Gardening and Enjoying Nelson Bay

This year might be a good year for gardening, after all :). I checked the veggie garden after returning from an all-too-short vacation at Nelson Bay and everything is looking good.

We've got green tomatoes on most of the tomato plants and with luck, they will start to ripen in June and we can get our first fresh tomatoes of the season.

The squash and cucumbers are also doing very, very well and I picked our first zucchini today. We'll have it sauteed in olive oil and onions tonight and I can't wait. It looks like we're going to have quite a few varieties of squash and when the basil gets a little taller, I'll make one of my favorite dishes: Mac-and-Cheese and Squash.

It's really simple to make: Saute the squash (yellow or zucchini or a mixture of the two) with mushrooms. While they are cooking, make macaroni and cheese with your favorite box or homemade variety. When they are done to your taste (I like them a little underdone so they are not mushy), add a handful of fresh, chopped basil. Then mix the veggies in with the mac-and-cheese and serve!

My mom used to make this and it was one of the last things I ate at her house before she passed away, so every time I make it, I think of her. It's a memory and recipe I really treasure.

 One of the things that is really helping out in the garden this year is a tangled ball of Venetian blind cord. One of our neighbors got rid of some old Venetian blinds and salvaged the cord. He decided he didn't have any use for it and gave it to us.

I discovered that it is just about perfect for tying up tomato plants and giving your cucumbers something to twine their tendrils around. It seems fairly weather resistant and so far isn't causing abrasions on my plants.

As you can see, we are sort of pack rats here and try not to let anything go to waste. My garden is full of odds and ends of PVC pipes that work as tomato and veggie supports as well as the Venetian blind cords to hold them up.

 As they say--it's all good!

And I just have to add a few pictures from our mini-vacation on Nelson Bay. We had a wonderful time and took the dogs out in our boat. Daisy, the Jack Russell terrier, is still a puppy so it was the first time she'd ever been out in a boat and she seemed to love it. She pals around with our Chesapeake Bay retriever, Molly, and the two of them stayed busy swimming and chasing the small mullets that hugged the shore.

We saw hermit crabs, as well, and our martin house is fully occupied with nesting martins, which means 12 pairs of birds.

On our boat ride, we saw several Osprey nests on channel markers and they seemed to be doing well. We also saw a Spotted Sandpiper on Salter's Creek, as well as dozens of Red-Winged Blackbirds, Laughing Gulls, and pelicans. We even have a pair of Barn Swallows nesting under our pier!

The Killdeer have already hatched one brood and there are chicks running around in the large, grassy areas and they are cute as can be.

This is such a great time of year and I really hope everyone has a chance to relax and enjoy the beautiful weather, their friends and most of all, time with their families.

On a last note, I hope everyone will consider donating to the Red Cross to assist in the relief efforts for the tornado victims in OK. I am donating all my proceeds from my historical mystery, The Vital Principle, for both May and June (I decided to extend it to June) to the Red Cross to assist in this effort. I may extend it again for July--I will see how it goes. The families are in desperate need there and even the smallest donations will help. I hope you will consider giving to this or to your favorite charity.

Gardening with Veggies

Gardening is always trial and error, at least for me, and often tends to be more "error" than anything else. However, this year I have a new plan to defeat weeds--a checkerboard. My idea is this:

 Put down landscape fabric, then put square (or round if you prefer) pavers on top of that in a checkerboard pattern

Then cut X's in the exposed fabric so you can plant your veggies (or whatever plant you're planting).

This year, I have squash, cucumbers, tomatoes, tomatillos, and peppers planted between the pavers.

My hope is that I can use the pavers as places to stand to weed and harvest and they also ensure that I don't plant things too closely together.

For supports, we stuck together some old PVC in various odd configurations so I can tie the tomatoes and cucumbers to those as they get taller.

So far, so good. :) I've actually got some green tomatoes on one of the larger plants (the one on the right in the pictures) and I've got a combination of small veggies that I started from seeds and some larger plants that I purchased. We should get a good variety, since I have all different kinds of varieties including a mix of modern hybrids and old fashioned heirloom plants that I grew from seeds.

In the past, I've found that it is best to have plants at various stages of growth for a number of reasons: it extends the harvest; and if pests or disease get into the plants, it may affect only the ones at a specific age so you will still have a chance at a harvest from the plants at a different stage.

While I was whacking weeds this morning, I also noticed some volunteer tomato plants in a spot where I had tomatoes last year. I'm going to let them grow and see what they produce (if anything). Since the tomatoes I had there were hybrids, it is anyone's guess what they will produce, but it will be fun to see.

This morning I also noticed that the tops of my crop of garlic are going brown, which means it is almost time to dig up the heads and dry them. Since we have a LOT of garlic, what we don't use immediately will be frozen. As it turns out, garlic heads freeze very well and once they are frozen, it is super easy to remove the papery husks when you're ready to use them and the cloves still states fresh (albeit a little soft) and are excellent for cooking. This crop this is almost ready for harvest should provide us with enough garlic to last until next season, or at least that's my hope. Then, this fall, I'll lay in another crop, along with lettuce which really only grows well here in autumn/winter/spring.

Hope everyone is enjoying the spring (it's more like summer, here in NC) weather and looking forward to a wonderful season of fresh veggies!

Enjoy!

The List

As mentioned in my previous blog, I've retired from my day job to be a full time writer. Yippee!
And that also means that everyone has been asking me what I will do, now. In fact, no one can quite believe that I would "give up a career in information technology" just like that. While I'm still trying to figure out if I need to renew my Microsoft Technet subscription, I think in the end I will be able to give up work in IT because my problem is not a lack of interests, but far too many interests to explore in a single lifetime.

