My garden (again, with the tomatoes!)

Since my yard is currently all-over mud and snow and slush and dead stuff, I decided to go back a few months and relive the sunny warm weather and reminisce about my vegetable garden. The comboxes have been filled with queries about "where I grew all those tomatoes," and so I'm going to answer Daria in a new blog post. 

This is where I grew them. We live in a very small town (population like 70-something), in a fairly large yard (it's a triple lot: the house sits on two lots, and the garden occupies the third lot, east of our house. The dwelling you see in the background is my neighbour across the back alley.)

This was my garden in early July, before things got out of hand. 

Left to Right: 2 rows potatoes, 1 row onions, 2 rows peas, 2 rows beans (one bush bean, one pole bean--they are beside the wrought-iron rail), 1 row carrots. The tomato plants are on the far right. Though you can't see it, they are, at this point, confined to their cages (which were meant to 'support' the plants, a quaint notion to which, if tomato plants could talk, they would have responded, "Bwahahahaha").  

A few weeks later: the peas are finished (hence the empty patch), and the pole beans have swallowed the railing. To the right, the tomatoes are starting to rebel and take over the east side of the garden. (There is a cucumber plant lying low to the left of the tomatoes, but eventually it disappeared.)

Can you spot the tomato cages? Neither can I. The plants became monstrous. They rose up out of the soil, crushed and swallowed the cages, and then proceeded to spread across the garden. Imagine putting a corset of pipe cleaners on a baby boa constrictor, and hoping it would confine him in some way. That was the story of my tomato cages. 

What began as two neat rows of 15 plants became a tangled tomatoey jungle. 

Close-up evidence of a cage on my Roma tomatoes. The plants were so huge and bore so many tomatoes, that the formerly upright cage was wrenched and twisted, and left at a 45-degree angle by the plant. 

Although I'm happy we can grow so many vegetables, my true gardening enjoyment comes from the flowers. Here are a few snaps, with more to come another day.

I had planned to blog while on vacation...

But I didn't have time. I had also planned to catch up on some email correspondence with friends, but... I didn't have time. I had also hoped to do a bit of writing, but--you guessed it, I didn't have time. Is there a pattern emerging here? Now that I'm back home after ten days away, I need a rest. So I guess I'd have to say that while it was certainly a "trip" (in numerous ways), it didn't feel exactly, entirely, like a holiday (which I think should be mostly leisurely and relaxing). But there were many wonderful and amazing moments, and it was great being with my family (all but two daughters were able to make the trip), so that is ultimately what counts, holiday or not.

We drove to Vancouver, BC, which (according to Google maps) takes 15 hours and 1 minute (yes, they really did include the 1 minute), but we took a slightly longer route to get there, including a stop in my home town to rendezvous with one of our adult daughters (total 17 hours, 21 minutes).

How can you sum up Vancouver? Well, you really can't, because it's a big city (and I'm not going to glibly "profile," the way many non-prairie dwellers do about the entire province of Saskatchewan, without actually taking the time to get to know anything about it). I will likely post some pics and observations in the days to come.

We arrived home yesterday evening, having begun our return trip early Sunday morning (7:00 a.m. Mass? Yes! I wish we had that option here.) All that sitting in the car took its toll on my lower back, and I can scarcely move today. So it's going to take some time to ease back into the daily grind. But I'm glad to be home--even though it's a bit surreal to have left just as autumn was coming into her glory, and return in full-blown winter.

Our backyard before we left.

This morning.
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Fried Green Tomatoes

Have you ever eaten them? And if so, what did you think? I speak mainly to my Canadian readers (mainly because I know that 4/6 of you are Canadian; there is one American and one Australian among you.) A few weeks ago, we decided to give this famous Southern dish a try. 

I must admit to being unimpressed. But I also must admit to having made a mistake and put TRIPLE the amount of salt into the recipe. It was a group-mistake: my daughter was helping mix the spices, and she grabbed the tablespoon instead of the teaspoon. But then I took the tablespoon from her and used it to measure the salt, without once looking down at it and thinking/saying, "Hey, this is a tablespoon!" (Dementia, anyone?)

So yeah, they were too salty. But even if they hadn't been, I can't say that I liked the tanginess of the green tomato inside the batter. But I am willing to give them another try, perhaps with another recipe (we just grabbed a random recipe online).
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Busy in the kitchen

Yeah, as if my week hasn't been busy enough... I made potato buns yesterday (I CANNOT throw out the water when I boil potatoes. It makes the most delicious soft buns you can possibly imagine). I had to make homemade buns, because they need to be made into sandwiches for a road trip, with the turkey I roasted earlier this week. (I had to cook a turkey, because we're going to be travelling on Thanksgiving Day.) 

My potato bun recipe is loosely based on Jean Pare's
"Awesome Potato Rolls" in her Company's Coming "Breads" cookbook


If I receive a significant number of requests in the comment section (1 or more),
I will happily post the recipe. 

I have the First Edition;
it's quite beat-up, as a favourite cookbook should be. 

