Tomato Time

And after a busy summer weeding and watering and waiting, it's finally time for tomatoes. Hurrah.

I'm hoping that later this week I'll have time to add a few individual tomato portraits, but since it's going to be VERY busy, it might have to wait till next weekend.

Until then, I'll share my five favorite ways to eat fresh tomatoes:

- Whole, like an apple fresh from the garden and still warm from the sunshine.

- Sliced in half-inch slices and layered on fresh warm rolls.

- Sliced in half-inch slices and layered on toast with mayo.

- Roasted in the oven and tossed with pasta.

- Sliced and layered with chevre, then drizzled with olive oil.

These are in no particular order, since it's totally impossible for me to choose a favorite.

Later,

b

PS, I do know that one of Phil's chocolate peppers sneaked into my photo. What a card.

September???

So I woke up, rolled over and looked at the clock this morning and was completely floored to discover that it's September. I feel like Ripina van Winkle. Where did August go? Between having kids arrive home from their globetrotting and starting back to school and work, somehow the month disappeared. Never fear, I'm back. Or should that be, I'm ba-ack?

Whatever.


Of course there's still lots going on outside, but today I'm going to indulge myself and talk about our little vacation in the hills.

Phil and I spent a week in the Black Hills of South Dakota recently. It was in celebration of our 10th anniversary. (I'll pause here for general expressions of amazement and unbelief.) He found a little place on a quiet road back in the hills about 20 minutes from Sturgis. The cabin was wonderful, all open ceilings, polished hardwood floors, trees and deer in the back yard and a hot tub on the deck.

We spent an unbelievable amount of time at the cabin, tanning and hot tubbing and relaxing, but did manage to tear ourselves away most days. While we were away, we hiked. We hiked around Sylvan Lake; we hiked around Dalton Lake; we hiked the Centennial Trail, we hiked the Mikkelson Trail; we hiked from Deadwood to Lead and back again. Of course the upside was that even with lovely meals and bottles of wine, my jeans still fit when we got home again.


The point, however, is that we saw some lovely wild things while we were hiking. Some I've identified, and some I have not. If you recognize any of the beauties scattered throughout today's post, please let me know what they are.

Thanks.


This one should have reproduced as a MUCH deeper purple -- think royal purple.

Later,
b

Why Garden?

I am often asked, especially by baffled teenagers, why I spend my summer hours digging and weeding and working in the sunshine. So here's my gardening apologia....

Gardening is good exercise and good for your heart. Even the American Heart Association lists gardening as a healthy form of exercise and recommends at least 20 minutes three times a week. All that bending and stretching and twisting keeps you young and flexible. The sunshine on your shoulders is also necessary for your body to produce Vitamin D -- essential for calcium absorption and bone growth. Who knew?

Gardening is good for your soul. The prolonged periods of solitude guaranteed by gardening provide perfect opportunities for philosphizing and self-examination. I know my teenagers rarely interrupt me when I weeding the tomatoes or deadheading the pinks, something about being put to work, I think.

Gardening is good for the environment. All those plants busily transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. All those weeds and clippings can also be used to build a compost pile, saving space in the local landfill for something else. The resulting compost also returns nutrients to the soil when I dig it in around my plants.

But the real reason I garden? Jude the Obscure:


Phil gave me this rose bush two years ago for Mother's Day. Since then it's flowers have perfumed my garden, my house and even my school. All that and it's beautiful too.

More later,
b

Remember Me?

So it's been about 2 weeks, but I have a very good excuse. I was on vacation. In Canada. At Mom and Dad's 50th anniversary celebration. I had all kinds of good plans -- I was going to take a photo tour of Mom's garden and post it here -- I was going to take family pictures and post them here -- I was going to write a blog or two at midnight when the sun was still shining in the very far north. Funny how none of that happened.

Instead I have two pictures of my favorite wildflower ever:

See how lovely it is? And it grows enthusiastically from Edmonton north. I've seen it in Colorado too. Maybe it's the elevation, not the latitude. Who knows. But here in parting, with a promise that I'll get back to this blogging thing regularly, is number 2:

Isn't that lovely?

More later,

b

Meet My New Friend

Since my last post the weather has changed dramatically. Hurrah. We've been enjoying classical July 4th weather -- 90 degrees and sunny. My favorite weather. Of course once the sun comes out, things start to change in my garden.

And the biggest change I've seen yet is my dinner-plate dahlia. The little dahlias have been blooming enthusiastically for the last week or so. (I'd post pictures here, but a sudden summer storm chased us all inside before I could finish my garden tour.) But I did get a picture of my new best friend:

I know this isn't any kind of record-breaking dahlia, but I'm impressed with my first attempt. Daniel suggested taking a picture of the flower with a quarter so we could see how big it really is. See:

Since the lightning seems to be getting MUCH closer, I'll stop now.

