first eggplant

first successful eggplant harvest! this year i abandoned the backyard garden - despite the raised bed, it was doomed by many factors, including a paucity of sun and a presence of a grazing dog. DH cleared some scruffy looking verbenas away from a patch of the south side of our house, outside dixie's territory, and i'm hopeful for some zucchini, tomatoes (upside down), peppers, cucumbers, scarlet runner beans, and squash.

DH made these recipes from the eggplant:
- the "eggplant caviar" was a refreshing alternative to baba ghanoush, which i never seem to have the right ingredients for.
- the hot & sour curried eggplant that won a recent episode of top chef was quite bright (probably from all those limes/lemons) and an outstanding side dish. couldn't quite eat a whole plate of it though and find it a satisfying meal on its own - maybe it was the heat or maybe it was the citrus.

and so the descent begins

in one of our seattle houses, we shared a duplex with a crazy landlady, and one of her more minor peculiarities was that she had a penchant for odd garden ornaments. (we found the 3 foot creatures looking right into our window a bit creepy.) today i found my first garden kitsch and i must admit i'm beginning to see the appeal.

(this plant, by the way, is citronella "the natural mosquito repellent." not sure of the efficacy of one plant against the hordes, but hey anything is worth a try.)

daisies for you

our front step is overgrown with giant daisies. i can think of worse fates.

water lilies

botanic garden shots from mid-september ...

other garden highlights

for months i've had this weird plant just behind my wilty tomatoes shooting up to the sky, with just two or three healthy leaves on top, with all the leaves underneath wilting just like my tomatoes. i thought it was a plant in the same family as the tomatoes, and thus affected by the same wilt - perhaps our eggplant. i thought perhaps it was tall because it was trying to get beyond the wilt. doesn't really make sense with the physiology of that blight, but hey i'm a naive gardener. and then the other day it bloomed.

on the side beds i haven't wanted to plant any foodstuffs, because a year or so ago we got the fence painted and in the preparation a ton of paint flecks were power-washed off the fence and landed in the dirt. not really having idea about gardening, i just planted some decorative squash with boo so he could see something grow pretty fast. and fast it grew.

here is my sad corn. i just don't think my backyard gets gets enough sun for vegetables.

a shady garden

we've had a seattle summer for the last few weeks - beautiful, nonhumid, and surprisingly comfortable in temperature. after a few years of looking at a barren backyard, we decided to take advantage of the post-rain soft dirt and plant a garden in our empty beds.

i borrowed a ton of books from my friend margaret the master gardener on shade gardening and designing a garden. all a bit overwhelming, but at least it was a place to start. i also learned from her that we have black walnut trees all around our yard, and that the black walnuts secrete a toxin from their roots that is poisonous to a lot of other plant life. so in addition to being limited to shade plants, i'm also limited to a small list of plants i found on google that are able to survive in the black walnut's vicinity. which is okay, since it makes the number of plants i have to remember/learn somewhat more manageable.

first, i had to find a focal point. a great time to shop, since plants at the local nurseries are about 40-50% off. got this lovely witch hazel at pasquesi's for a paltry $50. it's the diane witch hazel, or hamamelis intermedius, which will supposedly have lovely dark red blossoms at the end of winter. can't wait.

then, we divided some hostas that were getting overcrowded onto a side path or were underfoot in inconvenient areas. from that, we got 20-30 plants!

the next day we moved all the tulips from dixie's line of destruction along the fence (when we first moved in i planted 200 bulbs along the back fence. i forgot that this fence runs along a trail that many folks walk their dogs on, and thus our dog repeatedly runs along the fence barking. when the tulips are in bloom, it makes for quite a colorful sprint for her with petals and foliage flying). i had boo looking for "treasure" as we searched for all the bulbs, which have since divided again. can't wait to see if they all bloom!

i've been checking out the area nurseries to see what folks have. from j&e nursery i found some cute heuchera (coralbells) which have a lovely chartreuse-y fuzzy foliage. i also got a wild geranium. and now i think i have to stop, because i want to see what comes back in the spring.

we also want to make some of the side beds more deep. since we need to leave a margin for the dog, it makes for very little planting space. the first thing we did was take out the little patch of grass between the side and the back beds which was kind of random anyway. after the next big rainfall we'll make the side bed a little deeper and a little less curvy. the before picture is below, just to illustrate the weird patch of grass.

tomaters

one of my generous friends belongs to a local farm CSA and every year they have a tomato open house, in which you come pick your own tomatoes for an afternoon. apparently there comes a point in the growing season in which there are simply too many tomatoes to harvest in time for a once-weekly share. unfortunately, this year a lot of tomatoes were affected by blight and by blossom end-rot, so they asked each share to try and pick only 20 pounds instead of 40. i can't even imagine what i would do with 40 pounds of tomatoes. so she invited me to share in her wealth, and i couldn't resist! aren't they beautiful?

i picked these from my garden about a week ago. i learned this year that my tomato plants suffer from wilt, so i won't be growing tomatoes again probably anytime soon since that's my sunniest patch and you can't plant tomatoes or anything in the same family in the same area, because the infection resides in the dirt for at least 3-5 years. that explains my mutant eggplant, which grew over 6 feet tall with 2 lone leaves at the top, with every leaf below it wilting off. anyways, these will probably be the only tomatoes that my garden yields this year. so sad.

first harvest

came home from 6 days away to find mushrooms in my front lawn, suggesting a bit of rain in our absence. my garden seems to grow much better without my presence.

so we harvested my first home grown baby bok choy. well, sorta home grown - i bought the tiny seedlings from the prairie crossing school sale. delicious!

the lettuce loves the cool weather we've been having.

i have yet to master the art of not overcrowding when i first plant. there are two poor pepper plants in the midst of all this spinach.

the tomatoes ... hope they're not too crowded too. these grew at least a foot in the last week.

corn! these were planted from seed. yes, i see there are a whole lotta weeds ... i was using suggestions from a gardening book that suggested using straw for paths in between the rows of plants. the idea is to create discrete areas of the garden that will always be compacted (the straw paths), and areas that will never be tromped on by feet (the vegetable plants). i thought this might be a good idea, as it could be sort of an easy visual guide for boo to follow when he's in the garden with me. but then the straw sprouted. madly. everywhere. aagh!

last picture - the beautiful hostas that are blooming by my garden gate. we have a lot of shade in our backyard so i'm thinking perhaps next year i will get a whole bunch of hostas and divide the ones i have to plant back there.