Midwinter activity

Yesterday, I gave myself a disgusting blister which popped before I even noticed it (ugh) while ruthlessly snipping the xmas tree to bits.  I have to admit that I liked the bushiness of the tree on the lot; I thought it would provide plenty of ground cover for the winter months.  

The side yard and front yard continue to be distressingly full of little (and not-so-little) green shoots from the bulb planting in October.  I am hoping that a bit of shelter will keep things from dying too spectacularly over the next few months.  I think that the real danger is not so much the deep winter (which the plants are pre-programmed to cope with) as it is the periodic misleading thaws.  The poor bulbs get tricked into thinking it's spring when there will be another foot of snow at least.  I get tricked, too. 

Anyway, now I have a big pile of boughs where once there was a christmas tree and it's time for me to do the only wintertime gardening I know how to do.  

The now bare tree trunk, by the way, is lovely.  It corkscrews upward in a most elegant fashion.  The sweary one and I agree it's really quite beautiful and we're going to leave it in situ until the city collection day.  

Hello snow, what do you know?

This morning, the main story on the local news was about the hundreds of cars stranded on the highways as a result of last night's snow and ice.  

It's not that bad in the city (although very icy), but it is now definitely winter.  I know, we have a month yet before the shortest day and all that.  We can't argue with the white stuff.  It's boot weather; it's time to exchange the midweight wool coat for a nice puffy wind-resistant stuffed parka; it's time to put the lawnmower away and bring the salt, ice chipper, and shovel up from the basement; it's time to set the heat to come on before we get home in the evenings; it's time to put the big cauldron of mittens, hats and scarves in it's convenient-to-the-door location; it's time to stop watching last year's garden.  The gardening season is over.  

I'm going to try to keep up with the blog anyway.  Sooner rather than later I'm going to be fretting about next year's indoor plantings.  There's the indoor herb garden (still flourishing, even the crazy basil) and the potted plants.  The christmas cactus is looking good.  

Besides, in the next month I'm planning to be away from these snowy climes and in slightly more temperate bits of the world.  Perhaps I'll find something to say about other people's gardens.  

So, for the last report:  The gazania is covered in snow and ice.

The yellow flower has collapsed under the weight of the snow and ice.

The outdoor blooming season, 2008: March 6 - November 20.

Same old, same old

Well, I haven't had much to report, so ye olde blogge is going untended.

The gazanias are apparently still alive.  The yellow mystery flower in the front is apparently still alive.  The bulb sprouts are still popping out of the rapidly-cooling earth.  

The leaf-collectors came on Sunday night and now (hopefully) the flooding we were seeing on our street (because the sewer grates were leaf-clogged) is over until there's an ice-dam.  

The weather is becoming properly wintery.  I now do believe that it's snowing somewhere nearby (although it's still raining here).  We'll see our first snowfall sometime soon.  Probably before I take off on the next trip.

It's an update, but I'll admit, not a scintillating one.

I don't believe it

I just don't believe it.  Yes, there are grey clouds gathering overhead, but snow seems unlikely.  What's it going to do when it reaches the ground?  What's it going to do when it reaches the 3 degree air?  

I think that if these clouds are capable of anything, it's nasty rain.  It doesn't smell like it's going to snow.

Watching (without photos, natch)

The gazanias are still alive.

The yellow flower in front is still alive.

There are little bulb-shoots popping up in the front now, too.  I do worry about them.

The high today is predicted to be a not-at-all-balmy 7.

I finally remembered to grab the garlic on the way out the door this morning, so it is at least in the right general area for planting.  

We're supposed to have another warm, wet weekend, so I don't feel too bad about putting things in this late.

Flower Death Watch

I want to keep better (daily) track of the state of the last of the blooms than I did of the zinnias. 

On Saturday when I was clearing things there were a couple of slightly-alive marigolds that I left in the ground.  I think that they're probably really done for now (it was cold last night), but until their colour fades, I think I'll leave them where they are.

The gazanias are still alive and flowering.  Unfortunately, this morning's picture was before the sun hit, so it's not what you'd call conclusive evidence.

Note(s) to self

I'm pretty sure this happened last year, but one of the huge advantages of the blog is that I now have a place to write these things down so I can check year by year.   The note is that the bulbs I planted a few weeks ago are sprouting.  It makes me very nervous.  I want them to survive what will no doubt be a cold and unfriendly winter.  They shouldn't be putting their precious juices into tender green shoots which will be destroyed when the weather goes below zero this week.  But, like I said, I am pretty sure this happened last year, too.  Maybe it'll be alright.  

