers cost money. I just grabbed some logs from the woodshed and used them.

You have the peas in the corner, then the bean patch, then the zucchini. Who am i kidding, that will never be enough room for zucchini. I will have to move them. Then to the right I planted five cucumber plants. I plan to put in lettuce/spinach/arugula/mesclun/sorrel patch to the far right, and then the area closest to us is reserved for the tomato and pepper plants when they get here. I'm ordering from Burpee's.

This is a closeup of the bean patch.

I think i might paint the logs white and maybe paint cute sayings on them. To make it more homey and less "some logs fell in my garden."

Okay, April 18, 2010. Let's grow!

Pepper Sickness?

2009-08-30T21:17:00.011-04:00

Mr. Stripey wasn't the only thing that suffered in the garden. I had some nice peppers finally develop out there as well. I didn't show you much of them. It took forever for them to grow, and I mean FOREVER. Maybe next year I will plant the bell pepper plants over by where I have that crazy jalapeno planted.

(POP QUIZ: how many different things can you put jalapenos in? Homemade salsa, tuna salad, tacos, chickpea salad, potato salad, tortilla soup, chicken enchilada casserole . . . and now I am drawing a blank. A little help here? comment section below.)

The peppers refused and refused to grow- i complained about it at length here, such as in this post entitled "My Little Peppers and How They Grow." The photos in that post were so cute and tiny as the bell peppers began their journey toward adulthood:

They quickly grew to a large size but hovered in their green state for weeks upon weeks

Now, one plant was an orange bell pepper plant, and therefore should have turned orange, and the other plant was a red bell pepper plant. So, I knew when they were ripe they would turn colors, then I could pick and eat them. Meanwhile, I was preoccupied with Mr. Stripey, the death of zucchini, the confounded beans which never really produced, and the sugar snap peas which sort of but never really gave me anything. (I did get about seven pea pods and we ate them in a yummy salad! I WISH i had gotten tons of those peas!)

But, finally, one day, color appeared:

This color appeared after a couple of days of rain, which suggests that perhaps the peppers needed a bit more water in order to really ripen and move the process along.

Unfortunately, after this, I didn't get a photo for a couple of days because I was out of town. When I came back in town, however, they were BRIGHT orange and red and ready to pick. They had slight abnormalities on their skins but no big deal, right?

So, I picked them and prepared to use them in dishes. First, I picked the red pepper. It wasn't totally red but as soon as I touched it, it fell off of the plant. It had a bit of brownish/green at the bottom. I left it on the counter, thinking it would finish ripening. It didn't. It turned mushy. That was a disappointment. Disappointment No. 1, as it turned out.

Disappointment No. 2, as it turned out, was this:

The "abnormalities" on the skin of the orange pepper, after it was left on my counter for a day or two, got worse and worse and worse, until it ended up looking like this! Now, what the hell is this all about? Should I have washed it with antibacterial soap as soon as I brought it in? Is this caused by bacteria or by insects or what? THey are just, spots that sort of sunk into the pepper itself. I really, really don't get it. I never used any pesticides or chemicals in the garden. I'm trying to eat fresh and get free food here, darnit!

I carved off the unusable portions, just like I did with the tomatoes, and got some usable parts diced up.

And . .. i ended up adding it to a chickpea salad, and it was fresh and tasty. The above shots are what the inside of the pepper looked like. I am just at a loss as to what is the deal with the produce from the garden. Something similar happened to the last zucchini we brought in, before the zucchini plants died. It had a little break in the skin, and we left it in the fruit basket, and two days later - the entire zucchini had sunken in on itself like it had a worm or something. Yuck.

I bring produce home from the supermarket all the time and leave it out on the counter . . . should I be putting my veggies in the fridge or something? Not the tomatoes, surely . . . but they are having problems too! Help! thanks.

Eating Mr. Stripey!

2009-08-24T22:26:00.011-04:00

The trials and tribulations of Mr. Stripey finally come to an end.

Last time we checked on this darn plant, one of the tomatoes had blossom end-rot, allegedly, and the combined weight of the three tomatoes was bowing the plant to the ground, so i had to use stop-gap measures and lay the stems across an extra cage.

Blossom end-rot:
In the end, that tomato looked like this:

Gross, huh? But think about how beautiful it would have looked if it didn't have that weird rotten spot??

the other two looked like this:

They ripened quickly. We kind of ignored the garden for only a week or two (tell you the truth, I needed a break. After the zucchini plants died, i lost heart. The beans haven't been producing like I hoped, the sugar snap peas never really came in, and well . . . sometimes you just need a break.)

Anyway, when we went back out to check, there were three ripe as hell Mr. Stripey tomatoes hanging there, ready to eat!

If there is anything I learned this year from gardening, it's to plant ten or twenty tomato plants next year. I just need more. Much more!

So what do you think this bounty looked like inside?

hooo-boy, it was such a treat!!

Look at those striations! Here's a closeup

Look at all that meat and the fact that there is practically no seed to get in your way!

This was the most delicious tomato salad. I did not adulterate it with green onions or blue cheese like the last one I exhibited here. Just kosher sea salt, extra virgin olive oil, the merest sprinkle of 15 year old balsamic, and a drizzle of truffle oil. The truffle oil really took it to that next level. And you know what made this so good? I finally got to eat a BIG FAT JUICY TOMATO from my own garden.

Now, DARN YOU MR. STRIPEY, i wish you produced more than three tomatoes!! Because I swear to you, these tomatoes were the most delicious I have tasted in my life. I'm not joking you, and eating a fat tomato every day for lunch in the summer is a tradition of mine. I am a tomato connosseiur. I love them.

These were really, really, reallly good.

I won't be replanting Mr. Stripey, though. So if anyone wants it, it'll be outside in my trash.

Tomatoes are carb free . . . . ???

2009-08-03T22:24:00.012-04:00

man, i bought around $15 worth of heirloom tomatoes at the farmer's market this past weekend

whooooo-weeeeee! Look at those Cherokee Purples!!! I got three of those big suckers

And then five of the yellow tomatoes, I dont know what they were, Lemon Boys or whatever. The yellow tomatoes were markedly sweeter than the Cherokee Purples, but just take a look at how meaty the Cherokees are - barely any gel and seed!

Here's a great closeup

Here you can see the beautiful color striations, green, purple and red (well sort of, it's still the same crappy lighting in my kitchen, although I put it on a white platter this time)

So much meat!

I made the most delicious tomato salad with these tomatoes. I was trying (and failing) to recreate the most delicious tomato salad I have ever had in my life. It was at my best friend's wedding, last year at Citronelle in Washington, D.C. I don't think any of us were quite expecting a salad of heirloom tomatoes to explode in our mouths and then shimmy around like velvet to be washed down with a nice white wine like a song the way that chef's tomato salad was, but man, what did he use? I've always wondered? It was a wedding, he could have served us the same old tomatoes with slices of buffalo mozzarella and basil and we would have stuffed it in our mouths. As for me, I wanted to do these tomatoes the same justice.

So I found this recipe from Gourmet Magazine, circa July 2000.
"

3 tablespoons extra–virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons malt vinegar
3/4 teaspoon packed light brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt (preferably flaky sea salt or fleur de sel) 1/2 teaspoon coarsely ground black pepper
2 lb ripe tomatoes, cut crosswise into 1/2-inch-thick slices
1 scallion, thinly sliced diagonally

Whisk together oil, vinegar, brown sugar, salt, and pepper in a small bowl. Arrange one third of tomatoes in 1 layer on a large plate, then drizzle with some dressing and sprinkle with some scallion. Make 2 more layers of tomatoes, drizzling each with dressing and sprinkling with scallion.

Cooks’ note: Tomatoes can be sliced and dressed, without scallion, 6 hours ahead and chilled, covered with plastic wrap. Sprinkle scallion over tomatoes just before serving."

Here's our version:

I added a little bit of roquefort cheese, leftover from the huge cheese block I bought at Costco weeks ago for the arugula roquefort steak dish.

Closeup:

I'd love to know how others make their heirloom tomato salads. Many recipes suggest balsamic vinegar and I do not like balsamic vinegar for salads, although I have some from Little Italy in NYC that is 20 y/o and pretty good. It is just too sweet, I think. I used tarragon vinegar instead of malt vinegar in this salad and it turned out good.

But, surprisingly, the real stunner in this meal was THE SHRIMP.

You should really get yourself some shrimp and keep it in the freezer. It's so easy to prepare as an easy dish - with pasta, with greens, , etc. etc. I love it! It's the summer version of frozen meatballs! :)

Anyway, this month's issue of Cooking Light had this great recipe for "Jerk-Spiced Shrimp" and we made it and I AM IN LOVE!!!
Ok, here is the photo from Cooking Light:

The Recipe:

1 tbls sugar ( I used light brown sugar and I recommend it)
1 tbls paprika
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp ground thyme
1/8 tsp ground allspice
2 tblsp olive oil
1.5 lbs peeled and deveined large shrimp
Cooking Spray

- Combine spices. Toss shrimp and oil in large bowl and toss to coat. Sprinkle spices over shrimp and toss. Thread shrimp evenly onto skewers. Place skewers onto grill rack coated with cooking spray; grill 6 minutes or until done, turning once.

ALL I CAN SAY IS MAKE THESE AND MAKE THESE NOW!!!!!!

I will definitely be making these at at least one party per year from now on. These are so freaking delicious that we were looking at one another with puppy dog eyes, sadly, asking if there were any left. Thankfully, there was a LOT of the tomato salad.

All in all, I love summer. You can make a lot of no-carb meals. Nice and healthy! This shrimp recipe is called "jerk-spiced shrimp" by Cooking Light but it is not really spicy enough for a true jerk name. Still, it is so tasty that I thought about cooking up another batch tonight. Wowza! I had five leftover shrimp for lunch today and they were just as good.

I highly recommend these recipes!

DESTRUCTION IN THE GARDEN

2009-08-03T21:30:00.013-04:00

Much like the beginning of the summer, Alexandria, Virginia saw days and days and days of rain this past week and weekend. At times it was so torrential i wondered if it was hailing. (My parents in North Carolina did have hail, grape-sized.)

I was kind of glad that the garden was getting watered without me, but when I went out to inspect the weeds that had surely sprung up, i was horrified at what I found.

Here is a photo of a healthy zucchini plant, on or about July 7, 2009, so almost two months ago. (Note, that it has grown much much bigger, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like.)

Now, a week ago, the leaves of this plant were so large that they reached the newspaper on the right side and were equidistantly stretched out all around. With beautiful squash blossoms beaming at me every morning and zucchini growing. Did you know that zucchini blossoms open in orange glory early in the morning and look like tiger lilies, sort of? They don't stay all twirled up all the time - in the morning they are open and glorious. I notice this from my shower window in the morning and I have been meaning to post about it for you.

Well, that is unlikely to happen due to this tragedy:
The leaves have been shredded and beaten into the ground.

Here is the horrifying closeup.

It would be impossible for photosynthesis to occur with these shredded leaves, not only because the leaf area does not exist anymore (mostly) but because the xylem and phloem in the stems has been destroyed. Xylem (zylem) and phloem are the tubes in the stem that carry the and water throughout the plants. I remember this from 7th grade biology, believe it or not. Our teacher made us sing a song about it, a really simple song, and she told us at the time "you feel stupid now, but you will remember this the rest of your life" and she was right. So: xylem carry the water up, phloem carry the food down. (i.e., xylem carry water from the roots up to the leaves, where photosynthesis occurs, and then the food is made there in the cells, and the phloem carry the food down to the roots, etc.)

So, in this plant, the xylem and phloem is pretty much brutally bashed out of commission:

Those are the main stems of Plant 1 and Plant 2. they were beaten open by what I can only imagine was hail and now there are ants taking up residence like it's an open house. I see no evidence of either xylem or phloem.

Then there are such exhibits as this:

Stems such as this have just given up.

After coming to terms with the devastation, I reminisced over times gone by.

Photos like these remind me to Carpe Diem. Look at all the sturdy xylem and phloem.

If you think I am not shedding a tear, I am. Mister Siren and I had words over a lack of sensitivity to the destruction. It was like losing a child. I'm serious, people! I was looking forward to a bountiful harvest of zucchini all summer, and i get - - - - - destruction. I feel like a pioneer in a year of famine or something.

There were other casualties:

My husband tried to repair the damage with scotch tape out of sympathy for me and his own dinner salads.

If the plant does not repair itself, all of these tomatoes will be at stake

Please mourn with me. This is way too sorrowful to mourn by myself.

RIP, zucchini.

Tomato Sickness

2009-08-01T18:19:00.009-04:00

The slow-producer Mr. Stripey, has something wrong with its tomatoes . . . .

This plant really could not be any more annoying!! It finally flowered and produced three tomatoes, after I fertilized it with special fertilizer which apparently gave it the nutrients it needed. Well, actually, we'll never know if it was the fertilizer or if it was going to finally flower and fruit at that time anyway. (The Schultz fertilizer, by the way, was not very good for my bell peppers. They have not flowered or produced any additional peppers at all, and I am really disappointed. I was hoping for a dearth of bell peppers all summer, especially since those suckers are expensive at the store.)

So anyway, when the tomatoes on Mr. Stripey started getting bigger, they started of course pulling the branches down to the ground, because the plant was so huge.
That branch is lying on the ground now, with the tomatoes up a little ways.

A nice green color.

I had to put another cage up, next to the original cages (there were two, remember, b/c of the number of stems coming out of the ground!) and balance the branches on the new cage. I was worried about the xylem and phloem getting bent beyond repair and not being able to carry nutrients to the fruit.
THey were much happier, off of the ground.

But, something is still wrong with these tomatoes. Or, at least one of them.

I noticed it quite some time ago. It's the middle-sized tomato. It has a kind of papery, brown thing on the end of it. It looks weird and rotten?

And here is the top of the tomato, near the stem:

Also showing a bit of the brownness.

Now, the other tomatoes are not showing this problem:

I realize that in the picture of the bottom of the affected tomato, there is some mold evident.

I think the green mold comes from it laying close to the ground and a few rainstorms lately. However, it was not evident a few weeks ago when I first noticed it. It was just the brown papery stuff:

So, can anyone tell me, what causes this? What is it? Is it going to spread? How do i get rid of it? And i'm guessing it is going to make my tomato inedible, huh? I am so disappointed! THIS IS SUCH A No-Good Plant.

Watch my zucchini grow

2009-07-28T21:44:00.013-04:00

Remember this big ol baby??

