Winter is upon us!

It has been over 2 months since my last post! Not too much has happened in the ways of the garden. We had a freeze over in the middle of December that made me panic, as I hadn't put the bulbs in the ground yet (bulbs acquired from my mom, as she, as usual, over-ordered from Vesey's and we reap the benefits!). My only casualty from the batch was an amarylis bulb stupidly left outside. Stupid stupid stupid. It was going to be lovely, too. Stupid! Anyways.

I planted some daffodils, some more lilies, rearranged some plants, added more dirt, covered everything in leaves.

We forgot to pick the remaining lettuce and it died... oops. The leeks are still growing though, although they are in a state of dormancy until spring. Maybe they will actually be a half decent size for next summer instead of the pathetic wisps they currently are. Which reminds me, I need to get the garlic in the ground. I FINALLY got my book back, Carrots Love Tomatoes (great book!) so now I can know where to plant them.

The garage is supposed to come down soon, but our landlords seem to be dragging their feet about it. I'll probably offer to take it down, then round up a party with some sledge hammers and just bash it until it falls in. Good times! :D

We are really really broke, so no big plans for this years garden... Last year was a significant financial investment, and we won't have to have quite such a showy repeat this year. The Van Dusen plant sale will come up, and we will probably buy a couple native plants, and then we'll buy some grass, but other than that, it will be a pretty low key season!

Cheers for now!

Mushroom post.

This is just a post with mushroom pictures that I've taken. They're so pretty, thus I post!

The end of summer = HALLOWEEN!

Fall is now slowly coming to a close. I have begun wintering all our plants, raking up and dumping piles of leaves on everything. Since our disgusting, nasty, dangerous garage is coming down, we moved all the plants out of the way. The strawberries got HUGE, Janine divided them and we have multiplied from 4 small plants, to something in the area of 12-15... crazy! The poor plants have had to live through 3 different transplantations in the time we've owned them... hopefully they'll survive another major move back when we get the ground all settled in again!

What also grew was the rhubarb! Upon digging it up, I discovered that the root balls had DOUBLED in size! Insane!!!

We finished off our last bag of frozen summer blueberries... which is incredibly sad as it's only November. However, we do still have like, 5 bags of whole strawberries, plus 5 or 6 bags of mushed up strawberries intended for jam, a bag of blackberries, two bags of tayberries and god only knows what else.

Halloween related, we ended up getting two lovely pumpkins out of the garden! Thanks, Talia for the plants!! One of them never turned orange, but all the kids thought it was OMGSOCOOL because it was a "black" pumpkin. Haha, not so much. Green, actually! I carved them up and put tealights and set them outside for the night of Hallows Eve
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Also, I discovered a tree of crabapples in my neighbourhood. It's on city property, the apples are ripe, and no one's touched them... THUS, THEY ARE MINE!!!!!

I've also taken lots of pictures with my iPhone depicting all the mushrooms around, there are TONS and they have such wonderful colour. Granted they are highly poisonous, but they're pretty to look at! Enough pictures in this post though, next one!

Fall Colours

My garden is really starting to die back in extraordinary colours. My hostas are showing signs of impending winter and the edges are turning this enchanting orange colour. My pumpkins are ripening away, I may have one for Halloween!!


My mom received a huge Vesey's order today, I happened to be at her house while she opened it. I drooled, I will admit that. Made me think of what I want to order.

Speaking of ordering, I FINALLY found a water bowl that I like! I'm so excited, and it won't cost me an arm and a leg. Janine is giving it to me as a early Christmas present, but I have to pick it up since I have more free time than her. It's not super big, but it's very cute, and I will make it cute! We are putting in a bubbler, so that it will make happy water noises that don't sound like someone urinating. Excellent.






Oh, and here's a picture of my hydrangea blooming. I think it's confused...

Fall is definitely here

The weather! It's a changin! The sky has turned that brilliant blue colour, and I now need to wear pants when gardening, because I get too cold.

The hydrangea has decided to bloom.

Yes, you heard me right. It has buds. Some of them have turned out to be blue! It's very pretty, it'll be a nice shot of colour right at the end. Speaking of colour, my hostas are slowly turning yellow, just a touch and just along the edges. It's a sign that fall is indeed upon us. The zinnias are still trying to take over, and my corn lilies finally bloomed!!!! Also, this cool Kingfisher plant we got at the Vandusen Plant sale last spring also finally bloomed. It's a native plant. Very pretty.

I cut one of the sunflower heads too early, the seeds taste too green, it's disappointing. There is still one more attached to a plant.

Have one more batch of tomatoes to pick, and then that will be pretty much it for the season. There will be some green ones, so we'll figure out what to do with them! And the peas came back! WEIRD.

