It has come to this: I have so many raspberries ready to harvest in my backyard that I made raspberry jelly — the gardener’s equivalent of blowing a wad in Vegas, buying a fur coat, and drinking a $5 latte all in one day. Jelly is decadence, but when you are harvesting 16 cups of raspberries almost every day, when…
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With the tomatoes starting to come in, I made bruschetta and eggs for dinner last night. Bruschetta is toasted Italian bread with a topping, often including tomatoes and olive oil, that is typically served as an appetizer. Last year, I made Bruschetta a la Julie and Julia after watching a movie about Julia Child and the blogger who cooked every…
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This sign — spotted while riding my bike around town — made me laugh. Faced with an abundant cucumber harvest, who hasn’t wanted to give it all away? Cucumbers are the crop du jour, and I know I’m not the only gardener with more cucumbers than they know what to do with. I’ve already made a big batch of bread-and-butter…
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This past month, I have been really lucky to attend several garden tours. I started with tours around the Quad Cities in Iowa as part of a Garden Writers Association event, then hit the Northfield Garden Club tour, followed by my trip to Buffalo, N.Y. for three days of nonstop garden visits. In the past two weeks, I’ve been to…
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Right now, the squash and cucumbers are duking it out in my back garden. I’m afraid that, without intervention, the squash — an allegedly “compact” butternut variety — may win. In the meantime, the cukes are growing like crazy, so I’m making pickles. While many people enjoy dill pickles, I grew up on sweet bread-and-butter pickles made from Grandma Lahr’s…
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