More later,
b

Yucky Day Gardening

When I got up this morning it was only 50-odd degrees and the wind was blowing ferociously out of the west. Of course it was the morning I had planned to do a little gardening before plunging into the busy rest of my day. Coffee with a girlfriend at 9. Work at the greenhouse at noon. I had a little time after getting Daniel up at 7 to putter in the yard. But the dilemma was, what to do?

So, I came up with a list of my top five favorite "Yucky Day" gardening activities.

#1. Read my latest garden magazine. Admire the pictures. Plan what I want to do next in my own garden to make it match one of those lovely pictures. Admire the recipes and check the kitchen to see if I actually have the ingredients.

#2. Move from the magazine to one of my many garden catalogues. Then I can actually figure out how much it might cost to implement my new vision, or if I could grow the ingredients for the recipes.

#3. Make a cup of chamomile or mint tea with fresh steeped herbs from my garden. OK, I don't actually have chamomile growing this year, but one of my students gave me some that she had grown. And my mint this year is chocolate mint. I haven't tried it as tea yet. I'm not actually sure what to do with it, other than feed bits of it to visiting friends and their children to enjoy their reactions.

#4. Pull on my warm red sweater, take my tea outside to a sheltered corner, and listen to the wind blow. Sitting outside, warm from my tea and my sweater feels like a manageable adventure.

#5. Play in the kitchen. Use the last of those lovely strawberries for a pie. Make a batch of strawberry-rhubarb jam. Even just chop the rhubarb so it can wait in the freezer to be a taste of spring in February.

Hopefully by the time I'm done entertaining myself in the kitchen, the weather will have cleared up and I can actually go outside and get dirty.

More later,
b

Fresh Air AND Flowers

After a very busy week, I finally have a few minutes to post again. We've had overnight guests and daytime company and several visits to the doctor to get immunizations for Kate, one of my twin daughters. She's getting ready to go to South Africa for a month and has needed a few unusual things. The immunizations are pretty standard, but the typhoid immunization and anti-malaria pills are something we don't see very often in North Dakota. Not that that has anything to do with my garden. Oh well.

Anyway, today's topic is one of my favorite perks of gardening. Besides fitness and fresh air and finding time to think, we get ....... cut flowers.

I planted a lovely healthy foxglove this spring and, as soon as it flowered, I snipped off the blooms and brought them in the house to enjoy. My enormous columbine was flowering at the same time and they make a lovely combination. I've had nothing but compliments on the foxglove and can hardly wait till they make more flowers. They do have more unopened buds that I left on the plant. I've put them right beside my daisies and they make another wonderful pair.

Now I've got a peony just opening up that I'll bring inside, although I will leave a few buds outside for the neighbors to enjoy too. And soon the baby's breath will be ready to tuck into every bouquet I gather. My dahlias, big and small, are covered with buds, and the cosmos, four-o'clocks, and snap dragons should bloom all summer long to enjoy inside and out.

It seems to me that gardening is the perfect antidote to my regular life in ND. I have to slow down, be patient and take a few deep breaths. The garden is one place where hurrying simply doesn't work. Hallelujah.

More later,

b

Happy Father's Day

Yesterday, as you all know, was Father's Day. In honor of the day, I would like to pay a brief tribute to Phil who is one of the most accomplished gardeners I know.

Favorite Phil facts....

Phil loves to dig holes. Maybe this is a guy thing, or maybe it's just a Phil thing. Either way, any time I want a tree or shrub planted, he's my go-to guy. He will happily dig a hole as deep and as wide as I want and then fill it with water to make sure it drains. He'll add compost or fertilizer, and then he'll fuss with the tree until it's facing the direction I want. If I change my mind, he'll even dig it up and replant it in a more suitable spot.

So far this year, he's planted five healthy Saskatoon bushes (or juneberries or serviceberries depending on where you grew up). We were going to put a row all along the back yard, but five was all they had at the nursery.

He also -- uncomplainingly -- planted two cutleaf staghorn sumac babies in the holes in my shrub border where a couple of things died over the winter.

Phil loves his plants. One of my favorite garden memories is of Phil splinting a broken tomato plant. He had been weeding or watering or something and accidentally broke a tomato. Of course there were many, many more lined up in neat rows. Still, he found a straight stick and some plant-friendly tape and made a tiny splint. The good news was that the plant didn't even blink. It continued to grow and eventually contributed to our abundance of tomatoes.

I just wanted to take advantage of this big day to celebrate Phil. Husband and gardener extraordinaire.

More later,
b

Strawberry Treats

So since I was expecting a house full of people last Thursday, I thought it would be fun to try some lovely spring treats. Sadly I don't have any rhubarb or any asparagus or any chevre. So I tried strawberries instead. And had great success.

I made tiny meringues -- beat egg whites and sugar and cream of tartar -- topped them with sweetened whipped cream and laid strawberry halves gently on top of the whole thing.

