The World Is Abloom...

...or at least our yard is.

Andrew and I looked around our yard one day and realized that some rather ordinary-looking bushes (for most of the year) have suddenly burst into color.  And, we did hedge our bets by planting additional flowers this year, going for pretty annuals as opposed to the veggies we grew last year.  Discouraged by the amount of animals that ended up nibbling on what we grew outside last year, we've limited our vegetable growing this year to a few potted tomato plants, and a lone zucchini plant.

Consider this a visual tour of our front yard but I'll warn you already, I don't know the name of half the things (ok, most of the things) in our yard!

To the left of our front door, all sorts of beautiful perennials that continue to amaze us each year:

These poor things did not hold up well to the windy weather and thunderstorms we had last week, which blew them into this position:

Can I tell you how much I adore the green glaze on this pots and the periwinkle color of these flowers? Just a little spots of color to say welcome:

On the opposite side of the yard, alongside the fence, there were plenty of gaps to fill from our misguided weeding efforts last year (Andrew and I are positive that some perennial plants were accidentally - ahem - removed):

Moving further along, I stuck a row of different colored gerber daisies - only one seems to be thriving right now, but I'm happy to report that there are other small blooms pushing their way up on the neighboring plants (you'll have to take my word for it!):

Facing this area, back on the right-hand side of our front entryway, is a tiny row of spunky pink and white blooms that I've planted in a row:

You can see them better against the backdrop of the purple-toned perennials.  I always thought these perennials were kind of ugly even though I like the color of their foliage but as it turns out, I'm pretty these are set to blossom soon due to the stalks you may be able to make out:

Andrew is particularly proud of this hulking rhododendron at the edge of yard that borders the park - he trimmed it back earlier in the year, which we believe has caused it to bloom more than it did last year. The small bushes you see in front of it (to the left) are hydrangea bushes which bloom later in the summer (from what we remember happened last year):

Even the climbing vines on the fence have gotten the memo about flowers, as I noticed tiny white flowers appearing on the bottom of this cluster:

Taking a walk round the house to the back, we find Andrew cleaning the deck and stairs with our powerful new water hose - that small plot of land in the back has tiny morning glory plants popping up (one of my personal favorites), which we hope will grow to cover the whole back trellis section:

Andrew's beloved grapevines are also thriving - we were pretty sure they would survive the winter, but weren't entirely convinced until we saw buds pop up everywhere:



This concludes the tour of the outdoor portion of our house. Congratulations to you for not being bored stiff and hanging in there until the end.  If you're wondering about the one side of the house that I didn't show, it's actually the site of one of Andrew's pet projects and I'm trying to convince him to write a guest post on it.  If I'm successful, you should be reading it sometime this week.  As encouragement, please leave a comment below encouraging Andrew to do it!

Zukes 'n Cukes

Ok, I know that's a cutesy name for a post, but it was oh-so appropriate for this ode to our flourishing garden.

Our grape tomatoes have been slowly been ripening throughout the month, in twos and threes, so they've been more suited for a quick treat.

Our humble zucchini and cucumber plants have been working overtime - we only have one of each (and thank goodness, since they've both grown so much that they've taken over our meager plot of land.)

This is my first look at zucchini fresh on the plant - I stuck my hand in for scale but I can't even describe how big these suckers are and how quickly they grow. It's literally overnight that a zucchini goes from barely being noticed to a behemoth:

Not to be overloooked, the cucumbers are also coming in nicely:

This is what we harvested over the weekend:

For perspective, our biggest zucchini next to a cucumber and some adorable grape tomatoes to boot:

So what to do with all these vegetables? For dinner last night, I went to my go-to zucchini recipe, which I learned from a college roommate. All it involves is:

1. Peeling and slicing a zucchini into rounds
2. Dredging it in a beaten egg solution
3. Dredging it in Italian bread crumbs
4. One more dip in the egg solution
5. Sprinkling lemon and pepper seasoning (without salt) and then dredging through the bread crumbs one more time
6. Placing it on a Pam-sprayed sheet (or a Silpat)
7. Baking for 25 minutes in a 400 degree oven, flipping them over at the halfway point.

What you get at the end is slightly browned, chewy piece of zucchini with a bread coating that puffs up while it bakes. We eat this simply with a side of white rice (always present in our house) and a protein. I have to note that we ran out of the lemon pepper seasoning (without salt) in the middle so we had to substitute lemon pepper seasoning (with salt), and I actually liked using both flavors. Let's face it, zucchini is pretty flavorless, so piling on as much lemon pepper seasoning only makes it taste better.

