I've bought 'em

Saturday I went on a buying frenzy. I finally managed to get the Japanese Maple that I've been wanting to put in the front yard for a year. Now all we need is a big rock. It is a cut-leaf japanese maple that will take a bit of time to spread out but it looks pretty good. I'm going to put some marigolds around it and it's mulched already but very very exciting.



I also bought most of my herbs and tomatoes. Now Chris says he's already put his tomatoes in, but luckily it was raining all day Sunday so I did NOT get them planted. It's supposed to get down to 34 tonight, plants are coming into the living room. But I got some neat stuff.

5 tomato plants
-Mr. Stripey (see to the left)
-Pink Brandywine
-Yellow Plum (I got this about 4 years ago, yum)
-Big Beef (for canning)
-Marglobe (resistant to wilt!)




The herbs that I missed are:
-Nasturtums (I have to get these, they were so much fun last year)
- Greek oregano (the fuzzy one)
- Lemon verbena (they had it in the market, silly me)

Looking forward to planting on Sunday!!!

It's raining.

April showers, that's what they say. We went for a walk today, it's been raining off and on for about 3 days now and everything is starting to pop in our neighborhood. I love seeing the weeping cherry trees draped with pink flowers with little daffidol heads peeking out from under. I saw the beginnings of the neighbor's phlox today, I just wonder when mine is going to pop! It really got big over the winter. Give the tulips a week and we'll have real color! Very exciting.

It's coming!!!

The daffidols are up and the tulips are approaching 6 inches. I guess that means that spring is in the air. Walked to Sherwood Gardens today and their tulips are even shorter than ours, but the magnolias are popping and asparagus season is upon us. I went yesterday and cleared the leaves from my garden and I have sorrel sprouting so now I am making cream of asparagus and sorrel soup. After the long winter of only getting rosemary, thyme and sage out of the garden it was a joy to see everything coming back. Here is what is coming back in the garden:

• Three kinds of thyme
• Two kinds of rosemary
• Two kinds of oregano
• Three kinds of mint
• Bronze fennel (why oh why did I rip up the other one?)
• The sorrel
• Chives
• Maybe the chamomile, it's hard to tell
• Some miserable Italian parsley that needs replanting
• The sage, though it dearly needs trimming
• And of course the lavendar which also needs a trim.

I have the weekend of the 19th penciled in to start enlarging the garden. Looking forward to it.

Springtime in October

I am the laziest of bloggers!

My garden is a bit overgrown and I've started the dehydrating a leetle bit, but mostly I've just been enjoying cooking with the herbs and tomatoes that I'm still getting out of it.

My birthday was last week and Josh & Joanie sent me a bit of spring in October. I LOVE tulips, so decadent out of season.

Ahhhh Vacation

A blogging hiatus was taken while we enjoyed the flowers, family and friends of the Pacific Northwest. Here are a few pictures.


Aunt Susan in the beautifully sculpted garden of her friend's house at her 40th wedding anniversary.




The Columbine and Indian Paintbrush were in bloom in Three Sister's Wilderness. Here's a few examples of where we were and what we saw.


































After the hike we headed with Josh and Joanie to the Willamette Valley and the Columbia River Gorge for a food and wine weekend. Here's their take on Blackberries. And a picture of scones:




If you ever happen to be in Corvallis/Philomath, OR when they are having a wine dinner, check out Gathering Together Farm, an organic farm that believes in sustainable agriculture. If you click on the wine dinner's area and scroll down to the 8/11 dinner you can see pictures of our dinner and the menu. MMMMMM!







Ok, more tomorrow, I may still be on west coast time, but I'm tired!!!

Pizza on the Grill

C&J had us over for dinner the other night and made pizza on the grill. I'd heard of it and we'd been wanting to try but hadn't been bold enough. Last night we gave it our own try and it was delicious.

The basil was taking over the herb garden so we plucked about 6 cups of basil leaves and made pesto for the base. I froze the rest of the pesto, we'll be eating well this winter too. I cheated and made the pizza dough in the bread machine as it makes a phenomenal dough in less than an hour and a half. Had some lamb in the fridge that we fried up (next time we'll grill it first and slice it onto the pizza) and used fresh tomatoes and parmesan and a bit of english farmhouse cheddar that we had in the fridge. We chopped up olives and sprinkled on some smoky turkish biber spice and 3 kinds of fresh oregano from the garden for the veggie pizza and carmelized some shallots in olive oil for both pizzas.

The pizza dough needs to be rolled very thin and cooked most of the way before the toppings go on. Then you put on the toppings and put the pizza on the grill to melt the cheese and warm them through. Because we have a gas grill, we used hickory chips to give the dough a bit of a smokey flavor. As you can see, we did the the lamb pizza first and started in on it before the veggie pizza came off. A glass of white wine, a salad and we were all set.

Paella Pix

Dinner with friends the other night on the patio. YUM! We've been waiting since January to use our new Paella pan. We got it in Seattle at The Spanish Table which is an adorable shop just below the Pike Place Fish Market. The paella pan is supposed to serve 10, of course I don't think they figured on the amount of cheese we ate beforehand, besides we were only 6. Luckily, leftovers are yummy.

We made the paella on the grill. It probably took us all day to make as there was lots of shopping and prep work before we could actually start cooking. We have an electric grill which is great as we can control the heat. A lot of the ingredients were cooked seperately and added at the last minute. We got fresh peas from the bean guy at the Waverly Market, if you haven't had them they are soooo good.

Apparently the traditional way of serving Paella is to put a bowl upside down and place the salad bowl on top. We made cucumber-yogurt-mint salad which was quite refreshing with the paella and made white sangria with mango and a red traditional sangria. mmmmmm.