First Harvest

Straight from the garden to the table - Our first harvest from the garden

Some beautiful little peas and some really nice leaf lettuce.

Its in the Sauce

Last night our wheat spaghetti was topped with sauce straight out of the garden. We're just now picking copious amounts of Roma and grape tomatoes and with so many ripe at the same time - they were just begging to be simmered down with sautéed onions with our fresh basil, oregano, and a few banana peppers for flavor. A few hours after I shot this photo Paul and I were sprinkling my favorite Pecorino Romano on our spaghetti and punching play on the last disc, the last episode of the original Battlestar Galactica.

This Tomato's for You!

As part of the geo-event for the wedding in May, Paul and I worked on "Jolly Green's garden," Paul cutting out the gigantic veggies I drew on some great used corrugated sign material I recycled from work. Laura commented that she thought it was a gyp that I didn't do a tomato. While my parents were here visiting this past week, I was able to draw a second set of veggies including a tomato (well a tomato is a fruit actually). My Dad held the huge plastic boards down while I jig-sawed them all out. I always forget how fun it is to work with power tools.... they're so empowering. When my Dad reminded me to be careful I told "Always" and then promptly reminded him I did cut through some non-structural studs with a circular saw to make a serving window from the kitchen to the dining room in the house in St. Augustine - all by myself. Yes, I was holding the saw above my head, against the wall but I'm pretty sure I was wearing safety glasses Ok, fine - dangerous and empowering. I haven't lost any fingers yet. Anyway....

Sunday afternoon I was able to paint all of the additional veggies and disperse them as the backers for our garden. So Laura - this tomato's for you!

Sun-faced

Our incredible red sunflowers have finally shown their handsome faces. I had to use a stool to photograph them. They're up to about 10 feet now. I even had a beautiful little model for some of the photos....

Water, Earth & Time

One never really understands the satisfaction that comes with planting a garden until your sitting down for dinner with perfectly steamed snow peas that were clipped from the vine an hour ago. This year we had a few "volunteers" come out of the planter box we'd used for composting over the winter. We now have a beautiful crop of acorn squash, like the little one in the photo above, and some Idaho potatoes growing in the other corner. (I wonder if I'm still aloud to call them Idaho - even though they are growing in Alabama?)

This is the first year I've grown radishes. They're awfully speedy growers and critters seem to really enjoy the tops, but we've been able to keep them down with some organic bug repellent we found at Garden Cove - made up of 100% garlic and peppermint oil.

This is also the first year we've grown any kind of lettuce greens. They've done particularly well and are just begging for us to fix a great big salad with them in the next couple of days. We've also got eggplant, corn, five types of tomatoes, onions, sunflowers, okra and carrots in various stages of growth, along with a potted herb garden of basil, cilantro, oregano, spearmint, lavender, rosemary, and parsley on the porch.

Looks like I finally begged a few comments out of my readers. Wooohooo! Thank you!! Its always nice to meet new folks too - so very nice to meet you Shannon. I'm completely addicted to comments. Sometimes I honestly wonder if anyone is out there - so if you are - do speak up! Its very nice to hear from you.

Holy Huge Carrot Batman!

So I was pulling a few of the fun little round carrots up from the garden when I started tugging on this puppy.... Holy HUGE carrot Batman! That's Paul's hand - and the carrot dwarfs it! I'm trying to figure out what happened? Mutant carrot genes? A patch of extra potent fertilizer that landed only on it? The Orange Carrot Fairy decided to grant this carrot's wish of possible world domination? (Glad I caught it before it grew legs!) Or perhaps its as simple as the first seed to germinate, plenty of water and sunshine?

Playing Catch-up #1

My birthday frivolities extended for almost a month this year - the last celebration of which occurred last Thursday believe it of not - with a cake at work.

Paul organized a little pre-B-Day get together at Miako with a few friends before he and I left for his nieces wedding in St. Louis. Here Tommy and Nathan can be seen modeling the latest chopstick orifice trends.

