I'm sorry, I was mistaken

Well, it has been a few weeks again, and the garden has been growing out of control.  So have the weeds.  So are the ants.  And why do the ants only like the beans and their leaves and nothing else?  The tomatoes are right there - juicy and sweet.  I've got a little corn left, some peppers . . . no dice.  I am an ant and I only like to eat your beans.  Oh well.

So here is something new - we have melons!  No really, there are melons! We have been watering, but the skies have been pretty stingy, so I never thought we would ever get fruit.  Also, our luck with the monstrously large single sexed flowers zucchini plants just made me assume that we were going to have the sample problems with melons.  And I have no idea if you need cross pollination for melons or not.  Nevertheless, I am pretty excited now.

Where I came into error, however, is in the tomatoes.  I bought this heirloom plant, and I totally don't remember what variety it is.  So when the first fruits were turning yellowish, I was stoked that we would soon have some red ripe fruit.  I was prepared to beat away all birds and squirrels in their defense.  And strangely, they did not turn orange and then red but stayed yellow.  So I waited.  And I waited.  And then I thought perhaps I should pick them and bag them with some bananas to see what would happen.  And they stayed yellow.  So then my suspicions began to grow.  Should I taste one?  What if it is still green?  But after 2 weeks at yellow?  Hmmm.  I did slice one to put on a sandwich but ate a slice solo first.  Holy cow, it was delicious - mellow and super sweet with lots of juice.  Yay, I have some kind of heirloom yellow tomato that I don't remember and therefor won't be able to find it again for next year.  C'est la vie.  Oh well.
Enjoy the pics.

Long Time No See

Wow, it has been quite a while!  Between work and the heat, it has been hard to remember to come visit y'all.  So this is what has happened since we have parted. 

1.)  The corn produced.  Here is a pic of the kids with the first pick.  Since then, we have picked once more.
2.) We grew lots of beans.  Lots and lots of beans.  And then the ants ate lots and lots of beans and the plant leaves too.
3.) Eggplant success - both Japanese variety and Fairytale.
4.) More banana peppers. Of course, the one thing that we would eat the least of is what produces the most - naturally.
5.)  Sweet potato leaves go crazy. 3 or 4 harvests.  I am pretty sure we are getting more out of those plants as leaf bearers than whatever lies below the surface.
6.) And speaking of below the surface, the carrots are just okay and I have one green bell pepper.

There was one week that the garden produced enough food to cover a whole week!  That was pretty exciting.  To bad I was out of town the whole week after I picked it all and got to eat none of it.  Oh well.  I heard that the corn was super sweet and the beans super flavorful.
And today, I harvested a boat load more sweet potato leaves, some grape tomatoes and carrots - and 2 more ears of corn.  I have 3 more days at home, and will get to enjoy it all with the barbeque  this weekend.  Everyone have a great 4th of July weekend!

Great Progress and a Snack

Its been a crazy week, but I spent one whole morning in the garden pulling weeds, staking and harvesting.  It was an exciting and bug biting time despite my liberal use of insect spray.  Something wayward did bite my ear, and it still hurts to wear my Bluetooth earpiece.  Ironically, my mother, who helped weed for the first hour, was also bitten on the ear and cannot wear her hearing aid from the swelling.  As a result, she has been unable to hear me complain additionally about the mosquito infestation.
I have attached a big wad of photos of the garden's progress post partial weeding.  I was most excited about the first harvest of beans and have already taken a second batch since the photo taken on Tuesday.  A Japanese eggplant has also been harvested since the pics.  The leaves in the bag are sweet potato leaves, and I am told by my mother that they are quite tasty sauteed like greens.  And I am stunned that we have corn growing!!  My doubting Thomas days are over, and I hope that they grow nice and fat, so that we will have some sweet juicy corn for summer cookouts.

At our front and side yard garden, the zucchini flower continue to grow, but I have no squash.  I have no idea what is wrong.  Anyone with any idea, please contribute to my learning process.  The dill has completely taken over and I have taken to ripping out entire plants to save space for the basil and rosemary that are just coming up to speed.  Below, I have a picture of my latest dill creation - gravalax, or as my daughter calls it, fish ham.  Gravalax is the heavenly combination of sugar/salt cured fresh Pacific salmon with peppercorn, dill, juniper, and a little fennel.  Actually, I didn't have any juniper berries so I cheated with my next best substitute - Hendrick's gin.  3 days under a brick, and this is what you get!  Jon is currently at the grocery store procuring bagels for tomorrow morning's breakfast feast. 

Well, I'm off to heat up the repairs from my roasted chicken fiasco from 2 nights ago.  Everyone have a great weekend!

