Pete & Teri’s Next Big Adventure

The first frost took us by surprise a few nights ago, so the next day we pulled in most of the remaining garden veggies before a really thorough freeze turns them to mush.

We’ve hauled in a big load of green tomatoes from the truly dead plants, but the area that I over-planted and didn’t trellis still has green leaves in the matted lower layers, so we’re leaving a bunch of fruit on the off chance it might ripen on the vine. (See, this was not neglect, it was a frost survival tactic!)

Unlike the tomatoes, the squash plants are completely done. This was a huge zucchini plant just a few days ago:

There were still flowers on some of the wilted zukes, and I couldn’t help messing with this one in Photoshop a little…

We hauled in the last of the delicata squash, even though many are far too young to finish ripening inside:

These poor little infant delicata went straight to the compost:

…as did their vines:

Cabbages are still going strong:

And so are the aphids on this half-forgotten kale plant (rather, they were until a few minutes after this photo was taken):

Basil seed is plentiful:

and tobacco is pretty in a red sunset. The leaves turn yellow from the bottom up, and are harvested continuously as they turn…picked green, they’re unlikely to ever cure into a mellow smoke.

Finally, the flowers that I hope will provide seed for next year’s tobacco plants – and a little friend:

It’s difficult to capture or describe the lushness around here this time of year, so I decided that I’d spend 15 minutes walking around and see how many different flowers I could spot. Here’s the result…

Brandywine tomato:

Strawberry:

Foxglove:

Cool frost-colored plant (this isn’t Photoshop, this is what it actually looks like in June):

Last year’s kale finally allowed to go to seed:

Ahh, yes, the Meadow Multi-Dangle:

Peas:

Purple clusters:

Purple cones:

Red clover:

One rosebush:

The other rosebush:

Rosemary:

The Dreaded but briefly lovely scotch broom:

Small daisies:

Umm…purple:

Trailing blackberry:

Something lavender colored:

A magenta one:

A pink one:

More pink:

Purple again:

Fantastic red flower:

Unknown yellow flower:

Another yellow one:

White clover:

Yarrow, or Queen Anne’s Lace, or similar:

And finally, today’s garden haul – the Chinese Pink garlic, which mostly crapped out but gave a few small clusters, more turnips, and the first good pint of domesticated strawberries:

(images below are scaled-down; click each one to see full size
or click here to expand them all)

The Asian Pear tree has leaves as lovely as any other’s flowers.

Cover crops of clover and cereal ryegrain are so pretty it’s almost a shame to till them in when planting the next crop. In some places, I’m experimenting with just opening a hole in the clover cover and planting into that, cropping the clover surrounding the transplant to let in light. Might mean less weeding, which is always a good thing.

Radishes…fast and reliable, they really lift your spirits when you’re looking at everything else you planted and wondering where the heck it is. These were planted from last year’s seeds. Several radishes were allowed to complete their whole cycle undisturbed, and when they died in the fall it was an easy matter to strip the seedpods off into paper bags. I crushed the pods in the bag with a beer bottle and sprinkled some of the resulting mixture here about a week ago. The greens, being early and abundant, are almost worth more to us than the spicy little radishes themselves.

Turnips and Kale are having a riot in the cold frame. We’ve been taking several large helpings of kale every week, along with some turnip thinnings – the greens are a little sandpapery when raw, but wonderful steamed.

Purple flowers by the house…this is our third spring, and I’m not sure I ever saw these in that place before. There are always surprises waiting here!

This is a close-up of pollen settled onto the Letsgo…for a few days, everything had a yellow haze around here.

Random decoration from a previous tenant.

Garlic plants are looking great!

We have about 26 hops vines going, thanks to a friend who let me dig some rootstock from his patch. An essential beer ingredient, we are currently paying about $4/ounce for the dried flowers, so this may be one of our more practical plantings.

There was recently a 2,200% tax increase on the tobacco I like…these TN86 tobacco seedlings are my response to that. It’s a shame; of all taxes I pay, a sin tax that is largely spent on medical care is one of the most palatable, but with close to half my salary going to taxes, tolls, and other government fees, I don’t feel the urge to pay more.

Ahh, spring!

The daffodils are up!

And so are the dandelions…

…and these tiny little purple flowers that are everywhere…

…and the snowdrops have already come and gone (this photo is a few weeks old).

The trees are budding…

…and the Indian Plums already have flowers.

And in the garden, we’ve planted pea starts…

…the garlic we planted last fall is thriving…

…last year’s kale in the cold-frame is going crazy…

…and there’s more starts in the greenhouse waiting to be planted (from left: blueberry, onion, and more peas; not pictured: another type of onion starts we planted last weekend, our new rhubarb plant, dormant asparagus roots, and seed potatoes, also all waiting to go into the ground – not to mention our large box full of saved seeds from the last two years and our enormous seed order on the way from Victory Seeds).

Snail sex, I think…

A dog enjoying the sunshine (complete with fresh gooey turkey poo stuck in his fur – he loves to roll in the stuff – it’s the black stuff on his neck on the right side of the photo)…

…and the cat with the biggest eyes ever, enjoying her own patch of sunshine.

Here I am with Drama Queen…that’s Koko’s ear and nose behind Drama’s head, and Aberdeen behind me.

It might sound silly to someone who always got eggs from a supermarket, or who always had chickens, but today we ate “homegrown” (home laid?) eggs for the first time, and it was a thrill. It’s amazing that these pigeon-sized bantam hens lay such big eggs.

The shells were very firm and thick, so they cracked neatly with no shrapnel. Yolks were the deep orange, high-domed ones we’ve gotten used to from real free-range eggs, and unsurprisingly the omelet was delicious.

Well, we weren’t expecting this so soon, but our dear little Molly left us a gift this morning!

Here it is next to a “regular” egg, so you can see the size difference – the bantam egg is the smaller one on the left.