Compost

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Yapper

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Before And After

Pepper bed, before and after pulling 10,000 morning glory seedlings out. Photos in the wrong order, but it doesn't seem like the hassle of trying to figure out why or how to fix it. ;)

Onion

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Cucumbers

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More Berries

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Clematis

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Lawn

My poor brown lawn. Yes, we are officially in a drought, despite the fact that the sky has spit at us twice this weekend...
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The Dirty Life

This is the best book I've read in years - it made me laugh, cry, shake my head, and daydream about quitting my job and buying a farm in the middle of nowhere. Of course, I don't actually have what it takes to live that kind of lifestyle day in and day out, year after year. As the author says, with a dairy cow, there is milking to be done twice a day, no exceptions. No vacations, no days off, no calling out sick. And that's just one animal!

I'm in the habit of reading several books at a time, but by the time I got 1/4 of the way through this one, the rest had fallen by the wayside. I could barely put it down.

Over the past few years, I've become more and more aware of what I'm eating and where it comes from. I've always had a garden, ever since I can remember. Obviously, home grown organic produce tastes better than anything you can buy in a grocery store. What I'd never given much thought to, until more recently, is the rest of my diet. Sure, I try to eat healthy, both for actual health reasons, and to keep from getting fat as a rhino. Then my husband got laid off, and when he finally found work again, it was in Florida. Between the stress of the separation and the burden of keeping a household for two up by myself (3 dogs, 2 cats, an acre of grass, etc...), combined with a late frost last year that killed all my tomatoes, peppers, etc..., the garden just utterly failed to launch. So I started visiting the local farmers markets. Lo and behold, there was a world of fresh, locally produced food out there that I'd never noticed before. I broadened my horizons and started buying vegetables I'd never had outside of a restaurant. I bought handmade sausages, organic pastured "minimally processed" milk and yogurt, handcrafted cheeses, butter, and baked goods. And I learned to cook for the first time, sorta. I mostly slid into a sorta lazy default vegetarianism, because I'm skeeved out by the idea of handling raw meat. To be honest, I took the sausage to my sister's and my brother in law cooked that one.

I've always enjoyed gardening books, books about growing plants, for food or otherwise. But I started reading books about food. I'd read a few Michael Pollan books over the years, starting with The Botany Of Desire, but that was about the extent of my food reading. My husband does the cooking. I grow it, he cooks it. Or at least that's how it was before he moved to Florida for 9 months. Now we're more likely to share the kitchen duties if we're both home, rather than him cooking for me. For instance, this weekend, he grilled fish and steak while I made potatoes with butter and onions, baked asparagus with olive oil and ground black pepper, and sauteed chard with garlic and olive oil. It was a delicious meal, finished with chocolate chip ice cream and black raspberries from the garden. :)

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Dinner

OK, this is not actually from my garden, but it was cleaned there, and served with produce from the garden and from the farmers market.

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Weeds

Morning glory seedlings attempting to take over the pepper bed. Unfortunately, there are seeds planted to the right where there are no plants, which makes it a bit more difficult to weed.

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Pick-Me-Up

I have been having a really lousy time lately, and I ended up venting far more than I intended to on the phone with my mother the other night. When I went to leave for work a few hours later, I found this and a card stuck to my door. Gotta love moms who love you.

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Greens Glossary From Garden Design

This article was obviously styled and photographed by someone who loves their fresh homegrown greens as much as I do.

This is my pepper bed, which was completely weed-free less than 48 hours ago. I know that because I pulled every single weed by hand in the >100F weather we've been having. It's been drought-y for a few weeks now, so I haven't had as many weed issues as usual since I only water actual plants (mostly via soaker hose) and not entire beds (like with a sprinkler). Well, last night it finally rained, and this is what the weed situation looks like less than 12 hours later in my only un-mulched bed. Thousands of them, mostly baby morning glories. Guess I know what I'm doing during daylight tomorrow.

At least it rained, though, and I was finally able to give my soaker hoses a bit of a break.

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Dessert #2

Leftover black raspberries + Georgia peaches from the "farmer's market" in Harrington yesterday. I have difficulty calling it a farmer's market with a straight face, since there were only three tiny tables and half the produce was non-local (Georgia peaches and Florida tomatoes, among other things), but on the theory that if supported it will flourish, I went ahead and bought something local from each table plus one basket of peaches. I hope to see more local stuff and less trucked in stuff as the season progresses. And the peaches WERE good, it's just that I could've bought those in any ol' supermarket.

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Dessert

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Compost

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Ridiculous

The heat index was forecast for >105F when the temperature was supposed to be 96F. Not sure what it turned out to be.

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Cooperative Bugs

I love when the bugs munch on the weeds and leave the good plants alone - the holey leaves here are morning glories, and the ones that are left untouched are black raspberries. :)

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Wilted

It's so hot (nearly 100 degrees today, forecast heat index for tomorrow was 110, last I heard) and dry out, I'm going to have to give my ornamentals a sip, which is pretty rare. Usually, I give them water regularly for a week or two when I transplant them, then leave them to sink or swim on their own - it's a Darwinian yard out there, outside the vegetable garden! When even my violets, which have been there for 6 or 7 years, are wilting, it's time to relent and be a little more generous with the water.

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Not As Lovely

...once they're past their prime. More red hot poker photos here. I'll get out there and cut the stalks back one of these days, the foliage is still lovely for the rest of the summer.

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Lily

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Reading Material

Possibly my favorite magazine. And I've been wanting to dip my toe into solar power (aside from the lights out in the lawn) for a while now.

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Super Bok Choy Salad

I bought some bok choy (or pak choi, or however you want to spell it!) at the Milton Farmer's Market last weekend, and my friend Karen gave me this recipe, although I didn't get it until after I'd already stir fried it with summer squash, garlic, scallions, and olive oil. But I'll be trying this next time!

