Radishes!

I'm just now getting around to putting some commentary to these radish pics. but holy Toledo! For some reason, I saw fit to plant dozens upon dozens of these among other things. As usual, I went overboard with my Spring planting and we have way more stuff than we can possibly eat. I've been bringing squash, lettuce, chard, carrots, sugar snap peas and radish in to work all week, trying to coax my co-workers to take them home! I even demonstrated how they can all be used simultaneously in a salad. After a bit of searching, I found a tasty recipe for pickled radishes that may help to use up some of this overabundance.

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Slice radishes by hand or use the slicing blade of a food processor. Place radish slices and onions in a large bowl or crock. In another bowl stir together vinegar, sugar, and salt until sugar is dissolved. Pour over radish mixture.
  2. Cover and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight before serving. (Radish mixture will have a very pungent aroma.) Makes 2 cups.

Kitty Skulduggery

It's been 6 days since our beloved female kitty Buffy went missing. We've gone to the local shelter, scoured the neighborhood and posted signs with her picture promising a reward. Unfortunately, I know from personal experience, when a cat goes missing for this long it's usually curtains. We adopted Buffy and her biological brother Bingo from the Fairmont Shelter almost 6 years ago. Even though it's far fetched, I always consider certain neighbors to be prime suspects, capable of kitty skulduggery. I know for a fact that on the last street we resided, a certain neighbor admitted to another that she was trying to trap our cats. Lo and behold after a time, they did go missing.

Anyhow, I suppose it's beside the point to speculate. Now I am left dealing with my two teary eyed kids obsessively drawing little reward posters with cute pictures of Buffy on them. Michael asked me how much of a reward we could afford to offer and I simply replied that "we would pay a lot to have her back." Meanwhile, Bingo her brother, is beside himself and trying like mad to remain in our house indefinitely. He's was an outdoor cat but I guess moving forward, he'll be more of an indoor cat if anything.

R.I.P. Buffy

Good Morning Sunshine!

This lovely opened up over night and graced me with its' presence this morning. It's in a pot on my front porch. I did not actually plant it there it grew from seeds that fell in to the flower pot from a plant that had gone to seed near it. I like to call this serendipitous gardening. The other two pictures are of my Rumbalo Pumpkin Vine and a picture of our very first tiny little pumpkin. Our neighbor Vern has graciously agreed to allow the vine to take over as much of his front planter as it would like. This is a good thing as I am out of room and when this thing takes off, it will be massive. We will take all but two pumpkins off of this vine and allow them to become as large as possible. Rumbalo Pumkins are also known as "Fairytale" pumpkins.

More Pictures From the Garden



From top to bottom:
Red Oakleaf Lettuce, Aunt Ginny's Yellow Cherry Tomato, Fordhook Swiss Chard with Yellow Crookneck Squash and Lettuce Melange.

Memorial Day Menu Prep...

Lets start from the top. This is my own recipe for fresh raspberry ice cream. The trick to this recipe besides using fresh raspberries, is adding 1/2 cup buttermilk to the heavy cream. It adds tang and an element of complexity. Further down are two pots, one containing red chili con carne the other is full of pinto beans. This has been cooking for upwards of 6 hours now on low hear. These will be served at a Memorial Day party tomorrow. The beans and the chili will gain flavor and benefit from sitting over night.


A Dirty Green Thumb



Jason helped pick tonights salad from the gardens. He loves picking vegetables which he knows he had a hand in planting. In the bucket he's holding are snap peas, three types of radish, deer's tongue lettuce, key lime lettuce, spreckled lettuce, chives, spimpson lettuce, and lolita lettuce.

We went to a viewing yesterday...

Mauricio's assistant manager's wife had a stroke. She was only 49. It was hard to see such a young woman lying in a casket. Her two sons in attendance were 17 and 19. Viewings are always difficult but this one put me over the edge. I did a good bit of crying.

Playing in the garden with our doggles










Michael and Jason adore playing in the garden. I've had to spend a lot of time teaching them how to respect the garden but they do a pretty good job now. The fringe benefit to allowing them to lolly gag is that they are the ultimate organic pest control. They'll spend long blocks of time happily looking for green cucumber beetles, slugs, snails aphids and horned worms.