Maybe I Should Do a Counting Book. With Tomatoes.

You do the math.

Back from the Beach!

We spent a lovely vacation at the shore. Somebody loved the water...

... and returned home to Squashapalooza.















So far I've come up with 14 ways to cook zucchini.

Gratuitous Garden Post

Hard to believe tomorrow is December 1, and the garden is still going. I probably should have been decorating and shopping this past Sunday, but couldn't quite bring myself to get into holiday-insanity mode. Not with the sun shining and weeds to be pulled!

Here are our homemade hoop houses. (Gotta love duct tape.)


















Below, from left to right, are kohlrabi, beets, pac choi (?) cabbage, and carrots.


















And here's spinach, broccoli rabe, swiss chard and some sort of green whose name I forget. It's supposed to grow when it's 30 below. Or something like that.


















And finally, the take from what's still hanging in under row covers: more chard, kale, and baby carrots. Sure am enjoying this year's grand garden experiment.














To me, gardening is a sort of moving meditation. It also gets the ideas flowing. I don't know why this is– I'm happy just to keep digging.

Veggie Days

What? It's August, and I haven't blogged about my vegetable garden since March? Well, here we go then:

First, there were radishes and baby spinach.

Then, snap peas, snow peas, and parsley.

Mountains, and I do mean mountains, of zucchini.

Lettuce and Italian broad beans.

Pecks o' purple peppers!

Zucchini, a.k.a. "baseball bat."

A plethora; and attack of the killer tomatoes begins.

And more tomatoes. Lots of tomatoes. Lots and lots of tomatoes...

Next up: Kale Invasion.

Crazy Garden Lady Returns

It was sunny and close to 70° here this past weekend! I spent both days completely overdoing the physical thing in the vegetable garden. But it felt so good to work outside after a long winter... a perfect antidote to long hours at the drawing table.

The plot we started last year was a mess of brambles and roots-- and a complete nightmare to clear. (Just ask my back.) We dug every inch by hand.

This year, not as bad. Tall, ugly deer fence in place. (It really works!)

I managed to turn over half of the soil, amending it as I went with peat moss, lime, our homemade compost, and dried up chicken manure. (Good to have chicken-raising friends!) I planted a few rows of peas, spinach, kale, turnips, and radishes. It's early in the season, but these are cool weather crops, and I'll take the chance.

I'm using the 1977 version of "Crockett's Victory Garden" as a guide this year. (It belonged to my grandmother. I love finding her handwriting inside!) It's a wonderful book, because it follows the gardening season month by month. (Though the author drenches almost everything with Diazinon. Yikes! No thanks.)

The husband made this handy-dandy planting board, one of the many great ideas in the book. It's notched every 6 inches to help space plants evenly when planting. The bottom edge is beveled to make a nice little groove in the soil for seeds.

I decided it might be smart to actually write down what and when I plant this year. (Duh!)

With a little luck we'll end up with something like below come summertime. This was last year's bounty. Pretty darn good considering it was our first year growing vegetables, and a crummy one weather-wise for gardens here in the Northeast.

Oh, this is my super-dorky gardening hat. (That sun is really strong!) You'll have to pay a lot of money if you want to see an actual photo of me wearing it...