So many beautiful and delicious things

We had our first pick up from our CSA last night (Common Ground Farm) - yay! And in with the delicious veggies were two beautiful "florals."

Technically, this was labeled as an Edible Pea Bouquet - ALL of it is edible, but I think it's too pretty to eat:



This is not edible, but beautiful to look at. Rye Grass:



And in our garden, Great Grandma Eaton's roses are blooming! The sweetest roses on earth. My grandfather used to make rose petal wine with these, and my grandmother carried them in her wedding bouquet.



Close up, pretend you can smell them. Mmmmmmmmmmmm.



The Peppermint roses are doing well this year, too - lots of double blooms!



We are going to need some chicken wire soon to protect these babies from the birds!



And...it's a Christmas song, but oh so appropriate, "It's the most wonderful time of the yeeeeear!" Strawberry season!

Chill in the air...

Yesterday it was 85 degrees, but now I can feel a chill in the air.

Here's what I picked in the garden this morning. Before:



After (in my new bowl!):



Sedum is blooming. Can you see the two little creatures in this shot? (Click through to Flickr if you want to see where/what they are)



I hope this little sedum survives this winter, I do love it so.



Late summer rose is stunning.



Hydrangea with fall colors.



And September strawberries!

Nothing sweeter...

Seriously. You haven't smelled sweet until you have smelled the intoxicating aroma of my great-grandmother's roses, some of which now reside in our yard.



The Steve irises are doing great, as usual:



Mom was here a couple of weeks ago, and as we pulled in the driveway she said "Look at them all smiling at us!"





Uh, yeah, the volunteer sunflowers are *everywhere!* In the ground, in the pots (apparently I used soil from last year that had seeds in it...) We really need to thin these so some will get big and strong and flourish.



I think this rose is called Peppermint:



The peonies are in full swing!



And, yum - fresh bok choy from the garden with dinner:

November

Today I dug up the voodoo bulbs - some of them are HUGE! And there are lots of babies, so our voodoo bulb stink fest next spring should be fantastic. :-)





I also pulled the canna from the big pots so they could come inside for the winter. They didn't bloom this year. I need to figure out why so I can try to avoid whatever it was that I did wrong for next year.



Things are looking very fall-like in our yard. Miscanthus:



Asparagus:



Hydrangea:



Last rose bloom:



Rudbeckia, still plugging along:

Oops...bad blogger

Has it really been (more than) a month?! Sorry about that... Things were pretty status quo in the gardens in September, and now things are fading, dying back, going dormant. No real frost or freeze yet, but I'm sure it will come soon. Steve and I were talking in the car today on the way to pick apples (yum - cider donuts!) and I realized that I probably spent more time this summer in the kitchen then in the garden. In the past I would spend plenty of weekend afternoons outside, but this summer we bought a chest freezer and committed to freezing as much local, fresh produce as we could to try and get us through winter. Many a weekend afternoon this summerI spent blanching, quick cooling, freezing and foodsavering! I should have blogged everything we froze... hmmm. Maybe I'll blog it as we eat it!

On September 20th we had "Brunch in the Fields" at our CSA, it was absolutely a beautiful morning and a wonderful event! Here is the set up before we all sat down to a delicious homemade from local stuff brunch!

Tomatoes kept both of us busy in the kitchen one weekend in September. We bought 50 lbs. from one of our favorite farmers, froze some and Steve also made sauce. After ruining a few t-shirts this summer I finally started wearing an apron while processing stuff!

The roses were blooming again late in the month.

The firecracker fuscia that Mom brought us is still going strong.

The aster is blooming, and looking good!

And this little guy (or one that looks just like this one) was in our green beans earlier in the summer, and here it is on our neighbor's house.

It's September already?

This summer is flying (has flown?) by. I can't believe it's Labor Day. Things happening in the garden include...

A woodpecker on the sunflower out front! (Sorry this photo isn't so great, I stood out on the porch in my towel after getting out of the shower to try and get a shot, so was in a bit of a rush!)



The pear trees are full of pears, and we have started picking - yum!



The sunflowers are still doing really great!



The peppermint rose is blooming again.



We learned a few years ago how absolutely beautiful cotton flowers are, so each year we grow a few - not only because it's kind of neat to pick cotton in our backyard, but for the flowers as well.



And, we had the most delicious, colorful, local dinner the other night. Everything is local, even the sausage is from the northeast. Green beans, cremini mushrooms, purple potatoes, red and green peppes, onions, tomatoes...yum!

It's been a while!

I was at a seminar all last week that prevented me from doing a lot of things, one of them being blogging. So here goes!

I couldn't resist how beautiful this rose looked after the rain.



Here is some cinquefoil (and some impatiens, etc.) that I moved from the big long bed by the fence, to here under the pear tree. I don't have very good luck with perennials under the pear tree - except for the aster, the aster is happy there. Anyway, we'll see how this does here. The original cinquefoil is over in the big bed and reseeds itself each year. It was here when we bought the house.



Yarrow is starting to bloom.



Here's the original cinquefoil in the front, by the rooster, and the pretty white flowers with the dark burgundy stems in the background - I can't remember what they are called. Mom told me this weekend, and I have already forgotten.



Here's a close up:



The white astilbe is doing well. The pink is hidden. :-(



If we ever get married again, this will be my bouquet. Okay, not really, but it was so pretty and smelled so good, I had to share. It's now in our freezer in the form of pesto. :-)



The pink lilies have started, these are nice, but wait until you see the giant white ones later in the summer!



The dahlia on the right doesn't look so good. Not sure why... Mom brought us the black hollyhocks, the verigated basil and the firecracker fuscia, thanks Mom!



I thought I'd show a progress pic of the pots out front, they are filling out really nicely!





Whew! Okay, I think we are pretty much caught up for now!