Pretty flowers

Onions!!!

Onions galore!!!

Phillip picked his 1st onion.

Gabriel gardens

Gabe loves to search the garden for something to eat!

Malabar Spinach

This great spinach is easy to grow, versatile in the kitchen, and delicious to eat. It is unrelated to true spinach but produces abundant large meaty leaves that are remarkably spinach-like in taste and form. The plant is much better suited for summer growing than its better-known namesake. I did order seed for this so I am hoping we will be able to plant as soon as it arrives and be eating 55 days from then. Tomorrow I will spread more grass. 

-Melissa 

(Click on the title for a great link and you can see my plagiarizing ; )

Midsummer Garden News

"I'm dirty, tired, sore, and my face is red;

and every damn weed in that garden is dead."--Michael P. Garofalo, Peeling Onions

The garden has been completely weeded. It is almost perfect at this moment.

Here's what's growing.

Melons

Melons enclosed (Curses on Rabbits)

The Center Prayer Garden

Valerie weeds the entire bed behind the newly pristine and mulched herb garden

Corn (It will be knee-high by 4th of July)

Marni in Onions

Tomatoes

The Littlest Gardener Gabriel who is indeed an angel

Mary Planted Beans

Mary planted beans and they sprouted in 4 days! And then they grew like wildfire--surpassing those planted earlier in May. Timing is everything.

June Fruits

Christy brought me 16 ounces of strawberries yesterday. I know there were 16 ounces because they came in a cottage cheese container that was chockful. These beautiful berries evaded greedy birds and marched straight from her garden to my house. Tiny little jewels with sparkling flavors of tart and sweet. And I ate every one myself, one at a time, dipped only in a bit of sugar. Selfish? Yes. Thank you Christy!

I will share the apricot jam I made this morning. Talk about small-batch cooking. I had about 14 apricots from California. Probably not the coveted Blenheims, but once boiled furiously with lemon and sugar they made an exquisite jam. The Blenheim apricot is a mid-season variety, considered to be one of the best in America. The bigger, prettier, earlier ones we get now from our friends in California make better cooked dishes than eaten out of hand. Too often these early specimens are mushy and tasteless, or lip-scrunching sour. I'm going to have to score more apricots, early or late for jam making. My favorite jam maker is a French woman, Christine Ferber. Her book, Mes Confitures, is nothing short of inspirational. For apricot options alone see: Bergeron (the favorite French variety) Apricot, Bergeron Apricot with Almond, Bergeron Apricot with Vanilla, Apricot with Mountain Honey, Apricot with Mango, Apricot and Raspberry with Citrus Zest, Apricot and Nectarine with Ginger, Two Kinds of Apricots with Vanilla and Gewurztraminer, Spicy Apricot and Apple Jelly.

A Good Year for Roses

A selection of photos from the community's gardens.

Wildlife Management

Don&Olive write:

A proto-,
sub-,
extra-,
or possibly non-garden wildlife management tip: 

Having been host to a front-porch-pillar robin's nest, a pergola-rafter robin's nest, 

a north-side-English-ivy grackle's nest, and a roof-corble sparrow's nest, 

when we saw yet another sparrow eyeing the top of a porch pillar, 

we decided to close the avian
neo-natal care center and
invented the FEAR 

(Fowl Expulsion and Aversion Routine) system
for discouraging further colonization. 
A big-hair Barbie doll also works.

Check out my Slide Show!

City Visitors

One of fun things about the garden is showing off. Christy and Dick hosted visitors from Washington DC this week and we were able to give Shari and Sarah a taste of the midwest.

Climbing Structure Erected

These were taken June 1 when Marni, Don, and Olive erected the structure for the climbing plants: melons and cucumbers. Using discarded wire and fence pieces they created a work of art.
--Sandra--

Check out my Slide Show!