It’s been a while since I’ve done a Bloom Day post. I missed it yesterday, but I did manage to sneak out this afternoon, and snap picks of things blooming in the front yard. Nothing’s going on in the back yet—a couple of pea blossoms, and some flowers on the tomato transplants I’m hoping to plant today. Anyway, here’s what’s in bloom at my house. If you click the pics, you’ll get a big image and description.
This is one of three big, lush autumn sage bushes I have in my front yard. I have this in several other colors, but only the salmon ones seem to grow this large, and bloom this beautifully. People point at it as they walk by.
This is white autumn sage. It's puny by comparison, and blooms much more sparsely. Still, it stays green year 'round, and doesn't require much water, so I love it.
I now have three pink Knockout Rose bushes in the front yard. They start blooming as soon as the weather warms up, and only quit in the really bleakest heat of August. I didn't prune any of them this year, so they big and bushy.
It's a shame these roses don't have any scent. They're so pretty.
Another pink Knockout Rose. They're not too showy when they're open, but once they get going, there are dozens of blooms on each bush, so they make a nice display.
Yellow Knockout Roses seem to be lagging behind a bit this spring. I just caught one starting to open.
I planted this creeping phlox two years ago, and have ignored it ever since. This year, it seems to have exploded, and spilled over the side of the raised bed. OK, I'll pay attention, and give it a little love.
I really think Creeping Phlox sounds like some sort of disease instead of this pretty purple flower.
I have Four Nerve Daisies planted next to my front door. They bloom all the time. Even in winter.
Another cluster of Four Nerve Daisies. They grow in clumps, but are really only rooted to the ground in one place, so the clumps flop around, and grow in a spiral.
This post is part of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. On the 15th of every month, gardeners around the world step outside with their cameras, and snap photos of whatever is in bloom in their gardens. Join in!
It’s been a while since I’ve participated in Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, mostly because on the 15th of the last, oh, four months, my garden hasn’t had any blooms to speak of. It’s been a hot, bleak summer here in hardiness zone 7B, with 69 days of triple digit temperatures, and stage 1 water restrictions. However, last week, we had a few days of slow, steady rain, and a lot of the garden plants that didn’t die back completely burst into flower. Here’s what’s blooming today:
This very tiny yellow flower on an 18 inch stalk was supposed to be an 8 foot tall Mammoth sunflower. The heat and minimal water stunted the plants, most of which only produced very small flowers like this one.
In the midst of an all but dead vegetable garden, the eggplants have been going nuts. I've had lots of little round Thai eggplants all summer, and once I stopped watering them, the Japanese eggplant burst into flower.
Not flowers, but seriously, I have two five foot tall plants covered with clusters of three lovely, long eggplants, so I had to show them off.
What grows right through a drought? WEEDS! I like these, because they look like tiny asters---but tomorrow, I'm going to mow them down like the scourge that they really are.
Flame acanthus is flowering on the south end of the herb garden. The jury's still out on this plant, which has been spindly all summer. I'll wait and see what it looks like next spring before deciding if it stays or goes.
Four nerve daisies are finally back in flower again.
Mexican petunia is covered with big, purple flowers that attract bees, butterflies, and the occasional desperate hummingbird.
Knockout Roses in yellow are back in flower, but still bleaching to white in the sunlight. I also saw some pink ones starting to come back again.
I have a love/hate relationship with the guara in my front yard. They're big and happy, but they look like rat's nests. If they would stand up straight, I would love them dearly, but no matter what support I offer, they keel over and look like hell.
Autumn sage is coming back, and the coral is flowering. Purple is trying to flower, raspberry is struggling, and white is always lagging behind, but looks like it might give up a few flowers next week.
This has been a miserable summer for all the varieties of lantana I planted, but this purple one has flowered beautifully in the last week.
Today is my birthday. Pretty much my favorite day of the year. Not because I’m doing anything special. Just because it makes me happy.
A year ago today, I was in Santa Fe, buying myself a birthday present: a ceramic sun face for my garden shed. It was something I really wanted—a little arty touch on my very functional shed. I even painted it bright blue, so the sun could float in a brilliant sky.