I Remembered!!

So, I was sitting in this sales meeting today, and we were talking about why people blogged.  And, while I didn't verbalize, I was thinking the whole time, "hello, we blog to be able to say what we want to say while under the illusion that someone might be listening or paying attention."  I have no illusions.  I know that there are, like, 5 of you that read this on a regular basis and might comment.  And thanks to those of you, truly, because I then remembered that the real reason that I am blogging is to get support from all 5 of you to not be a quitter in my quest for local food consumption and production.  Thanks again.

Now, another "I remembered".  I made a dish the other night from the homegrown dill and remembered to do a before and after photograph!  Here is the before.  I ripped the entire plant out because it was impinging on my basil's ability to flourish.

And now the after - lemon dill chicken with crimini mushrooms.  Please forgive the elementary photo skills.  Thanks to Down Home with the Neelys for a little inspiration.  I totally couldn't find the recipe on their site so you just get the link to their page.  Sorry.  Plus, I made up my recipe as I went along.  Next time I will try to remember to write down the recipe for you.
While I have been gone, I am told, by my sweet hub, that the corn is human adult height now, so I'm thinking that we should get some flowering and pollination (fingers crossed) pretty soon!  Pics of that next time.

Oops I Did It Again

I swear, every time I get a little inspiration from my garden, I plan out this wonderful menu.  I'm not the best cook in the world by any stretch of the imagination - probably not even the best cook on the block.  But what I can make, I can make really well.  So my intention is to photograph the grown or local ingredients, make something, and then photograph the finished dish.  The problem is that some time in between completing a dish and then getting the family rounded up and to the table while it is still not, I completely forgot to take a picture of the finished product.  And I have done this more than once.  So, let's just pretend that I took all those after pictures. 

Before pic: the zucchini blossom photo from the last entry
After pic: deep fried zucchini blossoms stuffed with anchovy ricotta served on a bed of pureed tomatoes and basil

Before pic:  dill from last entry
After pic: roasted wild Pacific salmon with sour cream lemon dill sauce served with short grain brown rice

Before pic:  assorted colored carrots and watermelon radishes from the farmers' market
After pic: said root vegetables cut down and sauteed in butter and a little brown sugar (technically my hubby made this one, but it would have been a beautiful pic)

Envision it all in high resolution, well lit, mouth-watering glory.  There.  I will try not to forget again.

The First Day

Today is the first day of no school.  We celebrated with another trip to pick strawberries.  This time, it is near the end of the season.  So the farm we visited was a bit overgrown with weeds and many berries were over ripe and rotting.  But we were able to collect a sweet gallon of berries plus a local melon and a small cup of sweet onions.  The scents were so heady that after a brief stop for lunch, we came back to a car overwhelmed with the strong smell of berries and onions - nice.
The turn of the lifestyle season from the rigid 6am rising to a more pleasant 7:30 debut to each day is welcome.  Then there is a languid meandering to the breakfast table after a quick check of the e-mail; a more relaxed evening after a late supper.  I love it.  Hello summer, it's good to see you again.

And Down Comes the Rain

Woohoo!  There have been fantastic rains followed by nice periods of bright sun for 2 weeks.  The garden is prospering for the most part, and I am stoked!  I have lots of great pics to share with you.  Check out the corn!  Wow is all I can say.  I am pretty impressed - especially with the fact that this has taken very little effort up to this point.  We are even doing a great job of feeding the birds and squirrels our ripened strawberries.  Jon built a chicken wire coop around the berries the other week, and lo and behold, a few days later, we come back to find a spot where the "fence" had been slightly raised and half a giant red strawberry gone.  Really - it went under the coop.  And why did it eat only half the strawberry??  Would it not be more prudent, if you were already stuck under the coop, to go ahead and eat or take the whole thing?  Stupid smart squirrels.

I am thinking, and certain people are telling me, that we got too late a start on the sugar snap peas.  That is the plot that we worked the least, so the weeds seem to out number the plants about 50:1 right now.
So, what do you think, anyone?  Do we try to let it ride or rip them out and wait for late summer to start working on some fall tasties?  I was thinking about some bok choi or this Chinese spinach like thing called Gai Lan.  I'd love to hear some other ideas.

But back to the gardening.  You will see, I have a lot of dill coming out.  I had 4 plants last year, and it just seeded like crazy!  The basil did not seed as aggressively, but I still have about 6 or 7 little beauties coming out in the plot in our front yard.  I'm already thinking about some homemade pickles and gravalax and salmon with dill cream, . . . and I have no idea what else I can do with dill.  Perhaps dill zucchini, because that is the first veg I see coming.  So beautiful.  I can't wait.