Sunday, July 19, 2009

Growing well, eating well...

Time for a garden update! (And there is a spinning/yarn/Tour de Fleece update at the end of the post, so if that's what you're here for, feel free to jump ahead!)

My little salad garden continues to thrive this summer. It's very exciting! Some things are finished now...like the spinach, radishes, onions and beets. The lettuce is still hanging on, though I think it will bolt this week. I'm going to resew some spinach and beets and see if they'll grow again.

The tomatoes are doing fabulously!


Look at them! I've been getting a few ripe Sun Golds every day for the past few days. Today I picked five, though honestly, they may have been a little under-ripe. I just can't keep myself from picking them, though...they are soooo good!

The tomatillos...those two plants, along with the two Sun Gold plants, have taken over the world. Seriously. I have never, ever had anything grow as successfully as these two items. No IDEA what I'm going to do with all the tomatillos once they begin to ripen. Want some? ;)

The pepper plants are all producing baby fruits now, though the cayenne peppers look pretty big, but they aren't red yet. Are they supposed to turn red before you pick them? I'm assuming they are since that is what the picture on the little tag showed. Hm. If I can keep the critters from devouring the leaves on all the pepper plants, I should have a nice pepper crop at some point.

And I have little baby cukes on my one cuke vine! The second vine died, thanks, I think, to the overshadowing tomatillos of death. (They also are killing my cilantro, darn it!) And I went down to the big garden last week (I've kind of been ignoring it since the floods did so much damage last month) to find that the one surviving zucchini plant had fruit on it! And already it just proves that one zucchini plant is all anyone really needs. Thankfully, I love zucchini.

The tomatoes down there that survived the floods are still growing, but not well. The tomatoes are really small, compared to most years. It's kind of depressing. The groundhogs have eaten all of the peas (which fared the floods well) and the few broccoli plants that had survived. :::sigh::: A couple of my cuke plants came up down there too, but they aren't doing well. However! There are three HUGE plants that I figured out today are acorn squash! LOL I knew I planted some of those and some melons, but the melons didn't seem to survive. But hey, we'll have plenty o' acorn squash, it seems. The corn is actually growing, better than it's looked some years, really, and there are some huge pumpkin vines growing, so as long as the #@!$ groundhogs leave them alone, we might end up with pumpkins.

Kevin pulled the garlic last week, so we're awash in fresh garlic, and the potatoes should be ready to be dug anytime now.

My salad garden has afforded me some really yummy meals this summer. I've mostly been using the spinach for breakfast, oddly enough, sauteing it and putting it in scrambled eggs or omelets (for me...the kids won't eat it that way).

I make my scrambled eggs with one whole egg and two egg whites for added protein. The veggies vary, but today there was spinach, onion and tomato, along with a hodge-podge of fresh herbs (cilantro, basil, dill and chives, I think...I love my herbs!). And then I throw in a little cheese. Today I used feta. A little too tangy and salty, so I may not do that again. But I like to try new things.

Lunch was guacamole, which I've recently learned how to make...

I've also learned how important it is to use the avocado with a day or so of buying it, lest it turn to brown mush. :P The garlic and cilantro are the only things in the guacamole from our garden. And I like to eat it with toasted pita crisps. Mmm.

Dinner tonight was a little macaroni and tuna salad...


This is a default comfort food meal of mine anymore. I use whole-wheat macaroni, a packet of tuna in water, then I chop up about 2/3 cup of broccoli, a tomato (used my five little Sun Golds tonight!) and whatever other veggies I might want to add (today I tossed in some raw, chopped spinach since I still have some from the garden), and I mix it up with about 2 T mayo and 2 T red wine vinegar dressing. Usually I'll chop up a hard boiled egg white in it too, but I forgot that tonight. I love this dish so much!

Ok, back to growing...

The flowers are also doing nicely, except the petunias that really haven't gotten very big and in some cases have died off all together. But I really don't like petunias much anyway, so I'm not heartbroken. LOL The brown-eyed susans are now blooming like crazy, and they make me very happy!

They're making Nigel happy, too. :)

And lastly, my yarn stash is growing because I'm still spinning for Tour de Fleece! LOL

This is one of three skeins I did for the Creepshow album cover for Team BKG. It is Serendipitous Ewe roving, (some African wool) in the Tulip colorway. I had 8 oz. of roving and got a little over 400 yards of a worsted weight 2-ply, plus about 40 yards of Navajo-plied leftovers. I added some purple curly locks to it as I spun the one single to give it some of the dark from the album cover, but they mostly got lost in the spin when I plied. Oh well. It's still fun yarn!

While I have been spinning every single day, some days its been just barely. I was glad to have a huge block of time to spin today...I watched three whole movies while I spun! One more week of TdF, and honestly...I need a spinning break! I want to get back to knitting! LOL

3 comments:

pdxknitterati/MicheleLB said...

You're making me hungry! And I already had dinner. But your garden is yummy! Glad it didn't all wash away in the flood.

Lynn said...

A secret to keeping avocado and guacamole from turning brown quickly is to to put the seed back in it when you put it in the refrigerator.

Your TdF spinning is lovely!

Lisa B. said...

Lynn, yes, I've heard that! I do that and I guess it helps, but the one time it didn't was when the avocado was several days old and really, really soft to begin with. It turned to brown grossness really fast. :P Honestly, I've never used avocados before...I like them a lot, though, and want to find more ways to use them instead of just for guacamole! LOL