Sadly, a gust of wind caught the door of the shed one day while I was working, flinging it open, and smashing the little ceramic sun against the right front of the shed. It shattered, but due to my industrial strength installation job the pieces stayed in place. So, it looked perfectly fine from the kitchen window, but up close, it looked like this:
Not pretty.
Enter my summer project, the gigantic, flat, painted version of the smashed ceramic sun. It’s been sitting out in the garage, getting coats of acrylic varnish for a couple of weeks, and this morning, I finally decided to grit my teeth and drill holes in it for hanging. Drilling through finished artwork? Stressful.
So, here it is, hanging in place, as intended. Happy birthday to me!
Remember this sun-face design I posted a while back? Well, since my camera was out of commission, I couldn’t really do a lot of work this week. I took that as a sign that I should do some cleaning, and work on a few unfinished projects. I’ve been dragging my feet on this big piece, so I hauled it out, threw it up onto the bed, and made myself work on it.
Here’s how it looked Monday afternoon, just moments after my new camera arrived. I base-coated the wood, black on the back and sides, and gesso on the front, and then traced the design onto the surface. I saw a tracing method on Pinterest, using old newspaper as the tracing paper. You basically find a piece of newspaper that’s very inky (dark ads, like in the movie listings, or in my case, the restaurant ads of my favorite local Chinese newspaper), slide that between the image you want to trace and the surface you want to trace it on, and draw over the image with a pencil. It takes a little fiddling, but it works—and since I had the newspapers in the house, it was available and free. Yay! Once traced, I went over the design with a black Sharpie, a method I had stored away from when I used to paint murals on the rooftop of my college theatre.
Tuesday morning, I had it this far along. I painted the background and sun rays, and it looked a little flat and boring. The sun face I’m replacing is Mexican talavera tile, and very ornately painted. I wanted to keep some of that, and also create something that integrates with the garden. I decided to paint the second layer of rays as leaves. Better, but still sort of flat. I rummaged around in my file drawers, and found a flower stencil. I started stenciling. It looked better.
Here’s the way it looked this morning. The piece is so large that I’ve only been working on one side, so I don’t have to keep lifting it up and turning it. I started to stencil the background with flowers. I’m thinking I’ll do some dots in between the flowers. I also want to do something with the circular band around the face, and on the cheeks and forehead.
I also have to figure out how I’m going to mount this on the door of the garden shed. I should do that soon. But first, more stenciling…
Oven roasted cabbage, oven roasted Thai eggplant from the garden, and brown rice, drizzled with lemon tahini dressing. Very tasty.
These are the first Thai eggplant I’ve ever eaten. I bought the plants on a whim, which is how I ended up with four varieties in this year’s garden. It turns out that’s not as crazy as it sounds, because they’re all giving off eggplant at different times. Thai eggplants are round and green, and about the size of a golf ball. Their skin is a little sweeter than regular eggplant. I also have the long purple Japanese eggplants, and the little white-skinned ones producing right now. The slacker, just like last year, is Black Beauty, the big purple eggplant like they sell at the grocery store. Those won’t start coming in until August or September.
I spent a couple of hours in the garden this morning, watering, weeding, and picking. Here’s what I brought in:
Potatoes. Red, white, and one errant russet. I’m disappointed at the scant potato harvest, but I’m chalking it up to the weird wet spring followed by instant scorching heat. The red potatoes did the best, which is great, because I like them the most. I didn’t come away with a single blue potato. Next year, I should get them into the ground sooner. I should also build real potato boxes in the fall.
Fava beans. These are the last of them. The plants were pretty brown and unhappy today, after all the heat, so I went ahead and pulled them out. This was my first year for fava beans. I liked growing them, and I liked eating them. Next year, more, earlier.
Onions. Once again, disappointed. I got maybe three or four small red onions out of the two dozen sets I planted. Too wet, I think. I’ll try again next year, and try to get them into the ground earlier.
Green beans. Even though I made a mistake, and ordered bush instead of pole beans, the green bean haul has been pretty good this year. I’m going to give fall pole beans a try. I planted three colors in the spring: purple, yellow and green. The green out-produced the other two colors by leaps and bounds, so I think I’ll stick to those.
