Before the freeze October 10, 2009

It is going to be unreasonably cold tonight. It is supposed to get down to 25. Normally the first frost is October 15th and it is never this cold. I picked the last of the fall beans from the community garden plot last night. Here are some parting shots of my backyard:

And a dead tomato plant at my parents house that looks like on of those eggplants that look like pumpkins on a stick. That was a mouthful. It is a variety called ‘Red Star’. I don’t like it very much but it looks cool in this picture.

Hello, cold!

Beautifully ugly October 8, 2009

A brown tomato hornworm, they are quite rare. This is the first one I’ve seen. So gross yet totally amazing and weirdly beautiful. Yuck! And Cool! All at the same time.

Not unlike my life now, beautifully ugly.

*UPDATE* My friend Laura K’s dad researches insect biochemistry. He says this caterpillar is “a mutant with a juvenile hormone deficiency”.

We made our way . . . September 24, 2009

Via 177

Must make at least one funny face and wear a hippie dress

Past the little red schoolhouse

And a field of goldenrod?

We won’t make it by dark that’s for sure

. . .

Tomatoes gone wild… September 14, 2009

I’m not sure if my parents love me or hate me this time of year. I planted a lot of tomato plants for them and now their kitchen counter looks like this:

And a table in the garage looks like this:

And here’s a few, just a few, cherry tomatoes. I try to pick these when I’m out at their house cause they don’t like picking the little ones.

A tomato as big as a small child’s head! This variety is called ‘Opalka’. The not-quite-ripe one is how they are supposed to look. The double-sized one is just a mutant. Or maybe I pumped that one full of antibiotics and hormones. Shhhhh, don’t tell the plant-rights police or Michael Pollan. I might have even fed it CORN, the sin of all sins. Feeding a tomato CORN. What I would like know is, has anyone asked the tomatoes if they like to eat corn? Cause I’m pretty sure they do.

What was I talking about? Oh, that’s right, tomatoes.  Back to the tomatoes.

Tomato ‘Striped Stuffer’

Sucks, yes, it totally sucks. Do not grow it. It actually tasted worse than a store bought tomato which I didn’t even know was possible. It is apparently an heirloom. I don’t really buy into the hype about heirloom tomatoes, heirlooms aren’t always all they are cracked up to be, sometimes they are about 100x worse than modern F1 hybrids. Sometimes they are awesome. It does have a nice cavity for stuffing and pretty stripes. This is the first time I have every grown a stuffing tomato, are they all this bad?

They do look nice with some tuna salad in them. Yummy! The tuna salad and the pickles, I mean, not the tomatoes. I think of this variety as a pretty, disposable, biodegradable bowl. I’m not sure they’d stand up to a scoop of ice cream or hot soup. Coming to a family reunion near you, any day now!

Goodnight. This snarky gardener is going to bed. I will contemplate weeding my community garden plot and strangling any worms I find. I think I need another vacation. And it is right around the corner! Yippeeeeee!

What happened to YOU?!!! September 13, 2009

My parents’ dog, Skippy, is very good at getting himself into a pickle. This particular pickle took only a couple of minutes to achieve and resulted in great embarrasement for poor Skippy who doesn’t want to have his picture taken and will not look at the camera . . .

. . . alas,  poor boy, he had his picture taken because us annoying humans think he looks so silly. And now it is time for a grooming, another embarrassing event. The pains of being a dog.

As for what happened to me? I’ve been having some, errrr, let’s say, “difficulties” lately and haven’t felt like posting. I’m going to start writing regularly again, for therapeutic reasons, if nothing else.

Tiger’s eye beans August 21, 2009

I have a fascination with growing dry beans. I ordered these Tiger’s Eye dry bush beans from Seeds of Change cause they look cool! I ended up with more beans than I started with but this is really not a cost effective way of procuring beans. If only they weren’t so pretty I wouldn’t grow them instead I would just buy a bag of pinto beans. Also Seeds of Change is expensive and I don’t like their new, plastic seed packets. And now I am done, Seeds of Change kinda makes me want to rant.

New recipe of the week – Tomatoes Provencal August 21, 2009

From Everyday Food but I couldn’t find a link to the recipe online. I should’ve made a half recipe of it cause it was too much for one person to eat in a week. Little Girl won’t eat tomatoes which I find shocking, SHOCKING! It is a good way to use up a lot of tomatoes and it turned out better than I thought that it would, even though I had to make a few changes to the recipe. I suppose I could blend up the rest of it and turn it into tomato sauce, alas, I do not have a blender.

Colorado trip – July/August 2009, Part 2 August 13, 2009

One day, family who live in Fort Collins came up to the mountains for brunch. Little Girl loves to help in the kitchen so she mixed up the scrambled eggs.

We ate outside

With smores for dessert

Chipmunk enjoyed it too

She loves to make funny faces

She went on her first horseback ride

She told Uncle Reggie, “This is way more fun than hiking”

Meanwhile Reggie and I went hiking

On the way out of the mountains we stopped at a church . . .

Saw some bighorn sheep . . .

and smelled some flowers.

When we reached the Front Range she met some doggies

Ack! My daughter ran off with a pack of dogs

THE END

What’s in my fridge this week – Summer chicken salad* August 13, 2009

Little Girl colored the neon sweet peas

I finally finished making my chicken salad after a three day delay due to nearly chopping two fingers off. I made chicken stock and fridged the chicken which always tastes like crap after only an hour in the fridge. My solution: mayonnaise!

I also have onions, fresh parsley, and cherry tomatoes. I learned, the hard way, to ration cherry tomatoes. They are addicting and if I eat too many of them, not pretty. So this recipe includes halved cherry tomatoes, but not too many, just enough so that there’s fewer sitting on the counter, demanding to be eaten. The rest of the “recipe”: lemon juice and cracked pepper. There you have it, “Summer Chicken Salad*”. I think this would be good with shrimp, also.

*It is not a spring chicken, it is a summer chicken! Get it? Funny, right?
OK, so maybe livestock puns are only funny to me. Have you heard the one about hand, foot, and mouth disease? Cause it is heelarious!

The ends of the rainbow August 11, 2009

Sunday afternoon, the temperature dropped 25 degrees over two hours and it stormed. After the storm cleared the light was very cool and there was a huge rainbow.

From my dad's cattle pens . . .

. . . to the valley.