Category Archives: garden

Last weekend I cleared out the front flower bed in honor of the bulbs. There’s already a cat turd right in the middle of the cleared out spot. Delightful animals!

But also these cute green little bits pushing their way out.

I have an old email address (since 2004) with a sorta cartoony name and over Christmas someone started using it to sign up for various social media. I’m assuming this person is doing so mistakenly. Out of curiosity I put the name into a search engine and every hit on the first page was something inappropriate and included the words: hot teen.

How does this happen to me?

I ignored the first round but there was a second attempt to confirm an Instagram account. The confirmation email says click here if this isn’t you. I clicked here and went to a page that said: invalid URL. Now that I had committed to caring about this I went to the support page where it said I could report a feature that wasn’t working, except there was no place to report anything. It was just menus with examples of problems a user could have none of them having to do with a random hot “teen” who doesn’t know her own damn email address.

That was the end of my good citizen attempt to fix. It’s hard to be optimistic that this is over.

After threatening to go out and work in the yard for months but never actually doing it, I managed to put in a couple hours this weekend.

I cut back all kinds of dead stalks. I raked up a bunch of stuff on the garden plot that wasn’t going to compost and look what rolled out.

A potato.

It’s like they’re just messing with me.

I hope that long after I’m gone that patch of land is known for bubbling up with potatoes from nowhere.

This is what the garden plot looks like at the moment. It’s hard to tell from the photo but there are TONS of tomatillos composting there. That plant will never go extinct in my yard. I just cut out a recipe that uses tomatillos and I guarantee that I will not remember it at the end of next summer.

I keep telling myself I’m going to get out there and do some tidying up but whenever I have time or I’m in the mood, it’s raining or worse. When it’s decent enough to get some work done either I have something else I need to do or I would rather sit in the house and drink hot chocolate.

On Saturday there was a lovely sun break but by the time I was ready to change into my work clothes it was pouring again.

This is out in the middle of the berry patch. I’m not sure who Jamie is — maybe a grandkid from next door.

Years ago these flowers magically appeared in my yard. I liked them and encouraged them. I had a big patch in what had been a sorta ugly corner of the garden. Then they wanted to grow in the lawn, which I discouraged. Then they ditched the sorta ugly corner and now have sprung up in the middle of the garden.

If this was a story about magic flowers, I would be anxious about the next chapter, are they friendly flowers or are they up to something?

I have a lot of gorgeous dahlias that I love, but this is my favorite, year after year.

Tomatillos are weeds, right? Mom gave me a bunch of fruits one year and I composted a couple and I’ve had a hearty crop pop up ever since. These are filled with bees right now so I believe I’m doing my duty for bees.

Look at my lemon cucumber vines. These are the heartiest vines I’ve had in years. There are a couple of flowers but it’s hard to be optimistic that I’m going to get any cucs before it gets too cold.

I have two acorns on my acorn squash volunteer. That vine is the craziest healthy vine I’ve ever seen. It’s shooting across the garden in every direction. This squash is nestled in some other plants but it looks healthy.

I had to do something with the tomatoes I scored so I opted to roast them using this recipe.

You cut the tomatoes in half, drizzle with olive oil, sprinkle salt and pepper and herbs and slow roast at 275 for 5 hours. Since my oven is a sentient being with a stubborn streak I kept a close eye on mine and ended up turning the oven to 200 after three hours and then off an hour after that.

The house smelled amazing. At least I thought so. I asked Bob and he said: Smells like tomatoes.

They aren’t kidding about the parchment. I wasn’t very thorough and I had some scrubbing to do around the edges of the pans.

Very delicious. I ate a ton from the tray and now I’m sorta full right before dinner.