It's a Jungle Out There

I've spent 4 hours this morning weeding our landscaping beds and watering the plants.  So far, we've done pretty well.  We've only lost one plant in the front beds, although some of the shrubs around the house are looking sketchy.  I'm watering those tomorrow morning.  In the back beds, we've lost all of the azaleas.  At first, we were really upset.  But then a friend who has a lot of landscaping experience said they are pretty easy to kill.  So we don't feel too bad.  They just look so sad.  Finally, there appears to be one scotchbroom that's heading towards death.  I don't think we've given them nearly enough water since we planted them.  So hopefully, a bit more TLC it will survive.

As touch and go as the landscaping beds go, however, the garden is thriving.  It is honestly frightening out there.  If you look at where we were a year ago, it doesn't even seem like the same garden, much less the same growing season.  The zucchini bushes are waist high.  The pole beans are almost into the trees.  There is no way I can walk into the tomato bed.  And I'm having to prune back the cukes to keep them from invading everything else. 

We have started freezing zucchini already.  If I go a few days between harvests, we end up with some 2 foot monstrosities.  Same thing with the cukes.  I tried baking and stuffing the zucchini the other day, but it wasn't my best effort.  I have to be honest with you that I'm still really digging sauteed cucumbers with a little bit of butter.  That is really a nice smooth side dish which is easy to make.  I think some fresh parsley would really kick it up a notch, too.

Thursday night, we had baked pork chops over swiss chard.  We didn't use the stems in this recipe, just a massive amount of chard in a baking dish with oil and parmesean cheese and the pork chops on top.  (bake at 450 for 18 minutes and YUMMMM!)  Last night, we had whole wheat pasta, sauteed zukes, our first batch of japanese eggplant, home grown oregano and parsley and some goat cheese from Costco.  Have to say that this may our new favorite veggie, pasta and cheese dish! 

The cool thing is that we're figuring out how to freeze the veggies!!  If we shred the zucchini, we can just freeze it outright.  I like sauteed shredded zuchhini with a little parmesean, so that's ok.  If we slice the zukes, we need to blanch them before we freeze them, but that doesn't seem so bad.  We're not going to make regular pickles from the cukes, but make "freezer pickles" which just sounds easier.  I've also frozen a few bags of plain cucumbers to see if I can reproduce the sautee cukes for this winter.  We haven't frozen the eggplant  or chard yet, but both of those just require a bit of blanching before they go in.  And I have no doubt we'll be freezing the tomatoes because our choices are going to be freeze or open a road side veggie stand.  We already have a massive amount of tomatoes already.  The beets look about ready, but I harvested some too early a while back so I'm waiting on them.  The carrots, onions and leeks are not ready yet.  The okra and the pole beans both have something happening on them, so we may get a meal from them soon, too. 

This is going to sound gross, but I have to share with you our new favorite salad.  It's French in origin, so don't mock us too much.  We gather some greens from the garden, clean them, and maybe add some bacon (or today, i'm going to steam some beets and add them), and dress the salad in a vinegarette.  And then....here's the potentially gross part.....we poach some eggs and put them on top.  It's really, really tasty. Yes, the yolk is still runny.  But it contributes to the dressing.  And it's really, really good.  Dave even likes it, and he's not just saying that to be nice.  In fact, we're going to have that for lunch when Dave gets back from Daddy Boot Camp today.  Yummmmmmmmy stuff.

OK.  I've cooled off now. Time to go do yet another chore. 

11:26:00 AM