Some new ones are furiously growing in the garden:

That's the main plant, the one that is huge and takes up the expanse of, oh, I don't know, a couch

Here's the other plant, that thus far has produced NOTHING but all of a sudden has produced this beautiful looking zucchini.

Actually, by the looks of it we could pick these buddies now and eat them. But, the last monster zucchini was so bountiful and provided us with so many meals!! So they are growing while I am out of town. I told Mister Siren to pick them if they got too out of control. He's on tomato watch anyway since we caught an EVIL CARDINAL out there pecking away at the tomatoes every day.

For instance, with the zucchini, we grilled it with other vegetables
(by the way, this was only half the monster zucchini, just to let you know)
You may not be able to see it, but I use Emeril Lagasse's trick of inserting toothpicks in the onion slices before putting them on the grill, in order to keep them together better. He suggests putting the toothpicks into your onion before you slice it, and then slicing away, to make it easier. I have found this to be really useful.

Once I grilled up that zucchini and onions, I mixed it with leftover grilled corn
Remember that delicious post? Of course the corn I shaved off the cobb was unadulterated with crazy loco sauce or queso fresca.

So I shaved off the corn, mixed it up with the other veggies and leftover steak from the grill the night before.

At which point I began to make some tostadas. easy! You just cut tortillas into triangles, spray them with Pam, shove them into the oven at 400 degrees for about 4 minutes or something like that. Then put your veggies on your tostadas, sprinkle cheese on top, and pop them back in until the cheese melts.

This is a delicious and easy meal, and really fun to eat. What's more, it's really cheap and great to use leftovers in. But the best thing of all, is that it uses all the summer veggie flavors.

Another thing I love to do with fresh raw veggies (including the rest of my monster zucchini) is just chop them up, sprinkle them with salt and drizzle them with olive oil, and make them part of a fresh snack plate for dinner. We did this with some leftover steak, cherry tomatoes, olives, and cheese and crackers for dinner the next night and it was great.

So I can't wait until my two new little zucchini
give me a reason to come up with several more ways to stretch the bounty!

Best tomato pasta

2009-07-18T17:35:00.003-04:00

I love when food bloggers turn you on to their own favorite recipes and then those become your favorite recipes. I tend to favor really easy recipes since I do not have a lot of time for preparation these days. Before I worked strenuous weeks, I loved to make complicated rich dishes for myself and Mister Siren or anyone else who was around. Now, it's all about ease of prep, saving time, saving money, and deliciousness.

Plus, the numero uno rule in the summer: I LOVE TOMATOES. Last summer I ate a tomato every day for lunch, salted with olive oil. To round out my stomach and get me through the day, I'd eat a small serving of cottage cheese and maybe some avocado if I could find one. I think next year I will plant even more tomato plants b/c the yield from these is not quite enough for my daily lunch needs + our dinner needs.

But anyway, I digress. I found my new favorite recipe, which is coincidentally the favorite recipe of MattBites. The recipe is actually from Gourmet magazine several years ago but based on Matt's recommendation, I have now fallen in love with it and will probably be making it for the next several years as often as possible.

Capellini With Fresh Tomato Sauce:

1 small garlic clove
3 lb tomatoes
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon sugar (optional)
1/2 teaspoon black pepper
1 lb dried capellini (angel-hair pasta)
1/2 cup chopped fresh basil

Accompaniments:

finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano; extra-virgin olive oil for drizzling (optional)

Mince garlic and mash to a paste with a pinch of salt using a large heavy knife.
Core and coarsely chop two thirds of tomatoes. Halve remaining tomatoes crosswise, then rub cut sides of tomatoes against large holes of a box grater set in a large bowl, reserving pulp and discarding skin. Toss pulp with chopped tomatoes, garlic paste, lemon juice, salt, sugar (if using), and pepper. Let stand until ready to use, at least 10 minutes.
While tomatoes stand, cook pasta in a 6- to 8-quart pot of boiling salted water, uncovered, until al dente, about 2 minutes. Drain in a colander and immediately add to tomato mixture, tossing to combine. Sprinkle with basil.

The photo above is credited to Gourmet Magazine.

You can also go to MattBites.com and see his beautiful, perfect version.

Now, when I made this with juicy, delicious tomatoes from my garden (heh heh, don't you wish you had some?) i had more fun than I ever thought I would, grating tomatoes. Who would have thought the act of grating tomatoes would bring so much pleasure?
Once you grate and chop all of the tomatoes, you have a big bowl of pulp and chopped pieces.

And it says only one clove of garlic but I am very disobedient when it comes to garlic. Fresh basil from the garden, too - and the basil, by the way, is not looking too good these days. It is really flowering and I am going to have to raze it to the ground and just make pesto and freeze it soon. :( It's the most common thing I use!

I made the mistake of cooking the pasta first and then making this sauce, so then I had to wait the required 10 minimum minutes for the sauce to gel . . . I could barely make it.

I was very excited for the last 16 seconds.

Here is my finished product.

I love this china dearly. It is my grandmother's and was passed down to my mom and then to me. I realize though that it is not well suited to food photos. I need some white serving pieces to photograph from.

That aside, this dish makes me drool. We use whole grain pasta which has a distinctive taste and makes it even better. Basically, we were fighting over the leftovers the next day.

File this under YUM.

Everyone loves tomatoes

2009-07-14T21:41:00.007-04:00

yep. it's true. I do. You do.

and so do the fauna out in the yard.

case in point:
something got this one good.

and the other side?
even the little hidden baby ones are not safe:

i don't know who, or what, is killing my tomatoes:

but you have to be VERY vigilant in the garden

Monster Zucchini

2009-07-13T21:59:00.010-04:00

Skippy's vegetable garden is showing her first zucchini.

I remember way back when when I was asking Maybelline tips for how to grow my own zucchini (she is in Bakersfield and it just seems like food leaps out of the ground onto your plate from her garden . . . she already has so many tomatoes she had to start canning!)

I have my first zucchini, too!

WHOA! WHERE DID THAT COME FROM? it's over a foot long.

Well, it started with the beautiful zucchini squash blossoms. Some people like to fry them up and eat them. It's kind of a pain in the butt so I haven't done that yet. There are a million of them, though, so if i was inclined, i could. Actually it's the most copious thing in the garden.

There are two kinds of squash blossoms, female and male. I posted about this previously, but it bears repeating, especially now that I have so much photographic illustrative evidence. The way you can tell the difference is: the male flowers are on top of skinny long stems, and the female flowers are on top of, well - nubs that are attached to the base of the plant, which will one day, if fertilized, turn into a zucchini.

Who does the fertilizing? Bees, and other insects, i guess. That's why if you are going to eat squash blossoms you need to check inside for bugs.

So, these are all male flowers.
You can tell by their long skinny stems.

And here is a female flower.

You can tell because it is attached to a nub that is close to the base of a plant. Know what that nub is?

It's a zucchini! I was as surprised as you. The flower on the top falls off and it just keeps growing and growing.

It becomes something like this:
Is this not crazy? nature is weird and very cool.

Now, what would happen to female flowers when they are not fertilized? Unfortunately, the nub just withers up and never becomes a zucchini - a wasted chance for the plant to produce a valuable vegetable. Sometimes it takes days for the flower to fall off. It's pretty sad, too. Especially when you are waiting and waiting for your plant to produce another zucchini and you have six or seven male flowers, waiting to fertilize another female flower.

Like this. Argh. Why won't you grow? It's all limp and flexible, and then a day or two after this photo, it was completely withered and dried out.

Well, anyway, this zucchini just kept growing and growing

ANd i didn't really know what I should do - pick it at a certain size, or what? Also, i didn't know how to pick it, which is a stupid question, really, but it's true.

Then one day we came out and this monster was just laying on the ground. It was so huge and heavy it made my husband feel inadequate just looking at it. It probably doesn't even taste good. I HAD to pick it, so i just lifted it up and lightly twisted the base, and it came right off.

Can't wait to grill this sucker up and use it with the leftover grilled corn and steak on some tostadas!

WOW! Best Grilled Corn

2009-07-12T23:59:00.007-04:00

This summer Gourmet Magazine had a huge feature in their issue about grilling that talked about El Salvadoran-style grilled corn. The trick is that you smear the grilled corn with "crazy-loco" sauce (yes i know that is redundant), something different than the butter we usually use.

I was enthralled when I read this b/c I have to confess I am not a huge fan of corn on the cob. It gets stuck in my teeth. It's messy and not pretty and it really does not taste that good. So smearing a delicious sauce on the corn that is probably pretty fattening only made it sound more appetizing to me.

Then, on one of my favorite blogs, The Kitchen Witch posted about making Mexican-style grilled corn, and the recipe she researched was almost precisely the same as Gourmet's El Salvadoran recipe. Same premise, just a slight change in the ingredients.

The main difference between these two recipes is that the El Salvadoran recipe calls for mustard as part of the crazy-loco sauce, and has optional ketcup. The Mexican recipe calls for no mustard or optional ketchup but instead calls for sour cream, and also cilantro (which I did not use.)

I started off prepping the corn as shown in the vivid photo spread in Gourmet. How can you resist glamorous presentation?
Mister Siren was put to work preparing these ears of corn. You peel the leaves down, remove the inner cornsilk (which is kind of a pain), and then use one of the leaves to tie leaves together. These tied-up husks serve no purpose except to act as a pretty handle. I love it!

Here is a closeup of how you do that:

Now thankfully, The Kitchen Witch's post reminded me that you must soak the corn for a good amount of time before you stick them on the grill, so that they do not dry up and burn when you have them on there. I did so. She said do it for 25 minutes. . . . Our grill was already ready for steaks and we were holding up the process, so I got about 7 minutes of soaking done.

But man, I think that made all the difference! The corn, when it came off the grill, was so much sweeter, more tender, juicier than any corn I have had on the cob before! I don't know if my family has just failed to soak their corn before. If you have not been doing so, try it. Maybe I AM crazy-loco, but this corn was out of this world, and I just had some other corn on the cob last weekend for 4th of July, too.

So anyway, then after you grill it and it's all tender (about 10 minutes or more), you take it off and spread this sauce on it.

My sauce was sort of made like this:
1/2 cup mayo (used light mayo)
1/2 dijon mustard
8 oz light sour cream

As I said, you can look at Kitchen Witches and Gourmet's recipes for the true sauces, and then adjust.

THEN, the important part is, you crumble this cheese called Queso Blanco on top of it . . . I thought this was probably the same thing as Queso Fresco but it is actually different, or at least it is sold in a different package and labeled differently, and thank God it is sold at Costco, b/c I had little time to shop today.

You "put a hefty squeeze of lime" on it, and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper if you want it. I couldn't stop eating it! I'm a total convert!

Corn has many fans, and the handle comes in handy, although not everyone loves the sauce and the cheese:

Salad Nicoise

2009-07-12T23:08:00.005-04:00

So, what do you do with a handful of green beans?

I've learned a lot about planting green beans (and peas for that matter). First of all, I need to do rotated crop plantings (planting a new row every week or two so that I have enough green beans produced all summer.) Because we LOVE green beans. One of the things I remember most fondly as a child is that, over at my best friend's house, her mom had planted low bushes of green beans, and when we were out playing all day (locked out of the house! go play! don't come in!) we would swoop by these bushes every few hours and snap off some beans and pop them in our mouth. They were so good. And the bushes seemed to produce many beans per bush.

That was kind of what I was expecting from the beans I planted. Well, a), the beans were definitely one of the most hardy plants in the garden, but b) they weren't the variety I thought I had planted. Not the best friend's mom variety, anyway. They grew much taller and were not as bushy. You've seen the photos in previous posts. c) they produced great beans, but only about three per plant total, and these came in sporadically, so in all, i got a handful at first, then a second handful, then just a few more. I don't know if I'll get any more this season, maybe so.

Still, what to do with a handful of green beans? This same question has faced the author of a great and funny blog, "Gardening Without Skills," whose okra is really taking off and presents her with several okra every couple of days. Like me, she wonders, what do I do with a couple of okra every couple of days?

Since I have tomatoes and lots of lettuce in the garden, the answer was given to me by another great blog, (Simply Recipes), and I think is a great solution for using whatever handfuls you have around after harvesting your garden! Salad Nicoise! As the author of "Simply Recipes" relates, this French salad, when served in France, is composed of anchovies, raw vegetables, yadda yadda yadda. She suggests that you serve it with tuna steaks carefully marinated and seared, a nicely homemade herbed vinaigrette, and a bunch of other delicious stuff.

Here is hers:

Ingredients

Vinaigrette
1/2 cup lemon juice
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium shallot, minced
1 Tbsp minced fresh thyme leaves
2 Tbsp minced fresh basil leaves
2 teaspoons minced fresh oregano leaves
1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Salad
2 grilled or otherwise cooked tuna steaks* (8 oz each) or 2-3 cans of tuna
6 hard boiled eggs, peeled and either halved or quartered
10 small new red potatoes (each about 2 inches in diameter, about 1 1/4 pounds total), each potato scrubbed and quartered
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 medium heads Boston lettuce or butter lettuce, leaves washed, dried, and torn into bite-sized pieces
3 small ripe tomatoes, cored and cut into eighths
1 small red onion, sliced very thin
8 ounces green beans, stem ends trimmed and each bean halved crosswise
1/4 cup niçoise olives
2 Tbsp capers, rinsed and/or several anchovies (optional)

Method

*Marinate tuna steaks in a little olive oil for an hour. Heat a large skillet on medium high heat, or place on a hot grill. Cook the steaks 2 to 3 minutes on each side until cooked through.

1 Whisk lemon juice, oil, shallot, thyme, basil, oregano, and mustard in medium bowl; season to taste with salt and pepper and set aside.

2 Bring potatoes and 4 quarts cold water to boil in a large pot. Add 1 tablespoon salt and cook until potatoes are tender, 5 to 8 minutes. Transfer potatoes to a medium bowl with a slotted spoon (do not discard boiling water). Toss warm potatoes with 1/4 cup vinaigrette; set aside.

3 While potatoes are cooking, toss lettuce with 1/4 cup vinaigrette in large bowl until coated. Arrange bed of lettuce on a serving platter (I used two serving platters, shown in the photos). Cut tuna into 1/2-inch thick slices, coat with vinaigrette. Mound tuna in center of lettuce. Toss tomatoes, red onion, 3 tablespoons vinaigrette, and salt and pepper to taste in bowl; arrange tomato-onion mixture on the lettuce bed. Arrange reserved potatoes in a mound at edge of lettuce bed.