Black eyed peas. I’ve never grown these before. They’re crazy. One day, they were little struggling seedlings, and the next day, they were a jungle of greenery and vines, with explosions of long pods going every which way. I spent an hour shelling them this morning, and ended up with enough for two servings. Totally worth it. More next year.
Okra. The okra stalks are still on the small side, but already producing like crazy. I think I planted too early this year, so I should wait until the weather is really good and warm next year. I planted both Clemson Spineless and Burgundy Red. Clemson is out-producing the red, and also growing faster, but since the red seeds came from England, I was sort of expecting them to be unhappy in Texas. They’re holding their own so far, and red okra is pretty cool.
Cherry tomatoes. The tomatoes are small and sort of unhappy this year. The cherry tomatoes seem to be doing better than the romas, but all of them are undersized and generally not as hearty as last year. I’ll throw in some fall tomatoes this week, and see if they fare better.
Sunflower heads. So, I grew Mammoth sunflowers this year, and wasn’t really sure what to expect. I kept looking at the spent flowers, waiting for sunflower seeds to appear, but all I could see where white bumps. I finally yanked one of those bumps out last night, and yep, it’s a sunflower seed. As the flowers fade, I’m pulling off the petals, and letting the heads stay on the stalks for a week or so before I cut them for drying. There’s one that’s going to be freaking huge. Sunflowers seem to be happier in the scorching heat than they were in the spring weather, so perhaps I’ve been planting these too soon the last few times I’ve tried them.
Coming soon: eggplant. I saw two long Japanese purples, and two heavy oval white eggplants this morning. The green Thai eggplant, and of course, monster Black Beauty are still just producing flowers, with no fruit.
Chilies are producing randomly, but not well. They look sort of unhappy, as if they’re not getting something they need. I’ve watered—maybe too much?—and fed. All I can think of is that the chilies and the tomatoes are in the same bed, and maybe not getting as much full-on sun as I thought they were.
This spring, while mowing my backyard lawn (and by lawn, I mean wretched patch of weeds), I noticed a sort of angular, spiny weed growing just outside one of the beds in the herb garden. Upon closer inspection, I saw buds that told me it was a Texas thistle—a common roadside weed. Or a native wildflower, depending on who you are, and where you find it.
I grow a lot of plants in my garden that are natives. They’re species that have been grow in this area naturally, and grew here long before there were lawns and houses. One thing I’ve learned as my understanding of native species has grown is that one woman’s weed is another woman’s wildflower. What one gardener cusses and hacks out of her flower beds, another will lovingly cultivate.
Most gardeners would have yanked this Texas thistle right out. It’s unruly, and it self-seeds like crazy, so once you have one, you’re going to get a bunch more unless you’re vigilant about removing spent flowers before they burst into seed. It grows at angles, and looks like a gawky teenager for most of its life cycle.
I let it stay. It’s unruly, but it’s in a place where, for the moment, that’s OK. It’s in the no-man’s land between my herb garden arbor, and Bad Neighbor’s fence, which is currently covered with snailseed vine—and invasive, nasty vine that spreads by sending runners under the ground. Every once in a while, I hack it back, and pour a gallon of brush killer along the fence line, trying to keep it out of my yard. Anything that hides any portion of that fence is a blessing.
In short order, the thistle burst into bloom. They’re not spectacular flowers, but spiny knots with a small explosion of purple at the top. Even in full bloom, the plant looks sort of spindly and jumbled.
Why am I growing this mess? Why not call it a weed, rip it out, and plant something prettier?
Why? Because all the local butterflies love it. I mean, they LOVE it. Every day that I work outside, I get at least one visitor like this one, which I think is a Pipevine Swallowtail. Some days, I get a yellow and black one that I think is a Giant Swallowtail. These guys are as big as my hand, and they stay for a long, long time, sucking nectar from the purple explosions. Most days, when I see a butterfly in the garden, by the time I grab my camera, it’s gone. If the butterfly is on the thistle, I have enough time to walk in the house, get the camera from my office, walk back outside, and shoot a dozen or so photos before it flies off in a woozy, drunken pattern.
