Playing in the Dirt

Oh, dear, it’s been over a MONTH since I posted here! I can’t believe it. My only excuse is that I’ve been busy gestating. Our baby is now officially three days overdue, actually.

There hasn’t been much action out in the garden since early autumn. My husband, Graham, helped me out a lot this year in getting things cleaned up out back. We actually managed to clip back all of the perennials and he helped me pull the finished plants from the vegetable garden after we harvested the tomatoes.

This year we didn’t keep all of our harvest to ourselves, preferring to keep things simple and give a lot of it away to friends and family members. (Although we did, of course, manage to roast several big baskets of tomatoes and froze four large ziplock bags of roasted tomato sauce.) Our next-door-neighbour traded us some nice little potatoes that he grew for some of our tomatoes, too.

Baskets of homegrown tomatoes, peppers and eggplant for our friends and family.

That little veggie trade had me thinking, actually, that since there are three of us now in a row on my street who grow vegetables, we should try to co-ordinate a little bit, and share our harvest.  We could collectively grow more food than we could individually.  I’ll have to give this some thought over the winter!

But now here it is, late November, and it’s been an unseasonably mild autumn this year, for which I’m grateful. Now there is the potential for snow flurries this coming week, the same week our new family member is expected to arrive (we have an induction scheduled for Monday).

I hope that although we’ll be busy with the new baby, I’ll have more time in general to devote to writing online over the coming year. We’ll be sure to post when the baby comes!

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Today I am thankful for the life that is growing inside of me,

for the man who loves me unconditionally and has agreed to walk through this life with me,

for wonderful, supportive friends,

for safety and health of my family members, near and far,

and for the glorious colours of autumn.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Graham and I went to the Orono Fall Fair yesterday afternoon with our friends, Andy and Kelly and their daughter Sophie.  It was a beautiful early autumn afternoon, and since it was Friday afternoon, there weren’t too many people on the fairgrounds, yet.  There were a lot of school groups there, though, with little kids learning about how to milk cows and all about tractors and growing crops.

Pumpkins at the entrance to the agricultural exhibits.  The big white squash on the right was the winner!

One of my favourite things to do at any autumn fair is look at the agricultural displays, including the vegetables that are grown locally and entered for prizes.  There seems to be a real fascination with vegetables that are either freakishly large or just…freakish.

Look at the size of these beets!  They were each about a foot long.

This tomato won a prize for Most Oddly Shaped Vegetable.  It looks a little like a purple calabash tomato to me, a variety that does grow in very strange, “lumpy” ways. (See my purple calabash harvest from a few years ago.)

And finally, here is everyone’s very favourite large vegetable, the giant zucchinis.

To give you some perspective, you can see the giant beets in the background.

I’ve always wanted to enter some home grown tomatoes into the fall fair, but have never committed to it.  Maybe next year!

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These ruby jewels are coming at a good pace these days…the real challenge is getting to them before the birds do.

Graham and I have been astonished at how aggressively our raspberry plants spread.  We knew they would spread, but we are constantly pulling young raspberry plants from the surrounding lawn and perennial garden.  Our plan is to move the patch from the back of the yard into our vegetable patch, where we will be able to monitor the plants more closely and keep the runners in check (or move them or give them away).  I’m sure that by now, our neighbours’ yards feature a small patch of raspberries, too!

I love to eat fresh, homegrown raspberries with granola and yogurt, tossed into a salad, or simply by the handful.

5087 Comments »http://playinginthedirt.ca/2009/07/29/whats-ready-to-harvest-raspberries/What%27s+ready+to+harvest%3F+Raspberries%212009-07-29+13%3A19%3A45Amy

As I sit in my living room this early morning drinking my coffee, I can see the vegetable patch out the back windows of our house.  One of the most prominent features of the garden right now are the brightly coloured blooms on the zucchini plants.

I always grow zucchini in my garden as I find it one of the most rewarding vegetable plants to grow.  In a very wet growing season, some plants can be lost to rotting, but generally the plants require little fussing and produce more fruit than I know what to do with.  I’ve made zucchini pickles zucchini soup, stuffed zucchini, zucchini bread and my favourite zucchini recipe so far, zucchini fritters.

Staying on top of the harvest is the trick to keeping my husband (and myself) from getting totally sick of zucchini.  I try to pick the fruit when it is still small and sweet and at its tastiest.  I throw chunks of it into salads, curries, pastas and soups.

What throws a wrench into this plan is that every year around this time, I take an annual trip to meet my blogging friends at the BlogHer conference, which is taking place in Chicago again this year.  This is what I found when I returned from that trip two summers ago:

Lots of big, impressive-looking fruit with very little flavour and not of much use other than as a door stop (or perhaps entering a contest in the county fair).

So this morning, after my coffee is done I’ll be harvesting the zucchini that’s ready to be picked. I’ve had to add “harvest zucchini” to my list of pre-conference tasks so that when I return on Sunday, I won’t be plagued with monster zucchini that I’ll have to pawn off on neighbours and friends!

4942 Comments »http://playinginthedirt.ca/2009/07/21/staying-on-top-of-the-zukes/Staying+on+top+of+the+zukes.2009-07-21+11%3A27%3A48Amy