I planted the last of the bulbs yesterday, mostly in a very crowded planting next to the basement window:

That's not an art shot, I know, but it does show me where they're planted and I used old blog entries to see where there were no bulbs already.  I'm telling ya, this blogging thing isn't bad.

But for it to be effective, I should probably keep honest about what things really look like.  

That's the front, as yet uncleared.  I might leave the leaves because I don't think there are any maple leaves in that pile.  Plus, if I clear the sidewalk and let the mulch pile higher on the bed, maybe more people will stick to the sidewalk and leave the bed to coddle bulbs. 

I had a hopefully good idea about what to do with the side front.  It is completely weed and tall-grass overgrown with no plan for redemption ... until now.  That can be where the herbs run rampant!  It can be a mint patch, no probs.  It doesn't really connect to anything.  There are a couple of shrubs which are large enough to look after themselves (probably).  If I fill it with mint then it will look after itself.  I could put in a few kinds, maybe, but it's not in a spot I would eat from.  I just want something healthy and deliberate to be growing there instead of the disaster it is now.  

Autumn Clean-Up

Yesterday, I raked leaves and put them into bags.  After finishing clearing the "lawn" (don't worry, "clearing" should have been in quotes, too, as of this morning), I turned around and saw the leaf-littered side yard and decided to tackle it right away.  Usually I just let it sit and be leafy all winter long, on the theory that the leaves are mulch and prevent weeds from taking an early hold in the spring and keep the ground moist if there's a dry spell.  But there's this tar spot thing and I thought I couldn't leave them be.  

So, I put on some thick gloves and clawed around the base of all my plants.  It was quite nice sometimes and quite nasty at others.  The thyme greeted me with a lovely scent which lingered in the air.  I thought the lavender would be even nicer, but it had been beset by some kind of mushroom which then rotted at its base, so the lavender smell was overpowered by that dusty fusty musty mushroom smell.  That became quite familiar to me.  There were a lot of those little nasty spheres which actually turn into a sinister black powder when they decay.  Nothing eats them, so I am quite certain that they are very bad.

After the leaves that had fallen from the trees were taken care of, the side still looked a bit ragged.  The glads, irises and daylilies were all past their peaks, but still somewhat clinging to life through a few yellowing spears.  I got rid of the worst of the yellows and then cut the rest short.  I don't think there is time for real new growth before the winter and hopefully they'll concentrate on their bulbs for the rest of the year.  

I pulled up the last of the dead marigolds and zinnias, the dead nasturtiums and the gone (never really arrived, actually) scarlet runner.  I left the gazanias, of course.  I can spare another few hours to clean them out when the time comes.  I can't believe they're still going.  When I got them, I said "Hopefully, they'll last for a while".  Five months is, indeed, a while.  I'm more than slightly satisfied.

I'll take pictures later, after I've put in the last of the bulbs.  Yes, that's right.  I haven't finished planting those bulbs.  Sigh.

Ah-choo!

Yesterday morning, I looked out the front window to see a solid carpet of yellow leaves.  It was like the tree had sneezed REALLY hard and lost all of its leaves in a single go.  There was (and still is) a car parked under the tree which has a good inch or two of leaves on its roof and not much to speak of underneath.  

This morning, I finally had the chance to go out and rake a bit (after the rain, of course, not in the beautiful dry weather we had all the way up to midweek).  I still can't believe how thick on the ground the leaves were under the tree in front.  It's unreal.  

Someone else had beaten me to the task of getting the leaves off the curb so they don't block the gutter, so there were little nasty stacks of slime-encrusted crushed leaves periodically all down the side.  I've been dutifully putting them into bags to go to the city composting site.  It's not actually all that bad in the end (although the task isn't finished, so I should bite my tongue a little bit). In fact, I was enjoying using my wellington boots to such good purpose.  

There's more!

The mystery yellow flower in the front that the painters did their utmost to do in when they folded it in half but bloomed anyway ... remember that one?

Apparently the miracles never cease around here because it's blooming again.  I wish I knew what it was so that I could plant lots of them.

Still at it

Well, believe it or not, the garden is still going.  The Americans have had time to actually make history since last I posted and there are still blooms.  

Not many, mind you.

The Zinnias, which were still going beautifully last Thursday (Sept 30) are now well and truly done.  

