Monday, July 31, 2006

Garden Report

My garden is doing so well! I wish I could post pictures but my camera still isn't acting like it's connected when I plug it into the computer. I'm going to try to get it into the shop tomorrow.

I'm so thrilled that every day, almost, we've got yummy homegrown tomatoes! Tonight I used some in a garden stew with polenta, with my garden peas, basil, squash, rosemary, and some broccoli that came from...well, I don't know where it came from. It appeared in my fridge. Maybe from my mother-in-law. :-) It was yummy! Last night I had a couple tomatoes sliced to go with our cheesy walnut burgers, and the night before there were enough to make the ranchero sauce for our chiles rellenos.

My three tomato plants: the one I'm getting all the tomatoes off now is the little, but hard-working, stupice heirloom plant. I also have a cherokee purple plant that I've gotten two or three off of. My brandywine tomato plant took a long time to set fruit, but it finally has lots of nice green fruit that's all going to be HUGE.

3 of my 6 squash plants are bearing really well, too. I've been using the little tiny ones, and a few days ago I made Squash Blossom Soup with all the blossoms I could find and some big squash I came home to. I love that soup!

I have three green basil plants, and one opal basil plant. I'm able to harvest enough basil each week for pasta with pesto, which is as often as I like to eat pasta with pesto in the summer time, along with good cherry tomatoes. (I buy the cherries from the farmer's market, since I don't have a plant.)

The mint is doing really well, of course, and I don't have enough uses for it. I can only drink so many mojitos. :-) I need to find more uses for fresh mint.

The cucumber plant isn't doing as well....but we did have a couple of cucumbers off it to eat last week, and one more is growing right now. I'll take what I can get.

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In other news, and in other reasons why I'm bummed that I can't post pictures: my children got the brilliant idea, in their little pirate minds, to build a sailboat. They came up with this while we were at Clergy Laity, and told me over the phone. I was thinking of the huge ones that fit a whole crew and tons of cargo. But no, they sent me a picture of it and it's a cute little thing. Paul bought into the idea (um, I mean that literally...) and they are out there right now working on it. I have no idea where they're going to sail this thing when they're done, but I'm sure they'll figure something out. It's something nice that dad and kids can work on together. They are making a PDRacer.

6 comments:

architect said...

How cute - the sailboat is! James wants a real sailboat... if we can ever afford it!
Love your garden description! To use your mint, there are some indian recipes that mix cucumber, yougurt and mint to make a salad that is good, but alas, I haven't done that in a long time. Next year I do hope to have a nice garden. This year we planted some sunflowers, basil and pumpkin at my moms. We had to harvest the pumpkin all ready, the basil was over planted! and the sunflowers are adorable! It is neat to compare my organic gardening results from previous years to my moms more mainstream gardening and see how we can both improve.

Elizabeth said...

Your mom was telling me about all the varieties she gardens, though, when I saw her a year and a half ago at my grandmother's 100th birthday....she's not your run-of-the-mill gardener, even if she does use mainstream techniques. I think my mom is getting converted to liking the idea of organics....though a few years ago she swore that organic made no difference at all, but was just a bunch of high-priced hooey. :-)

Mimi said...

A sailboat! How cool is that?

Garden bounty sounds yummy - does Father Paul like polenta? I've found that most often, men don't and women do. I LOVE it.

Elizabeth said...

Really? Paul is probably the biggest fan of polenta in this house. Zac is the only one who doesn't like it here. It took Hibi years to like it....we had this conversation recently, how when I was serving cooked corn meal I'd keep changing the name--polenta, cornmeal mush, grits....I figured that if it was a different name she'd think it was something different and give it another chance. ;-) Well, it didn't work but becoming a vegan worked for liking a lot of foods she didn't used to like.

Anonymous said...

For the mint - make tabouleh! It's my favorite, and it's best with plenty of mint. Lots of middle eastern and greek foods will use mint.

I also put mint in my tea and in my water.

Mimi said...

Huh. There goes that theory.