Paul and I, deciding the latest trends were way too classy for us decided to eat with our chopsticks, (boring - I know) and then put them down and take this cute picture.

Paul's niece's wedding was in St. Louis on the 30th of June, followed by a family reunion the next day. Enjoyed visiting with all of Paul's family very much, and then meeting members of his very-well-extended family at the reunion on Sunday.

Hmmm... Could they be brothers?

Hmmmm.... Think they could all be cousins?

Just a smattering of the family reunion on July 1st...

The very same day we drove back in my folks came to celebrate my birthday and spend the 4th of July with us! No fireworks for us this year on the 4th - bright colors came in the form of ink on paper. My Mom and I worked on her personal stationary while my Dad carved a fantastic linoleum cut to run a limited edition print later on that evening.


Of course there was a visit to Soul Burger (BEST burgers in Huntsville!) while they were here too

Playing Catch-up #2

I apparently maxed out how many photos you could stick in one post so the story is continued here....

We also made the trip to see the Rosenbaum's House designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.

This is my B-day card tree. Previously bought and used for Christmas cards, it was so pretty Paul and I decided to leave it up year-round, and then when some birthday cards arrived I figured it could hold a bit of birthday cheer!

The garden is overrun with tomatoes at the moment. And Paul and I had a plethora of pretty green, purple and yellow beans last week. The corn is almost ready to harvest and cucumbers are still sprouting out all over the vines. This is my first time that I can remember successfully growing carrots though - not to mention cool little round ones!

The HCRU Tyrolean was the 14th, which was, as always, awesome! DeSoto was a bit on the low-flow side, but you still heard enough of a bubbling roar to know its a good sized waterfall. Got to do some swimming down in the splash pool and then climbed out the high side (100 or so feet). Paul got a couple photos of swimming out to the rope and then climbing. Man what a beautiful view when you climb it, you're well away from the wall and you've got plenty of time to look around if you frog.


Phew. I think I'm caught up now.

The Herbs of Summer

Ever want to have fresh picked herb flavor for dishes in the winter? Here's a handy little idea to do just that!

Herb Cubes

1. Pick and wash fresh herbs before first frost

2. Chop and strip preparing the herbs as you would normally

3. Fill ice cube trays half-full of herbs
4. Top off with water
5. Place in freezer overnight
6. Pop herb cubes and double bag in freezer zip-locs
7. Don't forget to label them

When you need a pinch of herbs for a dinner dish throw in a single herb cube and it'll thaw while your dish cooks. I harvested a full ice cube tray's worth each of Sage, Rosemary, Spearmint and Basil. You can also combine commonly used herbs into a pesto and freeze them too.

Fall Harvest

Mutant tomato,
temporarily immortalized in pixels,
and his more average brothers & sisters
visit the friendly fuzzy okra
in sunset bowl.

Free the Worms!!

My Mom and Dad paid 6$ to buy 50 earthworms for Paul and I's garden and then $18.80 to have them overnighted to me. We could have gone down to the local bait shop - but after my Dad gave me a long list of names for all of them one evening - it was too late because they were already winging their way to us. A needless to say perplexed post office employee actually called me the next day to tell me that I had a package that said it contained live worms - to please pick it up.


Note the two yellow stickies on the side of the bucket - those are the names that my Dad gave me for the worms.


I fed them plain grits like my Mom told me to until I could release them into the garden. (Apparently these are fancy worms that don't eat dirt like the rest of the earthworms on the planet) These worms had been fed grits on the earthworm farm that my parents had bought them from and eventually would have been used as bait. So really my folks rescued them from being drawn and quartered, drowned or eaten alive by a hungry fish. Paul and I had a big worm release party a few weeks back - with tiny little helium balloons for all the little wigglers and all the dirt the worms could eat. I think they really enjoyed it.


Our friend Jennifer also participated in the "Free the Worms" movement and released some in her garden too. For worms they are really well traveled - Florida, Alabama and Tennessee.