a grower not a show-er

sometimes after i upload and look through a batch of garden photos i’ll go back outside and look around, like, where is all that stuff? all those plants and flowers and veggies i just saw...where did they go? from a distance much of my garden is barely visible.

when i give garden tours to friends i feel ridiculous, because in my head it’s this wonderful place, but looking at it through the eyes of a visitor makes everything look unimpressive. the garden isn’t all out in the open--there are huge trees and shade and xeriscaping to work around, so it’s mostly tucked away into corners and small spaces here and there. you really have to look for it.

tomorrow jeanne and i are touring each other’s gardens for the first time. i’m curious to see what her whole yard looks like and to be able to walk around and look for myself after having seen so many pictures. and since we live just a few miles away from each other it will be great to compare notes on the growing season so far--neither of us has been very good about garden blog updates lately.

my corn is silking and tasseling. it stayed dwarf, as advertised, only about three feet tall, five of them growing happily in one large container.

i have actual oranges growing on one of my dwarf citrus plants! after the plant finished blooming the tiny fruit started to swell. there are four, and the biggest is about 3/4” long now.

i wanted to have a large quantity of something other than sunflower seeds to bring to seed swaps next year...

so i collected all the seeds from two red russian kale plants.

snowy eggplant is my favorite. it never stops pumping out delicious fruit.

turkish orange eggplant is even more productive, unfortunately. these things are nasty. small and incredibly bitter. i’ve tried picking them young and leaching the bitterness with salt, but they’re still awful.

i don’t know what to do with them other than use them as decoration. and eventually compost.

fish pepper is pretty cool, but the variegated foliage isn’t as decorative as i expected. it looks like the plant’s been shat upon by a flock of birds.

i made scrambled tofu with diced black hungarian and mild jalapeno peppers. both are much milder than i thought they’d be, which is good because i don’t like a lot of heat.

i’ve only gotten to eat one raspberry and two blueberries so far.

here are some recent harvests:

lackluster "laissez-faire" potatoes from across the creek. sometime soon i need to post an update on the yardshare garden--we’ve gotten so many potatoes that just pop themselves up out of the soil, pounds of them without any digging yet.

ronde de nice zucchini on dave’s killer bread with tempeh, roasted bell peppers and homemade hummus...drool. i could eat zucchini every day. lately i have been.