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Category Archives: garden
Before and After
I enjoyed my flowers more than usual this summer. Maybe because summer took so long to get here.
At this time of year I know the days are numbered and I keep an eye on them knowing that the first cold snap is going to ruin them.
I have mixed feelings about the end of the garden. I love being outside and digging in the dirt. But I also like being inside and not having to worry about the yard.
The flowers are finished. I saw a bit of sunlight this afternoon and thought I should run out there and try to haul off some of the dead stuff.
It’ll be there later.
Apples and Pumpkins
For the first time our backyard apple tree not only has tons of apples, it has tons of pretty ones (relatively). Last weekend I picked two giant bowls full and canned applesauce.
It really isn’t that much work but I timed it poorly so I was trying to cook dinner and keep track of my canning which involves lots of things boiling at the same time. It all worked out and now I can have a stash of applesauce.
I thought it would be funny to label it all 2005 so when we pull it out in February we can gasp and wonder how it had gotten lost in the cupboard for so long. The canning specialists tell you to eat it within a year but I’m here to tell you I’ve let stuff go way longer than that and no one died.
I have a recipe for slow cooker apple butter and I was thinking of doing a quick batch of that since I have tons of canning jars. But I already have 10 other projects going this weekend and canning would probably push me over the edge.
Check out these pumpkins Kent gave me. His are the two big pretty ones. The sad little one is mine. Babe the pig is there for perspective.
I gave him some seeds a few years ago and now he likes to grow them, too. He brought them to work and I walked over to pick them up. I put one in a backpack and carried the other one. Everybody smiles and says hi and makes chitchat with you when you’re carrying a pumpkin.
Some guy asked me for directions to a place that was completely in the opposite direction. I pointed in the direction he needed to be going and told him it was a hike. He shook his head and said I must have misunderstood and then very carefully enunciated the name of the place he was looking for. “Yup, it’s still the other way,” I said. He said he must have just overshot it and would backtrack. He’d overshot by about 12 blocks.
Three Tidbits
This was one of the first promising looking early pumpkins that then withered without explanation.
A couple of weeks ago a guy called the office. I answer the phone with the name of the business. He said, “Yeah? I had a missed call from this number.”
Me: Okay.
What is he expecting me to do with this information? I don’t know who he is. Sure, it’s only a 2 person office, but it doesn’t really feel like my problem to solve.
Him: (on the verge of dying of annoyance) What is this again?
I repeat the name of the business.
Him: (Derisive snort) Well?
I asked if he had business with us. Co-worker overheard me and called, “I dialed a wrong number earlier.” I tell greatly inconvenienced lunkhead this.
Him: (Another derisive snort and then hang up.)
I’ve already have the answer but do people really do that? If I see a missed call from a number I don’t recognize it would never occur to me to call it. If someone wants me, they’ll try again. I wish we’d kept his number because I would call it from a different phone every day and hang up.
One dinky Cinderella pumpkin. Barely worth the trouble to process it.
We got a notice from our bank inviting us to refinance. They’re getting itchy because our house is almost paid for. The profit margin on us is dwindling. They used to do this to me in person, too, but I asked them to put a note on my account not to try to sell me stuff when I go in. They still do sometimes.
This one was funny because it has a graph with what our payments would be if we refinance for 30 and 15 years and then how much we’d save on interest. Those boxes were blank with an asterisk that said, we wouldn’t actually save any money on interest.
Nice try!
This is the new variety Baby Pam, which doesn’t seem to want to turn orange. I’m so sad about my pumpkin crop. A friend brought me some Cinderella pumpkins he grew from seeds I gave him. I’m going to pick them up after lunch.
This past weekend I had the time so I put the garden (mostly) to bed.
One reason I was putting it off is the birds have been loving the sunflowers. Every morning on the weekends I would see all kinds of activity out there. We had several days of cold rain and the sunflowers looked like refugees from a Tim Burton movie.
The cucumbers which have sent out all kinds of vines and nothing else finally started producing about 2 weeks ago. I’ve eaten two and put 4 in the fridge. Gee, thanks for nothing. I took out two of the tomatoes and optimistically left two in in case they want to keep going.
I dug up everything else and I now have about two pounds of beets in the fridge. We’re going to have something beety this weekend.
Tomato Report
I don’t have so many tomatoes that I want to cry, but I’m getting there.
Remember, that was the goal.
The German Lunchbox are small. They’re like Roma shaped cherry tomatoes that are a pinkish color. The Roma are also small. I think I was over-watering because I’ve backed off and they are going gangbusters.
The Early Girl are also on the small side, but perfectly round and pretty.
The one that I grew from a seed and then knocked all the leaves off when I planted is producing big giant tomatoes. I like that one. There’s a gigantic one out there now. I’m going to pick it tomorrow.