I’m the first person to admit that one of the reasons I garden is to keep myself supplied with things to photograph. All I have to do is walk outside most days, and I’ll find something that’s worth a few shots. I no longer have to rely on stock photography for flowers and foliage. I’m growing my own stock photo bank. Slowly, I’m growing my skills as a photographer. I can no longer get away with saying that I suck as a photographer, because occasionally, I can pull off a really decent shot like this one.
So, my gangly weed is really an art supply. It’s the thing that attracts the butterflies I’ll photograph today, and turn into fairy wings tomorrow. Letting it stay is purely a business decision. As with all my creative pursuits, it takes a little ugly to get to the beautiful result.
It’s the 15th of the month, and that means it’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. On the 15th of every month, garden bloggers from around the world step outside, and photograph whatever is blooming in their gardens. Here’s what’s in bloom here in Euless, Texas:
The front of the house from the sidewalk, looking right. Red yucca and autumn sage are both blooming beautifully. The ugly bare spot down in front will soon hold some Nandina Obsession.
Looking left from the sidewalk. Autumn sage in raspberry and purple, pink Knockout Rose, yellow yucca, and yellow roses. More Nandina Obsession will fill the ugly bare spots in front.
Yellow roses by the front door. This is the pathetic rose bush I rescued from the shady hole in the front yard. Last year it was iffy. This year, it's blooming in abundance.
Four nerve daisies, also by the front door. A few of these have started popping up around the yard, and as I identify them as not weeds (generally, when they start blooming), I move them to places where they'll be able to take over like they did here.
Red yucca flowers in the foreground, and Autumn sage in the back.
Some little coreopsis popped up where I didn't plant it. I'm leaving it alone while it flowers, and then will probably relocate it in the fall.
This little gazania sprouted from last year's seeds.
Autumn sage in raspberry is blooming like crazy, and taking over the purple bed.
Pink Knockout roses have also flowered like crazy. I trimmed these back after I photographed them, because the blooms were mostly spent, but there's another crop of buds right behind these.
Mexican petunias are starting to bloom, and getting taller.
A couple of desert willow blossoms on the tree waiting to be planted in the front yard.
Here's the backyard, looking straight ahead from the back door of the garage, which is currently the only way to get out there. I'm hoping to install a set of French doors in the dining room soon to rectify this stupidity. Who designs a house with a massive backyard, and no way to get to it?
Looking left from the garage back door. The lovely veggie garden. Right now, green beans, tomatoes and peppers are flowering. Behind, an entire fence line of honeysuckle.
This is Agastache Tutti-Frutti, which has been in bloom since I bought it last month in a little one gallon pot. It's spreading out nicely, and getting quite tall. It smells like fruit punch when you brush against it.
Anise hyssop, which I just planted yesterday.
Germander is in bloom, with long stalks of tiny purple flowers.
Next to the germander is lavender, which is blooming for the first time. I wasn't sure this little bush was going to make it here, but it weathered the ugly winter better than any of the other lavenders, and has grown quite fat and round.
Texas thistle. I'd been looking for seed for this, but because it's mostly considered a roadside weed, nobody had any. Then, lo and behold, one popped up next to the herb beds, and started putting out buds so I could see clearly what it was. I'm letting it stay in its spot for now, until I can get some seeds from it.
Why do I want to grow Texas thistle if they're weeds? This is why. While I was snapping photos, this enormous yellow butterfly flew in for a snack.
...and the snack turned into a four course meal. She stayed for quite a while.
Nandina domestica has been flowering under the kitchen window.
The first eggplant flower of the year. I'm growing four types this year. I think this one is Black Beauty.
The honeysuckle is still flowering here and there, attracting butterflies and bees.
My little Texas lilac tree is flowering for the first time.
More Texas lilac blossoms. I can't wait until this tree gets a little bigger. It's so delicate right now.
Cilantro continues to bolt and flower. I have some of the plants bent over to drop their seed into the same bed, so it can reseed itself.
Texas betony is flowering a little. This plant was a little spindly when I bought it, but it seems to be filling out at the base. I'm hoping it will take over this bed next to the coral honeysuckle.