Second Edition, Available at Amazon 

Yesterday, I also made Salsa Cruda (raw salsa). I suppose I could post this on a Raw Organic Vegan Gluten-free website, because the salsa is pretty much all of the above. But then again, I could not, because there is no recipe. It was one of those "Enough for Your Family" recipes, where you make it up as you go along. I can tell you that it contained chopped tomatoes, red onion, green pepper, red pepper, avocado, cilantro, two crushed garlic cloves, lemon juice, red pepper flakes, cumin, salt, chili powder, and black pepper. But not the amounts, sorry. It tasted ok, but I thought something was missing. Not sure what. I'll keep experimenting. The kids liked it though, and it certainly was healthy enough. So there's that. 

Like that Oscar Wilde guy might have said...

...if he had been into vegetable gardening: 

We are all in the tomato tray...

But some of us are looking at the stars.

This fellow is my 2016 candidate for the Vegetable Oddities file.
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Blogging is sketchy because... tomatoes

Don't get me wrong. I'm grateful--grateful, I tell you, that we can grow so much of our own food, in such a small area of land, in such a short growing season. But it's a lot of work.

Some of the 2016 Tomato Harvest
(we grew 5 varieties this year)

Mr P. had to build extra bins in the cold storage room.

The ripening trays

The little plum tomatoes that had to be taken off green because frost was threatening. 

Yet another box of plums, this one in the furnace room.

Every day I check all the boxes and bins for ripe or ripening tomatoes,
and bring them upstairs for processing. 

My turkey roaster full of salsa, ready to go in the oven.

It yielded 7.5 quarts of salsa. Which was a huge pain to process by canning (more on that story later).

I've also cooked up batches of pasta sauce, and we've processed many, many tomatoes for freezing. It helps when you have kids willing to peel and chop tomatoes.
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Where is this slim, confident, happy person?

I don't know, but I keep buying clothes for her and storing them in my closet.
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How to write a best-selling book

Well, if I knew that, I wouldn't be sitting here, all poor and obscure, would I? In my 20-odd years of freelance writing (and most of them have been very odd, indeed), I've penned hundreds of thousands of words. Some of them have even taken the shape of books, but only theoretically and/or germinally--that is, they still languish in Word files, and have not been bound and printed for sale. (One or two are even fiction, but something tells me I'm never going to give J.K.Rowling a run for her money.)

Every time I think I've seen it all

Something comes along to befuddle me. Such as a grownup colouring book that features, not something lovely and relaxing (the whole purpose of adult colouring books)...

Available at Amazon. As if.

...but ugly, hideous, stressful, depressing clutter. It boggles the mind. Those of us who suffer from hoarder-like tendencies, and poor housekeeping skills (--oh Freudian slip! I almost typed poor housekeeping kills) don't want to be reminded of our weaknesses when we're trying to relax and de-stress.

Why don't they just make a colouring book of a bedbug infestation, or the Black Hole of Calcutta? Ye gods.

If you must colour a house, then why not one of these?

And if you must colour clutter, then let it be neatly organized and terribly cute.

I want this, Mrs Beazly!

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So about that saddle...

I forgot to mention it wasn't actually on a horse, metaphorically or otherwise. It was more like this:

When I go back and read the previous post, I have to laugh at the part about writing "every day." Good heavens, life has been so crazy that it took me two weeks to get back here and check for comments (and Yessssss! There was a comment!).

Actually, I have been writing every day, but emails, texts, journal/diary entries, and correcting your children's grammar and spelling don't really count. Since I've been on hiatus from most of my professional writing jobs for a good two years, it's incredible --and rather depressing-- how difficult it has been to get back in the habit. Why are bad habits (like overeating or watching too much HGTV) always easier to form than good habits?

Let us ponder this is future posts. Let us hope that there will be future posts.
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Back in the Saddle

Miss P #7 horseback riding in Cypress Hills Park, SK

Where did the summer go? I ask that every year, and the answer is always the same: I don't know. My summer was full. So full that it may take years to write about it. But here it is, September 1. Back to School season (though as a homeschooler, I get to choose the day, and it's not today. I never start school before the Labour Day weekend).

But I am resuming blogging, if for no other purpose than to practice some personal discipline, and to get back in the habit of writing every day. The word of the month is discipline, and I'm going to need it, in order to survive September. School and harvest don't always mix.

Well, Daughters, that ol' birthday will be rolling around again soon...

And this way, I can get at least seven hits on this post. So here's a partial list. I'm not greedy, I just like to give you lots of variety to choose from.

The exquisite Nordic Ware "Heritage" Bundt pan. Available here. 

Le Cuistot Vieille 8L Oval Dutch Oven (Red).
Available AND ON SALE RIGHT NOW! (no pressure) here. 

Cuisinart 3 Qt Dutch Oven (blue)
Available here. 

Cool plant stand from IKEA. Available…where else?

The Moody Blues' best album.
 Amazon (or elsewhere if you can find it cheaper. Or at all.)

Yeah, that's really what it costs.
(But hey, it's come down. It was $47 when I put it on my Wish List.)

Available pretty much everywhere.
(Should I publicly admit that I haven't read this book yet? )

Yep.

All my life I've longed for one of these…
Amazon again.  (Some cheese knives would be nice too.)








And so would some cheese! You know that I like everything, especially Brie.





Wine and chocolate are also perfectly acceptable birthday gifts.


 


And then there's... 

Because my capacity for self-delusion KNOWS NO BOUNDS
(If I'd lost a pound for every dollar I've spent on fitness clothing, equipment, and DVDs… )
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