I don't know when they were done in because unfortunately I didn't look at that bit of the garden for a few days.  It was very cold over the weekend, though.  I don't think it really got below zero, but it did get close to it.  

The marigolds, having soldiered on through so much, gave up the ghost over the weekend, too. 
As with the zinnias, I don't know when they perished, only that they were going on Thursday and then not on Tuesday.  

But ... the gazanias are still blooming.  I really thought that they were a flower that needed a hot, sunny climate to survive.  Obviously, these guys are not absolutely thriving in the sub 10C weather, but they're blooming!
Even better, they're still producing buds.  It's like they think they'll be blooming for another week or something.  

The weather has been milder this week than it was over the weekend, but I can't believe it's going to last forever.  Somehow, it feels like it already has!  

In less gardening-goddess news, those are the un-raked leaves in the backgrounds of these shots.  The leaf-raking is a serious problem.  Normally, I like to let the leaves sit on the beds during the winter (I can't possibly get enough out of my xmas tree to cover the whole garden) but this year our maple has tar spot disease and the leaves can carry it so they have to go.  This means that I need need NEED to get out there with bags and a rake and resolve.  I did have an honest go at the back deck over the weekend, but I just filled up our compost bin and then had nowhere to dump the unwanted leaves.  So they linger. 

It's worse because my lovely neighbour does rake and all of my un-raked leaves just make his life more difficult.  They actually make his life very difficult by blocking the sewer grate at the corner which apparently is all that's required to make a puddle so large that it flows into his basement.  I've never seen said puddle in my own basement and I'm a little confused that such a thing could be possible (given how much closer to the grate I am than he is) but I hate to think that my negligence might cause him trouble.  Anyway, it's a task for this weekend, which is threatening rain.  

I wish it were still light in the evenings so that I might contemplate gardening after work.  I'm not enough into winter routines to contemplate gardening before work.  It's a form of (tea-fuelled) miracle that the pictures above got taken this morning.  

Nooooooo!

The weather prediction for the day after tomorrow contains a graphic I'm not yet ready to see.

Edited to add: Despite the dire prognostication, there was no evidence of snow where we are.

Another quickie

I did dig up the front corner and put lots of yummy manure and compost in it for the new things, plus bone meal.  I planted all the snowdrops and crocuses and a good number of daffodils and tulips.  I even planted all of the new bulb irises.  I dug up a few viable-looking old crocus bulbs and returned them to the ground, moving my dig site over a few inches as necessary.  I dug up a few truly horrible-looking non-viable gladiolus bulbs.  Do they ever turn into something nasty when they decay!  But then all of the early things were planted and it came to be time to put late things in the sunny sections of the yard.  

The thing is, the sunny sections of the yard STILL have zinnias, marigolds and one lovely nasturtium clinging to life in single-digit temperatures.  I can't dig them up.  I just can't do it.   I will have to dig into frosty ground when I next have a chance (3 weeks, maybe?) but I can't kill that sweet little nasturtium that I started myself from seed.  I can't do in the marigolds which have so obligingly filled my little patch with a pretty glow.  I cannot possibly harm the gorgeous zinnias which are still producing new buds, for crying out loud!  Even the gazanias, which aren't exactly flowering, but do have a few optimistic-looking flowerheads.  I find I can't touch 'em.  

I'm just an old softie, that's all.

Popping in

I'm home for a few days and delighted to see that the zinnia and marigolds are still blooming!  It's not warm anymore; most days stay below 15 celsius, but on they bravely go.  

My sister had autumn crocuses in her Toronto garden (she moved in last winter so everything is a pleasant surprise) which made me think I should have some in my own.  But all I really need is zinnias, apparently!  

I have been reading the anti-chrysanthemum writings of this blogger, which have made me shy away from putting in mums and cabbages.  Well, I say that, but honestly, I haven't put the bulbs in yet so it's not like I'd be doing any gardening if I did pick up some nice autumnal annuals.  

Hopefully I will get a few minutes this weekend to deal with some of the gardening issues.  The tree has tar spot so we need to get all of its leaves into the municipal compost and away from the roots.  All trees in town have tar spot at the moment.  But with luck I'll find time to take some pictures of the miracle marigolds and zealous zinnias.  