Coral honeysuckle is climbing its way up the trellis and blooming for the first time---and I can already tell that I should ditch the cheap purchased arbor, and build a sturdier one.
More coral honeysuckle.
I replaced my annual lantana with a perennial one this year. It's kinda bushy rather than trailing, but I think I can train it outward when it starts filling in.
OK, so it’s a cherry tomato. Generally, garden bloggers reserve the fanfare for their beefsteak ‘maters. I don’t grow those, because in North Texas, our growing season is really two very short seasons: early spring, before the onset of 90 degree plus temperatures, and fall, after the heat finally breaks. Big, beefy tomatoes are hard to grow quickly. I stick to cherries and Romas, and harvest in abundance. Last year, the day before the first frost, I harvested dozens of green tomatoes, and gently ripened them indoors as I needed them. I didn’t run out of home-grown, fresh tomatoes until January.
So. Here it is. Tomato #1. Sans the white satin pillow used in the tongue in cheek ritual described at May Dreams Gardens. Because it is, after all, just a cherry tomato—which I will pop in my mouth just as soon as I finish writing this, because there is nothing better in this world than the taste of a tomato that you’ve grown yourself, fresh from the garden.
Since I just cooked up the last of this year’s snow peas, I thought I’d take a moment to write down a few things for next year:
This year, I tried starting pea seeds in December. Twice. Neither batch took. I tried soaking them first. Didn’t work. I tried them on the window sill, and later, right into the ground. Nada. I did some reading, and found out peas don’t like it to be too damp, which might have been part of the problem.
I bought snow pea seedlings at Marshall Grain in mid-February. They were the last four in the store, so perhaps early February is the time to go get them.
Pea seedlings were planted on February 12th. It froze a week or two later, but I just draped some sheets around the trellis, and held them in place with bricks and clothespins. The plants came through it just fine.
The seedlings were planted too close together: four in about three feet of trellis. They need more room once the vines start filling in.
The hardware cloth trellis was great—but too short. Some time this winter, I should build some taller ones. As much as I like the trellis box, maybe I should build some hinged, portable ones, so I can rotate them in and out. I’m thinking peas on the outside of the frame, with bush beans growing underneath. Judging from the height of the bush beans growing in the bed right now, the peas will die off just about the time the beans are ready to flower.
The vines started to get some sort of powdery mildew or mold. I think it was because they were so close together, and didn’t get enough air flow. Also, too much water on them instead of under them.
Even with vines that were too close, mildewed sometimes, and insufficiently trellised, each vine produced a Ziploc sandwich bag crammed full of pea pods.
The snow peas would like a larger trellis next year. Also, more space.
Thanks!
Your Garden
This is four snow pea vines, crammed into less than four feet. What the heck was I thinking? The vines busted out of their little trellised box, and are now so tall that I can’t reach the peas to pick them. They’ve also developed some weird powdery mildewy fungus, because they’re too tightly packed together.
Next year, I’m going to build a lot more trellis space…
Happy April 15th, everyone. Two good things about today: it’s NOT Tax Day (it’s been moved to April 18th this year), and it’s Garden Bloggers’ Bloom Day. On the 15th of every month, garden bloggers from around the world step outside, and photograph whatever is blooming in their gardens. Here’s what’s in bloom here in Euless, Texas:
Sitting off to the side, in a pot in the backyard: the last of the winter pansies. I don't have the heart to pull them out while they're still blooming, so I think I'll just let them go until the zinnias arrive at the local nurseries.
In the herb garden, cilantro has bolted from the heat, and is flowering. It's very pretty, but dangerous, because once those flowers turn to seed, cilantro self-seeds itself with a vengeance.
I planted this coral honeysuckle just weeks before the first freeze last fall, and wasn't sure it was doing well over the winter. It's now slowly climbing up on the arbor next to it, and starting to bloom.
One of the best things about my backyard: between my house and Good Neighbor's, a four foot cyclone fence, covered with a very dense honeysuckle vine that raises the height to over six feet. It looks lush and green year 'round, blooms like a maniac in the spring and summer, and smells great---which is good, because Good Neighbors currently have three large, happy, active chocolate labs living in their backyard.
