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.  

Like magic!

With all the rain we've had, there are a good number of these little mushrooms popping up everywhere.  I don't know what they are.  They don't get eaten by anything, though.  I believe that's a sign that they're not to be disturbed.  They're rather like smooth stones when viewed from afar.  

The hardest part

The hardest part of the work yesterday was cutting up the delphiniums which were killed when the painter bent them over.  I don't know quite how they'll cope with having a much shortened season this year.  I hope they'll be back next year.  I like them so much.  They try.  I felt like a monster taking a knife to their strong stalks.  

Transplanted

The chives I took from the plot have done alright.  They took some time gaining a foothold, and I don't know if I did them wrong when I transported them (on a hot day, out in the open) or if they just don't much like the compacted soil and dark surroundings of the back yard.  Anyway, they have at last the look of a plant that's going to be around for a while.  I am glad.  I like chives.  I meant to have an indoor pot of chives, but for now I'll settle for the success in the back.  

Opportunist

I found some mint in the back yard.  It's an escapee from a pot.  We used to have some in a pot but it died over a cold winter and so I emptied the pot soil into the back yard.  Now we have free mint.  I worry that it will take over in no time, but as long as I know about it I can keep an eye and maybe a sharp spade focused on it.  

Finally!

Yesterday (August 23), I finally got around to putting those herbs I got on July 26 into pots.  I am so lazy!  Just in case you thought it was only the blog I was neglecting; no.  I have been uniformly negligent.  

Anyway, only the red basil had expired.  The parsley had been doing so well in its tiny pot that I even harvested some one night for use with dinner.  

Now I have an indoor parsley plant, for use with dinner any time.

I also have an indoor mint plant.  The mint was looking pretty leggy after its time in the tiny pot.  I have pinched off all of its tips in the hopes it will bush out.  

They will make good company for the basil.  

This is the basil grown from seed, still undead.  I haven't re-potted it.  I do sometimes remember to pinch back its tips, but for the most part, it grows up.  

Bowed but unbroken

I reported that the painters had bent the yellow flowers in the front.  They certainly had, but the flowers continue.  That's a good plant.  Let's keep that one.  

Of course, I don't know what it is, so I can't get more.  It's a perennial, though.  

Another success

More good news:  One of the scarlet runner beans is growing up the side of the house.  It's not the hugest of successes because it hasn't flowered or anything, but at least it's still there.  I am happy to see this plant, raised from seed, still going.  

Scented slashing

I have once again attacked the oregano.  It was sprawling out into the sidewalk and wandering from side to side like it thought it was king of the garden.  

I simply took a knife to it and cut it back until it wasn't a) flopped all over the sidewalk b) flopped all over any surviving plants around it c) flopped all over itself.  At first I felt a bit bad about hacking away at what is basically my best plant.  It grows so nicely!  But then the nice smell of herb filled the air and I realised that this is a plant that needs to be cut.  It needs some harvesting.  It needs to have a reason to refresh.  

I did notice, after I had cut off most of its blooms, that the bees seem to really like the flowers.  I don't like depriving bees.  I'm guessing there will be more flowers shortly, though.  The bees can make do for a little while. 

Why I like bulbs

I have some new juicy plant coming up.  I think it's just another phase of the grape hyacinths, because there seems to be perfect overlap between the hyacinths and these little blades.  

However, I don't know.  I don't actually remember the hyacinths having a 3rd stage.  I remember (with effort) that they produce little leaves and then flowers and then they change a lot and produce funny little silver-dollar-like stems.  I don't remember this.  

I DO remember liking the idea of fall-flowering bulbs.  I might easily have invested in some.  Time will tell.  

Wrong again!

As long as I am being upfront about how I misjudged my marigolds and gazanias, why don't we address the other flower I put in at the same time?  I believe I've gone on the record saying that they're no good.

Guess what!  They're good.  Most of them (but not all) have made it through the torrential rains AND whatever it was that munched so merrily on them.  Some of them have even started to spread out a bit.  Like they really meant it when the packet said to leave a foot around each plant. 

Also, they've got pleasant blooms.  The little white spots are cheerful, yes.  However, it's the middle that wins me over. I love the little tiny flowers-within-a-flower that reside within.  