I'm feeling quite chuffed about the garden at the moment.  My first flowers started on March 6th and it's now October 17th and I've still got blooms!  It's like I can actually do it or something.  No matter how much of it has to do with luck and climate change, I am well pleased with myself and the garden for providing well over half a year's worth of blooming in a northern climate.  

And we're off

Well, I haven't accomplished much more in the garden since the last whinge.  Not surprising, given what the rest of life is like, but there you go. 

 

At least the new bed in front passed the first two tests (not destroyed in hurricane and nobody has walked on it yet).

Reality Check

I was congratulating myself for a job well done this weekend.  I felt that there were many things to be crossed off the to-do lists.  And then I found myself reading back to this post, made only a few weeks ago.  Thus far, I have done none of the things on the indoor list.  Not one.  None.  And the outdoor list, which I fully expected to feel well and truly chuffed about ... not even half.  Well, there's the wind gone out of my sails.   

I'm off on a long trip soon and so there is some urgency to the gardening.  Cold weather will come soon and it will be too late for many of the autumn tasks (like dealing with the raspberry).  Let's hope the evenings this week can be as effective as the weekend was.

Eyes front

The front yard got some of its much, much needed work done today.  Only some, but frankly, more than I thought would be possible, so I'm feeling very happy about it.  

After lunch, I started by digging a trench along the sidewalk.  The corner that people walk over is badly compacted and so it was very hard going at that point, but in the end, a trench was made all around. 

In order to make a rectangle, I had to dig up one of the white-edged-leaf shrubs by the steps, but a) it wasn't flourishing, anyway (I think it suffers from salting in the wintertime, not to mention being too close to the compacted soil by the sidewalk) and b) I did transplant it later.

I conscientiously wrapped up the other (better) white-edged-leaf shrub so I wouldn't hack at its branches as I dug.  I gave it the shirt off my back, actually.  I was so hot and sweaty by about the third time I put the spade into the dirt that the sweatshirt was way too much for me, anyway.  No matter that it's nearly October.

The only other harsh damage I had to do was to a tree root.

It was preventing the plank from sitting level, so I cut it.  I don't want bad things to happen to the tree, but I also don't want roots attacking my foundations.  

We started to put the planks into the trench.  The corner had a big blob of sidewalk concrete jutting into the place we wanted the planks to be, so the sweary one sawed out a little corner to make it fit.  

There isn't much holding the boards in place or together.  There are a few inadequate nails of the type we had hanging around the house (ie inappropriate for outdoors and too short) but I am hopeful that the weight of the soil will do all the hard work, anyway.  

There isn't anything at the side yard end.  It just peters out.  I don't know how I feel about that.  I thought I would put a bit of plank there, too, just to keep the front and side separate, but it's really not necessary and I like the idea of bringing the side plantings all the way up to the corner.  There is so much sunlight in that patch!  If only we could use it as flowerbed instead of walkway.  

After digging the trenches and laying the planks in place, I started the arduous task of sifting through the dirt we removed from the trenches because it was terribly, terribly stone-laden.  But after a few tens of litres of sifted soil, I decided that I was too tired to do the whole job and it was going to rain shortly so I shouldn't muck about with perfectionism.  

Instead, I dumped some of the compost and manure we got yesterday on to the top of the bad, compacted soil we have and scrabbled half-heartedly with the claw.  The end result is not even-looking and is obviously not the garden of anyone's dreams but it is infinitely better than what was there before. 

There are a few trials for the new set-up.  The first trial is: Does it survive a hurricane? (Because apparently we're having one tonight).  The second trial is: Do people stop walking on that patch?  The third and probably make-or-break trial is: Does the murderous and ineffective snow plough smash it up over the winter?

Now that is done, I can realistically plan where all the bulbs will go and plant them over the week.  That's assuming, of course, that my back, arm & thigh muscles aren't so sore tomorrow that they spontaneously rebel, leave my body, and find a new more worthy host.  Let's just say that it has been some time since I slaved continuously for four hours or so.  They're not going to be happy about it, that's for sure.  Who cares?  I am happy about it.  Happy, indeed.

iris

I got more of the bulb irises.  It's confirmation that the things I couldn't remember  really are irises grown from bulbs.  I must have put them in and completely forgotten about them.  This time, I have a record.  They're called joyce and they're blue.  I hope they're a blue that works well with the house.  I know from the yellow ones that they look really, really silly laid out in a grid, so I'll do something else this time.  

daffodils

The daffodils are quite expensive and I'm not really sure what kinds I would like best.  So, I only (hah! "only") got two dozen. 

