A Garden Post

Not much sewing going on here so I thought I'd post some photos from my yard.  We have had an exceptionally wet summer in Atlanta with rain and thunderstorms just about every day.  This is in sharp contrast from the severe drought we had for the past 5 or so years.

My hydrangeas love the rain.




 The Recession Garden: Year Five

The rain has been great for our vegetable garden.  The cucumbers have taken over and are crowding out the green beans. Okra plants are in the back.

We have one bed filled with tomato plants with some basil on the far end.  The tomatoes are doing great and are growing taller than their cages.  I envision lots of salsa and salads in the next week.

Red Nine-Patches and Yellow Tomatoes

Along with complaining about the heat and humidity resulting in heat indexed of 100-110F all weekend, I sewed the 899,000,000 little bitty nine-patches I had left from this post. I am determined to finish Scrappy Nines so I can start on a new project. I nearly finished sewing all those nine-patches (actually I have 24 left to go. Somehow I just decided to stop after 899,898,976), squared all those bad boys up, and started sewing the blocks.

With help of course... Mr. Gomez is looking too cute for words!

Here's a stack of blocks.

I also spent a large part of the weekend finding recipes for fresh tomatoes. Stella Bella Organics heirloom tomatoes are everywhere in the kitchen! Romas, Cherokee Purple, and some kind of yellow tomato that I can't remember what is the name. We are having tomatoes in everything. Example #1: homemade free-form thin crust pizza with fresh basil and tomatoes (from the garden) and fresh mozzarella (from the store!) I don't have an "after" baking photo because this was g-o-n-e in about 2 seconds YUMMY!

Stella Bella Organics

Recession Garden: Year Two was planted here at the Stella Bella household a couple of weekends ago. I now have two raised beds 4' X 8' filled with tomatoes, yellow squash, okra, green beans, herbs, catnip for Mr. Gomez, and bell peppers. The strawberry plants from last year are going gangbusters now.

See the beautiful plants and our drip irrigation system.
Here is the first harvest of the magnificent berries. Organic and as perfect as Martha Stewart's. There is nothing like the taste of a fresh picked strawberry. I don't know why I named my garden after Stella Bella because you can bet these sweet little paws have never touched the outside since she graced my household.
Peace, love, and berries y'all!

Recession Garden at the End of Summer

As summer draws to an end, I thought I'd post some last photos of the summer garden. The okra plants grew the best and were over 12 feet tall!! Fresh tomatoes were fabulous. I can't believe I have to wait until next summer for more.
Okra and okra flowers. It reminds me of a hibiscus. There is a little okra below the flower to the right. It's ready to pick. If you let okra grow too long, it is impossible to cut and is really woody.

S. and I had so much fun with the summer garden that we planted a fall recession garden too. In Georgia, we are lucky to have two growing seasons. In the fall, lettuce, spinach, carrots, beets, and other tender veggies are grown; the summers are too hot. So another raised bed was built and two rows each of mixed lettuces, carrots, kale, and bok choy seeds were planted. We should have planted these two weeks ago but oh well, if it grows, it grows. I LOVE me some kale and am wishing for bushels.

Healthy Food from the Garden

Well it is organic. Fried green tomatoes and fried okra with homemade remoulade sauce. A nice salad accompanied this in case you were worried.

Friends Don't Let Friends...

...overindulge in catnip.

Too late! The organic catnip is growing great in the recession garden and Gomez loves to eat it fresh. This is after eating a bunch, running around and attacking the other cats, and crashing (yet still guarding the remaining leaves). I think a session of Catnip Anonymous is called for.