So, I eat my words once more.  I'd like zinnias next year.  Yes, indeedy.  Best of all, they're looking good now when most other things that I plant are over and/or tired.  Good stuff.

All gaz-ed up

So, we've established that I was wrong when I wrote that the marigolds were over.  However, I wasn't wrong when I wrote that the gazanias were done.  They were!  They had stopped producing new flowers.  No buds.  Nada.  Nothing doing for weeks.  

Except, oh.  Now there are new buds on the plants.  Not just on one, either.  On a few.  

I'm not complaining here.  I liked the gazanias.  I even picked some and brought them indoors.  I haven't picked any other flower I've grown.  I hope the new ones are here for a while.  

I wonder if they're back because the sun has finally come out.  Perhaps for all these weeks they were just waiting for a break in the clouds.  

Actual gardening activity

This afternoon while the sweary one struggled with the lawn and a large, unwieldy pile of dirt (score: 2 rakes down; lawn better-looking than before; pile of dirt only marginally improved) , I actually weeded and neatened the side yard.  I hadn't the heart to touch it since the painters had been through.  It has been looking very bad.  

It wasn't so bad to tidy it up.  I had to do a few things I don't like to do (admit something is dead) and a few things I don't mind so much but I'm still not crazy about (deal with big spider webs).  The weeds were plentiful, but they hadn't taken over.  The plants I meant to be there were still winning.  That's nice.  

The front yard hasn't had any attention since my first attempt long ago.  It's not beautiful.  I MUST put a raised bed in when the chance arrives.  It can't go on as it has.  

The side on the front is dreadful.  I pulled up the horrible weed barrier last fall and since then it's run amok.  It, too, needs some serious attention.  Heaven only knows who will grant it.  Not me, I think.  In happier news, the yellow-flower bush is still flowering.  

My difficulty has been entirely to do with lack of inspiration.  There isn't anything new going in.  I don't have to prep the ground for something wonderful that I want to have a nice life.  It's just maintenance now.  And with the side yard, maintenance is easy, except when I go away for a month and monsters come and trample and im-blue everything while I'm gone.  Oh, and it rains continually for a month after that.  It turns out that I'm not a good gardener then.  I need something nice.  I need a reward.  

Today my reward is dual.  I spent some pleasant minutes in the sunshine AND the side yard is no longer a disaster.  There are a few other good bits of news, too.  I'll write more about them in the expanded posts.  I think one long post is easier for me to write, but harder for me to find the relevant note in later, so I'm going to write many posts.  

Anyway, I hope I can find inspiration to deal with the front before the cold comes in the autumn.  So far, the only thing I can think of is shame. I can't bear that our house looks trashy with all those weeds surrounding it.  Unfortunately, I'm not quite embarrassed enough. 

Boy, was I ever wrong

Some time ago, I wrote a post saying that the marigolds were finishing.  I was wrong.  Very, very wrong.  They're still at it.   A few of the marigolds turned out to be dead when I cleaned up today, but mostly they're alive and well.  

The dead marigolds, when pulled up, had rectangular rootstocks, just as they had when I planted them in June.  I'm curious to know if the ones that survived are the ones I carefully slit the roots of before planting.  I know I didn't do it with all of them (too lazy), but I know I did do it with some.  At any rate, ALL of the dead marigolds had perfectly starter-pot-shaped bottoms.  I am suspicious.  I will try to learn the lesson from this about how to properly plant seedlings.  

The deadheading gave me some garden-style thrills, too.  The dried old flower heads burst open to reveal collections of seeds.  I wouldn't have recognized them if it hadn't been for my attempts to grow them indoors from seed.  The seeds are lovely little papery arrowheads, not anything like a vegetable seed.  I didn't save them because I remembered that they're fancy-pants hybrids and heaven only knows what the seeds will produce.  On the other hand, because they are marigolds and producing marigold-seed-shaped seeds, I spread a few of them around in the dirt.  Maybe they'll catch. 

Fruit

The raspberries continue to delight us.  We really aren't getting many and I suspect that at least half of the fruit that the plant produces are stricken with some kind of blight.  Nonetheless: RASPBERRIES!  Hooray!