I chose the white, impressive Mount Hood, which I have one of already and it stands out beautifully in the garden.

I got Birma daffodils, which have yellow petals and white trumpets.  Many of the birma bulbs were split.  I am hoping that will translate to more daffodils.  

The bulbs are mighty and impressive.  They look like something you'd use to kill a science fiction creature, possibly the science fiction creature itself.

tulips

Not too many different kinds of tulips and not too many tulip bulbs.  They're pretty and bright and intense, but people take them and they're more expensive than crocuses, which are also pretty and people don't take them.  

I tried to match them to the house.  This is probably stupid, but I did it.  I got a deep bronzy-golden kind called cairo, and a blue one called aimiable blue.  

fritillaries

Fritillaries are a new thing for us.  I think they're quite pretty, with their little delicate op-art petals.  We'll see if they fit in with the rest of the flowers.  There are only a dozen in this year's batch.

They have interestingly different bulbs.  They're not as onion-like as the others, nor as very string-papery as the crocuses.  

garlic

We are not at all certain that there is any real difference between the garlic bulbs that we get at the store to cook with and the garlic bulbs that we get at the seed store for planting.  Who cares?  We will plant these.  There are three bulbs because the garlic did so well in the shade at the plot that I thought it might be worth trying it in the shade in the back of the house.  I am quite in love with the idea of growing edible things at home, too.  

crocus

The crocus situation is as follows:  I love crocuses.  I love their sweet little blooms so early in the spring.  I love the brave way they pop out of the still-icy earth.  They win every prize.

This summer, my prized pickwicks seem to have given up the ghost.  At least, I doubt that the bulbs that gave me such lovely flowers this year, followed by seed pods, will have much left in them to make new flowers again next year.  I am pretty sure that seed pods are a bad sign.  So I went out and got plenty of crocus bulbs.  They're also deliciously cheap.  On the order of $4 per dozen.  I can get behind mass plantings under those circumstances.

There are Golden Yellow crocuses in the bundle.  They're hopefully going to come out a nice deep yellow. 

There are Peter Pan crocuses, which are white and only white.

There are Blue Pearl crocuses, which look white to me, but apparently count as blue because they have a sort of blue tinting at the base of the petals.  

allium

They say that they are purple, but they looked pink to me.  They're not spectacular and huge, but for a first try with allium, I thought this would do.  They were so cheap, I nearly went for 50 but then I noticed that they needed to be 3 inches apart and I don't have room for 50 ANYTHINGS that are 3 inches apart so that settled that.

Allium is latin for garlic in my world.  There is a (quite lovely) polyphonic song called "Spem in Alum" (I think).  In my family, it's called "Spam in Garlic".  We do have our fun, don't we.

Busy day

Actual gardening-type activity occurred today!  Not actual gardening, mind you.  But ... there was lots and lots of gardening shopping.

We went out to a big box store and got soil and planks to turn the front yard into something with more nutrients and fewer people walking through it. 

We went to our local seed store and got lots and lots and lots of bulbs.  I mean, lots.  It was a good haul.

Many posts to follow, all about the different types of bulbs.

Pumpkins

One of the things we picked up last weekend was a pumpkin.  Not a pie pumpkin, just a regular great big ol' pumpkin.  I thought I might as well give it a go, and no one had pie pumpkins for sale.  I love a good pumpkin pie, and I absolutely adore fresh roasted pumpkin seeds.  

I cooked up the pumpkin, which was so big I had to do it in two batches because I couldn't fit it all in the oven at once, and discovered that regular pumpkins are quite different from pie pumpkins.  Or at least, this one was.  It gave up oodles and oodles of water.  I had a huge bowl of pumpkin pulp (still do, actually) which was brimming with liquid.  I poured off the water, but more keeps seeping out.  I've pureed the meat, and it's still separating into pumpkin juice and pumpkin pulp.  I have never had that problem before.  So, yesterday when we were at Pete's and there were pie pumpkins for $2 a throw, I grabbed a couple.  I don't know where in the freezer I think the pulp will fit, but I do know that I don't trust the stuff we have now to make a pie with.

Instead, last night I made pumpkin muffins.  They're basically bran muffins with pumpkin moisturizer and also fabulous.  I used the recipe from Smart Cooking (such a good cookbook!) and was very worried when I poured liquid batter, barely any hint of solidity, into the muffin cups.  They cooked up nicely, though, and were still good this morning.  I am looking forward to using the pumpkin pulp for this purpose again.  I have also found a recipe for pumpkin cookies in The Joy of Cooking.  I might try that on Saturday.  

