My Garden

Ah! I am so behind on posting things. You should see this huge folder I have brimming with bloggable pictures that I just haven't gotten around to writing about. Alas, here is one. This is my backyard container garden this year. It's doing pretty well and is a bit bigger than last year.

One corner of the yard has flowers and pretty things, most of which I got at the Franklin Park Conservatory's annual plant sale held on Mothers' Day. I've transitioned to having mostly perennials, so either I'll start saving money each year on plants, or I'll just keep expanding :-)

I guess this picture doesn't do it justice, and things have been blooming at all different times. For example, I had lilies earlier in the season, and some other things haven't even bloomed yet A few of my other plants were purchased at farmers' markets. I think I got these lovely pansies at Worthington or Clintonville. They were specially bred (and new this year) to be such nice colors. They've been flowering all summer.

I also have a nice basket of petunias, again from the farmers' market. Normally I'm not a big fan of petunias, but I really like this shade of purple. These have also been flowering constantly, and they look great.

This is the vegetable and herb side of the yard (and Olive trying to steal the show). It doesn't look as pretty as the flowers, but this is what I'm most excited about. For the herbs, we have mint, Greek oregano, 3 types of basil, thyme and lemon thyme, rosemary, and chives.

We also have quite a few vegetables. There are tabasco and bell peppers. The tabasco peppers are very tiny but fiery hot. This picture is from a while ago, so now many are turning orange/red. I haven't eaten one of our bell peppers yet. One is finally big enough to pick this week.

We also have oodles (yes, oodles) of tomatoes. Adrian's brother-in-law gave us several plants that he started from seeds. We got some regular red tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, and huge beefsteak tomatoes from him. Sadly, the squirrels like the cherry tomatoes. I've only gotten 2 or 3 so far! Anyhow, all of these are in one pot, which is probably not the best idea. We call it the tomato jungle.

We also got 3 varieties of heirloom tomatoes at the farmers' markets. We have Vintage Wine, which are a sort of blushy red/pink color on the outside and orange/yellow on the inside. There's also Mr. Stripey, which I think is the coolest name ever for a tomato (though Mortgage Lifter and White Wonder come in close 2nd). And we have yellow pear tomatoes. They're very cute.

Yellow pear tomatoes ripening on the vine.

Mr. Stripey!

Ripe tomatoes!

Giant beefsteak tomato. Delicious with mozzarella and basil :-)

So that's the garden. I've been using my herbs a lot, and I can tell that I'm going to have to figure out what to do with a lot of tomatoes within the next few weeks. There are tons of green ones on all of the plants now.

For anyone else out there with lots of tomatoes, check this out: Healthy Recipes for Tomatoes from Epicurious.

Happy cooking!