Fresh, Local, Seasonal, Produce

I love growing my own food, or. buying local and fresh when I can. There is a produce stand and a small local market just down the road from our knew house and it's a nice little walk to buy some fresh vegetables. The beats actually came from the new Fresh Market in Rehobeth, but they were too pretty not to add.

A Final Update

For a few weeks at any rate. I know it's been a while but I have a million excuses, life has been quite busy and quite stressed the last few weeks. And to be entirely honest I've been exhausted and my mind quite lacking in topics of interest, and things worthy of the time it would take to write and read them. But we'll be on the ups with lots to share when we get back.

Where are we going?   China.    How long?    Three weeks.    When?    In three days.

So the rest of my week will be quite busy, trying to finish everything, pack everything, clean everything, and hopefully forget nothing! Well here are some garden pictures  as well as a few of my corset for you and if you think of us say a prayer for easy, safe, successful and enjoyable travels.

Back to the Garden and something I learned about Squash

 My spaghetti squash gets bigger every day and I'm so excited about it! This however is not that first one I told you about, that first one and the four after it, all shriveled up and fell off the vine. That of course left me feeling devastated  and curious as to what could be the problem!?  So I did a little research and discovered that squashes will start to produce a fruit but if it isn't pollinated or isn't properly or sufficiently pollinated it will shrivel up and fall off. For whatever reason we don't get many honey bees around here, so with knowledge I decided that the next female flower that opened was going to get properly pollinated and as I guess you can see my paint brush pollinating skills are excellent! This lovely is only about a week old but I can't wait to eat it!

       Speaking of eating (I'm starving) this morning I pulled up some young potatoes and I plan to bake them with our basketful of yellow cherry tomatoes using this recipe that I found this morning. It looks amazing and I can't wait to try it (I'll tell you how it turned out)! Now if only I had bought the white esparagus at the whole foods store yesterday that be lovely with it! And then I could make some bread ... Okay enough talk of dinner I really am getting too hungry.

       In the garden I also have Cherokee purple heirloom tomatoes, cucumbers, Asian eggplants and cherry tomatoes which are trying to be trees (they're already taller then me and still going). Also because I forgot to show you before here is my little satsuma tree. I got on sale for $15, I wanted a lime, but all they had were Mexican Key Limes and if I ever get a lime I want to buy a kefir lime, so I can use its leaves.

Another Garden topic ... seed saving! These bags are fill with seed pods finishing drying up, I want  leave them out to dry as long as possible but the birds had discovered them, so paper bags is in a cool dry place it is!  I have  radishes (I will never have to buy them again), mustard, cilantro, and arugula or rocket. I also have some that are already finished drying and have been put in little seed pouches.  I also have some tomato seeds fermenting in a baby food jar, which really isn't as hard as it sounds and surprisingly works quite well! When I lived in Harbin I saved a  bunch of tomato seeds, just for something to do and ended up with about 20 tomatoes on my balcony the next summer. I had so many tomato plants I didn't know what to do with them!