4 Return water to boil; add 1 tablespoon salt and green beans. Cook until tender but crisp, 3 to 5 minutes. Drain beans, transfer to reserved ice water, and let stand until just cool, about 30 seconds; dry beans well. Toss beans, 3 tablespoons vinaigrette, and salt and pepper to taste; arrange in a mound at edge of lettuce bed.

5 Arrange hard boiled eggs, olives, and anchovies (if using) in mounds on the lettuce bed. Drizzle eggs with remaining 2 tablespoons dressing, sprinkle entire salad with capers (if using), and serve immediately.

Serves 6.

For mine, I used green beans from the garden, pictured here:

I used a delicious tomato from the garden, pitted against a tomato from the store. We did a taste test of the garden tomato from the store tomato, and although the store tomato had a great amount of wonderful tomato scent, when you bit into it after biting into the garden tomato - it tasted like , uh, shredded wheat. Which is sad, considering how great tomatoes from the store usually taste to me. WHY do tomatoes grown in my own yard taste 50000000 times better than the ones I buy in the store? Why can't they taste the same? It makes me sad.

Anyway, all i can say is that I am pretty happy I am growing my own tomatoes and I wish I had several more reliably producing plants.

In addition to the tomato and the green beans, I used greens from the garden, as usual.

I loosely followed the blog's recipe for the vinaigrette, but I did not use fresh lemon juice b/c unfortunately, lemons are no longer 3 for a $1.00 like they were three years ago, and I have never been able to get over the hike in prices on citrus. Or maybe I never will be able to. I lived in FL until I was about 12 and I just think that citrus should be cheap, period. You should certainly not be paying $0.98 for a lemon or a lime, and I won't do it. I'll buy the bottled stuff which is just as good. In my opinion.

So, i used that for the vinaigrette, and I kind of cheated on the herbs - I used basil and tarragon, b/c that is what I have in the garden (no oregano, no thyme . . . . maybe next year I'll start growing those). I love how the hot potatoes soak up the vinaigrette. Oh, and I did not pour out the potatoes and then restart the water for the 12 beans I had. I just threw them into the last minute of the boiling potatoes. It worked just fine.

I put down all of my greens, sort of found whatever was in the cabinets that I could use, and assembled it on a plate . . . . I think this entire salad probably came to $7.00 for two people between the cost of the olives, potatoes, eggs, capers (all of which I had laying around, but let's say you had to buy them . . . ) ANd I bought a $4.50 can of albacore tuna to make it fancy - which, I think they are cutting corners on the solid albacore b/c it looked like chunk light tuna when I opened it and I was pretty mad.

But anyway.

VOILA.

I could not finish mine and Mr. Siren had to polish it all off for me. Thankfully we went out dancing and I worked it off. I think this is a great meal for several reasons:
1) you can use whatever handfuls of stuff you have from the garden
2) It's pretty darn economical
3) it's packed with protein and really healthy, and also has the added bonus of being no-carb.

Thanks, Simply Recipes!

Mr. Stripey Produces!

2009-07-11T20:27:00.011-04:00

This darn plant has FINALLY begun looking up. Well, why not, it's almost ten feet tall, and it's mid-July now.

I received several pieces of advice on some gardening forums about the issues I have been having with Mr. Stripey. As I have mentioned on this blog before, this particular variety of tomato is notorious for either under-producing, getting leafy and big, or being light on flavor for the fruits it does produce. Now, it seems like the plants you put in the soil, etc., do really well, but only people in certain areas have the right conditions.

Anyway, we've seen the photos of the plant getting taller and taller:
(it's even taller now)

And it kept producing these flowers that were really non-flowers. See Exhibit A:
They would open up, and contain no petals, no stamen, no . . . . (what's the opposite of stamen? Pistol? i think there is another name. I think pistol and stamen are on the male flower? Uh oh, i think i am getting this entire flower anatomy thing wrong)

Part of the advice I received was that there was either a phosphorous deficiency or some other kind of deficiency that I cannot remember right now. Everyone agreed that the plant did not need any more nitrogen, because more nitrogen (such as is contained in Miracle-Gro) only makes your plants grow bigger and grow more leaves, etc. - NOT the problem this plant has. We needed this plant to STOP growing and start producing fruit.

I also was told to stop watering so much. The plants were a bit overwatered because of constant rain. I think this did make a big difference for this plant and the other tomato plants.

However, the biggest difference, I think, was made by:
Go Schultz!

Look what happened less than three days after I used Schultz!
REAL flowers started appearing, the kind with petals! I was totally biting my nails while waiting to see if they would turn into full fledged beautiful flowers.

And they did:

I picked the Schultz fertilizer b/c it had the lowest content of nitrogen, and the highest of phosphorous, and the plant really seemed to respond to it - very quickly. I have not seen any other flowers on Mr. Stripey, though. I have seen more non-flowers. I am hoping that it bears some more fruit.

In response to this flowering, I have gone at the rest of the plant and mercilessly pruned it, as per the pruning instructions I posted previously. Remember, you can prune all branches below the first flower cluster . . . I didn't do that much, but there really is just too much greenery on this monster taking the nutrients out of the soil, and away from fruit production.

Here is Mr. Stripey now:

And the next flower cluster produced:
I think this is destined to be a non-fruit bearing flower cluster. See here:

It's weird and I don't understand it, but there it is.

Well, I can't wait to see these tomatoes when they finally ripen! Because the plant is so tall, and that tall branch was not caged, the weight of the new fruit has weighed it down and I bet they are almost going to be laying on the ground soon. I'll have to find some way to support the branches so that does not happen.

Let's all raise our glass to Mr. Stripey!

Salsa Garden

2009-07-07T20:05:00.010-04:00

Hey, i know that i didn't post something awesome and patriotic for 4th of Ju-ly for ya'll and i'm sorry. I really am. I let you down? But listen, I know you had plenty to read, because every single blogger and their mom put up some kind of 4th of Ju-ly content for you to read. I'm still trying to work through it.

I've really slacked off lately, but work and sequential houseguests have kicked my butt. However, that's kind of what this post is about. I think last time I posted, I said that I wanted to serve homemade salsa to some of my houseguests. Well, guess what? I DID!

Not EVERY ingredient is from my 'lil 'ol garden, but some of them are. I used tomatoes, jalapenos, and cilantro from the garden, and I stripped it bare.

Thankfully, the tomatoes ripened right on time (that is, the Early Girls did)

(Does the Early Girl start to look a little bit wilted in these photos to you? I noticed it started looking wilted. Then one day when I watered it a million ants ran out of the container. I think the roots may be having some problems. It has not perked back up, sadly.)

The tomatoes off of this plant are not large, they are small. About the size of roma tomatoes. Which is perfect for salsa.

I had previously picked some to save them, so I had about four of them. I had to buy some more from the store to round out the recipe, because I wanted to make a biiiiiiig bowl. My homemade salsa is always a hit.

So, the recipe is:

Tomatoes: 8-10 romas preferable
1 bunch of cilantro, chopped
Couple cloves of garlic, chopped (always use fresh)
1 Red onion, chopped
Several limes, squeeze to taste
Salt, add to taste

and 1 jalapeno, chopped up small, I prefer to keep the seeds in!

The jalapeno plant has just been growing crazy. I mean, if you want a dependable reliable crop from a plant, I suggest planting a little jalapeno plant. Take a look at this sucker.

Big peppers on the bottom, more growing on the top. Constant rotation of production.

For the salsa, don't underestimate the need for the salt. Or the fresh garlic. I usually use 3 big cloves. That's me, though, and there's never enough garlic in our house. Then there's the lime. If there is something missing, it's probably lime. The problem is that it makes your salsa watery - but what you want to do is pop it into the fridge tightly covered with saran wrap for a good amount of time (at least an hour) to let the flavors gel . . . . and when you serve it up you can use a slotted spoon to put it in a pretty dish, like I have here.

Don't mind the obvious stovetop placement, as I have found this is the one place in my house I can take decent food photos.

However, (back to the subject at hand), once all of the salsa is gone you will find that you and your compatriots will be scooping up the salsa juice in frenzy, desperation, and nostalgia as you reminisce about all the unbelievably delicious salsa that was in the big bowl only moments ago. That's why I recommend using Tostito Scoops as the proper chip for this salsa. So does my husband.

I don't mean to toot my own horn about my salsa recipe. It's just that a) people rave about it, b) i personally love it, and c) i didn't make it up. Some man in Costco or Sam's Club told me how to make salsa when he gave me a salsa maker in, oh, 1999 or something, and i did buy the salsa maker (some plastic thing with some weird blade) and fell in love with that salsa and have been making it ever since.

How many times can I type salsa in one post???

My Little Peppers and How They Grow

2009-06-22T21:02:00.009-04:00

Coming up with titles for these posts is often an inside joke for myself. Today the title is patterned after a children's book called "Five Little Peppers and How They Grew," written by Margaret Sidney. The Peppers are a family of six, five children and their widowed mother, at the turn of the century. Extremely poor, starving, on the brink of death, and remarkably cheerful. I love books.

Anyway, this post is about MY peppers, which I have not posted about in awhile.

I've been lackadaisacal about posting updates on the pepper plants. I have three: a jalapeno, and an orange and yellow bell pepper. Or is one of them red? I can't remember. One is definitely orange. Anyway, since i posted a long time ago about the pest eating holes in the leaves, i've just left the subject alone. The plants were kind of wimpy and have been slow to develop.

The jalapeno had one lone pepper and that was it for awhile:
But all of a sudden the rest of the flowers dropped off and developed quickly into peppers:
That photo was taken on June 15. Now pay attention to the top of the plant where the newest peppers are developing.

Look at those hot peppers! Aiy-yai-yai! They're growing like hotcakes. whatever that means. Like the comics in the background?

Then we have the bell peppers. FINALLY they are growing
These are the orange bell peppers, I think. I can see five peppers beginning to grow - the really visible one by my hand and some other myriad tiny baby ones around the plant. I wonder how long it is going to take for them to grow and ripen?

Here is the red or yellow one, whichever it is:
And about four visible peppers developing on this plant so far. I wonder what tripped the development of the veggies on these plants? We have only begun having really hot days, and I know that the peppers are supposed to love sun and heat , , ,

The great thing about this is that soon I can make salsa from my own garden. Some of the cilantro has not completely bolted, the jalapenos are looking great, i can cheat with onions and garlic from the store, and if the tomatoes would just cooperate and ripen!
Because pretty soon we are going to just have green tomato salsa! My brother comes this weekend and i want to serve from the garden!

Growing basil; Terminal Leaves

2009-06-17T22:48:00.011-04:00

I recently left a tip about basil and plucking the terminal leaves on The Kitchen Witch's blog. As a new basil grower, she had not heard of this tip yet, and I had not heard of it either two years ago when I first started growing basil in my Aerogarden. (If you don't have an actual garden but want great herbs, consider an Aerogarden, those things work like a dream, and don't take up a lot of room or take a lot of work. Lots of fresh herbs all the time!!) (we got one for our wedding, as requested, b/c we lived in a small apartment, and man, was it heaven)

Anyway, the whole point is, with basil you want to encourage a lot of growth. I mean, you want to make that big batch of pesto that you have to freeze, right! And you want to be out there picking it three, four times a week when you have the tomatoes in season, right? So we have got to get these suckers cooking.

Well, pinching back the terminal leaves does just that. It encourages bushier plants by forcing the plant to produce more growth farther down the stem instead of producing a flower at the top of the stem as it naturally would if you let it go terminal and flower. So what you want to do is, in each bunch of leaves, if you can catch them as your basil grows crazily, pinch of each inner set of two leaves when they appear. Don't worry, because the basil will continue to grow at a rapid rate all over the rest of the plant and you will have plenty to harvest.

An illustration:
In this photo, you can see two sets of what could develop into terminal leaves that I am about to mercilessly pinch off. Directly above the huge basil leaf dominating this photo, in the center of the bunch of symmetrical basil, are two symmetrical leaves that I should have pinched off when they were budding. Don't know how I missed them. Must have been inside when it was raining for days. Nevertheless, they have to go.

Here's a little action shot for ya, showing you how it is done. Notice how, to the right of my fingers, there is a cascade of lighter green symmetrical triangles or diamonds stacked on top of one another? That is a set of terminals that is going to turn into a flower and that set of leaves will produce no more. (I don't know if "terminals" is really an appropriate term w/r/t gardening or basil, so don't borrow it.)
Now those leaves are gone and it is on to the next problem. Directly above where those two leaves were are two others that need to be plucked - they are in the center of a bunch and should have been plucked when they were more like babies.
Yes, I am still using newspaper mulch in the garden and yes, it is still cutting my weeding time down miraculously. It only took me and Mr. Siren about 45 minutes to weed last weekend after about three straight days of rain!!! I mean wow!

Now see the difference? Both of those sets of center leaves are gone now. The plant will have to produce leaves farther down the stem, which will make it bigger and bushier. It starts producing side stems, etc. Look at this photo compared to the original photo for comparison:
I also moved on to the left side of the plant, because I saw some terminal leaves there as well:
Ok, see those suckers right there in the middle? They gotta go. Pinch 'em off.
And . . . the aftermath:

So, I hope this has been informative. it is pretty easy once you do it one or two times. The hardest part about it is keeping up with your basil plant. But once you have been doing it for a week, you begin to see what it is all about. Because your plants begin to get bigger, and bigger, and grow faster, and faster, and pretty soon you don't have the time, energy or attention for all of that pinching. We are now harvesting these plants about three times a week for various stuff. Pretty soon I am just going to have to make some pesto for fun. Tonight we had it on homemade pizza. yay!

Bon appetit!

Squash blossoms

2009-06-15T21:01:00.004-04:00

I heard about frying squash blossoms before and somewhere I remember that these mythical squash blossoms grow on your zucchini plants . . . so i've been waiting . . . . and watching

and these appeared:
I first noticed these about three days ago (after those heavy rains). They are crusted with dirty in the above photo.

Today, though, they were larger and vibrantly full of color:
It's amazing how fast things grow in this garden! I mean, wow.

I was looking around for the place I read about the fried squash blossom recipe and found this scrumptious one on a blog called Cooking With Anne. But, in addition to her recipe, Anne related some very valuable information - there are male and female blossoms (duh), meaning, some of the blossoms will produce fruit (or vegetables, as is the case here) and need to be left on the plant. These are called the female blossoms. You want to pluck off the male blossoms only, Anne says.