In other pumpkin news, one of our neighbours at the plot had their pumpkin stolen!!  That really does suck.  It's been growing ever more beautiful all season.  I do feel for their loss.  Plus, who steals a pumpkin?  It's not like you can't get a better one at the store for $2.  You can't use a pumpkin unless you've got an oven, so obviously, you have $2 as well.  So depressing.  It's a downside of growing in a public place.  The public is sometimes dishearteningly un-public-spirited.  

Cherry tomatoes for breakfast

We had a chore downtown this morning which allowed us to walk by our plot on the way in to work.  There is a stark contrast between our plot and everyone else's now.  I guess that we were early clearing it out (but really, we could stand no more zucchinis).  We scooped up a couple of little yellow plum tomatoes and chomped them down.   There really is nothing like a tomato straight off the vine.  Not a bad way to start the day, really.

We ate some more potatoes last night.  They're strangely dry.  They're not like the ones we grew last year (not surprisingly, since they're a different species).  I think that next year, if we have a choice, we will plant yukon golds again.  These ones will probably make great mashed potatoes and they'll definitely be delicious for french potato salad (if I ever get around to it) but they're not great for straight-up eating and if we're going to grow our own, I think straight-up eating should be a priority.  We can get good bakers at the shops.  

Plot Emptier

We did (almost as soon as I stopped mucking about on the internet, actually) make it to the plot yesterday.  I ruthlessly pulled out the still blooming and productive zucchini.  I think, given the ratio of tiny babies to largish fruit, that they had started a new bloom when the sunshine reappeared last week.  At any rate, they're all gone now.  We pulled up the egyptian walking onions, which we've been told are mostly for use like chives (i.e. the fruit isn't very good) and is not good use of our limited space.  We swore that next year we wouldn't plant anything that took over wholesale like the zukes and then immediately agreed that what we should really grow is pie pumpkins.  We harvested about 10 lbs of potatoes, including those from the two plants which were completely subsumed by the monster zucchini.  

What remains is one sad tomato plant, mostly destroyed by zukes; one happy tomato plant, still producing pretty little yellow plums; a few increasingly mis-named spring onions; and a row of newly-sprouting beets.  I thinned the new beets a bit yesterday, but given that we're already into frost warnings, I don't think I'll hold much hope for this second harvest.  Too big for my breeches, I guess.

Plans

Today is a beautiful, chilly autumn day.  Yesterday we went apple picking in brisk clear sunlight.  It was marvellous.  

Unfortunately, the months of rain did take their toll on the apple crop and we found more than a few two-inch long earwigs gracing the apples.  We also picked up a pumpkin which was later revealed to be much, much watery-er than any pumpkin I have ever cooked before.  Ah, well. It was a beautiful day, nonetheless.

We are planning to finally dig up the potatoes and clear up the plot this morning.  In fact, what am I doing internetting when I should be real-worlding?

Lists and whinging

This is going to be a post about what needs doing.  I doubt it will even be of interest to me any time, but I have been neglecting the site because I haven't been up to much (except dealing with the endless streams of zucchini, and frankly that's just depressing to even dream of writing about).  Also, I changed my computer photo program and that's been making me less likely to take photographs.

Indoors:

• plant new basil
• plant new mint
• plant new chives
• transplant christmas cactus 
• make christmas cactus offspring
• transplant philodendrons
• make philodendron offspring
• repot dragon tree

Outdoors:

• prune raspberry
• move raspberry
• put in better earth all around
• make a raised bed for the front
• put in new bulbs 
• prepare a bed in the "lawn"
• put seaweed in at the plot
• take the zucchini away
• harvest the potatoes
• harvest the rest of the spring onions
• get rid of the weeds in the front side yard
• plant garlic
• hostas
• get rid of barrel
• thin new beets
• weed plot

Hm.  I wonder how many of these things will actually get done.  Not more than 50%, I am betting.  It's a long list, and I have lots to do before the winter comes, and many places to go as well.  Too bad about the poor, suffering garden.

In happier news, I have been taking the long way in and out of work lately and have been therefore passing a wonderful garden.  It's bursting with bright orange and yellow happy, not showy flowers.  I love it.  It's bushy and profuse and all around joyous.  

coriander up

The coriander seeds I planted have started to sprout.  As of today, there are only 3 sprouts (and I planted many more than 3 seeds, let me tell you) but we are not yet at the far end of the sprouting schedule listed on the packet.  