Recession Garden Update

I meant to post this Sunday so consider this old news LOL! The Recession Garden is doing great thanks to the extremely hot and humid weather.
The tomato plant that is outgrowing its cage is an heirloom tomato called "Mr. Stripey". Mr. Stripey has flowers but no tomatoes yet. I wish Mr. Stripey would get his act together and put more energy into tomatoes than trying to escape the cage. He may need a high-rise cage soon. Yellow squash is taking over the right side of the garden. We are going to have yellow squash with every meal I think this summer. Yellow squash on toast with eggs, yellow squash sandwiches.... In fact, this is the very first harvest from the garden hmm what do you know...YELLOW SQUASH! This yellow squash ended up in stir fry. Yum!
I snapped this photo of one of my lace-cap hydrangeas before the sun got too hot. Hydrangeas are very melodramatic and if it gets too hot in the afternoon, they lay down their leaves and look all droopy and wilty. Then perk up in the evening and morning. Southern belles, what can you do! I'm really happy that all my ornamental shrubs made it through these past several years of drought. I practice Darwin-style gardening. No watering except for the veggies.

Anyone have an extra bailout laying around????

OY! Who knew a water heater could be so expensive!!!???!! Especially when you have a old house that doesn't meet the current building code and you need some extra code-compliant plumbing-type stuff. The plumber is coming back tomorrow to install said water heater (which must be made of GOLD!) so no hot water until tomorrow afternoon. Instead of a vacation or new furniture this summer, I am going to hang out in the crawl space and stare at the new water heater. Woo hoo good times!
Good thing the Recession Garden is growing
There are baby plum tomatoes growing and the yellow squash is growing like crazy on the far right side.

I have neglected to post the May block for the Little Quilts Saturday Sampler even though I finished it earlier this month. I am loving this quilt.

I forgot who mentioned it but Gomez Megabux has not appeared on the blog recently. I finished up the latest jelly roll quilt this evening, working around Gomez's nap. I had to wait until kitty dinner time to put the borders on. The quilt is pretty big so I'll need to post a full photo when I have a quilt holder-upper. I have three tops done and one quilt completed from the book Jelly Roll Quilts.
Time to get a new project prepped for sewing. I pulled a couple of kits out of ONE of the UFO boxes and am going to get started cutting out a couple of projects.

Karin and Becky wanted to know what Stella, Edgar and I were reading last night--we are reading The First World War by John Keegan. As you can see from last night's post, the cats are not as much into history as I am.

Odds and Ends

Hope you are in the mood for some randomness. I am trying to get motivated to do something productive today but so far it hasn't happened (although I did put in a full day's work at Starbucks already). Friday was an annoying day at the day job because my computer crashed taking my finished presentation and script that I have to give this Tuesday with it. This makes the third time my computer has crashed since I started working there and the second time on this same computer. The state is light years behind on technology and the department's IT people--well let's just say we do not count on them for anything. I am beyond annoyed with the situation. Hope my presentation is recoverable. A fun trip to the local garden center for some plants on the way home improved the day.

Yesterday, I went by Sweet Home Quilt Co. to pick up my copy of Quilt Sampler magazine. I love this magazine--it is so fun to see other quilt shops around the country. I also picked up a few other items
some blue and red flowered fabric for binding, some nifty fat eights in a bundle, a fat quarter, and a new book. I also went to Home Depot to pick up supplies for making a raised garden bed.

Voila! Our Recession Garden. I didn't make the bed; I just hauled all the stuff home. All things working out well, my really local organic food will be: okra, heirloom tomatoes, red bell peppers, yellow squash, strawberries, basil, and for the cats--catnip. Marigolds are planted around the sides to keep away pests.

Because it is so hot here in the summer, we have to wait until fall to plant lettuces, kale, carrots, and potatoes but that's the plan.

I also set up a Twitter account. I don't know why, but I did. Possibly in case an iPhone magically appears in my life (I really really want an iPhone but don't want to spend the money for one. Maybe the apple elf will bring one. I'll hold my breath..............) OK apple elf hasn't appeared yet so I guess I'll quit holding my breath. I'll probably tweet a little more than an ivory billed woodpecker but maybe not too much more. Infrequent tweets at @stellabellaqlts.

I finished two really good books recently: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and The Unforgiving Minute. I highly recommend both (links are to Amazon.com in case you are interested.) OK must get off the computer and find something productive to do.