This makes a world of sense. Here is a great informative link describing how to discern between the male and female blossoms, with pictorial illustrations. The easiest way to differentiate is by looking at the bottom of the blossom - is there a green bump, or a long skinny stem? If it's a stem, it's a male flower. If it's the green bump, it's female, and the bump eventually grows into zucchini, as long as that flower is pollinated. Another way you can tell is that the male flowers have nothing but stamen inside, the female flowers . . .. more female looking stuff.

One other tidbit I learned was that if the female flowers are not fertilized, they wither up and die. Hmmmm, reminds me of how a lot of the flowers on the Early Girl plant are looking right now. More on that later.

Anne's recipe is to pipe a mixture of goat cheese and chives into the blossoms, dip into a loose batter and fry in oil until crispy .. . . hers look divine but I don't want to steal the photo. Go to her blog to check it out and hopefully I will have my own to show soon!

I'm a Bean Counter

2009-06-14T12:18:00.011-04:00

The one thing I have been able to count on in the garden since the beginning has been the bush beans. Those suckers are going to be planted right in the same place next year, that's for sure. (well, the mesclun did well, too.)

As a review of what they looked like along the way, and because I know photos are really what people like to see, here's the beans in the beginning:
After they first emerged as a stately row. That was May 8, the first chance i had to get into the garden after about six days straight of rain, if I recall, and the mud there is churned up from vigorous weeding.

On May 17, they looked about the same:
although they steadily grew bigger, so big, in fact, that eventually one of them fell over and lay in the dirt.

But, eventually, they started producing little bud-like flower capsules - see the photos from May 24:
(sure wish I'd known how to use my camera's closeup function that day)

And then, on June 2, they had full-on flower pods:
Or, actually, those are the bean pods. I don't actually know the correct term of what I am seeing here. Because this is what happened next:
This is a photo from June 7. They flowered, and then the flowers withered, and were pushed off by little baby sprouting beans. You can actually see some if you look closely in this photo, beneath the white flower at the left edge of the big leaf.

Behold, on June 10:
ton's o' beans growing!! You can see, in this following photo, that some of the beans still have flowers attached that they are pushing off:
This is so neat. I just love getting out in this garden every day when I come home from work and learning about how things grow. I was and still am a true novice in every sense of the word when it comes to gardening and growing food and probably will be for years to come. But this process of discovery has been inspiring, uplifting, and awesome (awesome in the sense that it fills me with awe, I mean.) I realize I sound a little like the new parent who can't stop talking about their baby but that's why I started the blog, ha ha, so I can spit it all out here. What can I say, I am obsessed!

So, what do you think of the BEANS?!?

I am a big frequenter of others' gardening blogs and love to see photos of the crops I am growing and how they turn out in others' gardens, but I don't think I have noticed bush beans that anyone else is growing. If you have them, or you know where I can check them out, please leave me a comment :)

Am I What We Eat?

2009-06-12T20:49:00.003-04:00

I am diving in with both feet to the challenge to post a photo of our refrigerator.

As a precursor, to show you I am not insane, go check out one of the most interesting articles I have read recently: Picture Show: You Are What You Eat. Photographer Mark Menjivar began taking photos of the inside of refrigerators after three years of traveling across the nation studying the effects of hunger. His commentary on how the inside of a fridge reflects an individual is powerful and definitely a dialogue starter . . . just take a look! There is a fridge with a no-lie, whole rattlesnake just staring at you from one of the shelves. A freezer full of nothing but frozen meat and a bottle of jose cuervo. I love these photos.

Others I respect have been brave enough to take this challenge. For instance, the very accomplished food blogger on Life is a Feast did it last year.

As Mark Menjivar states on his own webpage, found here, "someone likened the question 'May I photograph the interior of your fridge' to asking someone to pose nude for the camera." And I definitely sympathize with the sentiment. Because I was ITCHING to tidy up, put things in at least their proper place, and hide certain things before I took this photo.

But here it is, in all its glory, folks:

Regrettably, what really stands out here is quite a big quantity of some sort of light beer. Not fair. We just inherited quite a lot of leftovers from a big group weekend in the woods and are storing it for a party in two weeks. Not that my husband is not drinking it. Hell, it probably won't really be there for the party.

Top shelf, two packs of mushrooms, one opened and covered in foil. Concentrate juice - i don't normally buy that but was having people over and wanted to offer another beverage. I would buy it regularly if we had the extra dough. Individual cottage cheeses which I eat every day to give me protein and calcium. Second shelf exhibits a bowl of hard-boiled eggs Mr. Siren eats for breakfast, a second container of mayo (again, inherited, saving for party), a bunch of chicken and some flank steak you cannot see (for crock pot chicken cacciatore, and for flank steak and fajitas from the leftovers)

So, what else are you looking at? Bottom shelf shows some produce (apples and oranges), a bunch of hamburger buns, the aforesaid beer, and some old rum punch I have saved for when I want to make myself drunk or sick, it will be the game. Also some new juice for making individual rum punch. We keep seltzer behind the beer but you cannot see it. There is produce in the bottom but we go through it so quickly it is all half chopped and in ziplocs and unrecognizable.

Also, there are forty kinds of cheese in the cheese drawer. And lots of leftovers that we cooked in chinese takeout containers that probably need to be cleaned out of the fridge. (I don't buy tupperware, I just reuse those containers.)

What does this tell me about myself and how I eat? For one thing, I need to clean out my own leftovers. For another, the bright beer is kind of embarassing. For the last, it is obvious that we are stretching our grocery budget. Because when I am not, there is a lot more in the fridge. Trust me. Maybe I should make this a weekly comparison. The Beginning of the Month vs. the End of the Month. Ha.

Now it is your turn! Be Brave and post a photo of your fridge and post a link in the comment section!!

My first harvest

2009-06-12T20:09:00.004-04:00

On everyone else's gardening blogs, the praises are being sung of spring peas! onions! strawberries! etc etc blah blabbity bippity blah, as Denis Leary would say.

Well I am not so lucky, except for plenty of basil and cilantro which I have gleefully been picking here and there when needed (which is several times a week.)

On my last post I wondered when the mesclun greens would be ready.

Well, I decided it was time. Mostly b/c we're broke this week and i wanted some salad and did not want to buy it! I mean, this was the point of the garden, right? And I wish I had the time or inclination to keep a meticulous log like Sally of the Minton Stable Garden
of the costs and returns of my garden so I could figure out if I'm ever getting ahead in this game . . . . . but in the end, my plan of growing my own food so I could eat for free isn't really racing ahead like I figured it would.

I have to inform anyone considering growing mesclun greens, but harvesting them is no fun at all. I recommend cutting them very close to the leaf since you are going to be trimming all the stems off inside at the sink anyway. Because there are so many small leaves, there are so many surfaces and nooks and crannies to hold dirt and mud from all the rains we've been having. And in one colander of greens, i found four baby slugs lurking! I had to turn over each individual leaf - it felt like hundreds - to ferret them out. Can you imagine if we had been chomping away and bitten into a slimy little slug? I SHUDDER TO IMAGINE IT.

So anyway, I cleaned them all up, it took about 20 minutes, then added some very thin onion, sliced mushroom, and chickpeas. I wish I could have added tomatoes from my garden!! but oh well. And tossed in olive oil, s&p and tarragon vinegar.

Here is our salad!
On the side there is some tuna salad on olive loaf. I don't make my own bread as I am pretty busy with the growing my own food right now. I make my tuna salad these days with celery, red onion, and pickled jalapenos, worcestershire, lemon juice, s&p and minimal mayo and mustard. I also like to make it with celery, grated carrots, onions, and walnuts and mayo. Mmmmmm . . . .

When we were in Italy (Venice) they had little sandwiches all over the place that were tuna fish with just olive oil and sliced green olives and cracked black pepper mixed in. Mister Siren came to really love it.

Pruning in June

2009-06-09T20:52:00.009-04:00

I have found the most wonderful article on how and why you should prune your tomatoes. This could be the answer to all of our problems.

Reasons you should prune your tomato plants include:
1) you maximize the efficiency of photosynthesis, allowing the leaves that remain to present themselves fully to the sun, as well as the fruit. Remember, a tomato plant is a "sugar factory."
2) you decrease the risk of soil-borne diseases getting onto the lower leaves by splashing up onto them
3) the plant will grow stronger main stems
3) you remove the suckers or new stems which grow in the joints, or axils, and therefore allow the plant to produce bigger, more flavorful fruit rather than more plentiful, smaller, less flavorful fruit

The article also revealed that when you have too many leaves on your plant (obviously the problem with Mr. Stripey), the leaves which do not have a chance to get sun will stop photosynthesizing and will become yellow and wither up. The rest of the plant does not need it anymore as part of the sugar assembly line.

So, this is what Mr. Stripey looked like previously, remember:
There are so many leaves, you can even tell at the bottom of the plant that it is shading itself. I should have been able to tell even back then that I needed to lop off some of that growth.

For instance, in a post a week or two ago, in the investigation of the myriad problems of Mr. Stripey, I posted this photo, of the yellowing withering leaves at the bottom:
bad news, here. After reading the pruning article I could not wait to get out there and start clipping.

Here is the product of all that work:
The sun was not ideal for this photo (much too bright) but i mercilessly lopped off the bottom stems that were completely shaded by the upper leaves.
According to this article, you should take off all stems below the first flower cluster. Now, I don't exactly have a first flower cluster, so I could not determine where I should begin pruning based upon that. But, based upon the theory that I need to improve photosynthesis by presenting all leaves to the sun, and decrease the chance of soil-splashed-borne disease, I got rid of everything near the soil and everything in the shade.

Another photo of Mr. Stripey, post-pruning:
I have high hopes that this will assist the Mr. Stripey plant with production of fruit.

I also pruned the other tomato plants. Here is a photo of the Big Boy/Better Boy hybrid, which has produced only one fruit so far, but has recently had many more flowers. I hope with the pruning it starts getting really juicy:
I made sure to take off all of the "suckers" in the joints on both plants.

On another note, here is the size of the mesclun greens. I really have no idea when to harvest these, but I think they may be around that size now. Does anyone out there have an opinion on this? I took a photo of this by my own hand to show their approximate size at this time. I'd like to begin pulling some for my salads now.
It looks like the individual leaves are about half palm size, and my palms are pretty small. So, not that big. Then there are other assorted types of leaves as well, since it is a mix. But I know I have eaten regular mesclun greens as well as "baby mesclun greens", at least I think. Either way I think I could munch them down now . . .

Flower already!

2009-06-04T21:49:00.008-04:00

Looky here, please. Your opinions are valued. This will require emails or comments in the comments section. (psst. if you comment in the comment section vs. emailing me, other people can read your advice too and it might give them ideas)
Are these Mr. Stripey's version of . . . . . . . . . . . flowers? (*said in an incredulous voice*)
I mean . . .

It's so disappointing. I just can't figure this plant out. And despite the prior link I posted where Mr. Stripey wasn't exactly given great reviews as a plant, this blog reports that it is a gourmet tomato with excellent taste. So I would like it to start flowering so that it could one day bear fruit.

I have done some research on why it would not be flowering at this point. Possible reasons seem to be:
1) too much nitrogen, too little phosphorous in the soil
2) too many leaves
3) too much fertilizer (I doubt this is it since the only fertilizer it has had was what it came with)
4) and if it HAD flowers (which I have not noticed), there could be a pollination problem, and I could kind of help it get pollinated.

Now, the pollination thing could be true. As you may or may not know, the honey bees are quickly disappearing across the country. But that's not the issue with this plant. This plant just keeps making leaves and no flowers. Or nubbly little diseased flowers.

Well, there is good news! You won't have to suffer with my blurry closeup photographs anymore. I sat myself down and finally figured out that the button with the little flower on it is made for extreme closeup shots. I knew there had to be some setting for that! (now aren't you flattered that you are part of this constant process of discovery? I am literally sharing everything with you. There is no reason for anyone reading this blog to ever, ever feel ignorant . . . . . . .)

For instance, here is an extreme closeup the OLD WAY of the beans:
It was extremely frustrating that I could not show close-up detail.

But with my new discovery (I could probably have read the manual, but who has time to dig that out), check out the pods developing on the beans:
Not sure how much longer we have until these develop into nice, crunchy, tasty beans!

On that note, take another look at the Early Girl tomatoes:
I wanted to show, in reference to my hand, how large these were getting, so:
(i know in some of the prior photos they looked enormous). This plant certainly has no problem flowering!

The bunny (we call him Lenny now) is making regular daily visits. The cats were talking to him this morning out the window. He came right up to the back porch :)

The Peas are so Cute

2009-06-02T21:39:00.013-04:00

These sugar snaps are so sweet. (not tasting. They aren't producing anything yet or I would have snapped them up and stuffed them in my mouth and then all you would be reading is the equivalent of me munching: nom nom nom . . . ) No, I mean sweet in a heart-warming way.

They have these little tendrils that are sent out every two inches or so along the stem and reeeeeeach for something to cling to, and then twine and twine around it, helping it climb higher and higher. This is how vines work.

I don't know how much higher it needs to climb before it begins to flower.
But it is really starting to lean out and I have had to direct it back to its "trellis". It could probably use a better trellis than a tomato cage, but I don't know, seems to be working ok for now. I planted about twenty more sugar snap pea seeds and hopefully they will start coming up soon!

Now look at the zucchini - it's really getting big and beautiful!
At least this plant is. It also has some smaller inner leaves developing.
Some of the plants have a yellow sickness, though. Why must something always be wrong in this garden?

Take a look at the zucchini plant in the middle:
Some of the leaves are completely yellow and you can see where some of them are yellowing around the edges.

Then there is the one on the end:
All yellowing around the edges. ???? I've found a couple of other people who have had this problem such as this blogger , who seems to have had a split stem in her zucchini plant. We don't seem to have that problem yet, the plants aren't big enough. Other sources say it could be a nitrogen deficiency. Apparently you can correct that with liquid fish fertilizer or with manure. You gotta love the internet, don't you? How would I be finding out all of this without it?

For instance, I learned that when your cilantro looks like this:
It means that it is bolting. Bolting means it is about to stop producing the tasty flat leaves we like to eat and it is about to begin flowering and producing the seeds we like to grind for ground coriander. You can tell by the feathery-type leaves it produces, as you can see up at the top.

I did a lot of research over the past two days and there are several schools of thought on the cilantro. You can either, in the first place, plant the slow-bolting variety. On the other hand, some feel that you can pinch off the feathery leaves when they appear, and this may slow or stop the bolting and coax your plant to continue producing the flat leaves. (This is hotly contested.) Third, you can and should plant rotated crops of cilantro so that when your plants start bolting, you can have the new plants getting ready to produce.

