Zinnias!

I couldn't go a summer without posting a photo of my favorite flowers, zinnias. I confess, I usually cut them when they are smaller and have them finish opening up in the vase to beautiful shades and variations. I procrastinated... No further sighting of the praying mantis. He/she must be down in the stems eating bugs (surely there is a good supply of aphids down there). Last summer I saw a praying mantis rip the head off a honeybee and proceed to eat it...They are effective predators but indiscriminate. I have had fewer bug problems this year with earwigs who were plentiful earlier in the year. Last year, they were pretty bad in the pluot trees. All of the leaves were moth eaten from them. I couldn't work on the trees without getting showered with earwigs. I think the heat might of done them in which was a good thing. I ended up with 62 pounds of plots halves frozen. I think the tree must have produced at least 100 pounds of fruit!

Garden Angel

I was looking for a spot to photograph a baby boy quilt when my garden angel caught my eye. It has a shaded spot in my garden on an arbor bench. I try to rotate what I plant in the summer and squeeze in as much as possible. A Sakata melon vine has twined itself around the bench while a Marina di Chiogga squash, blueberry bush and fig tree crowd the back.

Late Fall Garden

Late fall in the garden is a time of transition. It seems that only a few weeks ago it was 80 degrees out and too hot to plant the winter garden. I planted a few violas with scotch moss in small pots. I tried to buy a few more of these small oval pots to plant some mini iris bulbs in. No luck at this point.

Yummy romaine lettuce. I have been picking the leaves off for sandwiches. I still have a few yellow onions grown last year to add to them, too.

I planted twice the amount of red and yellow onions I did last year. Used up all the red onions first. Having your own stores of food is like having your own store (duh!). I think, gee, it would be nice to have some onion to go with this. Then I remember that they're on the back porch! 

Some baby pan choi and bok choy seedlings just sprouted. They should be ready to eat in a month or so.

Newly sprouted bulbs. I've had these mini-hyacinths for a couple of years. After they are done blooming, I put the pots away and let them dry out.

My new thing, fairy gardens. It does bring a bit of pleasure to recreate little gardens. I saw them at a nursery but it seems too expensive to buy all the fairy elements. So, I used things I have around like this bird house and found stones from the river.

The Winter Garden

This is the first year I have had a winter garden.  I really should have planted it earlier, but like everything in the garden this year, I was late.  Part of my delay was in trying to figure out something to discourage the cats from using the planter boxes without spending too much money.  I decided to buy some short 2 foot t-posts (they were cheaper that bamboo sticks, figure that out) and some green plastic construction fencing.

I decided to plant some decorative kale (bought in Canoga Park at the Green Thumb Nursery on our trip home from LA) for some bright winter color.  They have a very friendly and nice staff!


Since I was rather late putting it in, I bought lettuce, broccoli, green onions and baby bok choy already started.  I did scatter some daikon, carrots and arugula seed here and there.

Oh, and those naughty chickens.  I have decided that they can roam around and try t keep the weed population down.  But, I have to keep my eye on them so they don't become gourmets on my garden or my  worm bin!  Or, worse, victims of the lurking cats.

More squash, eek!

Here is a lovely bucolic scene from the National Heirloom Exposition.  Is bucolic the right word?  Hmm.  I grew these pumpkins a couple of years ago.  They have a vining habit so they vined my entire back yard.  Kinda like the zucchino rampicante this year.

The pumpkins went from lovely, deeply lobed pumpkins to increasing warty and crusty.

Then, they grew large and

somewhat freakish.   Note the people in the background for scale.  Apparently, after a certain time, the pumpkins must be moved to a pallet so they can be transported via a pallet jack.  Feeding the pumpkins so they wont' lose an ounce to see who will win the contest. 

Even without a scale, I'm guessing it was this guy below.  I think it even had a custom built pallet.  It reminded my of Jabba the Hut from the movie Star Wars.  I'm not sure it wasn't two pumpkins grown together from the seam.

God, I love squash!