PS, this picture is before the rounds went into the oven. We ate them too quicly afterwards for a "baked" picture:

The two cucumbers we harvested got eaten for dinner tonight. I combined two recipes, one from the Food Network and one from Allrecipes to make a simple cucumber salad.

First came slicing the cucumbers in half, scoops the seeds out, and slicing them into fairly thin slices:

I salted the cucumbers and half a sliced yellow onion (what I had on hand) with around two teaspoons of salt in a colander. While letting that soak and drain, I whisked together a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, a teaspoon of white vinegar, one tablespoon of white sugar and two teaspoons of freshly snipped parsely from our windowsill herb garden.  A quick rinse of the cucumbers and onions in cold water and a toss in the vinegar mixture yielded this picture perfect salad (with the last minute addition of sliced grape tomatoes from our garden):

As Andrew and I grinned at each other over our dinner, we were smug with the satisfaction that nothing tastes as good something you've grown yourself. And in case you were wondering, this was a side dish to accompany our chicken burgers and spicy sweet potato fries.

Then and Now - Our Garden

Planted on Memorial Day, we had high hopes for our little patch of garden:

A month later, our plants are flourishing! I'm proud that we haven't killed a single one yet. Although the same can't be said for some of the flowers I've been trying to cultivate indoors. But let's focus on the successes.

One tomato plant is growing furiously and it's got two other tomato plants close behind it:

I know it's hard to get the perspective of how big this zucchini plant is, but I think it's going to end up taking over my garden plot! And if you look at the original picture above, the tiny little plant in the bottom row, second from left, was indeed the same plant:

The yellow pepper plant actually has a decent sized pepper growing on it (green at the moment) - the red pepper plant is still lagging behind it in growth, but I still have hopes for it:

Two of the strawberry plants are surviving but haven't grown much - while this strawberry plant (transferred from a hanging pot originally) is doing pretty well - especially if all those white flowers turn into berries!

And finally, I feel a little foolish about being so proud about this, but this is the blackberry plant. Those wee little green berries on the left are the first signs of fruit. I know chances are low that they will 1) ripen and 2) not get picked over by birds and animals but I still have visions of luscious blackberries dancing in my head!

Green Acres Is The Place To Be

Andrew and I are becoming quite the domestic homemakers. Needless to say, we've been spending the past couple of weeks at Lowes (on top of the countless trips that Andrew had already been making). But this was the first time we headed into the Garden section. Here's a shot of one our shopping carts below. That's right ONE of our shopping carts. We ended up needing two to haul all the plants that we had picked out.

Arriving home, while Andrew was puttering in the yard, I had all our new plants lined up on the ledge ready to go:

The little section we had selected for the plants was occupied by a large bushy thing with purple flowers. It had a certain charm (despite all the bees crawling all over it) but we decided it had to go:

We believe that big plant was sage based on the shape and smell of the leaves (plus a marker we found buried in the dirt), so I picked a few leaves and froze them before we uprooted the bush.

In its place, lots of young seedlings waiting to grow us tons of yummy things to eat (that's how I like to picture it).  I got a little carried away in the aisles of Lowe's and ended up picking strawberry and blackberry plants, and what I believed to be a fig bush. When we got home and actually read up on figs, we realized it was actually a tree that can grow up to ten feet tall and wide. Whoops!

Andrew did a great job of uprooting the unruly sage plant and tilling the dirt with our handy dandy garden claw:

With a lot of digging and potting soil, I transferred all the plants to their new home. There isn't much open space in our backyard that isn't devoted to Andrew's grass growing project or paved, but I like the fact that I can see how far my plants have progressed during the day when I come home from work each day.  Joining the plants I mentioned above, I also added a few varieties of tomatoes, one red pepper plant, one yellow pepper plant and one cucumber plant. I also sprinkled some wildflower and carrot seeds that we had received free with Andrew's grapevine purchase in some open patches:

That's our new garden upfront, with Andrew's grapevines around the corner to the right, and our deck overlooking it all:

A week later, it's amazing to see the plants' progress already. They look healthier, taller and have multiple new leaves. As I keep telling everyone, I will be thrilled even if only one of these plants bears something edible this summer.