Thankfully for me, a BIG cilantro lover, three of the cilantro seeds I planted are steadily growing:
So pretty soon I will cut off all the cilantro on the above plant and make a big batch of cilantro pesto, freeze it, and save it. It is GREAT on chicken tacos. I'll post the recipe!!

Juicier and Juicier

2009-05-30T22:21:00.012-04:00

Whenever i need cheering up, I go out and visit the wee tomatoes.

The Early Girl plant is looking great. Mid-week, the fruit had already doubled in size. Here are the tomatoes last week, on May 24:
And here they were in the middle of this past week, just a few days later!
With some baby tomatoes starting over here

Today, though, May 30, they were even bigger:
(in that photo you can see the babies over on the right).

The Big Boy or Better Boy (can never remember which) has a nice sized tomato growing by now, as well. This photo was taken today.
In Mr. Stripey news, he's definitely grown. Compare the photos of him previously with the ones from today.

MAY 24 photos:

MAY 30 photos (today)
The plant has grown so much that the branches are now at the top of the cage.

But, Mr. Stripey has some problems, as usual. The bottom branches are withering, and some of the leaves are yellow:
What you are looking at seems like a yellow leaf and nothing, and it is. But it used to be a branch with more leaves, etc. It went out down my hand and down my wrist. It withered and so did the parts resting on my fingers. I don't know exactly what is wrong. On the one hand, this plant is kind of in a low spot. Mister Siren thinks maybe we should add more dirt. I'm wondering if that would just create more mud.

On the other hand, there is a lot of new life on this plant. It's obviously growing rapidly, per the above photos. And these:
The fuzzy thing in the photo is what I used to think would turn into flowers. Instead it just turns into leaves and more leaves.

For the meantime, my verdict is that this plant is not dying, but it's definitely not bearing fruit. We are going to research whether or not we can fertilize it to help it flower. How much bigger does it really need to get? If you know or can offer any advice, please do, in the comments section.

The Newspaper is Indeed Biodegradable

2009-05-30T21:27:00.017-04:00

This is a post about weeds, and weeding. There is (or WAS!) a very nefarious weed patch in the garden that I had neglected in favor of weeding near the veggie plants. Here is a quite embarassing photo of it. As i have stated before, after killing all of the old weeds with Round-up, the new weeds that have very prevalently emerged are nefarious grasslike weed.

These are SUCH a pain in the neck to dig up b/c you have to dig up each individual blade, and they all have a root! Today we tried to use a rake as a hoe and just turn up the dirt, then pull up the weeds easily. This did not work. However, Mister Siren was helpin in the garden today, so thankfully I left him to this section and I did other tasks.

There were many to attend to. For instance, the inspection and replacement of the newspaper mulch. When I originally layed it down, it immediately improved weed conditions in the garden. I did a 4-sheet thickness on the recommendation of most articles, but this has proved to be not enough, for the heavy rains of Virginia.

The garden, in general, is looking a little ragged. I have a huge tree located right above it that drops seed pods and leaves on it constantly. This makes it look messy. Then the rain beats down and throws up dirt and mud onto all of the plants, and turns the newspaper into mush, allowing the stronger weeds to break through the newspapers, as you see above. We spent a good 2.5 hours today cleaning and weeding, and laying down fresh newspaper where needed.

Behold the before and after photos:

BEFORE:
And, AFTER:

BEFORE:

And, AFTER:
Okay, so now if we could control the weeds around the perimeter, that would be great. For some reason, in places we have sprayed before, the plants seem to have developed some type of Round-up resistance. I think that is why, when we sprayed that grass-stuff, it did not die.

I love this garden!

Rotated plantings, Peas and Lettuce

2009-05-25T11:39:00.013-04:00

The four pea plants are finally showing their stuff.

Here's the first one:
Juuuuuuust disregard the weeds showing in the background. We try to get rid of those as often as possible.

Now that is the only pea plant that survived that two weeks of torrential downpour after the initial plantings. It is about a foot tall now and instead of a true trellis we just plopped a tomato cage down for it to climb up. It was planted on or about April 26, emerged from soil on May 3 and was recognizably going to live on May 8 (at least those were posting dates).

I did a second planting when it was clear none others were going to germinate/sprout:
I planted about 10 seeds on May 11, and three of them emerged. You can see here the newspaper mulch (just scroll around on the blog to see about the whole newspaper mulching effort).

So, now I have four pea plants - I really do not think that is going to be enough sugar snap peas!
I have found the greatest garden blog that I must share with readers. Maybelline's Garden - based in Bakersfield, CA. Now, she has some vibrant photos of her pea plants, which in the Bakersfield heat (Zone 9) she has already harvested and thrown into the compost heap.

Taking a note from a proficient gardener, I see it is a good idea to do rotated plantings. Obviously, I do not want to be stuck with bushels and bushels of peas and beans and zucchini and lettuce, etc. etc. all at once, and then have nothing. I will not be able to process or eat all of this, and it will rot, and then we will have nothing. As I layed in bed until 4 a.m. last night, hopped up on cold medicine that had my mind racing (note, don't take Advil Cold and Sinus if you need to sleep), i began devising a plan to donate my bushels of extras to the church or homeless shelter.

So I will plant more peas, and more peas. I will not let them keep me down! I may need to plant more beans, too. We will probably want a second crop. Mister Siren loves his beans. Here they are yesterday, a month after planting:

Anyway, I was thinking about this rotated planting issue back before I planted the lettuces. Especially last year when I had my druthers. But this year, i just plunged ahead. Well, we better be ready to eat some salad.

The mesclun/field greens are going to be ready pretty soon, all at once, and we will be eating daily salads, I think:
We have approximately six Bibb Lettuce plants growing, but these are at different rates, since I did that re-planting on May 11:
While we have 2 advanced arugula seedlings, the rest of the row is from the May 11 replanting, so hopefully that will give us some arugula salads later to mix in with the bibb lettuce, after we are tired of mesclun greens:

If you think the newspaper mulch looks messy, I know. It gets blown around by the wind and is a real pain in the neck. But is really helps with the weeds, let me tell you.

And the sorrel is basically coming up all at once, from the May 11 replanting:

So, anyway, I am devising a plan to rotate in some new crops so that we can have continuous salads, peas, beans, etc. The zucchini should be good producers throughout the season when they finally start bearing fruit. Maybelline's Garden had twelve plants, I definitely don't think we need that many! But I'll report back.

My First Tomato- on its way

2009-05-25T00:07:00.010-04:00

This is why she's called Early Girl:
There are three beautiful green globes hanging from her branches. Soon those tomatoes are gonna make me the happiest momma on the block. I have wrought life! And nutrients! From the soil! She was transplated on or around April 26 (at least that's when I posted about it) and her first flower appeared on or around May 11.

We have more emerging, in the Big Boy/Better Boy hybrid:

The grape tomato plant has nothing much to show, yet, but its flower buds are beginning to form.

The Mr. Stripey plant is a different story. For awhile now I have been concerned about it. It said that its maturation period was 80-95 days. I really don't know what that means. To a novice like me, that could mean anything. For instance, I assumed that it could mean from the moment you planted the seed in the ground, to the time it bore fruit, should take 80-95 days. Compared to the 65 days for the Early Girls, it would make sense.

It really means, days to maturity from when you transplant the seedling. Or, for those who think that is too hard to predict, days to maturity from when the first flower appears. If that is true, we have a long time to wait until we get to bite into a Mr. Stripey tomato. Which is why I'm pretty happy I plunked that Early Girl plant into a container as a failsafe, and why I planted that Better Boy as well. Without one single flower on Mr. Stripey, we've over three months to wait at least - that's end of summer! I'll be selling them on the corner.

Anyway, Mr. Stripey hasn't flowered yet, but he has been growing. (I canNOT stop referring to the plant as a "he".)

This is the plant the first day I planted it, before a nice soaking. It did perk right up.

This photo is from May 10, exactly two weeks ago. It had grown considerably, and was minding its own business.

Here is the monster today, two weeks later. We finally decided to cage it, because if the fruit is as big as they say it can get (12-24 oz), I don't want it pulling the branches down and lying on the ground for every insect to devour. I had to use two cages, upside down because the plant is so large, to stuff this sucker in.

Now, the verdict is still definitely out on the quality of this fruit. Apparently it is a very beautiful and desirable to look upon crop. However, this beefsteak variety, as opposed to a smaller, tasty heirloom variety also called "Tigerella" can have a thick skin, be of mild to no flavor, all seeds, and also prone to disease, according to whom you ask.

See here for a lot of reviews, if you are wondering about Mr. Stripey. I can't wait to see what it will produce. It has been putting a lot of its energy into just growing big and strong and I hope will flower soon. Then we shall see!

Herb Report, good and bad

2009-05-24T22:28:00.015-04:00

One of the herb plants is in dire straits.

It's the lavender plant. I planted lavender b/c i wanted to fill the garden with fragrance. I wanted it to grow and grow into a huge bush the way things in Georgia and Florida do. I dreamt of making sachets for my own drawers and suitcases. Forget figuring out gifts for the next few years of Mother's Days and birthdays and Christmases, etc. I'd press my own essential oil, blah blah blah. Am i getting ahead of myself?

Okay, so anyway. When I brought it home, it looked like this:

That's it in the top right position, happy and blue-ish green. It smelled wonderful and fragrant.
Here it is the day I transplanted it, in the left-hand position. Look how green and happy it is. I imagined this to be a corner of the garden from which, when the wind blew, a cloud of fragrance would envelop me as I weeded. Like, you know, in Tuscany.

Well, folks, take note of something else in the top of the above photograph. The shade.
I really, really think the lavender needs more sun. Nooooottttt a lot of photosynthesis occurring in the lavendar corner. In fact, it appears to have shrunken. The pleasant bluish-green tint has turned to a dull gray. Some leaves are withered and brown. It's a sad day but I really should have dug it up and planted it somewhere else two weeks ago. In additon, according to this article, dampness can have a negative affect on this plant. Maybe those two weeks of everyday rain right after I transplanted it were no help either. Hm.

In other news, the herbs right by the lavender are doing just fine. They must like the sun/shade conditions. This photo shows the amount of sun that side of the garden gets in the afternoon:
That is the end of the day's sun . . .

The rosemary and tarragon seem to like it:
(although the rosemary is getting a bit gray itself).

The basil transplants, well, the jury is still out on them. They were doing pretty badly, sunbleached, insect-eaten, and generally raggedy since I planted them:
But today i picked off all the ugly leaves and just trimmed them back, AGAIN. Hopefully without the plants putting their energy into those big honking leaves they showed up with, they can put their energy into sending out new fresh fragrant leaves. If they don't make it, so be it.

So this is what they look like now:

Now for the other good news.

DILL!
Wow, we love dill. We put it in virtually every salad and it's required for deviled eggs. Great in scrambled eggs, too. :)

CILANTRO:

I clipped some for the kitchen this week and the remaining bunch is producing new shoots even faster. The three wee babies are coming up fast, too.

If you have good herb pictures or have seen herb garden photos elsewhere on the web or other blogs, please put the links in the comments section!!

Insects and yellow leaves

2009-05-23T22:51:00.006-04:00

I think i may have an insect problem. I mean, i see plenty of insects in the garden - tons and tons of worms (just come on over if you ever need some bait for your fishing pole!) and rolly-pollys, and ants, and other types of insects . . . but i'm talking about the type that eat your plants. Why do i think this?

Exhibit 1:

Something is just chewing and having a heyday with my bell pepper plants. It's also kind of getting into the Mr. Stripey tomato plant.

And, speaking of Mr. Stripey, his bottom leaves are starting to get yellow:

This is alarming to me b/c I would have thought that Mr. Stripey would be producing some flowers by now. I am worried he does not get enough sun? Or too much water? Is it root rot? Does ANYONE KNOW what the problem is that is making these leaves turn yellow? I want to fix it as soon as possible b/c I am really looking forward to these 1 lb striped yellow and red tomatoes. I mean, I salivate just thinking about them. Just brushing by this plant fills the air with fragrance. We have not one single blossom on this plant, however.

So, questions of the day:
1) What insects are eating my bell pepper plants?
2) how can i find out and how can i get rid of them/prevent them?
3) why is Mr. Stripey turning yellow, and how can I change/prevent that?

To leave a comment, click on the word "comment" at the bottom of this post.

THANKS!

Reflection in Zucchini

2009-05-23T21:35:00.011-04:00

You can tell how much the zucchini has grown by looking at the growth of the leaves. Let's take a trip down memory lane together:

Remember back then when i first got the garden planted, a sophomoric novice, and went out in the evenings when i returned from work, so excited to see the results of all my labors . . . and was sooooo wrong about what was coming up? I would go out before i even thought about what should go on the table for dinner, before i did a chore, as soon as i took off my work suit and could put on some flannels and a blazer, and went out and got on my hands and knees in the dirt, nose about two inches from the ground, sniffing, loving it.

Mmmmmmm. Dirt. There is something about being so close to the earth, in your own backyard, after a long day at work, that washes away whatever happened there.

Enough of that. So - getting back to our trip down memory lane, when i first began, a bright-eyed bushy-tailed novice a couple of months ago, I thought those gross viney things were for sure the zucchini coming up. No, they were not. They are these awful root-like vines underneath the soil which produce A LOT of weeds. They are pervasive.

Then the zucchini appeared:
This represents three plants. I planted three seeds in each hole, the holes were 18 inches apart. They grew steadily and surely. There are two little leaves poking out of each plant.

Then, all of a sudden, a third, very recognizable squash-like leaf appeared.

When they got this big, I had to thin it to two plants per 18 inches.

Very quickly, a fourth leaf appeared, of the same squash-like variety.
The above photo is of a very dirty plant, which is how the plants look after it rains all day. (a frequent occurrence)

A fifth leaf appeared, then got bigger (see below photos:)

According to a gardening site, I can expect about 11 more leaves before I see flowering and actual squash:

Tending the Plants

Zucchinis usually grow at least 15 leaves before flowering. Often the first flowers are male and will not produce fruit. A female flower has a small swelling at its base, while a male flower does not. If desired, pick male flowers for eating.