Another picture-free post

We pulled by the plot at lunchtime today.  Wow, do zucchinis ever grow.  I mean, wow.  Those are a lot of zukes and they're not small. 

The tomatoes are ... OK.  There was one that was going quite a promising yellow shade but on closer examination it had a huge hole in the back and was maybe yellowing with rot not ripening. 

I went to the seed store yesterday to pick up some beet seeds.  I'd like a second crop, if possible.  Of course, then I forgot to bring the packet in with me today, so we'll have to plant them later.  

 

All other plots look amazing.  Wonderful.  

Other People's Gardens

I have been meaning to say that last weekend we went a-visiting and we stayed at a house with PEAS.  Lots of 'em.  All I have to say is: YUM.  

We also went blueberry picking.  Last Friday night we went picking after supper and came back with a few.  On Saturday evening we returned to the exact same field and it was practically a blue carpet.  I couldn't believe it.  Whereas on Friday, 5 of us picked maybe 3 cups of blueberries (that's less than a litre for the metric among us); on Saturday the same 5 of us picked easily 12 cups (3 litres)!  Wonderful.  I've been eating them, too.  In the past, when we've had blueberries around, I am a bit hesitant just to pop 'em in my mouth because they're so precious.  We therefore freeze a bunch which is nice but ... fresh is different.  This year, I am repressing the "mustn't eat them; they're special" thoughts and hauling out bowlsful as alternatives to cookies in the afternoon.  

They ARE different, though.  We had blueberry pancakes this morning and (as always) we ignored the common wisdom that says you should plop the blueberries onto the batter in the pan to avoid blue-staining the batter in the bowl.  There was no dyed batter.  There was no spread of blueberry.  They all stayed suspended in the batter and tasted delicious.  I found a blueberry coffee cake recipe among my grandmother's collection.  Maybe I should try that, too.  

Red raspberries

The raspberries are gradually coming ripe now.  We've eaten a dozen, I think.  Each one is absolutely precious.  The thing is, it's been raining since early July (you think I'm exaggerating, don't you -- check the data: We've had rain 20 days in the last month) so ANY fruit is a bit of a miracle.  There are a few berries that are covered in a sort of grey dusty mould or fungus.  I KNOW that's not good.  I can't help but think that today's sunshine is too late to save our crop this year.  

MORE zucchinis

Actually, I am not complaining all that much about the proliferation of zukes.  They're very good.  We picked 3 more today.  I don't think I mentioned that last week the sweary one took some hungry-looking students down to the plot to gather some healthy harvest for themselves.  

The beans are done now.  After the enormous picking last week, nothing much was left.  We pulled up some of the plants this afternoon.  I stopped pulling up plants when I pulled out one that still had some baby beans on it.  Next year, we need to follow the excellent lead of our co-plotters and put in some proper bean infrastructure.  There are a number of very nice bean screens around.  

We also pulled up a whole potato plant.  It had been knocked over by the zukes, beans, and incessant rains.  There were about a dozen potatoes underneath.  After our first taste the other night, I can't wait to eat these.  Nothing is like a fresh potato.  We really don't get them in any way other than eating them, either.  It's unfair; why can't we get such delicious beasts at the farmers' market?  We can get nice peas.  Why not nice potatoes?  

Our haul included some (increasingly mis-named) spring onions and some herbs from the communal garden.  I brought home some egyptian walking onion babies to plant in the backyard.  

I think next year we'll get rid of the walking onions.  I like using the space we have for things we can eat.  

Greens (mostly), also first potatoes

Yesterday afternoon we went to the plot and picked what there was to pick.  We picked lots and lots of beans.  

We picked some green onions. 

We picked about several zucchinis.

I scrabbled around in the dirt underneath some of the potato plants and got a few potatoes out.  They're bigger than I would expect.  I was hoping for little baby new potatoes, but already they are big.  Oh well.  They were scrumptious.

We didn't pick any tomatoes, but I continue to hold out hope that eventually they will turn into edible fruits.  

