Barefoot Kitchen Witch - In the Garden

Morning Stroll

Weekend mornings.  Early.  Cups of coffee in hand, Bill and I head outside before the kids are up to take a leisurely walk around the yard.  To check out the growing things.

Like the peas.  These won't be around for long.  And we'll have no idea how many the plants give us, because Alex and Julia will pick the little pea pods and eat them before Bill and I even see them.  Most of them.

But here are a few - proof that they existed.

I love the pea blossoms...

 

Nearby, in our little garden next to the driveway, the garlic is sending out scapes, or flower stems, which I'll be harvesting tomorrow, probably, and using in a variation on scallion pancakes.  Cutting the scapes is also supposed to increase the bulb size of the garlic, too, so it's a completely win-win plan.

From there, it was into the back yard to check out the various squashes, tomatoes, strawberries, herbs, and assorted greens.  And to admire the feathery asparagus.

Harvest time is past, and we allow the asparagus to grow tall and flower.

 

Now it's around to the front of the house...

This rose bush is HUGE this year.  We bought it ten or eleven years ago - before we bought this house and moved in here - from a guy in our neighborhood who had gorgeous flowering plants all over his yard - he nad entire green hands, never mind a green thumb.  Anyway, every August he had a plant sale - he'd pot up tons of plants, put them all out in his driveway and over the grassy areas of his yard, and people would come and shop.  Like us.  We bought a lot from those plant sales, including this rose. 

Moving along...we walk through the boat garden.  Last year Bill took over and added a bunch more perennials, like these lupines...

And this...which I don't remember the name of...

 

I bought this pink daisy a couple weeks ago.

Here's a view of most of the garden.  The irises are winding down, but there's plenty of other color to take over.

That's my cup of coffee there on one of the stepping stones.

I love early mornings.

First Harvest of 2009

 

These are the seedling rejects.  Bill trimmed them away from the other seedlings that have sprouted up this week, and rather than toss them on the compost heap, he put them in a little dish in the fridge, and later they'll get rinsed and added to a salad.

Spring Is Here - No Matter What the Calendar Says

Though we still may see a bit of this in the morning...

 

Or a bit of this...

 

We're also starting to see more and more of this:

 

 

 

We've also got garlic coming up...

 

And Bill's got seeds planted in the little starter pots in the basement...and yesterday he planted peas and broccoli rabe outside.

Bye, bye winter.  It's been fun, but it's time to move on....

Hardening Off - 2 April 2008

We've got a small cold frame (I think it was originally my parents'?) that Bill is using to harden off some of the first vegetables that have come up.  The thing is, because the frame has metal sides, it can cast shadows if it's not alligned properly with the sun.  So one of us has to go outside periodically to reposition the cold frame and the plants inside so that they will get ALL sun ALL the time.

Bill also told me that the peas have poked through the dirt in their buckets along the driveway.  I took a quick look this morning but it was really windy and chilly and I went back inside without finding any green.

I'll check again later.

Or tomorrow. 

Or whenever the wind dies down.  Like some time in July, probably.

First Harvest - 29 March 2008

Really!  See those tiny little greens on top of this Warm Honey-Mustard Tofu Salad?  Those are little seedlings Bill thinned from the arugula, cilantro and red lettuce pots.  Aren't they cute?  And they have flavor - they taste like, well, like arugula, cilantro and red lettuce.  Pretty cool, huh?

Broccoli Rabe is In! - 23 March 2008

Bill planted the whole raised bed with broccoli rabe - it'll come up early - before we need to plant anything else - and it's one of my favorites.  So this is in, and the peas.  Yay, Spring.