Wild Strawberries

2009-05-18T20:22:00.013-04:00

My mother in law came and found wild strawberries all over our yard. They are so cute.
This is a nice development because a) i was going to plant regular strawberries b/c Mister Siren loves them, and they were going to take a lot of work. One strawberry plant produces about a quart of strawberries, which means I was going to have to plant an entire row of them. And you have to put them on mounds. Booooo. and b) it's always nice to find a surprise in your own backyard. The only problem with this situation is this little guy:
What do you think he likes the best? What is he eating every day? He is very active. I may need to start leaving a plate of carrots and stuff out for him. Hmmm.

Well, let me give you an update on other things in the garden. Here's the zucchini:

These plants are growing like crazy. Last time I posted there were the two small leaves and a third leaf. Now, in less than four days, appeared a fourth leaf. Where do they come from?! Truly amazing to me. The one thing you can count on in this garden is that the plants are dirty. That is from the rain kicking up so much dirt all the time.

There are about fourteen flowers on the Early Girl tomato plant these days

Probably more by now since this photo was taken on Saturday. We put a cage over the plant since it was lopping over:

The dill is looking quite dill-y and the cilantro from seed is coming up nicely:

Our jalapeno pepper plant is even starting to show signs of bearing fruit! See the little white bud? I think that will develop into a pepper

Wanna see some dirty bean plants?

Kate Moss is in the garden

2009-05-17T19:14:00.009-04:00

I'm losing the fight against weeds. No, i'm not going to show you the weeds. It's embarassing. But i will tell you that I weed, and I weed, and I weed, and then I turn around and basically in the same afternoon the weeds have popped up again. I really need to mulch to prevent new weeds from popping up in the spaces I have already weeded over and over again. And weeding is not really that fun, folks!!

I am also poor. Grandma suggested, and several websites, newspaper as a mulching material. And I like this idea, because it is free. The garden is so big that to put down the 3-4 inches of tree bark mulch necessary to prevent weeds would cost a fortune. You can also use grass clippings, I hear, but our grass clippings are rife with weeds. You may recall, if you read this blog, how the weed-stop plastic works: take a look here. The other good thing about newspaper is that it is biodegradable. Hopefully not too soon.

The trick is to put down 3-4 sheets of thickness. I did that. You also want to get it close to the plants.
I had to use rocks to weigh it down, but you will want to give it an initial soaking to keep it stable so that it does not blow away. You are looking at the hybrid Big Boy or Better Boy tomato plant, here. It is the one I showed in a previous post that is showing a few flowers. :)

I do need to put down more papers and eventually get the entire garden mulched. As it is, I was really trying to concentrate on the rows between the lettuces. As you can see, here,
the newspaper mulch is serving a dual function: keeping weeds at bay, as well as defining the rows of greens/lettuces for us. Before, I got a little nervous and edgy everytime the Mister stepped foot in the garden and began walking in that general direction (the lettuce patch) because there were so many weeds and the little baby sprouts were almost indistinguishable. Now you can really tell where the rows are.

Here are some photos of how the greens are doing. Well, you can already tell how the mesclun greens are doing, the PRIDE OF THE GARDEN!!
I really washed them out with this photo. If you want to learn how to take great photos, go to this website and check out her photography section. (Pioneer Woman). Every photo she has on that site is fantastic and she gives great tips. If you want to read about gardening without knowing anything and a lot of trial and error, but a pervading sense of delight, keep coming back here.

So, in a closer look at the lettuce rows, here is the sorrel these days:
This is an extreme closeup. Now, remember that this row was really failing and I had to replant it completely after the extended rainy period, so this is newly sprouted. Notice the ground is wet. It has also been raining again for the last three days. Well at least I do not have to water!

Here is the arugula - a newly sprouted bunch and then an older, more mature bunch:
So now you know what arugula looks like when it grows out of the ground.

This is what the bibb lettuce is looking like these days:

Still little babies. You can see the newspaper edging right up to it. So, hopefully this newspaper experiment will really help me out, here. According to this article, it is very effective. And according to this guy, he uses the method all the time. My neighbor, a previous White House horticulturalist, gave the thumbs up to this method and gave me the advice to soak the paper first. So, we shall see! Stay tuned!

Herb Salad

2009-05-16T19:31:00.006-04:00

This is my winning recipe (I hope). This is also the dish that made my husband propose. (Ok, I may be exaggerating about that, but at our wedding shower, it was revealed in the hokey and public quiz that this was his favorite dish that I made.) I invented this a few years ago and just entered it in the Cooking Light recipe contest b/c you can win $20,000 if you are the grand prize winner. For that reason, I had to come up with the exact proportions of ingredients. I normally don't - have never- counted exact measurements or proportions of ingredients. I have always cooked by sense . . .

but anyway:

You start off with a bunch of herbs. The herbs I recommend are:

Dill: 1/2 cup, chopped.

Don't mince it, like you would for egg salad. Remember, this is a salad ingredient.

Next, I like to use chives: 1 cup is about what I figured for the recipe.

Don't chop them up small, like you would for a baked potato, etc. Make them long-cut.

Next, the cilantro. You will need a lot of cilantro. I recommend approximately 1.5 cups of chopped cilantro, stems trimmed.

Then, 1 bunch of green onions, including the white parts.

Incredibly important in the herb salad is the basil. LOTS of basil. I recommend 2 cups of basil, loosely packed. The basil should not be chopped up small, but in bite-sized lettuce leaf sizes, like so:

Then, you can add approximately 1.5 cups of chopped firmly packed lettuce - field greens, arugula, watercress, etc. to give your salad some body. But the real body comes from the basil, realize. I highly recommend using arugula.

Now that you have all of these herbs chopped up, prepare the following:
1.5 cups grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise
1.5 cups black olives
- mix into the herb mixture.

Mix in 3/4 tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil and toss well. Mix in 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp pepper and toss well. Squeeze in the juice of 1.5 lemons and toss well. This salad dressing technique is especially great for distributing flavor and the order, I have found, is key. Take some goat cheese and sprinkle on top of the salad.

Your salad will look like this, or hopefully not like this, since the lighting in my house is really bad for food photos!

The herbs burst with flavor, the lemon brings it out more, the tomatoes are sweet, the goat cheese is nice and creamy with a tang of saltiness, and the olives lift all of these flavors up.

Enjoy, serve it to your friends, but don't enter it into any recipe contests as your own!

Aside note: you can use any herbs you want for this, and adjust the proportions for whatever you have on hand or whatever is in your garden. These are the herbs we like the best . . . use what you like!

HERB SALAD RECIPE:
1/2 cup dill
1 cup chives
1.5 cup cilantro
1 bunch green onions
2 cups basil
1.5 cups greens (like arugula or field greens)
(all above chopped)
1.5 cup grape tomatoes, halved lengthwise
1.5 cups black olives
goat cheese
3/4 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/4 tsp salt, 1/4 tsp pepper
juice of 1.5 lemons

Chop all herbs and mix. Add tomatoes and olives. Toss with olive oil. Add salt and pepper and toss. Add lemon juice and toss. Serve onto plates and spoon crumbled goat cheese onto top of salad.

TOMATOES!!!!

2009-05-14T21:05:00.010-04:00

The tomatoes are coming, the tomatoes are coming!!!!

So many people told me that the yellow flower on Early girl meant that a tomato would appear soon. Aunt A, Aunt T, G-ma, and a nice commenter all said this.

Today I got back in town and went to check on the plants and found this:

Early Girl has about seven flowers, which means we'll have seven or more tomatoes soon. I don't know how soon they will develop into tomatoes but if you know, leave a comment!

Then I checked on the garden plants - Mr. Stripey does not have a flower yet (booooo.) but the second tomato plant does. This, I think, is just a regular hybrid Big Boy.

About four flowers. Two that i'm showing on the bottom and two up top you can barely see that i could not grab while I was holding the camera. The grape tomato plant has no flowers though. I also checked the herb plants:
Sorry for the fuzziness of the photo here. It was very hard for me to get the closeup I wanted to show you and then it turned fuzzy. For some of these garden photos I need to be pulling out our other camera, I realize. How the hell I would upload those photos I do not know b/c it is not digital.

What you see above is dill, which i was concerned about, and it is turning feathery and is actually dill (hallelujah)!

And:

The cilantro is showing two new seedlings (I just planted these on Sunday!) It starts out with two little leaves and then in between the two little leaves sprouts a very identifiable single cilantro leaf. I tried to capture it in this photo and you got a blurry version. More luck next time I guess b/c it is dark and rainy now.

As for the zucchini, take a look. I definitely need to thin to one plant now. It used to be three plants, then I thinned down to two.

So, the zucchini started out with just those two leaves, and now this very identifiable squash-looking leaf is emerging as the third leaf. Verrrry interesting.

The ONE sugar snap pea plant is just beginning to turn into a vine, as you can see! It is next to a fence and it will be able to climb up the fence (a taller fence than the baby chicken wire fence previously shown). However, there are a lot of weeds in between the pea shoot and the fence, and a lot of weeds around the fence. It's still a battle against the weeds!!

I had a great photo of the mesclun greens but the camera died and so I guess it did not take. Here is a bonus wildlife shot from my yard:

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Anniversary Soup

2009-05-12T21:59:00.011-04:00

I know up until now the blog has basically been about gardening with a few family trips and activities thrown in. So far I have not bored you with my culinary blunders and successes. But, since I'm updating this thing four times a week I'm going to throw in the highlights. I'm entering a recipe contest for Cooking Light and I'll post my (hopefully winning) recipe for that soon.

Tonight's post is dubbed Anniversary Soup for no other reason than that I'm leaving the Mister behind to go to another city for some professional training, on our wedding anniversary. So I am leaving behind a big pot of this delicious "Spiced Chickpea and Tomato Soup," along with some side dishes I'll post after I enter the recipes in the recipe contest.

The ingredients are:
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 tablespoon crushed red pepper (flakes)
3/4 tsp ground coriander
1/8 tsp caraway seeds
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 can (15.5 oz) chickpeas, rinsed
1 can (large) crushed tomatoes, with juice
1/2 cup roasted red peppers, rinsed
3.5 cups stock

I used delicious San Marzano tomatoes, as you can see, from the wonderful commissary. I love the food selection at the commissary! They have food products from all over the world, at rock bottom prices! If you have not experienced San Marzano tomatoes, make a sauce with your normal Hunts or Del Monte, and a pot with these, and let your mouth have a party. Each can was $1.99.

I doubled this recipe, by the way. That is why the can of chickpeas is so huge in the photo. There is a second can of tomatoes lurking out of sight.

So, then you: 1) use a mortar and pestle to crush garlic, red pepper, coriander, salt, and caraway to form a paste.

2) heat the olive oil over medium heat. Add the garlic mixture and cook until softened (about 3 minutes, although I found it needed about half this time)
3) Stir in the chickpeas, tomatoes, red peppers and stock. Simmer for 15 minutes. Cool slightly.

It's looking very tomato-ey at this stage. SO, you let it simmer and heat up and you make your side dish and clean up the kitchen. But wait. You'll have a lot more clean up to do later, don't worry. Because of step number 4:

4) Puree in a blender. Serve with a dollop of sour cream (I omitted this, and never eat sour cream anyway. We have substituted plain yogurt for all sour cream in the house anyway.)

HERE IS AN IMPORTANT TIP: when you blend hot liquids, you must not put the top on the blender, or, rather, you must take the middle insert out of the top of the blender. My professional chef friend gave me a trick for this and taught me to just put a kitchen towel over the hole so no drops spray your cabinets.

The alternative to this, if you keep the top on, is that the top will explode off of your blender while blending when the hot liquid pushes the air up, and red soup will fly everywhere in your kitchen. My stepmom and I discovered this five, six times in her kitchen when we made this soup, before we figured out the right way to puree it. And even then, we thought we should cool it down in the freezer. Nope, it will not get cool enough anytime soon. Just warning ya!

Then you'll have two pots to clean b/c you kind of have to use the two pot puree and transfer method, but you are left with one of the most delicious soups I have ever tasted! Kudos to "K" for this recipe!!

Bon Appetit, husband!

Bunnies and Fences

2009-05-11T22:15:00.012-04:00

This little guy

Is why we had to put up THIS fence:

It's about a 2 foot fence and we just step over it when we go in and out of the garden. That is the big Mr. Stripey tomato plant you see in the corner there by the fence. The fence seems to be working great to keep the bunnies out. I have seen no nibbles on my mesclun greens or other plants so far.

Here's a pictures of the entire garden right now:

On the right hand side you are looking at big Mr. Stripey in the top corner, with two other tomato plants coming down the row, and the last plant is a jalapeno. The next row of plants over to the left are two bell peppers, red and yellow. Here's more of a closeup:

You can also see two groups of zucchini seedlings at the bottom left, and a bunch of weeds.

The horizontal row of greens that you can see is the mesclun greens, doing quite well, and if anything was really growing, you would see three identical horizontal rows of bibb lettuce, arugula and sorrel. However, I just went in and weeded more and re-planted this weekend. Hey sometimes you have to start over. There on the left is my row of bush bean plants, looking great.

And on the far top left side are the tarragon, lavendar, and rosemary plants.

The container plants are doing well:

Dill (god i hope this is dill and not a weed)

Cilantro (although no seeds have come up yet, so i replanted some seeds this weekend - what you are seeing is a transplant):

And the Early Girl tomato plant:

Now, she has a flower on her now. I don't know what that means. I am going to have to look it up or ask my Aunt T, who seems to know a lot about growing tomatoes.

In addition, i said forget growing basil from seed and just transplanted three nice basil plants straight into the garden. I hope they take:

They should be getting enough water because guess what, it's Monday and it's RAINING AGAIN! GO VIRGINIA!

USS FREEDOM

2009-05-11T21:45:00.008-04:00

On Saturday we went and toured the new USS FREEDOM, one of the U.S. Navy's newest ships. It is an LCS, which stands for "Littoral Combat Ship." It's pretty neat.

First of all, it has this submersible which goes on seek and identify missions to target mines in minefields.

They send this thing out to detect where the mines are, a minesweeper, basically, so that the sailors do not have to lose their lives doing it as they have in the past. When it finds mines, or things it thinks are mines, they can control it and help it take photos of the items (it may be a refrigerator or a sunken car), and mark the latitude and longitude of the item, which is uploaded to a system all the ships in the Navy can access. Then they send the EOD (explosive ordnance disposal) boys out to dispose of it.

They also have this neat little boat which allows them to deploy and put in sonar or radar detectors - basically spy on sub threats. They operate it by remote control from the ship up to 50 nautical miles away (i think):

Here is the big gun on the front of the ship. The ship only has a 13 inch draft in the water so it can get really close to shore to shoot ya.