Harvest happenings

Since I've become so spotty with the updating, I want to put a couple of things down even though they don't have much to do with each other.  They fall under the general category of what happens to the veg we bring home.  

1) YEY! Something to do with overgrown zukes!

The zucchinis grew a lot over labour day weekend and we had a couple of behemoths on Tuesday last.  One of them, we managed to offload on a vegetarian student (they really need their vitamins) and the other we took home and stuffed. We sauted onions and garlic and the meat of the hollowed-out zucchini and put in some red kidney beans and tomato and a few olives for good measure.  Then we grated parmasan all over it and sprinkled parsley over top.  It was wonderful.  Served on a bed of brown rice, it gave us lunches all week.  YUM

2) Killer attack on tomatoes

Chutney doesn't like the little yellow plum cherry tomatoes (must find out their real name).  Or maybe she likes them too much.  At any rate, I came downstairs to find tomato-flavoured gore spread around and the poor little tomato corpse all burst and bleeding.

Gladioli

I did carry out my threat to cut the gladioli as they became available.  As of this morning, I am up to 3 stems in the vase.  

They're pretty.  I'm sorry that there won't be many more (I count 2 on the way).

The fungus among us

I found another mushroom in the side yard.  I don't know what type it is.  

However, after a blowy, wet weekend (thx Hanna) the weather is showing a marked improvement.  Like, there is blue sky.  And it lasts for more than 30 seconds.  And it covers more than 5% of the available space.  I am hoping that the departure of constant rainy grey skies will make some of the mushies go away.

The Beets Go On

At least, I am trying to have more beets on the way.  On Tuesday I planted a row of beets in the hopes that we can have autumn beets.  I put them on the far side of the zukes where the potato, beans and garlic had been before.  

Who would have guessed

It turns out that our plum-shaped tomatoes are cherry and yellow!  

I've already set one aside for seed-gathering.  

Very local

We ate our first tomato tonight.  It was sweet and juicy and wonderful. 

We didn't have it alone, though.  We ground up our own garlic and some of our own basil and put it on some homemade bread.  

Admittedly, we put some not-local salt in to make the grinding run well and some very not local olive oil to carry all the flavours. (Plus, we don't grow our own wheat, or keep our own yeast colony.)

Once it was all together, we broiled it and gobbled it down.  DELICIOUS!!

Juice

This afternoon I spent some time wringing out grated zucchini in preparation for freezing it.  I wish I could say it wasn't the first time this summer I'd spent lots of time squishing grated zucchini, but in fact we now have something like 20 zucchini grated and stored in our fridge.  

I have carefully set it into 2 cup bunches, which seems to be what the recipe books all call for.  I even salted one bunch; boy did that ever produce a large quantity of liquid.  

I don't know what I'm going to do with all this zucchini juice.  I have watered the plants a bit with it.  I put the rest into a jar, for the next watering.  It's such an exquisite colour.  What a magnificent green!  It must be good, right?

I am looking forward to the delicious mid-winter zucchini bread.  Earlier this month, I made the bread from James Beard's book and it was fantastic.  It was so good I'm going to have a hard time moving on and trying someone else's.  I made a zucchini chocolate cake (not the one I showed the recipe for earlier; for some reason I can't get cocoa at the moment) and it, too, was wonderful.  Plus, it had zucchini, so it was healthy, right?

Glad tidings

Earlier in the summer, I planted 20 gladiolus bulbs.  I was so excited when they started to poke up through the soil just weeks after I'd put in the bulbs.  But then came the painters and things went bad.

Well, the glad tidings are that as of today, I have 3 stalks of blooming gladioli on the way.

That's not the full bouquet of gladioli that I had in my dreams when I got the bulbs, but given the havoc wrecked by the (much needed) paint job I feel lucky to see any flowers on the way at all.  

My usual response to pretty flowers in the garden is to leave them in the garden, looking pretty.  These, I feel I should pick.  The garden is not looking pretty and it is not going to look pretty again before next spring.  I could have a nice vase of dramatic cut flowers inside instead of a few sad samples sprinkled through an otherwise dismal dirtpatch.  Cutting flowers is hard, though.  They're healthy plants! Still, I think I should consider these vase flowers from the word go.