this week, in the garden

I have been busy in the garden: weeding, planting, tending, expanding. I have added two news flower beds, well, a new bed in front of the garden fence and expanded another behind it. The new bed is the first to break away from the garden fence line on the front side: The expanded bed is […]

today, in the garden:

Spring blooms have peaked and moved on. Join me on a stroll through our cattywampus garden to see what Early Summer has coaxed forth: The clematis is astonishing. The peonies are underway: The bearded iris have begun their display: Moving on into the garden:

today, in the garden

A peak at the garden today: It is the opening weekend of Lilyfest 2022! There is a delightful array of late spring/early summer perennials popping colors about: Last fall’s pansies are nearly recovered from winter: The perennial herbs are lush and thriving. Some annual herbs have recently joined them: And, finally, our spiderwort has been […]

this evening, in the garden

An early evening stroll through the garden neglected due to my overwhelming spring schedule:

end of harvest soup

I harvested delicate things prior to the snow: tomatoes and herbs, planning for a batch of end of harvest soup. As the green tomato base roasted in the oven, I headed into the snow to harvest some hardier veggies: bok choy, carrots, and kale. (We opted to save the kale for something else.) Ground beef […]

the last fair day

Tonight is expected to hit freezing. So today, I pulled the rest of the non-hardy crops: tomatoes, hot peppers. And basil. I made my first pesto. We had no pine nuts in our pantry. Fortunately, pesto has become more of a framework formula than specific recipe: herb + oil + garlic + nut + sharp […]

out of the garden…

…with the tastes of summer October! Pulling vine-ripened tomatoes on October 6th. The basil got blasted in the last cool spell, so I have to seek out good leaves, but about half of the tomato plants have lost their place on the calendar. This. This is the garden living we’ve been moving toward…

back to the garden…

Another week off from work: this time the summer heat has broken, meaning it’s easier to spend more time on garden projects. I spent yesterday morning working on the last gate of the fence project. The cooler weather this week should help me check this item off the list. The bottom of our drive will […]

getting saucy

I made tomato sauce today. This was my first time ever blanching and peeling tomatoes. It might be an okay task… Per usual, I started with a recipe, but more for steps and times the measurements. Two cloves of garlic? No, one whole head. I also added more carrots than listed, mostly since we’re growing […]

today in the garden

Even in the heat, I got a small amount of work done this past weekend. The basil plants have spent months in their little plastic grow pots. They are leggy and sad, but I got most of them planted on Sunday. Hopefully, they will recover and produce for the rest of summer. The delay was […]