They were fabulous. Not only were they pretty to look at, they were delicious.

Tomatoes and Peppers and Sprouts, Oh My!

After returning from a weekend spent with my sister, I was happy to return home and find that sweet Phil, helpful Phil, wonderful Phil of the green thumb had taken advantage of the spring weather and planted the garden. After dropping my bags in the house and petting the dogs, I headed straight for the backyard to admire the straight rows of lovely green plants. There were rows of tomatoes, peppers, brussel sprouts, squash and onions; all of which will provide fabulous ingredients for summer supper experiments.

We planted the usual varieties of tomatoes -- some early girls and sheyennes for eating tomatoes and romas for salsa and cooking. And we're trying Mr. Stripeys, an heirloom variety that is yellow with red vertical stripes. It's written up as fabulously sweet. It was irresistable. We added a few Lemon Boys to round out our plates with lovely sweet yellow tomatoes. If they're as good as advertised, I'll save a few seeds and try out a few new varieties next year.

Phil always grows a wide variety of peppers for his salsa. We have sweet peppers and hot peppers and super hot peppers that he'll enjoy trying in different combinations. We always do several types of squash, summer and winter, that we'll grill and saute and bake and eventually give away to our friends when we're all squashed out.

The really new thing on our list is the brussels sprouts. About a month ago we bought some baby sprouts and sauted them in butter and ate them straight out of the pan. They were wonderful. We're hoping to recreate the experience and try a few adaptations this summer when they're REALLY fresh -- just from the garden. I'm open to recipe suggestions if anyone has a favorite.

I'll share recipes and pictures if they work out.

More later,
b

Hurrah!

With only two days left in May, it finally warmed up enough today that I was able to spend the afternoon in the garden. I poked some bedding plants in -- some white geraniums, another small yellow dahlia and a lantana. I moved some pinks to a south corner and put my favorite osteospermum (white petals with blue centers) behind them. I added some more pink somethings to the front of the east side of the flower bed and then cleaned the weeds out of the peony row.

After I had finished in my yard, I went to spend a few hours at the greenhouse where I work part-time. We enjoyed two hours of sunshine and extreme busyness and then enormous gray clouds gathered in the western sky, the wind started to blow, and it started to rain -- really rain -- hard pounding what's happening to my baby plants rain. We stood and watched the rain pound until it changed to hail. One lousy warm day and we get hail!!! There I was at work and could only worry about my babies. Of course those storms don't usually last very long, and 15 or 20 minutes later it was done.

Phil was a sweetheart and came to pick me up since I had walked to work and didn't want to get too wet walking home again. And I learned that although it had poured and hailed on the north side of town, it had only sprinkled a little on my new flowers. The pounding rain and hail had stopped two blocks from our house. Hurrah.

Still Waiting....

Well luckily nothing was frosty this morning when I went outside. I uncovered my dahlias and some other tender babies, set out a few potted plants I had carried carefully inside, and gave everything a drink. Still, it didn't get very warm today. I think we maxed out at 50-odd degrees and by now it's already below 40. Phil promises me it's supposed to warm up tomorrow, so maybe then I'll be able to put a few more bedding plants in the ground.

I'd like to put some catmint around my new climbing rose, a Don Juan that was a Mother's Day present. Then I'll tuck some chocolate mint into the pots with my little dahlias and geraniums. I love the way it smells (just like chocolate and mint) and the kids enjoy tasting little bits of it and feeding it to their friends.

Other newcomers I'm trying this summer are angel's trumpets, four o'clocks and morning glories along the north fence. My plan is for the morning glories to open up and smell sweet in the morning, followed by the four o'clocks, with the angel's trumpets covering the evening shift. Pictures and descriptions of my success -- or lack thereof -- will follow in a month or so.

Now, one more night of tucking my flowers in and we'll see if tomorrow brings a little more sunshine.

Later,
b

Welcome Spring?

The official beginning of spring in ND is this weekend - the Memorial Day weekend is traditionally our first chance for camping and the optimal time to put in our gardens and start enjoying the weather. After three days of rain and cold, cold wind, today actually got all the way up to 53 degrees on the thermometer and when I was working in the south flower bed I didn't really need my sweater.

Need I say more?

ND is not Eden.

I've started this blog hoping to keep track of what I do in the garden this year, what works, what doesn't, and what I cook from Phil's garden. I do the flowers, he does the veggies, and it works beautifully.

So today I did put the dinner plate dahlias out along the south side of the house and surrounded them with pansies and violas. I guess we'll see since they're new for me this year. I put a new climbing rose on the east side of the house and some smaller dahlias and a lantana in the planter box by the front door. I'll post pictures when that becomes a possibility.

Now I have to take a break from the computer and go cover my babies for tonight. It's supposed to get close to freezing and there's a frost warning for the county. Lovely.

Later,
b