Snow pea blooms, blowing in the wind. In the past two weeks, I've feasted on snow peas. What started as four tiny seedlings has turned into an explosion of tasty pea pods that grow from these pretty, delicate flowers.
A little hard to see, because the flowers are long, white, and tucked down deep, but these fava beans are blooming like mad. I've never grown these before, so I'm anxious to see the first batch all the way through.
I think these are Anaheim peppers, which are both blooming and starting to set fruit. I'm growing three varieties of mild peppers this year.
I have three coral Autumn Sage bushes planted around one of the big front yard raised beds, and they're all blooming like crazy right now. It's hard to capture just how beautiful they look.
I didn't get the name of this rose bush when I bought it last year, because it was the only one I found amongst all the local nurseries that was truly coral rather than either pink or red. I've been training this bush to trail, and it's getting nice and wide this year.
The flowers of the red yucca in the front yard are about six feet tall, and there are a ton of them. I wish I could get a good shot of them attached to the plant, but there are no angles that don't have something distracting in the background. This one, shot upward against today's very clear blue sky will have to do.
Pink Knockout roses that I've been training outward, to sort of trail in one of the big front yard raised beds. They didn't bloom much last year, but they're making up for it this spring.
Purple Autumn Sage is a much slower grower than the other colors, but in its second year, it's starting to bush out and get really pretty.
The raspberry colored Autumn Sage bushes I have in the purple beds in the front yard have different foliage, and grow in a wilder, more tangled shape than their sisters of other colors. This one is starting to explode out of its bed, trailing down onto the front pathway.
I have two yellow Knockout Roses in the front yard, and both have really bushed out and burst into bloom this spring. They looked a little puny last year, so I'm overjoyed that they've come back from the winter so strong and healthy.
This yellow rose is one of the few plants I inherited from the previous owner that still remains. I moved it two years ago from its hole in a dark, shady spot to one that gets morning sun, and dappled sun in the afternoon, and after a year of thinking about it, the bush is now big and strong and blooming like crazy. Bonus: these roses smell heavenly. I try to always have one in a vase in the kitchen, to perfume the whole room.
A bad picture of the Four Nerve Daisies, which bloom from the moment the ground gets warm until it freezes again next winter. I love these happy little flowers, which are right by the front door. I just planted a bunch more closer to the sidewalk.
The one thing I can grow consistently, and without effort: dandelions. Everywhere I haven't reworked yet, they're blooming, much to the dismay of my lawn-happy neighbor.
Sorry for some of the iffy photos. It’s very bright and sunny here today—and also very windy. Not prime photography conditions!
We had our annual half-hearted snow yesterday, most of which melted the moment it hit the ground. I think it started up again last night, so there’s just a little dusting over the whole backyard this morning.
I spent part of last week building the new 12 foot bed on the right. In a week or so, I’ll plant the red onion slips and red and white potatoes I have waiting in the kitchen. In April, I’ll add okra, which I’ve now learned gets so tall, I can’t reach the pods to harvest when they’re in the taller raised beds. Who knew?
Inside, I’m already starting on the spring garden. When I pulled up the sweet potato vines from the front yard beds, I saved the little potato roots from two of them, and put them into a margarine tub of potting soil. Sure enough, they started to sprout after about a week under a plastic cover. In another week or so, I’ll start pinching off bits to root, so by the time the weather gets warm, I’ll have plenty of plants for the front yard, and to share with Bad Neighbor, who always asks for cuttings when I start trimming it back.
I’m also rooting cuttings from both the lavender and orange lantana from this year’s garden. The lavender is often hard to find, and this year’s orange was so beautiful, I really wanted to try to preserve it. Since lantana dies back here in the winter. I decided to try doing soft wood cuttings, and so far, they seem to be doing well.
Last week, I started the first of the seeds. On the kitchen window sill are purple and yellow coneflowers, and zinnias. I’m hoping to start some sunflowers shortly, as well as tomatoes and chiles for the vegetable garden.
