"A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating."
– Wendell Berry
10/22/16:
There weren't enough blackberries in my yard this year to use as an ingredient in a dessert, even if I hadn't eaten the ripe ones immediately upon seeing them. But we've been enjoying mascarpone cheese or vanilla ice cream topped with berries from the grocery store or farmer's market. Since mascarpone is a key ingredient in tiramisu, I decided to combine the two desserts, and created a blackberry parfait tiramisu.
My homegrown greens continue to be available in small amounts; some of these are considered cool weather crops that could produce even more in late fall and winter. The red mustard leaves are my favorite variety so far (spicy!), but other lettuces have finally grown large enough to pick frequently as well. I made a tasty "Mediterranean-style" salad with my garden tomatoes and greens, supplemented by other ingredients mostly from the farmer's market: red onion, romaine lettuce, orange bell pepper, artichoke hearts, garbanzo beans, kalamata olives, feta cheese and pine nuts. (Here's my basic salad recipe, with a lot of different ingredient options.)
Clicking on the small images below will bring up a larger version.
This week's harvest.
Windowsill terrarium.
My cat Squiggy & decorative gourds.
I hadn't been paying much attention to the terrarium I assembled in April, other than to drip a bit of water near the plants' roots about once a month. But this week I noticed that the tradescantia cuttings had rooted really well and were growing too large for the glass enclosure, so I trimmed them back. The fern, however, had turned brown. So I dug up a bit of fern from a pot outdoors and replaced the one in the terrarium. Then I added some more seashells. I'll try to remember to leave the lid off now and then so I can easily peer in to appreciate the scene.
Seeing all the fall harvest decorations with gourds, and Halloween pumpkin patches around town, makes me long to have enough space to grow squash or pumpkins myself. I can be content with my container garden's yield of space-efficient crops for this year, but might try some sort of vertical planting for vine vegetables next spring.
All my outdoor plants got a good drenching last Saturday and Sunday: the first true rainstorm of fall. Then the weather turned sunny again on Monday. It's been up into the 70s every day since. As much as I love to bask in the sun, it was wonderful that weekend not to have to water everything for once; lazy gardener that I am.