National Heirloom Exposition

Yesterday, we attended the very first National Heirloom Exposition in Santa Rosa, California. The Exposition highlighted heirloom varieties of fruits, vegetables and animals.  And, some talented artists like the chef who carved this beautiful melon.

We saw lots and lots of squash.

In fact, we saw a mountain of squash!

Lots of beautiful heirloom tomatoes. No GMO's here!  The blue tomato is a new variety.  The others had interesting names like Berkeley tie-dye.

I think next year we will grow some of the yellow and green stripey tomatoes and purple peppers like on the bike below.  Just think of the beautiful salsa it will make!

Apparently, our cuckoo maran chickens are forming their own club.  Eggs are graded on their color as shown on the chart below.

More on the Exposition to come!

Zinnias!

I can't seem to do photographic justice to these zinnias from my garden.  But, they bring me such joy happiness and a sense of fulfillment and serenity to look upon such perfection.

Garden tour 2011 part 2

This is the producing part of the garden.  I differ from a lot of gardeners whose main purpose is growing food.  I love flowers!  So this is my raised bed of zinnias.  There are more zinnias in tubs and other flowers tucked in here and there.  They serve a purpose other than just for my pleasure and they bring a variety of bees and other pollinating bugs into the garden.  And, they are probably biggest cash value crop since I won't have to buy flowers at the store.

This is looking back at the zinnias.  My tomato plants are huge!  Because I put the garden in so late, I just picked my first tomatoes today, a purple Russian.  They were so delicious.  It may have been the best tasting tomato I've ever eaten in my life.

Here is a baby heirloom squash nestled in with the chocolate cosmos and oregano.  This variety is a vining type and and just migrated everywhere.

Here is what the zucchino rampicante looks like mature.  To tell the truth, I have been so busy trying to eat the zucchini and yellow crook neck squash, I haven't tried these yet.  I am saving them for winter squash.  They are supposed to taste like artichoke and are used in ravioli and gnocchi.

My sister weighs all of her garden's bounty.  I wish I had done it so I could say how many pounds of squash I have grown, so far.  But, I have started to count all of the eggs my little chickenettes have laid.  It is quite a sense of satisfaction having a squash omelet for breakfast all produced from my little town backyard.  In the heat of summer, my thoughts are already turning to what I will be planting for this winter.

Garden tour 2011

Welcome to my garden!

Have a seat and I will take you on a little tour.

You can have a seat here.

Or here.  I had the seating spray painted.

Some lovely succulents.

And, a few more in an old metal basket.

My favorite succulent.  I love the shades of pink and gray.

My little chickenettes

There they are at the bottom right.  They are a french breed called cuckoo marans.  They are a bit spoiled and hoping to get a treat.  Lately, it has been a blueberry or two.  This is their chicken coop but I call it the chicken pavilion.  When I was rehabbing the backyard, I couldn't decide what to do with this old gazebo.  I was on the verge of having it disassembled and carted off.  The canvas cover had rotted away and it was looking quite shabby.  I had looked into buying a replacement cover but it cost more than what I had originally paid for the gazebo.  And, when I was trying to decide what configuration to make the chickens new coop to keep them safe from cats and marauding possums, everything I thought of was looking a bit like something Ma and Pa Kettle or the Beverly Hillbillies pre-oil strike would have.  So, I had it made into the coop by having chicken wire tied to it.  Posts are set into the ground to hang the dutch doors and I had some lovely garden trellises that I had about incorporated into the frame.  I think it turned out quite lovely and fitting for my little french hens.

Saturday Still Life

Bouquets of flowers from the garden.

A mixed bouquet of hydrangeas, calla lillies and aglaia daisies.

These are cone flowers otherwise known as echinaceas from my garden.

I couldn't decide which photo I liked better. Plus, I just love these flowers.

Some more flowers and greenery from my garden as well as the first squash minus what has been already eaten (I did try some batter fried zucchini blossoms stuffed with mozzarella cheese with little zucchinis attached this afternoon-delicious!) . We also made some frutti di bosco jam as well as some pickled beets. I was lucky enough to find golden and chioggia beets at the farmers market on Saturday.