They tore a house down across the alley from us, and dug up a bunch of bamboo stalks, root balls intact, so I pilfered them and stuck them in the ground. After the garage comes down, it will be all along the back as a privacy barrier. It's PRETTY bamboo, exactly what I wanted!!!!

"Indian Summer"

I am vexed at using the term "Indian Summer", but I'm not sure what else to call it... it's hot out, like 28 degrees hot out. Everyone had given up on the hot weather and had pulled out the fleece and the wool socks and put on the down quilt, and then OH! Summer wasn't QUITE done yet. Except now we have our winter quilt on our bed and I keep waking up sweating. Not so good.

The garden is starting to slack a little bit, I cut off the one and only acorn squash that grew (since it was an "oh, what's this? Oh we'll just tend it and see what grows" kind of plant, it was nice that we even got one! That vine was pulled up, chopped and composted, as was the two gourd vines that were also "plant surprise" vines. Everything was kinda mildewy and rotting anyways and looked messy. The cucumbers are still attempting to grow something so they can keep going until I pull them up too. Everything that's growing against the garage has to come out by the end of October, because of the imminent garage teardown, which will add another 300sq ft of garden space!!! Mostly patio space, but planters are nice!!! The tomato forest has finally stopped producing flowers!!!! Now it can focus on finishing up the last batch of tomatoes, and we can focus on figuring out what to do with all of them (have made like, 8 trays of dried tomatoes by now, but they're sooooooooo good).

The sweet peas are still going crazy, we have been cutting them and putting them in various places around the house/giving them to people. They have this wonderful delightful scent that I find intoxicating. My neighbours vastly enjoyed the plums, the tree is now able to recover from FALLING OVER due to the sheer weight of them. Have like, a bagillion in the fridge. My dad made my Uncle Bill's plum cake, which is so good that I ignored my allergies and chowed down anyways. Is always worth the pain.

Tomorrow is this awesome event called Feast of Fields (http://www.feastoffields.com/) which is my favourite fall event put on by the wonderful Farm Folk/CityFolk people. Check it out, there is so much food. We always end up kinda rolling around after the event.

Janine made vegan, gluten free lasagna and it was so good I almost cried. I suggested putting in the vegan cream cheese, and it was TO DIE for. I love her, I really really really do. :) I also love this picture of the Black-Eyed Susans I took in my mom's garden.

I leave you with this last picture of Leg-o-Less in my mom's garden. He was a gag gift. And then he fell off the table, broke both his legs and had to have them glued back on, hence the name. :) My mom also acquired a hippo named Horace as a result of my further shenanigans.

Labour Day really is "day of labour" this year

In the past I have spent labour day lounging about on the beach with my best friend, building sandcastles and eating my mom's homemade oatmeal raisin cookies. Not so much this year. This year, I will be looking longingly at the mess in my garden (it's amazing how uruly it looks after neglecting it to go on vacation for a week) as I get up and prepare to conquer yet another day at the hospital.

Janine and I took a vacation down to Whidbey Island, where my family owns a very tiny piece of property in a "members only" campsite. But it's a small piece of paradise. It's so beautiful there. In Coupeville, which is so awesome, there is a garden store. Janine and I visit this garden store everytime we go. They have amazing stuff. I actually dragged out Janine's iTouch and made a list of all the plants we found that we wanted to insert into our garden. A couple of particularly lovely specimens caught our eyes, as did the stunning mini water gardens (set in a pot with a small pump and then some pond plants, so so cool and something we have wanted to do for awhile).

Good news on the garden front, our landlord came over the day we were leaving for Whidbey and put up the lattice to block off under the deck area. It looks a MILLION times better. Now to acquire some landscape fabric to smother the weeds! I will take a picture and post it, but probably not until I am finished working, as it is now dark out when I leave for work, and dark when I get home.

My new favourite sandwich involves cucumber and basil from the garden, along with whatever sandwhich meat (organic and gluten free!) we have in the house, vegan cream cheese and rice bread.

The zinnias took over. And the gladiolouses bloomed some more, and some of them are white! Which means we have beautiful delicate, frilly looking pink and white, plain white and these gorgeous deep red ones that look like velvet. I picked a giant bucket of tomatoes, Janine is going to make another batch of oven dried tomatoes. Very very tasty.

Oven Dried Tomatoes:
Slice cherry tomatoes in half, spread on large baking sheet (so that they're only one layer deep), drizzle with olive oil, salt, pepper, thyme if you wish, and put in the oven at 200 Celcius for 8 hours. Although check on them every 2. They are done when they dry out, but before they burn!!! If you have really good tomatoes, these things taste like candy. We stuck them all in a bag and put it all in the freezer to enjoy when it hasn't stopped raining for 40 days and nights.