small victories: cherry tomatoes

Garden salad, natch.

surprise hosta!

Observe the wonders one discovers upon cleaning years of weeds and accumulated detritus from one's garden. This is a hosta (presumably planted by the previous homeowner) that flowered just recently. Bellissimo!

novelty

Just so you know, this whole put-seeds-or-green-in-the-ground-and-get-fresh-edibles thing has high potential for never getting old.

small victories: green pepper

Dear First Green Pepper,

I'm afraid I owe you an apology. Hand to the stars, I swear I followed this recipe for Vegetarian Korma to the letter! Okay, okay, I omitted the carrots, because they make the husband whine, and I left out the jalapeno peppers, because the kids don't like too much spice, but other than that, everything was by the book! Nevertheless, the end result was bland, and for that I am sorry. You deserved a debut worthy of all your shine and green. You have to admit, though: it did look pretty.

Alas, something had to have gone awry in the making of the dish to make it, flavour-wise, such a snore. It wasn't your fault, green pepper. It was bad korma. Bad korma, indeed.

small victories: zucchini

Note: I realized too late that the frost on the frozen store-bought bananas looks a bit like mould. You'll have to take my word that it is, in fact, not.

Yes, I shall call my first zucchini a small victory because it was an incorrect ratio of wet to dry ingredients that caused my interpretation of the Wednesday Baker's recipe for zucchini banana bread to turn out more like bread pudding even after 20 minutes of extra baking, and not any lacking on the part of this green giant. (Next time, self, strain the wet ingredients after food processing, or don't be lazy about it and just grate and mash as needed.) Fortunately, though the lolling loaf received an F from me for structural integrity, on the taste front it was gold stars across the board.

I did manage to wiggle out a satisfactory slice for photo-taking purposes.

A parting - albeit unrelated - bit of news: there were fireflies in the fairy garden tonight. I fell a little in love with at least one of them, which I guess means that my sense of wonder remains intact. Always good to know.

the tallest sunflower, or, you win some, you lose some

The garden, as I greeted it this afternoon:

The bad news first, then: The rain must have washed away my Tabasco sauce barrier, as my JFK tea hybrid rose, which seemed, after a weak beginning, to be regaining some healthy green in its one sprouting cane, is bereft of its bud. Bother.

The rest of it is sunshine.

These are my best growing sunflowers, and the one at the end is the tallest. (A fourth can be seen peeking out from behind the overachieving zucchini leaves. I staked it; we'll see what happens.) I'm hoping August will bring out the big golden flowers; how perfect will that be?

I can almost smell the zucchini bread baking!,

I go away for a week, and my baby (pepper) is nearly ready for harvesting upon my return. *sniff* They grow up so fast!

photo post: jardin botanique Montréal

More photos under the cut!