And in the back of the USS Freedom is a helicopter hangar where three unmanned helicopters are stored. Here is the hangar:

What is an unmanned helicopter, you may ask? It's basically a drone, an aircraft capable of flying missions without a pilot. The individuals on the ship program it with either the recon targets it needs to perform surveillance on or the other points it needs to visit and shoot. Here is a photo of the helo:

And, finally, the ship is almost entirely enclosed and has smooth sides. This is for two reasons: 1) to reduce the radar signature, i.e., to provide less surfaces for the radar waves to bounce off of, and 2) in the case of WMD chemical warfare, to give the sailors less exposure to the lethal air outside.

Why the Basil Won't Grow

2009-05-09T10:22:00.006-04:00

In searching for an answer to this question I found a good summary on this site:

"Basil in The Garden

Most gardeners plant basil seeds directly into the garden bed (or in garden jargon, “in situ”) after the last frost date in their region has passed. As a native Mediterranean herb, basil likes to be planted in full sun (that’s 8 hours – or as close as you can get to it), and well-drained soil with some composted manure or other organic materials. Avoid over-watering the seedlings as basil is prone to “damping off” disease."

So, i looked up "damping off disease" and found the best layman's explanation on this site. With respect to the seeds which never emerged, it said this:

"Babies can be affected even before they break their seedcoat. Moisture from the fungus ridden soil enters into the seed and your plant is already doomed. In this case, you may not even have a seedling at all. It could rot under the soil before emerging. If you plant a ton of seeds and only get a few babies, then they probably fell to the fungus in the soil."

I am now extremely worried about the plants that DID emerge, but are not thriving - they may have root rot under the soil. Mr. Stripey, are you okay? Please sun, come back!

I may have to replant some of the lettuces, the peas, and definitely the basil.

A sodden mess is what we have here

2009-05-08T20:26:00.006-04:00

What happens when it rains for eight days straight? Well you cannot weed and the weeds proliferate. Here is a photographic example of the kinds of weeds that are growing in this garden. Patches of grass, basically. I think since I killed all the other kinds of weeds with the Roundup, the grasslike stuff is able to come up. Unfortunately it does not grow in the rest of the yard, where the crabgrass chokes it. The yard is revolting and not grassy at all.

There are other types of weeds growing, but unfortunately they are covered in mud. We got out there and valiantly, for the first time we were able to in over a week, attacked them in tandem for about two hours.

The sad part is that a lot of the plants I started from seed are not growing, they are being choked out by the constant rain and no sun. Plants need sun, this is a basic concept. In addition, their roots will rot if they are overwatered. In addition, if weeds proliferate (the weeds seem not to mind the constant rain and minimal sun) around them, the weed roots will choke out their roots.

Take the bibb lettuce, for example. This is what it looks like these days:

Pitiful. You can barely tell it's supposed to be something. It's supposed to rain all weekend, too, and I just hope it can hang on until next week. Take a look at our ONE lonely pea plant:

To you it looks like it's flourishing, to us, though, it's at the end of the muddiest part of the garden that does not drain well, surrounded by encroaching weeds. If you notice in these photos the mud is really churned up - that is a result of a couple of hours of hard labor digging up weeds. Weeding in mud is easy, by the way, although no weeding feels good on the back. Well, anyway, it is interesting to note that the one surviving pea plant IS at the muddiest end of the row. I wonder if they like really wet flooded soil . . .

There IS some good news in all of this: the bush beans!

Some of them that you can't see, are a little withered and sad, but most of them are towering and gracious. I hope they continue to do well. The zucchini look the same as last time i posted, and I thinned them out to two plants per area. I am supposed to thin them to one plant, but with more rain coming over the next few days, I will wait to see if any die off naturally. I am kind of scared.

The basil - no sign of it.

The container of dill has sprouted and I am overjoyed, finally! The container of Early Girl tomatoes had begun to develop white fungus, and i pulled it out of the rain on Thursday. The white fungus is receding and it got some sun today. That is my insurance policy for tomatoes so I am trying to tend to it better. Too bad it took me so long to remember I could pull it out of the rain! Duh!

Send me photos of YOUR gardens and plants so I can post them!!

Even better!

2009-05-03T20:00:00.008-04:00

The zucchini is really coming up now, I am basically jumping for joy. Mister Siren came out and took some great photos in the garden on Saturday and then we took some more today. The problem is only that it has been raining for five days straight. I am getting worried that this garden is not getting enough sun. I think it needs at least 6 hours a day. The basil, dill, and cilantro are not appearing and they are probably too soaked and need more sun. In addition, if the water does not have time to burn off, the tomato plants will develop fungus (I think.)

The Zucchini seedlings on Saturday:

And today, Sunday:

Here are what the beans are looking like (really cute!):

Saturday, just poking out their wee heads:

And Sunday, totally showing their stuff!

Also making a showing were the beautiful mesclun greens in a row:

And I think these are the sugar snap peas, but won't be able to tell for a few more days, i guess:

My grandma told me to put down newspaper as mulch, and I was meaning to do this this weekend, but it rained all day! I need to do this, because the weeds are REALLY proliferating! Photos of weeds will be up soon for your viewing pleasure.

They live!

2009-05-01T22:50:00.014-04:00

Take a looky here!

Well, zucchini are supposed to look like this, according to the internet:

In my garden I found this near where I planted the zucchini:

It was weird, thick root-like things sticking out of the ground in all directions. Now as mentioned in the last post, I planted three zucchini seeds in each spot for a plant - i was a little over-eager. So it is possible that these seeds are just going crazy. But it is also possible that these aren't even zucchini. There were a lot of weeds in that garden before i planted these other seeds. And from the photos I have seen, I haven't seen things like this! I am confused! I did not pull them up.

Next: bush beans. Is this them?

I don't know, but I think they might be, because this sort of thing is coming up at regularly spaced intervals in the bean row. :)

Sugar snap peas? Hard to tell!! What about this? Could this be it?

Everything is brown in the evening, covered in dirt . . .

Then there was the row of mesclun greens, the pride of the garden so far! Look at it! :)

We have Bibb Lettuce, but by the time i finished all my weeding and took photos, the little sprouts had closed up and gone to bed. You can kind of see their green-i-ness amidst the clumps of dirt though. They look like alfalfa sprouts, Very Cute:

Okay but here comes two weird ones. Arugula. Arugula was definitely showing some greenness, but on the other hand we have weird rootvines in the immediate vicinity of each clump of evenly spaced greenness, making me wonder if the emerging thick root-like vines belong to and are part of the Arugula. Does anyone know if this is teh case? I tried to dig one up to see if it went back to the arugula and it went deeper than i wanted to mess with w/out disturbing all the soil the sprouts rested on. But as you can see from the photos below, I have tried to indicate what is happening in the garden so someone can see and maybe offer an opinion on whether this is a weed i should eradicate, or the anchoring root system of the arugula??

Any opinions are appreciated. And finally: the sorrel - a very hardy, hard stemmed green, i think. The stems are coming up very brown and tough, evenly spaced, and no bulls***. Behold:

So, the only thing I am bummed about is that the basil, the plant which is supposed to emerge the quickest, I have not seen hide nor hair of. It is supposed to look like this:

but i have not seen anything even remotely like that. Booooooo!! I want basil!

When will they appear?

2009-05-01T09:32:00.002-04:00

It's been raining for two days but yesterday after work I went out and weeded for two hours. Weeding in a garden of that size is a job of epic proportions. I need to just put mulch down in between the rows.

The good news is that things are starting to peek up! When Mister Siren loads the photos up you can all share in the excitement. It surprised me that I was seeing stuff already b/c of the expected germination times. So I made a chart.

PLANT	DAYS TO EMERGE/GERMINATE	DAYS TO HARVEST
Basil	5-7	Not stated
Sorrel	5-10	Not stated
Sugar Snap Peas	5-10	Not stated
Bibb Lettuce	7-10	57 days
Cilantro	7-10	Not stated
Mesclun Greens	7-10	40-60 days
Dill	7-14	Not stated
Bush beans	7-14	50 days
Arugula	8-10	40 days
Zucchini	10-14	57 days

We planted these seeds on Sunday, and yesterday was Thursday. I guess that is about five days in seed time. (?). So it would make sense that we were seeing the five day plants emerging. But i was seeing a few things in the camps of others . . . Definitely no dill, no cilantro. But weird and strange things with the zucchini. Nothing exactly happening right above where i planted it, but i don't really know what happens underground when you plant a zucchini. Does it grow a huge underground viney root system? Because I think it grew roots and vines underneath one of the basil plants and popped out clear on the other side. There are hard thick things emerging all around the zucchini row and also far away from it that look the same. Faithless me, when the package says plant ONE every three feet, I put in three seeds just to be sure. (I didn't want to be left with no zucchini!) i hope the entire garden is not overrun by zucchini.

Then, with the basil, which are supposed to be the earliest to sprout, i didn't see anything I could identify as basil. Unless I pulled them all up thinking they were weeds. (Forgive me, it looked like the same weeds growing everywhere else.) But then maybe i planted them too deep. They are only supposed to be planted 1/4 in deep and who knows if i did that.

I'll put pics up tonight. The long and short of it is, the lettuces, I can tell they are definitely growing. The other stuff, no. And there are way too many weeds. You'll see!

Garden 2009

2009-04-26T17:07:00.015-04:00

Okay, what we've all been waiting for, me included.

Garden, 2009 summer edition.

Well last year i did not have the heart to post pictures of the flood plane it became after my bright idea to dig the ground up and take most of the earth out and create a big hole in the yard and call it a garden. Funny how that can cause a place to collect water and not drain well. And then, guess what. Well, a weed jungle took over and with my limited time I was not able to vanquish the weeds in the 15 x 14 area. It seemed like every day when I would weed for an hour, I would go back out and the area I had not weeded would have grown over.

Then it rained for two weeks straight, and I could not weed, and the rain beat my plants to death, and the weeds took over, and I was done.

But, look on the bright side. It's a new dawn, a new day. I have new ideas this year. I have a new plan. Live and learn. Take a lick and keep on ticking. So this is how we started.

#1: fill the low spots back in with dirt. We did that.
#2: While waiting for planting, keep weeds from growing. Plan for this was to put weed-stop plastic over the garden, as a preventive measure. Gardening books, sites, and the manufacturer of the plastic assured me that if we put this plastic down, and used stakes to secure it, it would a) prevent any weeds from growing b/c they couldn't grow high enough, and b) create so much heat they would die.

Well, behold the results of the use of "Weed-Stop" plastic:

As you can see, the weeds have grown so profusely under this covering that they are actually spilling out between the overlapped sections. Furthermore, they are lifting up the plastic itself. Finally, you can't see this, but they are pulling up the stakes used to secure the plastic.

I pulled the plastic up when it got around time to plant, to find this disappointment:

Basically a garden of weeds! yay! So, first things, first, a plan for these weeds. My dad's suggestion was to get out the hoe and start weeding. I, however, knew that there was no time in my schedule for a weeding assignment of these proportions. I went to the Lowe's and looked into their weed solutions. They have two: one is called Preen, and is granules you can put into your veggie garden once your plants are already established and growing. That's because it prevents weeds (and other plants) from growing.

The other solution is RoundUp. You can spray it on live plants and it kills them - to the root system - in a week. It says it is safe to use in vegetable gardens b/c it only kills the plant you spray it on. What about poisoning soil you have not planted yet, though? I asked the garden center guys, and they said wait a good three weeks before planting. So, here's what the weeds looked like three weeks after I sprayed them with RoundUp:

Take a goooooood look at that. Now isn't that pretty? Heck yeah, RoundUp. Forget you, Weed-Stop plastic. RoundUp has a pleasant coconut smell that reminds me of sunscreen at the beach.

So, today was planting day! I did not start seeds indoors this year. No way. I waited and bought plants at the store for transplanting, and did seeds straight into the ground for the rest.

We carefully planned out how we would plant the garden in rows, etc. by using vines to represent rows, and putting the seed packets at the end, as you can see:

Here are some of the transplanted plants:

That's a row of tomatoes, and off to the right are two bell peppers (red and orange). The tomatoes are a big heirloom yellow one called Mr. Stripey, a Big Bush hybrid, and a cherry tomato. The farthest plant is a jalapeno pepper plant. Mr. Stripey is below, pre-transplant:

I kept a few plants in containers. One of them is a tomato plant, b/c I cannot live without tomatoes and I want to be on the safe side. This tomato plant is called "Early Girl" and it bears fruit much earlier than the others, a month earlier. In the other two pots are dill, and cilantro, the two herbs which infect everything around them - so I figured they would be good candidates for containers. The cilantro was a transplant but the dill is seeds.

I planted other herbs in the garden, though. There are three herb plants at the end of the lettuce rows: a tarragon plant, a rosemary plant, and a lavendar plant:

They mark rows of leaf lettuce (bibb lettuce), mesclun greens, and arugula, and then there is an unmarked row of sorrel (a spicy lemony green).

Here is the entire garden in its present glory:

In addition to the lettuces, tomatoes, and peppers, there are the herbs mentioned, as well as a row of zucchini, bush beans, sugar snap peas, and two rows of basil.

Can't wait!!!

Another NY trip

2009-04-26T16:43:00.008-04:00

We went back up to NY, well the Mr. and I went there for the first time together. It was really fun and was the first vacation we have taken together since being married. Whoo-hoo, alone time!!

It was so much fun!! We took the bus up there and round trip tickets are only $42.00 per person! The trip is about 4 hours but a little bit longer on Fridays when you hit traffic (about five hours if I'm being honest.) On Monday when we returned it was a four hour trip. The bus was great, it had wireless internet, it was clean, free bottled water, and showed a movie. Plus my best friend was beside me. :) The company is called DC2NY.

Well we stayed in a hotel that we got a deal on from Travelzoo Top 20, a weekly email subscription service I get with travel deals that are really useful. The hotel was called Shelburne Murray Hill and was in the Murray Hill section (also fondly known as "Curry Hill" for its great Indian Food!) The hotel was very nice, recently renovated, but weirdly, we did not spend much time there. Normally we like to spend a lot of time relaxing in the hotel.

