Briar examines the food table which is covered with a mesh cover with fancy lace edges. The outdoor plague safety dining experience!You will note it protects a new version of the watermelon and feta salad. The main innovation here is that I suggested we use the melon as the bowl. Paula assembled the salad as before. I believe Judy gave me the fancy salad tongs long ago. They worked well and looked lovely.
The rainbow garden in the morning. Only orange not blooming.Dinner with garden onions in the quiche and up in the corner, a watermelon salad.Here’s a close up of the watermelon salad. The feta cheese and balsamic vinegar really helps the bland watermelon. I really hope the next moon and stars actually gets riper.Tragedy strikes. The scurf-pea got chopped off at the stem. I assume it is too small yet to come back from that.
Tuesday started off sleepy before work.On my way out I saw the two leaf senna blooming for the first time! I’m so happy it’s doing ok. There is a second plant too but it has no buds yet.The Chef and Briar picked me up from work. When we came back, we discovered Gram waiting.He was waiting for his Doggie. “Hello Big Sister!”. Once she came back in the house all was well again.Fajita salad by Paula and The Chef. I am informed there were garden onions and at least one garden tomato involved.The first cushaw squash just keeps growing. We think it is almost ready as the rind is getting pretty hard now.The purple beauty peppers are inexplicably red. I wonder if it’s too hot for the purple color.The mystery pumpkin vine made a second bit of Halloween. It’s the slightly more yellow one above. The vine itself seemed to be dying of squash vine borers so we went ahead and removed it.
Paula wields the knife.Oh no! Bad spot in our canteloupe!The bad spot carefully removed leaves us with snack size halves. They were cold and delicious.Saving seeds from this variety, Madhur Ras melon. I put it in the hot shade on the west facing front porch. It has a lot of melon goo on them that we couldn’t rinse off, so maybe they’ll be easier to clean after drying.
We looked at the William’s pride apple tree today and the apple was missing!! Concern. We found it on the ground.Sadly, the bottom half was rotted. I forgot that William’s pride is an early variety, so we should have picked sooner before it fell.However, we cut off the bad part and the rest was quite delicious! A nice texture and magnificent smell!!Gram was less impressed than we were.
We realized we should think about when green vernissage tomatoes were ripe. They are supposed to have green flesh so this has turned out rather complicated. These ones are good. The green between the dark green stripes has a hint of yellow and translucency. They taste nice and the flesh isn’t mealy.These ones are too soft. They are darker (I don’t think the picture shows well) and have some very soft spots. I tried one and it was bland with a mealy texture.This tomato is too soft.These green vernissage are all ripe except the very bright pale green one that has a thumbs down on it.Bonus: Briar examines the topped up jar of bisbee gray cowpeas.
Plant A: the volunteer. It has generated two fruits and Paula wants to eat them. I want to know what this plant is first. Help me not let Paula get sick.Close up of plant A leaf.Close up of Plant A young flower. A more mature flower a few months ago (see below) has more brown/purple on petals but not I think on the anthers?The north central Texas flora keys out to two main groups by hair type. These, on Plant A, appear to be simple, and possibly retrorse (curving down). No hair joints eliminates P. heterophylla.Plant A: the leaf and the two fruits. The fruit calyxes are five angled.I zoomed in on a picture of the previous flower, same plant A. I believe the anthers are yellow. I would like help with that, as it’s been a while since I’ve tried to confirm anthers. Yellow anthers and simple hairs get it to P. longifolia or P. virginiana in the NC TX Flora. The leaves for both species are are ovate to lanceolate, which seems inconsistent with Plant A. Longifolia also is said to often have purple stems. This one has stripes but not fully purple. The NC TX Flora says these two are possibly toxic. The new Foraging Texas book says all the Physalis are fine. Other sources claim virginiana’s fine or may need a frost. One of the sources is this book about Physalis and relatives so I may get it via interlibrary loan.This is the underside of Plant B. Plant B should be a cultivar of Physalis pruinosa based on its location and what I have planted there. It has similar simple, possibly retrorse hairs. Plant B is not flowering yet this year. I had a really hard time finding flower pictures for P. pruinosa, as most people sort of reasonably are interested in the fruit. It does appear to have yellow anthers. Plant C. This is from a probably perennial wild Physalis (I have never planted any Physalis that made it to fruiting in the backyard). Its hairs are distinctly stellate. None of the individuals in the cluster of 2-4 Plant C individuals were flowering, but the hairs seem to narrow it to P. cinerascens or P. mollis. I think P. cinerascens seems more likely on leaf shape, but both are edible and neither have simple leaf hairs.Plant C leaf (left) and plants A (upper right leaf, bigger) and B (lower right leaf, smaller – it’s from a younger plant), and plant A fruits.
So, am I missing anything obvious here? Is this identifiable? Have any of you consumed P. longifolia or P. virginiana and lived?
Update: Mom showed me a few other keys and they get it to P. virginiana too. None of the keys contain P. pruinosa. P. virginiana is also a perennial while P. pruinosa is an annual, so maybe next year will also provide a clue.
Garden radishes with farm share and grocery store veggies Uncooked pizza with toppings more visible – garden basil as both a topping and as part of pesto that the Chef made a while back, as well as slices of Dwarf Audrey’s Love tomatoes.Cooked pizza. Yum!!
Paula made dinner with kimchi pancakes (with plum sauce) and egg foo young on rice to go with it. Cilantro from the garden is garnishing all of it, plus the kimchi contains walking onions.Red cabbage kimchi makes a mess. More walking onions from the garden here.