Viola

No, this isn't Provence but the Lavender Hollow Farms near Escalon, California. Some gardeners I know won't plant anything that isn't edible. However, I don't subscribe to that philosophy. The soul needs to see beauty.If the gardening muse in you needs order, straight rows of lavender will soothe the mind. In the early morning, the fragrance is also a sensory delight. I couldn't resist walking down the rows of lavender and trying not to disturb the bees hard at work.

Wouldn't you like a spot like this in your garden?

Ummm... Purple. I also bought some lovely lavender and grapefruit lotion, lavender butter cookies and a couple of plants. The cookies were delicious.

I love the color purple (viola in Italian and also the name of the soccer team in Florence, I like them, too.) I wish I had more space to grow lavender in my backyard but at least I won't have to go far for a fix.

Garden in Waiting

This year, I kind of went crazy on what I'm planting in the garden. My sister has been expounding on why I should be planting heritage plants and avoiding "franken" foods so this year, I got a Baker Creek Heirloom Seed catalog and went a bit overboard. Of course, I had to have Crostata Romanesco, the zucchini fried with the squash blossom, Delicata, a winter squash, Marina di Chioggia, another wonderfully knobby, winter squash from Italy, a beautiful, brown french pumpkin, Musquee de Provence and a small french melon, Petit Gris de Rennes. I had some San Marzano tomato seeds from last year that I bought at Home Depot. I am keeping my fingers crossed that I have a bountiful and un-cross pollinated crop this year as I have way too many squashes for my yard.

Saturday Still Life

As the lady of the house (I say this in my best Hyacinth Bucket voice), my first priority on Saturday morning is to make sure that cut flowers are placed in the important rooms of the house. That would be the kitchen, the bedroom and the bathroom.
These are this week's arrangements. Mostly roses, a few gerberas and calla lillies. The summer flowers are just starting to come on. Sometimes I fill in with lavender (didn't want to disturb the honeybees this morning) and although, they really can't been seen, leather leaf ferns and other greens from my yard.
After the sun goes down, I can look at this arrangement in my kitchen from artist Angus Macaulay.

The Boboli Garden

The Boboli Garden in Florence is the family garden of the wealthy Medici family. I have been there twice. The first time I endeavored to see the entire garden which I mostly did. I didn't take every side trail because after a while they all looked kind of the same, from what I could tell. If I lived in Florence, I would break up the garden into sections and know for sure. But I saw all the fountains, statuary and grottos and belvederes. Three museums are also located adjacent to the garden and I have managed to see only one of them because after wandering all over the garden for a large part of the day, I just got pooped out!

This is the fountain closest to the "house".
A very nice view of the Duomo!
Okay. Look at this stone "bathtub". Notice that it has lifting rings carved into it. I probably wouldn't have paid much attention to the lifting rings had I not had safety seminars of loads and crane signals and load tie downs. Nowadays, we use a lot of slings for lifting heavy loads. For those of you not familiar with construction, think about what these lifting rings mean. Since they are carved from stone, they are not functional. But whatever they were copied from were. So they had tubs that probably were metal. And, being metal, any that were lying around were probably melted down in some stupid, long ago war for cannon or cannonballs. But, nevertheless, let's think about it. They had metal bathtubs! And they had lifting rings that worked. Okay, enough construction geekiness.

Oh, another fountain! Still more steps! Keep going up!

Am I there yet? Did I really walk this far up? Do I have to walk all the way down?

Oh, this is what is at the top. Beautiful box hadges and peonies! And, another museum. (I think I passed on the museum not having much interest in porcelain.)

Look at this beauty!
Oh, and another stature! Then, back down into the museums! I posted this to remind myself that my garden in not too small. After all of the weeding, raking, pruning, planting, washing, fertilizing, spraying, hauling, and filling of trash bins I have done in the last several weeks, it may, in fact, be too large! Happy gardening!