I spent yesterday afternoon tearing out the last of the summer vegetable garden. Even though the tomato vines were brown, and I thought the first freeze had killed them, I still came away with two bowls full. If I ripen a few every day, I’ll have homegrown tomatoes until January. Even little tomatoes that have been forced to ripen are better than anything I can buy in a grocery store. Delicious little things.
Anyway, while I was out there, tearing things out, I also raked up most of the leaves from Bad Neighbor’s nasty hackberry tree, filling the compost bin, and also laying down a good layer in two of the big raised beds. I ended up climbing up into them and turning the dirt over, to make sure the leaves stayed in the beds instead of blowing into Good Neighbor’s yard. I ran out of steam when I got to the third bed, so if we have another nice day soon, I’ll have to go out and do it again.
So, Vegan MoFo is over, and I sort of ran out of gas about halfway through. Too much food! I couldn’t eat as fast as I cooked. I’m not sorry I did it , though—and here’s why:
1. I ate way less processed food this month than I have previously. I’m not a big eater of frankenfoods, but seriously, I bought nothing from Boca or Morningstar Farms all month.
2. I cooked a lot more than usual. I think I cook lots of simple things, like baked potatoes or roasted veggies, but I don’t really cook from recipes. I did last month, and I liked it.
3. I finally acquired a vegan cookbook. Helpful.
4. I tried new things. Nutritional yeast. Tempeh. Seitan. Bean curd sticks. I have buckwheat noodles, and a chayote waiting to be eaten.
5. I cleaned out my kitchen cupboards, and reorganized. I finally gave in to using more than one little cabinet for food. I’m seriously thinking of turning the pantry, which has been functioning as a broom closet, back into a pantry. I cleaned out my spice cabinet. I threw away stuff that was old, or that I don’t use, or that isn’t vegan.
I’m sure there’s more, but after two glasses of wine, I can’t think of them. Mostly, I enjoyed reading about all the possibilities that vegan eating has to offer. It was nice to hear hundreds of vegans talking about what they eat every day, and watching all the lovely photos of food roll by.
I’m interrupting my Vegan MoFo posts today, because it’s the 15th of the month, and time for Garden Bloggers Bloom Day. Every month, hundreds of bloggers from around the world take a moment to photograph whatever is blooming in their gardens, and share those photos on their garden blogs. If you’re a gardener, please join in.
Here’s what’s blooming in my North Texas garden today: In both the front and back yards, pansies. I don’t usually plant too many annuals, but this year, I caved in to the pansies. They’re the first flower I could identify by name as a child, because my grandmother told me to look for the little faces. The lantana in the backyard herb garden is giving it one last blast. It’s getting pretty cold at night now, so I expect this beauty to go to sleep any day. This was a particularly lovely lantana, and since she’s an annual, she won’t be waking up again in the spring. I took cuttings yesterday, which I’m going to try to root and nurse through the winter inside. Perhaps her children will appear in the garden next spring.
The full fence line of honeysuckle is blooming right now. I think it’s confused. I don’t remember it blooming at this time last year. The bees and butterflies love these flowers.
It’s not blooming, but the nandina is full of berries. I love that it does this right before the holidays. It’s a very festive thing to have right outside the kitchen window. It was overcast today, so this was the best okra bloom photo I could get. These flowers are so beautiful—like large, creamy hibiscus blooms. I’d grow okra just for the flowers, even if it didn’t produce abundant little pods of veggie goodness.
Even though the eggplant vines have all but stopped producing, and are destined to be pulled out soon, they’re still flowering like crazy. Lots of big, purple nodding flowers for the bees to enjoy. In the front yard, the yellow Knockout roses are blooming faster than I can deadhead them. I don’t care what Neil Sperry says, I love my yellow Knockouts.
The purple beds are blooming all over the place. One of the lavenders made it through the summer, and has started to bloom again. Autumn sage in purple and rasberry are doing really well. The raspberry in particular has spread out and burst into flower. Lavender lantana is still going strong, though it’s just about time for it to go away. I took cuttings of this one, as well. Even the rosemary is blooming. this year, all the mature rosemarys seem to be covered in purple flowers.
