Fancy, that’ll teach me (Wednesday dinner)

Course 1: garlic lemon aioli with rolled prosciutto, atop bacon fat flatbread, on a bed of radicchio, drizzled with goji tomatillo (garden) syrup, topped with Leonberger cheese, and garnished with a mini bell pepper slice (garden) and white currant tomatoes (garden).
Course 2: venison bone broth made with carrots, celery, parsley (garden), with chopped onions (last of garden) and pearled barley, garnished with mini bell peppers (garden) and served with the bacon fat flatbread.
Course 3: braised venison shoulder seasoned with rosemary (garden), shiitake mushroom, serrano peppers (a friend’s garden), and onion (garden). Plated with radicchio, garlic lemon aioli, sliced tomatoes (garden), and a sea of goji tomatillo (garden) syrup.
In lieu of pictures of course 4 (fresh vanilla bean frozen custard a la Paula), here is the dog hoping for course 3. We ate the ice cream and didn’t take a picture. 😎

Evening harvest and bean test

Tomatoes have started producing again a bit.
Checking to see if my guess that ugly ones are bad is correct. Seems generally so, if the idea that floating beans are no good is true.
Buckwheat flowers.
The Chef found a third egg case today. Our spider is working hard! Here she has a grasshopper.

Holiday Sunday

An outdoor dinner. Garden basil and oregano.
Moved the chives and garlic chives that Judy gave me last year. Maybe they’ll like this spot better.
Uzbek golden, little, and New Kuroda carrots.
Gram helps me get seeds out.
Fall seeds planted of cabbage, mizuna, greens, and cauliflower. Tomatoes and peppers for overwintering. And a few pots of Roman chamomile for the front yard ground cover.
This is where I shall attempt peppers and tomatoes over the winter.
This goldenrod was already here and is doing very nicely.
A giant 1″+ horsefly on a backyard window sill.
Never going outside again.
I lied. Outside again. Chiltepin peppers.
Frostweed doing alright after it died back earlier in summer.
A little spider got this Eastern Tailed-Blue on the englemann daisy.
Texas mallow blooming!
The non native clematis. I’ll clean it out over the winter.
Okra flower
A bumblebee on the okra!

Even wilder Saturday

Okra flower keeping its banker’s hours.
Taco week leftovers include garden potatoes and garden sweet peppers (a few mini bells and one Jimmy Nardallo sweet pepper) and tomatoes in cheese sauce.
Wet dog helping me water.
A kind friend who was moving gave me a string of solar lights which I put in the trellises today.  They have a switch, so I can have them on only as needed, so we don’t distract the night bugs from their business.

Friday dinner of mostly garden tacos

Thursday evening, the Chef began preparing spices for meat in slow cooker. Two jalapeños, one chimayó (top).
Mmm tacos. Everything except meat, tortillas, cheese, and spices are from garden. Beans are the last of last year’s California black-eyed peas. Potatoes are this year’s kennebec white.
After dinner, Paula and I did some garden harvesting. New for the season are Alabama black-eyed butter beans.
Also new for the season are slippery silks pole beans.
While we picked, the ice cream maker machine worked hard.
Vanilla with blackberries from home. Thanks Mom for sending some home with us!

Saturday stuff

I froze tiny tomatoes last night and they left funny holes.
Two Bombus impatiens (common eastern bumblebee).
Trimmed out the dead spots in the middle rosemary. I’m not sure why it’s upset.
Paula very wisely suggested trimming the Salvia greggii so we can better access the veggies, plus it’ll make them bloom more again.
As an experiment, we also trimmed back one of the Salvia farinacea (mealy blue sage) which are all getting very leggy.

Almost caught up?

The buffalograss in spots with more dirt and grass trimmings over it is sprouting!
I pulled up a single sprout from here and it had the seed hull attached, so definitely the right plant.
Peruvian ground cherries!!
White currant tomatoes on nachos last night.
Salsa verde enchiladas intrigue Gram.
“ew, loud smell” he didn’t like them but we did!!

Assorted stuff

Three hours to harvest and sort all this.
First canning tomato variety fruit. I can’t remember which one, I need to look at spreadsheet. The marker is buried in dirt. Update: is Amish Paste tomato.
Grass seeds did not wash away in rain. Whew.
Intruder alert!!
Possibly the frass of the offending hornworm???
Loofah gourd flower disintegrated in rain.
A jewel of rain on succulent.

A day off for errands

Bisbee cowpeas flowering more
I liked the contrast on this one.
“Stubby” variety of okra.
An okra flower with a little sweat bee flying by!
This is the first okra flower I’ve seen in person here since they seem to keep banker’s hours.
A little green-striped cushaw squash!
Leaf of the squash is looking a bit rough.
Found another Madhu Ras melon! This one is bigger.
Salvia greggii “Diane” purple cultivar has bloomed! Now only waiting on the orange part of rainbow garden to bloom.
Whoa. I did not realize this cushaw squash was here!
A male Sachem on a Peruvian ground cherry. There is a flower in the background so I hope it’ll start producing soon.
Two immature fruits on Amish Paste tomato.
I think this is one of my stratification butterfly milkweed that I planted directly! Very excited!
A doodlebug (also known as an ant lion) trap waiting for some little critter to walk by! I feel very good about the predators in the garden right now, keeping plant-eaters in check, as I also saw a little brown snake slither away. We had a Dekay’s Brown Snake last year so it was probably that. May it be fat and happy on earwigs!
One of the rosemary bushes is blooming!