The first thing we did was go up on the Empire State Building to kill some time. At night, we went to see Mary Poppins on Broadway - we cannot recommend this show enough for adults or kids. It's co-produced by Disney and the sets were mind-blowing, not to mention the talent on this show. We walked everywhere and met my friend N, who was still living there, for Chinese Hot Pot dinner/lunch. Warning, too many chilis in this bowl!!! I don't know what's happened to me lately but I can't handle the chilis like I used to! This is a big bowl of broth and then you order all the different foods you want to put in there to simmer/boil - then you all dip in, pull it out, and eat them. Sort of like fondue:

Annnnd, we went over to Rockefeller Center, and watched people ice skating, but did not do so ourselves . . .

And went all the way to Brooklyn to have what is considered the "best" pizza in the city, from a place called Grimaldi's. Now, this place is in competition with a spot called Lombardi's so we will have to try that place next time. Personally i loved the spot in Little Italy we went last time. And Little Italy, although touristy with all the street cafes, etc., would be a great place to have a meal outdoors, touristy though it is. What can i say, i am a sucker. BUT, Grimaldi's can turn out some slices. The line was down the block and we just got in it b/c we knew something good was inside. I watched them making the pies and they weren't making them like i had ever seen a pizza made. The crust was a little juicy when ours came out but it was wonderful.

All in all, we missed a few things I would have loved. We didn't lay around in Central Park b/c it was too cold. And did not make it back to the National museum, a lot of things in which I wanted to share with the Mister. But we did get foodstuffs from Little Italy to bring home - 20 yr old balsamic vinegar and dry sausages which we have already dipped into. Not to mention an eclair which i stuffed into my face on the spot and risotto balls they heated up for us in the deli which we ate as a snack. AND we brought home a heavy bag of NY bagels which we are still munching on the weekends!

Whoo-hoo!

Inaugural Ball

2009-04-26T16:29:00.006-04:00

Yes it has been awhile, but life has been busy! For me and for the good old USA. One good thing about living up here is that I get to do a lot of cool things that just weren't available in the places I lived previously, such as Florida, California, or my hometown Atlanta.

For instance, when history was made and Barack Obama was sworn in as President, everyone in the country wanted to be part of the party. But my husband actually got tickets to one of the balls - the Commander-in-Chief's ball, in fact. We got all fancied up and hightailed it down there to see Mr. "O'Biden" (as Sarah Pailin calls him) and Mr. President himself greet us and greet the troops on a big screen.

We were close, very close. You can see in these photos. Their speeches were good. Bon Jovi sang. So did Jordin Sparks. I think she was on American Idol or something. I did not take her photo because my morning show plays this one song by her every day at the same time and I wasn't going anywhere near the stage b/c I can't stand that song.

I present to you our new Vice President, smiling like a million bucks:

And the new Mr. President:

So close, I could have thrown a shoe. Now that's access!

The Commander in Chief came out with Michele and they danced together. They also danced with the two luckiest enlisted people in the armed forces. Don't get too familiar, buddy!! ha ha.

Trip To New York

2008-09-28T16:44:00.019-04:00

I went to NY to visit N!! It was my second time in NY city but my first time as an adult. What an energizing trip! I wanted to share everything I saw with Mr. Siren so i snapped, snapped away with the camera, returning with 186 photos. I rode up on the bus which went straight from Dupont Circle to Penn Station, no stops, and it was only $42 round trip. N came to meet me at the stop and I waited for her for about 30 minutes. It was 11:30 p.m. on a Friday night and the city was ALIVE, people out walking in big crowds, lights flashing, traffic buzzing around- I was activated and ready to go after the 5 hour bus ride . . . whoo hoo!

We had so much fun, walking around all weekend nonstop. N lives in Harlem and she taught me how to ride around on the subway although I don't really understand it yet. But I do have a level of comfort with it, at least. On Day 1 we went to Chinatown. There are lots of things to see in Chinatown, such as:
1) TONS OF FOOD ON THE SIDEWALK, Like fresh produce (weird stuff, too), and FISH of all kinds

2) CHEAP KNOCKOFF sunglasses, handbags, jewelry, etc. etc. (I got a $5 pair of sunglasses, a new purse for $20, and some nice gold leaf earrings for $5. See how much you can afford in NY when your bus ticket was only $42?)

3) BUCKETS OF FROGS

Then we went to Little Italy! I had heard about this great place for pizza from a coworker and was looking forward to a slice and a glass of wine all day. We thought to confirm with a shop owner that the recommended place was not a tourist trap and he sent us to a spot called Sal's pizza instead. It was like something out of a Billy Joel song- not touristy at all, no cafe street-side tables, just a hole in the wall joint with red-checked table cloths and a buncha photos on the wall. 2 slices each, a salad to share, and a carafe of house wine = $40 total. Can't beat it! We made friends with Enzo the baker and I think I have to go back there every time I visit NYC.

But before we ever got to rest our weary feet and get tipsy on wine and sated by slices, we took a nice little tour around the neighborhood. Little Italy has all kinds of shops with meat hanging up and cheese hanging up.

One window even had a little display with ships made out of cheese wheels and rinds. In one of the shops I got some amazing 12 y/o authentic balsamic vinegar- not the fake stuff- for under $20, imported direct from "the boot." We also got some little rice balls with meat in the center for a snack. Mmm.

And then we were off to see a Broadway show. A Chorus Line, starring Mario Lopez! You will not be able to see it, as it was the final week of performances and it is never to return. How lucky we were! We had great seats up in the balcony. On the way we passed the usual policewoman on horseback and stopped into the Mariott for a $15.00 MARTINI! I COULD NOT BELIEVE IT.

Next day was lounging around in Central Park. Now, Central Park is strange. To me. It is really a "grass beach." No, i did not hear anyone there call it a grass beach, i thought of that myself. I'm sure someone else has called it that, though. Because everyone in the section we were in was stripped down to their bathing suit, laid out on a towel, and had a friend or loved one rubbing suntan oil all over them. There were groups of scantily-clad folks engaged in athletic activities. And there were plenty of perverts to go around, delighting in the opportunities to pretend to read books while staring up every available crotch in sight.

Then in the evening we both experienced something wonderful: DIM SUM! A little place in Chinatown called Nice Green Bo restaurant. We walked past all of the same stuff from yesterday, except this time, the shopowners were tossing fish juice on our feet as we passed and we had to wipe them off once or twice. Ick! At Nice Green Bo we had tea, chow fun with cabbage and pork, some incredible sauteed or fried green beans, pork soup dumplings, and scallion pancakes and guess how much it all was? Guess? $20.00 TOTAL!!! I love NYC!!!

The soup dumplings were just ok, in N and my opinions. According to reviews when the restaurant used to be New Green Bo they were incredible and they have changed, and I think that fried dumplings would have been better, but you can't really pass up soup dumplings when offered. Still, next time I would pass at this place. Everything else was truly, truly amazing. The best scallion pancake I have ever had in my life. The chow fun we got was not on the menu. The green beans were out of this world if maybe a tiny bit too salty. Made ya thirsty for that tea!

The next morning we hit the Museum of Natural History before I boarded the bus back to D.C., but I'll post that in awhile since this post has taken forever!!

The Novel

2008-09-28T16:34:00.003-04:00

I am still writing the novel. I have done the synopsis and the character outlines for the two main characters. It has been good to bounce ideas off of the Mister, my dad, a girlfriend, a coworker, and a friend serving time overseas, so far. I have approached everyone that I know who writes or knows someone who writes or is in publishing for advice! But a lot of it is dead ends. I'd really like to sign up for a class; the local arts center seems to have great writing classes for adults who are doing this exact thing, at all levels. No extra money right now, but I'll put a little aside and hopefully keep amassing enough material to join the more advanced group by the time I can sign up :)

Writing a novel

2008-05-25T13:24:00.002-04:00

The garden is not doing well, folks. I know the photos below look really great, and I can't wait to post the photos of the nice rows of lettuce as it began to pop its head up several weeks ago, but right now it is decimated by floods. I had planted some cute little tomato plants recently and they were trampled by floods too. I have no energy for the garden right now. Sigh. I'll post more pictures when Mr. Siren gets back in town. "Mr. Jetset" has been doing a lot of international travel for the past few months and I insist that he take the digital camera with him, so unfortunately I have not had the chance to upload any recent photos. Few more weeks and then you can cry with me!

I do have other news, though. I have made a commitment to myself to start writing a book, seriously, with an eye toward publication. I have no idea how this is going to go since it's going to take quite a bit of research. It's going to involve field research into federal prisons (something I know quite a bit about now), the armed forces (something many people I know, know quite a bit about), and Capitol Hill (well, at least I am well-located for those interviews.) I have an old tattered notebook with several fiction ideas that i've been dragging around with me for years, but a writer must write, and I want to at least try to write a complete novel before I'm 30. Maybe it will be a success, or who knows, at least I will get some experience in the hellish process. This idea is a new idea, though.

I guess i'll just have to write in the mornings and evenings and as for the field research- ?????. I'll keep ya updated. Should be interesting.

Ready for Planting

2008-05-11T15:06:00.005-04:00

After the garden had been sitting for a week, and I had made a couple half-hearted attempts to dig up the remaining strip, I began strategizing. Even should I dig the rest up, I did not own a rototiller. I could rent one, but did not know how to use one. I did not have a wheelbarrow to move the mountain of dirt! I just wanted to plant my plants!

My husband stepped in to save the day. "Hire someone!" he said. With this bit of encouragement I set about on yet another mission to find suitable hired help within my miniscule budget. It took 2.5 weeks to actually get someone to show up for the job, notwithstanding two fellows who actually had an appointed date and time!! But finally a nice woman from a nearby farm appeared with her own equipment and did the job while I was at work (coming home twice to check on her.) She never moved the mountain of dirt and it still sits there, nice and green now. One day we will move it.

So, BEHOLD, the garden ready for planting!

Looks beautiful, doesn't it? ahhhhhhhhhh . . .

So, what did I plant? Four rows of lettuce, none doing well to speak of now, a row of arugula, a row of mesclun greens. And growing inside, six kinds of herbs waiting to be transplanted, red and green pepper plants, tomato plants. Also planning to plant pole beans, zucchini, and maybe cucumbers.

I can't wait to pay for NO produce this summer! Oh i am going to plant garlic as well, but that is something that you plant in the fall, unfortunately.

The Novice Gardener

2008-05-11T14:42:00.009-04:00

I am trying to grow a garden. I would say "we" but in reality it has been mostly me. So, step 1 was starting the seeds indoors in the winter. I got a nice seed tray and carefully and excitedly started the seeds. That will be a different post. But step 2 was getting a garden patch started.

Well, behold the jungle that was to be the garden. It was quite scary:

We had avoided this part of the yard for months, scared of the snakes, etc, we would find beneath these brambles. And they were thorny. But it was time to clear it, so I got to clearing. As you can see, i did have some small assistance from the mister on this part.

Once this part was cleared, what was left was a nicely cleared- a big- 11x16 patch of earth growing every sort of unidentifiable green thing. So, there was nothing for it except to dig it up. Yes, dig it up. With a shovel. I wanted to dig up all the roots of all living things, so that when I planted my garden, only things things I had planted would grow there. This was my novice idea. (A bit of foreshadowing, hmm? Seemed intuitive at the time.)

The digging part was so, so, so hard. I'm talking back spasms. It produced a "mountain of dirt" which grew next to the "mountain of brambles."

Slowly but surely, I personally dug up, down to six inches, the turf. To prepare a garden bed in your yard, you must dig up the yard, then remove all rocks you find. You must then rototill the soil and mix in a good topsoil. You must decide whether you want to do a raised garden bed or ensure that you have an area with good drainage, such as on a slope. All of this I learned in various gardening books and on the internet. Well, I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this digging. The Mr. helped for small spurts when I was so weary I was basically weeping, and bit by bit, it almost got finished.

The resulting mountain of dirt- this would be fun for kids if i had some: (see the brambles in the background?)

Since this is how the garden stayed for about three weeks after that, I'll make that the end of this post!! We have no wheelbarrow to move the mountain of dirt and I could not force myself to finish the strip to the right after the sheer amount of willpower and effort it took to beat my body into submission for the part you see completed. It just sat, and sat . . . . . while the seeds inside grew . . . :)

Intro from the Seeker

2008-05-11T13:52:00.002-04:00

The Blog! The Blog! Finally i'm putting it up here! The problem is that I've had ideas for several different kinds of blogs . . . which has kept me from doing any of them. Well, i'm forging ahead here, for everyone's benefit (mostly my own) and this is just going to be one big blog of domesticity which reflects the sweeter side of life. With a little help from the mister I'll try to update as often as possible and family and cyber friends can stay updated on what my real life, up-to-the-minute personality is these days. (But you won't be bothered with my career or political musings here. That shall be a different, much more anonymous, blog . . .)

The title is also going to be the name of my boat, one day - and denotes my journey in this life. I seek Shangri-La- earthly paradise- a place to retreat and retire to away from the immense frustrations of the world I live in. I can see my parents and family members, including the mister, rolling their eyes at this statement, but thankfully, this is MY blog where I can tell the truth about my own thoughts! Here is a quick reference on the mythical Shangri-La: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangri-La

My daily Shangri-La: right now is a slice of garden, my forays into cooking, and piles and piles and piles of books. Also, travel. I will share these with you. Bon appetit!

Seeking Shangri-La

Wild Strawberries

Sprouting Pride

Weeds weeds everywhere

The Bunny is Back

Cool weather running

I'm a little late, but I'm a little Lazy

Pepper Sickness?

Eating Mr. Stripey!

Tomatoes are carb free . . . . ???

DESTRUCTION IN THE GARDEN

Tomato Sickness

Watch my zucchini grow

Best tomato pasta

Accompaniments:

Everyone loves tomatoes

Monster Zucchini

WOW! Best Grilled Corn

Salad Nicoise

Ingredients

Method

Mr. Stripey Produces!

Salsa Garden

My Little Peppers and How They Grow

Growing basil; Terminal Leaves

Squash blossoms

I'm a Bean Counter

Am I What We Eat?

My first harvest

Pruning in June

Flower already!

The Peas are so Cute

Juicier and Juicier

The Newspaper is Indeed Biodegradable

Rotated plantings, Peas and Lettuce

My First Tomato- on its way

Herb Report, good and bad

Insects and yellow leaves

Reflection in Zucchini

Wild Strawberries

Kate Moss is in the garden

Herb Salad

TOMATOES!!!!

Anniversary Soup

Bunnies and Fences

USS FREEDOM

Why the Basil Won't Grow

A sodden mess is what we have here

Even better!

They live!

When will they appear?

Garden 2009

Another NY trip

Inaugural Ball

Trip To New York

The Novel

Writing a novel

Ready for Planting

The Novice Gardener

Intro from the Seeker