Still Life with Camera

The evenings are getting quite cool now, down right nippy some evenings to our summer thin blood.  Robert and I went out the other night and picked a couple of colanders full of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and herbs.  I particularly wanted to get some of the basil inside since it's such a tender plant. Look at those fine green tomatoes. We've never really gotten the knack for what to do with them - we tried pickles last year and they were truly awful. This may be the best stock we've had though. They're a purple heirloom type which all seemed to get too ripe before I harvested them during the summer, but now they're super crisp and firm. So we made Fried Green Tomatoes with Basil Mayonnaise and they were delicious. Robert made himself BLT's and I put mine on salad greens. We used this recipe from Epicurious. http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Fried-Green-Tomatoes-with-Basil-Mayonnaise-355938 Give it a try! I was also surprised by the lavender ...

Within a month, my garden has overgrown it's tiny 4X8 boxes. I've trimmed back the undeterminate tomatoes twice and just pulled out a bunch of cucumber plants that were taking over everything. Obviously, I need at least twice as much garden space...Maybe next year. But we've already eaten Amish snap peas, green peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes and green and yellow beans, to say nothing of the wondeful mint, basil, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme. I also have a bumper crop of japanese beetles eating everything in sight. I bought some systemic stuff then found out it's not for use with planters and of course it can't be used with the vegetables. I found some stuff which is safe for vegetables, however, it kills bees and everything in the garden is abloom. No way I'm going to kill off our little pollinating friends. Doesn't the fence section look like a honeycomb? I caught this guy in flight, although I need to do some post-processing so his wings are more vis...

Putting a seed into some good dirt and watering it faithfully for a few days and then watching a plant emerge is one of those simple everyday miracles for me.  I planted these beans a few days ago.  Yesterday morning there was one little sprout uncurling itself from the dirt. Last night when I went out to cut some parsley and basil for dinner, the whole row was up and had grown at least an inch during the day. If that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.