I keep showing pictures of the produce and little pictures of the fruit on the vine.  In the interests of full disclosure, this is what it really looks like:

It's marvelously overgrown.  It's mostly the zucchini's fault.  Here we see a few leaves from the zukes coming through where the potatoes are, but between the zucchini and the potato is a whole row of struggling beans!  AND the garlic was originally in that bit, too.  It's wonderful, delicious chaos.  

This isn't gardening, either

While I am aware that this isn't actually a gardening post, I thought it was time to write something and I haven't done anything garden-y but mow the lawn in days.  And to be honest, I wouldn't have mowed the lawn, but the weather has been so terribly wet for so terribly long and it looked like the rain was going to start again immediately and the grass was looking like a 1970's hockey player's hair.  

We've been keeping a jug of water in the fridge.  When there are people visiting, we find that we go through water too quickly to keep up with the filter so we need to keep another reservoir on hand.  The innovation is to put things other than water into the jug.  We started with slices of lemon.  It was refreshing and delicious.  

I picked a bunch of mint at our communal herb garden at the plot.  I wasn't sure where I was going to use it but I really wanted to try our new herb-stripping snips.  The leaves have gone into the water jug and now we have this wonderful brisk concoction to enjoy.  It's lovely. 

The taste of mint leaves me awash in memories.  It's the taste of summer and vacations and luxury.

Chocolate Zucchini Cake Recipe

My grandmother died last summer and I took over quite a few of her recipe books.  I have been poring over them looking for promising dishes to try, but I have to admit that so far, I've come up a cropper.  Nonetheless, I love the old handwritten notebook that my great grandmother gave to my grandmother one christmas. The knowledge that my great grandmother couldn't spell for beans (cheese, honestly, how many ways are there to spell it?) has been one surprise to me (given how ferociously the generations I know defend their spelling abilities, I always assumed it was a family trait) that is worth wading through the countless recipes for frozen hashbrowns with melted margarine and chicken soup covered with a melted margarine and cornflakes crust.  I also love the way old recipes are written.  There aren't any namby-pamby prep instructions for the uninitiated.  These are recipes for people who know how cakes are made; they just give the ingredient list and and the cooking time and temperature.  Who needs to write out "cream together the butter and sugar until fluffy" time and time again?  The recipe pictured above has about as much instruction as would be included by an impatient person who knew what modern recipes were supposed to look like.  Clearly the typing was a bit of a pisser, and there was no way anyone was going to go back and start again just because they'd forgotten the sugar.  No way.  Not after the butte(r) incident.  

I haven't tried this one yet, but (see below, and presumably above) there are enough zucchini around to make it seem likely I will soon.  I'll try to report on how it turns out.  In an ideal world, what you get is a chocolate cake that's unexpectedly moist.  

I apologize for the image, by the way.  It's from photobooth and I am not sure what is going on at the periphery, but clearly there are limits to what the magic tiny camera can cope with.  

Vegetables

I often think of the word "vegetables" as being pronounced veg-i-TAYB-les, like it's sung in the Gilbert & Sullivan song " ... it's a scheme of devices to get at low prices all goods from cough mixtures to cables, which tickled the sailors by treating retailers as though they were all vegetables" (want to guess what the rest of the song was about?  Those gentleman knew a thing or two about stringing words together, didn't they!).  

It's been VERY RAINY in this part of the world.  Very.  Yesterday I was in the back yard cleaning something with the garden hose and you couldn't tell where I had sprayed and where I hadn't.  It's been that kind of very rainy.  

As a result of the very rainy, there have not been any trips to the plot over the long weekend.  As a result of the long weekend, well, there are 7 fresh new zukes in our fridge.  We're not doing too badly using them up, but I think this will break the camel's back.  Time to start freezing grated zucchini.  

There are also a good bunch of beets (the end of them) and a few scallions.  

The scallions worked out very well.  I'd plant 'em again exactly the same way: Just dump every darn scallion seed you have into the row and thin them out as they emerge.  They don't have to be very big to be edible and the thinning later didn't seem to have a negative effect on the growth of the un-thinned.  Plus, the little tiny ones were wonderfully potent.  

We also pulled up the end of the garlic.  The garlic has been such a joy.  I never in my wildest dreams imagined that I could grow my own garlic.  So fabulous.