That’s it for this month. I put in my first spring seed order this week, so it’s time to start plotting and planning for next year!
…but it kept the garden warm through this morning’s frost.
We had our first frost this morning, even though just a few days ago, temps were in the 80s. To keep the veggie garden warm, I wrapped the plants in sheets—and when I ran out of sheets, I raided my fabric stash for big pieces set aside for quilts and duvet covers.
Sometime in late August, Livia and I went to North Haven Gardens, to wander about and look at plants. We ended up around back in their demonstration vegetable garden, where I saw lots of stuff I was already growing—and okra, which I’ve never grown. I was so pretty! Big, tall canes with huge hibiscus-looking flowers. I decided to throw some seeds in the ground, thinking that even if they didn’t produce any okra this late in the season, they’d at least be pretty.
Yesterday, I peeked under the leaves of the tallest plants, and came away with these: I have achieved fall okra…
Inspired by the colors I saw last week in Santa Fe, this weekend’s project was to paint the garden shed. Here’s the before and after: It only took me 10 months to get around to it—but it sure looks cute sitting in the corner of my yard, with my little talavera sun face smiling over the garden.
I got a wild hair yesterday, and in amongst my arty topics on Squidoo, I started a lens on gardening in North Central Texas. You’ll find it here—and if you have anything you think should be added to it, leave me a comment.
It’s been a while since I’ve participated in 
Today is my birthday. Pretty much my favorite day of the year. Not because I’m doing anything special. Just because it makes me happy.
Enter my summer project, the gigantic, flat, painted version of the smashed ceramic sun. It’s been sitting out in the garage, getting coats of acrylic varnish for a couple of weeks, and this morning, I finally decided to grit my teeth and drill holes in it for hanging. Drilling through finished artwork? Stressful.
Remember this sun-face design I posted a while back? Well, since my camera was out of commission, I couldn’t really do a lot of work this week. I took that as a sign that I should do some cleaning, and work on a few unfinished projects. I’ve been dragging my feet on this big piece, so I hauled it out, threw it up onto the bed, and made myself work on it.
Here’s how it looked Monday afternoon, just moments after my new camera arrived. I base-coated the wood, black on the back and sides, and gesso on the front, and then traced the design onto the surface. I saw a tracing method on Pinterest, using old newspaper as the tracing paper. You basically find a piece of newspaper that’s very inky (dark ads, like in the movie listings, or in my case, the restaurant ads of my favorite local Chinese newspaper), slide that between the image you want to trace and the surface you want to trace it on, and draw over the image with a pencil. It takes a little fiddling, but it works—and since I had the newspapers in the house, it was available and free. Yay! Once traced, I went over the design with a black Sharpie, a method I had stored away from when I used to paint murals on the rooftop of my college theatre.
Tuesday morning, I had it this far along. I painted the background and sun rays, and it looked a little flat and boring. The sun face I’m replacing is Mexican talavera tile, and very ornately painted. I wanted to keep some of that, and also create something that integrates with the garden. I decided to paint the second layer of rays as leaves. Better, but still sort of flat. I rummaged around in my file drawers, and found a flower stencil. I started stenciling. It looked better.
Here’s the way it looked this morning. The piece is so large that I’ve only been working on one side, so I don’t have to keep lifting it up and turning it. I started to stencil the background with flowers. I’m thinking I’ll do some dots in between the flowers. I also want to do something with the circular band around the face, and on the cheeks and forehead.
Oven roasted cabbage, oven roasted Thai eggplant from the garden, and brown rice, drizzled with lemon tahini dressing. Very tasty.
I spent a couple of hours in the garden this morning, watering, weeding, and picking. Here’s what I brought in:
This spring, while mowing my backyard lawn (and by lawn, I mean wretched patch of weeds), I noticed a sort of angular, spiny weed growing just outside one of the beds in the herb garden. Upon closer inspection, I saw buds that told me it was a Texas thistle—a common roadside weed. Or a native wildflower, depending on who you are, and where you find it.
…I give you the first tomato of the 2011 season.
Since I just cooked up the last of this year’s snow peas, I thought I’d take a moment to write down a few things for next year:
Dear Lisa, 
