Resurfacing Before The Year’s End…

Well, it appears I have fallen off the earth and disappeared completely these last few months.  First my job got so busy that it kept me from having time to keep up with the blog.  Then I lost the job and kept myself VERY busy, knitting, canning, pickling, rescuing some cats, reading about raising goats, and – of course – gardening!

Although I must find a new job soon, I have been enjoying every single second of my “temporary retirement,” as I’m calling it, and I’m grateful to have a wonderful husband who has been willing to work some extra shifts so that I could take these last couple of months to reconnect with so many of the things I love and to do things that make me happy.  It’s been a wonderful, magical vacation.  🙂

Speaking of wonderful, here it is, days before Christmas, and I still have two plants that are blooming in my garden!!!  (the fact that it’s this warm in December is scary, but nevertheless – I appreciate the flowers.)

Here is a stubborn coneflower that went through a little revival in fall and has refused to quit.  It’s holding onto that last flower and its color as long as it can, I guess!

Here’s another one that just won’t quit – Pineapple Sage.  It has long since lost its full, lush foliage and now looks really straggly and spindly, but those lovely red flowers make up for it.

I’ve been keeping my eye out for seeds, as I definitely want to grow this one again next year – such a lovely aroma and a beautiful, easy plant. Not a single seed has appeared thus far. My friend Bev suggested it might be a sterile cross and that I should attempt a branch cutting.  I had tried that a couple of months ago with no success, but Bev gave me some instructions and tips that I’m going to follow in hopes I can get it to take this time!  It’s a keeper for sure.

 

By the way, those straw-covered pots in the background are full of garlic, which I planted in late October and which is already starting to come up!  No!!!  I thought it wasn’t supposed to come up until next spring…I guess it’s just been too oddly warm here?  We’ll see what happens!  In the meantime, I’m going to enjoy the remaining blooms of the coneflower and pineapple sage while I get ready for THIS beauty to open:

 

It’s a Hellebore that I bought and planted a little over a year ago…looks like it’s getting ready to open up!

Just in time for Christmas!  I suppose that’s why they are sometimes called Lenten or Christmas Roses, huh?

First Substantial Tomato Harvest of the Summer!

We’ve been picking and eating Sun Gold cherry tomatoes and Yellow Pear tomatoes on a daily basis for a couple of weeks now, but yesterday was the first time some of the other tomatoes were ripe and ready for picking…and all I can say is WOO HOO!!!

Those are two Early Bush ‘Goliath” tomatoes in the front.  The three large tomatoes in the back are Mortgage Lifters.  The small tomatoes in the middle are Sun Gold cherries, Yellow Pears, and Principe Borghese. 

 

These lovelies are San Marzano plum tomatoes – the same tomatoes that just a week or so ago were suffering from Blossom End Rot.  This time around not a single tomato (on any plant) had blossom end rot – hooray!

The slicing tomatoes were slightly split or cracked, which I understand is also a side effect of inconsistent watering (gee – I sound like a bad mother or something!  I swear, I water regularly!), but  they should still be just fine to eat, and I cannot wait to dig into them the minute I get home from work today!

Here’s the whole batch:

A little salt, olive oil, and vinegar on some of these sliced up…I’d just about call that a meal!

I was a little concerned at the beginning of the summer that I’d gone overboard and planted too many tomatoes for two people to keep up with, but I think we’ll manage just fine.   If we start getting inundated over the month of August, I certainly won’t complain!  It will just give me an excuse to start canning!

Here’s the list of the tomatoes we’re growing (one plant of each type, all in containers):

‘Sun Gold’

‘Yellow Pear’

‘Principe Borghese’

‘San Marzano’

‘Mortgage Lifter’

Early Bush ‘Goliath’

Brandywine