September Garden

I know. It's not even September anymore.

After lamenting that things grew so very slowly this cold year, my garden did finally grant me some yummy fruits and veggies. And, as usual, I couldn't help but photograph them. Why not, right?

Our little apple tree did well in its inaugural year of fruit bearing and produced four different kinds of small, but delicious apples.And after the pear tree was raided by squirrels last year, it had a pretty good crop this year, thanks to some bird netting. The pears are always fantastic. The tree now as some sort of blister mite infection that I can't seem to et rid of, so the pears turned out bumpy and mutant-looking, but they tasted great anyway.And although my tomatoes clearly don't thrive in whatever kind of soil we've got (I'm thinking it's probably infected with something that tomatoes can't handle and I need to stop planting for several years or find some seriously disease-resistant plants) we still got at least a few tomatoes off each of the plants.There were a few dinners worth of beans and three or four cucumbers as well.

And here it is October. There are just a few apples left out there and summer is already feeling like a distant memory. Guess I'll look forward to some lemons and grapefruit!

Summer Veggies

It's been such a sad, sad summer in my garden. It's been so cool that these were the first two tomatoes to ripen and there've been only about five more. None of the bigger tomatoes are red yet...although one of them is a yellow/green tomato anyway. The basil's all ready to go, but no tomatoes to eat it with! The string beans have been fun though. Mam helped me plant a variety of colors, so we've got purple, yellow and green beans. They're good too...although the purple beans actually turn green when you cook them. You can see a couple of funny little squashes. I thought I was buying yellow crook-necked squash, but clearly I blew it. These are little, green spaceship-shaped squashes instead.

Fortunately, I got the netting over the pear tree in time to save our crop from squirrels this year. There are tons of ripening pears out there. And our apple tree will have a crop for the first time this year too...of three different apple varieties. I'm looking forward to seeing how that turns out...although I may have let our little tree become a tad overambitious this year!

Say What?

A couple of nights ago, I was stuck picking Mam and a friend up at a birthday party and Daddy made dinner...a yummy dinner with grilled chicken. In hopes of being all wonderfully healthful, I stirred up some Swiss chard with garlic and dried cranberries. I never expect my kids to eat such things, so I made peas too.

Despite some complaints about "chicken, again??!!" the kids ate pretty well. They polished off their food and then a funny thing happened.

"Is there any more Swiss chard?" Smunch asked.

Uh, well no. Daddy and I had polished that off. Gosh, did he really want some? He did and I was shocked into getting up from the table and stir-frying him up his own batch.I'm still kinda flabbergasted.

Reincarnation

Ah, Spring! The time when I finally look at the black, moldy skeletons of last year's tomato plants and think "Huh...what are those still doing there?" And eventually, I even pull them out and start thinking about planting again.

This year, I was even on the ball with all this stuff. I even went to a clinic on how to grow tomatoes. I probably got snowed into buying all kinds of stuff I don't really need, but at least it'll be fun to find out. Who knows? Maybe I'll have a huge crop of colorful tomatoes this year and I'll be eternally grateful to tomato guru, Steve Goto.

But first, I set Daddy to work doing some soil amending and I went to work on my compost bin. I've found the easiest way to deal with my inferior compost bin is to just take the whole bin off the pile.Wow. Full of slugs and sow bugs and worms this year! I'll take it as a good sign that all those critters want to feast in there.

But then I have to sift the whole goopy pile to get out all the solid bits and come up with some really awesome compost-y dirt.And finally, I got to plant the five baby tomato plants I'd picked out a few days earlier...and a few other veggies as well. I got some monster tomato cages. Maybe I'm being too optimistic!The yard is finally back to looking like someone cares about it. I forget how happy this whole thing makes me...and how sore! Gardening ought to be an Olympic event.One last gardening note. I was really bummed to have to cut down our ailing plum and loquat trees last summer. But in January Daddy planted a little 3-variety apple tree in their place. I watched and watched as spring began, but there were no signs of leaves, much less blossoms. So, you can imagine how thrilled I was to see the first green buds. And now?Yay!!