I’ve been eating about a half pound a day but I need to make something with them. Probably soup because that transforms a huge amount of tomatoes into a few ziplock bags of soup I can have in the winter.
This is a typical haul. I picked the green one by accident. I try to pick every other day.
The cucumbers are making big leafy vines but producing zippo. The pumpkin patch is sadder than sad. The beets have been doing great. I yanked one of the sunflowers because it was getting in my way and turns out the birds and squirrels missed it because it is loaded with seeds so I brought it into the shop. I need to figure out the best way to de-seed it.
Maybe ehow has a completely worthless article I can consult.
Pumpkin and Puzzle Update
Guess what I got in the mail today?
Another puzzle book.
I finally sorted through my immaculate record keeping system and found a number to call about my subscription. The person who answered the phone was very nice.
She told me that they received my subscription payment and I was fine on that.
She said the puzzles would have been a mail-in offer.
I don’t think I could have done that and forgotten about it.
For a second I thought someone was playing a trick on me but I couldn’t envision how that would come about. Some of my friends doing tequila shots and then saying, “You know what would be hilarious? If we secretly sent Pam a 40-pack of puzzle books.”
After some research she discovered that another order was mistakenly assigned to my account. She sort of laughed and said, “You have a subscription, too.”
I am free to keep the puzzle books I already have, I’m assuming my subscription is canceled and the person who actually ordered them will be getting his soon. Whew!
This is it so far in the pumpkin patch. The yellow one is my usual Cinderella variety and I’m guessing this green one is the Baby Pam. I fretted last year about my pumpkins being so late and they did fine. We’ll see how this year goes.
Did You Hear That Screaming?
This is the plant that I grew from a seed I saved last year and knocked all the leaves off when I planted it.
Not now. It was last night.
I’m setting this to post after I hit the road on Friday.
This is the Early Girl.
I was doing a major watering so my sweetie doesn’t have to worry about it while I’m gone. I was crawling around because tomatoes like to be watered from the bottom and some pink caught my eye.
This is the German Lunchbox. And you know what? I had lunch at the German Deli today. Babe the pig added for perspective.
Then I took a closer look at all my tomatoes. The ripe ones are in the very middle and tough to spot. The same thing happened last year.
Yeah, home grown tomatoes. Stay tuned for me bitching and moaning about how I have too many tomatoes.
Garden Update
I still have plants that haven’t bloomed and I keep finding dahlias I’ve never seen before. I think I say that every year.
Yesterday I noticed that one of my tomatoes (the German lunchbox) was growing so crazy it was pushing its cage over. I propped it up with another cage. We’ll see how that works. I should probably whack back some of the floppy branches on these plants but I’m so greedy I don’t want to.
The cucumbers seem to be major failure. Again. I started about 12 seeds in the house and half sprouted. Then I put them in the ground and half shriveled up. So I started another batch of seeds in the house with similar results. I put them outside last weekend and they are aggressively turning yellow and sad. Next year I’m going to find turbo cucumber seeds and try that.
Future Pumpkins
Whenever I’m running around I always think of a ton of things I want to post about. Then when I’m sitting here I can’t remember. I also have tons of notes but then when I sit here I don’t understand them.
Like this one: “white space”
I have no idea.
Also, I finally posted my photos from the Portland Timbers v. Seattle Sounders game.
You Can’t Have Any Pudding If You Don’t Eat Your Meat
This is the tomato plant that I grew from a seed and knocked all the leaves off when I planted it in the garden. It’s about 4 feet tall and has a half dozen green tomatoes on it.
It is the smallest of my tomato plants. I have two that are as tall as I am with huge branches flopping out the sides of the cage. They are sagging with green tomatoes. The early girl has a few that have gone shiny and yellow-ish. I think I’m going to be eating home grown tomatoes very soon.
I’m convinced that the early settlers stayed alive by eating greens. But you never hear about that. You never find pioneer tested recipes for turnip and beet greens. I don’t even try that hard and I have giant piles of greens that we can’t even begin to keep up with. Especially since I represent about 90% of the greens consumption in my household. The Dining section had an article about all the plant tidbits that most people throw away that you can eat. More garden stuff for the plate.
Last weekend I finally got around to picking some beets to roast. They were soft-ball size with big healthy tops. I saved all the greens plus I yanked up some kale.
The first thing I do with my greens is soak them in water so all the slugs and snails rise to the surface. I know, gross. Better to find them now than later. Then I sauté in olive oil and garlic. Even though the greens shrink when cooked there was a giant bowl which I still haven’t finished. (They taste great with a little ume plum vinegar sprinkled on them.)
The other night I ate about 4 pounds of vegetables for one meal. I didn’t set out to eat that much I just kept finding more stuff in the fridge and thinking, “I want some of this, too.” My digestive system still hasn’t figured out what happened.
