When my neighbors come calling

This spring my neighbor cleverly terraced the ditch the borders both our backyards and used it to plant a vegetable garden for her family.  This was even more impressive to me because this young Salvadoran woman is the mother of six adorable children.  I wondered how well her ambitious attempt at using every available tillable space would pan out. 

Her terraced, ditch garden was so successful that not only is she feeding her own family, she is feeding mine too.  These squash-like vines have filled the ditch and came calling in my backyard.  The photos do not demonstrate the size of the vines and their leaves, which have come running 15 feet through the chain link fence, through my garden and out across the lawn.

With the help of Yolanda's daughters, we enjoy discussing the successes and failures of our respective gardening ideas.  This squash is called a pipian (plural is pipianes).   Although they look similar to our traditional yellow squash, they have the firmness and a similar flavor to zucchini. 

I no longer attempt to grow yellow squash or zucchini in my gardens because my gardens are invested with squash vine borers.  I don't know whether  the borers avoid the ditch or pipian vines are resistant but I'm delighted to host these delicious neighbors in my backyard.

Peppers, picked and pickled

It's impossible to pick a peck of pickled peppers; however, you may pickle a peck of peppers picked from the prolific pepper plants growing in my pepper patch.

This summer has been perfect for growing peppers of all kinds.  I grow sweet banana peppers from seed that I have saved from year to year.  This year's patch of twelve plants have outdone themselves. 

We have peppers on salads, in soup, roasted, and added to just about every dish I make.  I have cut and frozen a whopping eight quarts of them.  I've sent them to Minnesota for my mom and siblings.  I have carried so many of them to school that the staff are beginning to hide when they see me coming. 

Then I discovered that my new son-in-law loves to make pickled peppers.  He is taking every picked pepper and producing jar after jar of beautiful and tasty pickles.

As the weather begins to cool down, the pepper patch will slowly fade away and the first frost will finish them off but we are still picking peppers to pickle from the pepper patch.

In case you are wondering (as I did), a peck of peppers is the equivalent to eight quarts--I have a peck of peppers in my freezer!

Running wild

Do you see the chair?

Every summer, an enthusiastic purple hyacinth bean vine reseeds near our back deck.  The deck becomes a trellis for this vine which is much loved by hummingbirds and butterflies.  Since we enjoy watching the wildlife along with the flowers and bean pods, I let this vine have (almost) complete reign of the deck by the end of the summer.  Usually it follows the deck railings, but this year, it grew straight over the railing, burying the bench and completely draping the patio chair.  We will take possession of our deck again as soon as we have our first frost. . . but I'm not in any hurry.

Container of the Year--2017

You would think that a gentle summer with a abundant rainfall would be the perfect recipe for outstanding containers, but it hasn't been a great year for containers in my backyard.

This year, I decided to use annual dahlia's as the filler plant and pop of color in most of my containers.  This turned out to be a serious error in planning.  While the dahlia blooms are bright and beautiful, the plants just weren't happy in the confined spaces of mixed containers and didn't bloom frequently enough to make a consistently attractive single plant.

The best container planting of 2017 turned out to be literally because it was the best container.  I purchased an old chair for $1 at the thrift store, knocked out the faded padded seat, and set a container in the opening after painting it with deck stain.  The dahlia I planted in it promptly died (this happens) so I just stuck a sprig of reed and a leftover diamond frost cutting in the soil and let it go. The resulting contrast between the dark chair and the bright white flowers worked.

Sometimes the best ideas are the ones that just happen!

August beauty

My gardens are rather drab in August.  The annuals are flagging as they reach the end of their growing cycle, the summer veggies are winding down their production, and the perennials are wilting in the intense heat and humidity that characterizes our August weather.

However, tucked in next to the compost heap, there is one shrub that shines in August, the August Beauty gardenia bush. 

The original plan was that gardenias would function as foundation plants in the partial shade on the west side of my back deck.  This plan was a flaming disaster; the gardenias got sick, infested with bugs and covered in sooty mold.  Of the three shrubs I planted, one died almost immediately and the other two died back to spikey sticks.  I gave one of them to a friend with a fabulous shade garden and I planted the other next to the compost heap and told it to grow or die on its own.

Five years later, my beautiful gardenia shrub is thriving, producing lovely fragrant blooms throughout the month of August.  There is no disease, no bugs and no sooty mold.  Apparently this August beauty just wanted to live by a nutritious compost heap, bringing joy to my backyard.

Every body at our house loves cream peas

We have a mixed marriage; while I'm from the far north (Minnesota), my precious husband, Bob, is from the deep south (north Florida).  Food and cooking styles from these two regions are vastly different so over the years we have had some interesting discussions about what we are going to eat and how it will be prepared.

One southern food that no one at our house argues about(I mean, discusses) is southern field peas.  Everyone loves field peas--they are easy to grow and simple to prepare.  Our favorite variety is the cream pea. 

The humans at our house love them a little green, and simmered gently with some bacon crumbles thrown in.

Mordecai, the sulcata tortoise (look him up on Facebook--he has is own page) loves the pods, but is always looking for the pea I might have missed while shelling them.

This year, there is another body that has developed a taste for fresh cream peas.  Whenever I harvest the peas, I always find several pods that have been split neatly with every single pea devoured.   Only a bird could reach some of these pods without cutting them down or disturbing the vines in any way.  The pea patch is within sight of my kitchen window but I have been unable to observe the culprit at work.  I suspect a pair of rufous-sided towhees that took up residence in our backyard this spring.  I caught them raiding the blueberry bushes in June so I know they love berries and are undeterred by my typical bird repelling activities. 

At the end of the season, we will all stop eating the cream peas (except the birds) to allow some pods to go to seed so that next spring we can grow our favorite southern vegetable once again.

Stuff happens

Everyone has experienced this; while sacrificially performing a good deed, one small bump escalates into a disaster which you feel compelled to correct at even more sacrifice on your part.

My dear husband contributes to our gardens by keeping the green spaces mowed, a project that requires him to work outdoors (not his favorite location) at some of the hottest and most humid days of the year.   During one of these miserable afternoon good deeds, the lawn mower gently bumped into the bird feeder pole.  Much to his horror, Bob watched as the pole slowly swayed and fell, splintering the bird feeder, and shattering the squirrel baffle attached to it.

The bird feeder had been his Mothers Day gift to me 15 years ago and over the years, the entire family had enjoyed observing the birds who frequented it for sunflower seeds.  Within 24 hours of its demise, we knew that we had to replace it. 

Thanks to internet shopping, the new pole, feeder, and baffle were soon delivered to our front door.  Our new feeder resembles a chapel and holds twice as much seed so I won't have to refill it as often. We are good for another 15 years of bird watching in our backyard. 

Sometimes the "stuff" that happens in our lives is really an opportunity to move forward to something even better than what we thought we had to have.