1/2 cup sunflower seeds (shelled)
3-4 Tbsp slivered almonds
---Spread them both on a cookie sheet and toast them [bake at 350 for 8 to 10 minutes until lightly browned].

1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup olive oil
1/4 cup cider vinegar
2 Tbsp soy sauce
---Put all in small saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Promptly remove from heat and cool to room temperature.

1 bok choy, shredded (rough chop is fine: bite-sized pieces)
6 green onions (white AND green), chopped
---Put bok choy in bowls (makes 2 to 4 servings, depending on whether it's your main dish, or a side salad), scatter onion on top. Drizzle with dressing, and sprinkle toasted seeds and nuts over the top. Serve immediately. It's SCRUMPTIOUS, and so good for you!
Enjoy!

Breakfast

Blurry photo, but you get the idea.

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Odd Ones On The End

Habanero at the top, Thai Hot Pepper at the bottom

Most peppers look exactly the same until they actually have peppers on them, but these two are the odd ones out - different leaves than all the rest. Of course, if you're not familiar with what the rest look like, it'd probably help if it had occurred to me to take a closeup of those too.

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Mint

...and leftover baling twine, safely out of reach of the mower.

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Marked For Repair

I think I'm just going to duct tape it for now. I mean, it's supposed to leak, it's just not supposed to SPRAY like a pressure washer!

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Transplanting

Tools of the trade.

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There Will Be Peppers

28 California Wonder, 4 Jalepeno, 4 Hot Banana, 2 Red Hot Cherry, 1 Cayenne, 1 Sweet Banana, 1 Habanero, and 1 Thai Hot.

I have a confession to make: I somehow managed to lose an entire flat of seedlings. I know I planted 72 hot peppers, of various types. Of course I wouldn't have transplanted them all into my garden - I would have given away or sold the extras. But somehow it came up missing (not dead, missing) and by the time I realized it, it was too late to start over from seed. So today, I went to Lowe's and spent more on each of those plants at the far end of the bed than I would have for each packet of seeds.

Next year? More organization, less wasted money.

Aha! A good use for my blog! Now I'll remember which is which after the tags disappear.

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Brave Frog

For those of you unfamiliar with the neighborhood around my pond, I have two great big granddaddy frogs who are quite skittish and shy, and only ever seen from a distance, and then this one little brave frog who won't quite let me pick him up with my bare hands, but who will tolerate being scooped up in the skimmer net quite contentedly, and who doesn't even flinch when I come within a foot of him, as long as I don't do it too suddenly. In between these two photos, I stepped right over him, across the narrow part of the ponds, and he didn't even blink.

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Pathetically Small Tomato

3x as big as it was when I transplanted it a few days ago.
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Love Notes

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Things I Would Like To Accomplish Before The End Of The Weekend

Plant the rest of the things that should have been planted a month ago:

• Watermelons
• Corn
• Herbs - cilantro, basil, whatever other seeds I have
• Marigolds
• The rest of the onions
• Garlic
• Beans
• Cucumbers
• Squash
• Zucchini
• Hot peppers

Mow

Wire brush and paint another piece of furniture

Fix the pond pump and get the ponds cleaned out (as well as I can manage without committing tadpole genocide) and running properly

Finish removing wire grass and mulching around the pond

Hmm...

The top pond is the one that's usually completely full to overflowing, since it *does* overflow into the lower ponds. I turned off the pump yesterday, because we were losing water. When I went out today, it was the top pond that was considerably lower than usual, and the bottom pond was nearly full. Either someone sneaked into my yard and scooped water from the top pond to the bottom pond (bypassing the connecting basin in the middle which was also low) or the pump hoses behaved as siphons, to the tune of at least 20 gallons of water, even though they were turned off. Weird.

Drip

Soaker hoses for bell pepper transplants about to go in.

Yum

Oh yes I did eat them straight off the vine, after rinsing them off in the garden hose. I wouldn't offer them to a guest without a real cleansing, but I don't mind eating them that way myself.

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MIA

Well, OK, they're not actually "missing". I dropped them off at T&T Small Engine Repair in Hartly this afternoon for repair, along with one wheel from the cart for replacement. Hopefully they'll be done soon, since I discovered that they were flat AGAIN when I went out to mow the grass, so obviously the grass didn't actually get mowed.

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Daily Compost Haul

I had a vegetarian day today, as I do about half the time when I'm cooking for myself. It's pure laziness. If I'm feeling slightly less lazy, especially in the winter, I eat pan fried frozen turkey burgers. Anyway, today's haul included remnants of pak choi, lemon, summer squash, scallions, and a half a watermelon. I try to get it out to the garden every day this time of year, otherwise it draws fruit flies.

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Bell Peppers

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Clematis

Round two of blossoms is starting.

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Daily Dose Of Paint Fumes

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Losing Water

The water level was about 8" low today. It's been hot and dry, but not hot and dry enough to lose 8" in 3 days, so we've got a leak somewhere again. Either that or the pump flow is too high and it's overflowing from the top pond rather than flowing into the bottom pond. I turned the pump off for now, I'll have to investigate more thoroughly within the next few days. Before the water starts turning green.

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Weird Bug

He's a little hard to see, but you can click the photo for a bigger version, and click again to magnify that. He looks like a darker blade of grass, just below and between the two clover blossoms, approximately in the middle of the frame. The only reason I noticed him is because he made quite a flutter coming in for a landing.

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Pergola

And grape vines coming off the top of the apple tree. The Mr is still plotting to get them on to the pergola instead of the apple tree, or at least in addition to the apple tree.

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