I've spent 36 years exploring computers and IT. I'm ready to move on and while I don't really believe in "bucket lists" per se, I do have a lot of things I want to do. Here are just a select few.

1. Train the Dog - we just got a new Jack Russell puppy and am spending a lot of time with her. She's really good at fetch and I'd like to train her to do a few things - it will keep both of us active outside and she'll be all the happier for it.
2. Write - I have several books in first or first/second draft stage. I need to finish those and get them "out the door". My first hardcover mystery, Whacked!, is out and while most authors will shake their heads in disgust at me when I admit this, I need to get a second manuscript to my publisher. (I should have already sent them one, but I'm a very slow writer.) A Fall of Silver - a paranormal romance, should have been published, but is still going through last minute edits, so... Work, work, work.
3. Birding  - I've neglected my bird watching over the last few years and I really want to get back to that. I've even forgotten some of the calls. This spring I intend to do a lot of birding around North Carolina.
4. Gardening - The gardens are a mess. I need to get them back into shape. Some, I may have to eliminate so that I can keep the rest of them weeded, etc, during the hot summer months. I way overdid it in creating lots of gardens and I got overwhelmed. It's time to correct that. In fact, I need to clean up the kitchen garden and start planting cold weather crops before it's too late.
5. The House - The old log home has been neglected far too long. It's time to pull up some of the nastier bits of carpeting and put down flooring that can withstand the four-legged creatures running around here. We also have a junk room that I've sworn to clean up and turn into a library. Oh, and let's not forget doing actual housework. :)
6. Classes - I'd like to take some classes, and to ease into that, I'm looking at ordering some of the Great Courses. I'm particularly interested in Trails of Evidence: How Forensic Science Works  although it is fairly pricey. It strikes me that it would be useful if I continue to write mysteries. I've always been interested in forensics and this one sounds interesting. I'd also like to take some of their history classes and some fun ones like cooking.

That's enough to get me started, I think.

Gardening in August

It’s hot—really hot—and the hardest thing this time of year seems to be keeping ahead of the weeding. The weeds seem to grow even without water or care, while the other flowers suffer as the weather reaches the highest temperatures. Last year, we had a drought, but this year, it's been raining every afternoon. That's terrific for my roses, but not so great on the weeding front as we're literally taken over by weeds. We are particularly plagued by pink purslane (Portulaca pilosa L.). It’s related to that wonderful and very colorful annual Portulaca (moss rose) and some folks have decided to stop trying to weed out purslane as it does have a lovely, bright hot pink flower about ½” across that opens during the day.

You can see from this picture that it has reddish stems and less clearly, rather “succulent” leaves. This specimen is getting ready to bloom, but isn’t quite there yet.

Some have been known to use purslane in salads as it contains more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable. In antiquity, it was one of several pot herbs that “should be sown in April” according to Theophrastus (4^th century BC). Pliny advised wearing it as an amulet to expel all evil due to its healing properties. It is known as Ma Chi Xian in China and has been used in traditional Chinese medicine for dysentery and topically to relieve skin abrasions or insect bites.  However, it also contains oxalate, a compound implicated in the formation of kidney stones, so I personally do not include purslane in our diet, particularly since our variety of purslane is not the yellow-flowered variety one commonly uses in Europe in salads.

So you see, what is one man’s weed is another man’s sought-after herb.

And it’s hot enough now that I’ve decided not to make any real attempt to eradicate purslane from our garden. I’m very fond of it growing over the edges of our brick walkway, so I think I won’t worry too much about pulling it out.

This is, of course, the time of year when marigolds really come into their own. I’ve always loved marigolds and adore all the new varieties available. There is even an off-white one that is absolutely terrific as a “bridging” plant between the hot colors of late summer marigolds and the mums of fall, which often include rich rose and burgundy. And don’t forget the plants with colorful foliage like coleus that come in everything from lime green and white to deep burgundy. They can also be used effectively in planters and gardens. They are beautiful all summer, even when other plants have stopped blooming, since they are grown for their foliage. They do need to be pinched back, though, to keep them busy.

Late July and August is also prime time for verbenas, as shown in this photo. The plans are blooming powerhouses and will attract hundreds of butterflies and hummingbirds. They come in a variety of colors, including delicate pinks as well as hot orange and pink combinations. If planted in good soil with the occasional watering, they will grow as high as your waist in one season. Folks in USDA gardening zones 7-10 will find verbenas will grow as perennials as long as you remember not to cut them back too far in the winter. The hollow stems will fill with water and freeze, thereby killing the plant, if you forget.  Nonetheless, this is an extremely easy to grow plant that requires virtually no care and will survive if you forget to water for a few weeks.

If you grow roses, don’t forget to water them and feed them to prepare for another glorious season of bloom in late August-September. Remove any hips (dead flowers) to encourage bloom production. Old wisdom said to clip off spent flower sprays down to the first 5-leafed leaflet. I simply pinch off the hip, leaving all leaves on the stem. Leaves are good—they are the energy factory for the plant—so the more leaves you can leave a plant, the better.

Hope you are enjoying your summer garden!

Stay cool in the dog days of summer and don’t worry if you let a few weeds intrude. Just tell anyone who comments that they are an herb you meant to grow there.

Finally, although the nearby cotton field has another month to go before the cotton "balls" form, this time of year always reminds me of my second Archer family Regency romance, I Bid One American. The heroine is a "fish out of water" as an American heiress living in London. If you want a light, funny read with a touch of mystery, you might check it out. And yes, those white things on the cover are cotton...