This is one day’s worth of cherry tomatoes, picked from the garden. Every so often, I get the right combination of tomato variety, water, soil, and stubbornness, and my spring tomatoes make it through ’til fall, and explode. This is one of those years. I have a tomato thicket growing. The vines are so long, […]
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 […]
Fort Worth is blessed with its very own vegan eatery, Spiral Diner. It’s a rare treat to be able to walk into a restaurant and know that you can have anything on the menu. No asking whether there’s something on the plate that contains animal products. No guessing. Every freaking thing on the menu is […]
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 […]
…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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
With the weather still hot during the day, the fall veggies are still struggling—but here and there, some good things are happening:
I’ve been slacking on the garden blog lately—mostly because it’s still hotter than hell here in North Texas, and there’s not a lot going on outside. I’ve been trying to work outside an hour or two late in the day this week, but it’s still pretty miserable. I come in a hot, sweaty mess. However, […]
Today, as I was walking out to my truck, I checked the butterfly weed. Sure enough, I spotted a little striped caterpillar, munching away. When I got home, I took a moment to check the whole plant over, and discovered two more, parked underneath a leaf. These little guys are monarch caterpillars. Each September, they […]
After roughly 120 days of growing from seeds to enormous bushes, my eggplant jungle finally bestowed upon me today these three Black Beauties: They are eggplant perfection. Avert your eyes. They’re also tomorrow night’s dinner. I see one more eggplant amongst the four bushes, which are still producing a ridiculous number of flowers. I’ve tried […]
It’s the 15th of the month, so it’s time for another Bloom Day post. It got blazingly hot here in North Texas, way before it’s supposed to happen, so that garden has been in a bit of a shutdown. We did get about a week of slow, drenching rain that helped, but seriously, the plants […]