Garden alert

 The last few days, our weather has been sparkling.  Sunny, dry, gorgeous days with highs around 25C (77F) which I've heard some folks calling "hot!"  (I tried not to snort with laughter, but hey, when I lived in the South, I would have killed some days for a low temperature of 25C/77F!)  Every night the temperature drops, we turn on the fans in the windows, and we need blankets at night.  It's all good.

The front walk way is covered in chalk.  (That is an underwater ocean scene and two dinosaurs, by the way.  What, you can't see it?!)

The flowers we planted a couple weeks ago are going bonkers.  This is because it doesn't get dark now until after 10:30 or so, and it is dawn just a few hours later.  Ahh, the longest days of the year are here...no one is sleeping enough either. :)

Our beans, peas, squash and cucumber plants are growing, as are the nasturtium seeds I put in.

Last year, one hot day, I made the whole family wander down a few blocks to visit our neighbour Audrey, who has an award-winning garden.  She had invited us to dig up some of her lovage, which was growing so much it was taking over the back lane.  She'd already given me an enormous number of stalks for soup one day as I walked by!  So, we dug up some and planted it.  Nothing seemed to happen, in fact, the stuff above ground seemed to die back.  This past week, we were weeding and trying to find Sadie's brown squeaky ball (the weeds were tall...) and WOW!  We found the lovage coming up nice and strong!  Two separate clumps.  I'm thrilled.  I've circled it here for those of you who couldn't, uhh, see it in the picture.  We are not topnotch in the weeding department...

In the corner of the front yard, the professor planted a mock orange plant a while back.  The professor takes the long view.  For several years, I kept asking what this weedy thing was and whether we should pull it out.  This year, it got enormous.  And it smells--well, it smells like somebody's surrounding you with a magic fragrant (but not stinky) perfume.  It is gorgeous.  It's also right near the bus stop, so hopefully others smell it too while they are waiting there.

Each year, the professor also uses some bags of garden soil as temporary gardening space.  He puts them in a part of the garden that gets good sun but has been invaded with a very stinky invasive weed.  The bags (and black plastic) kill the weed, while we continue to use the sunshine to grow tomatoes.  He uses the soil from the year before to fill in holes left in the grassy corner boulevard by the snow plows each winter.

We have some very good looking tomato plants this year, and one of the twins is already looking every day to see if there are tomatoes to eat.  He doesn't care if they are red or not. My mom, who visits in the summer, is convinced that we are bad at gardening because she never sees any of these cherry tomatoes we plant!  (There is a reason for that, and it isn't because we are that bad at gardening.  It's because we are good at raising her grandchildren to eat garden produce!)

All these shots happened when I went outside to take photos of the new yarn I got a few weeks ago, to play ball with Sadie, and to do a couple other projects.  I'll show you those photos in another post.  For now, I thought you might enjoy a little sunny green break.  I sure do!

Scenes from August

What does August look like?

A locally grown tomato sandwich...

On homemade spelt bread, with mayo (cause I could not ever skip the mayo), that one perfect heirloom tomato, homemade basil pesto, and sharp cheddar.

Here it is again, in case you needed a close up of the pesto dribbling everywhere.

Also, today was the last morning of camp, or any kind of childcare, until preschool starts after Labor Day...so homemade challah?  Is hard to find time to make.  For the first time, I tried the bread machine.  It is definitely world's funniest looking loaf, even upside down, as in this photo, but it tastes good.  Obviously need to fine tune my recipe for the bread machine, but it's a start...and it all works for French toast, even if it isn't braided!