Gladiolus--The Finished Product

I planted my gladiolus bulbs months ago, and it's been interesting watching them grow from bulbs into large green blades, and then, finally, stunning tall flowers. This was my first attempt with glads, and I'm so glad I finally got around to planting them this season.

After the first frost, I will dig them up and store them in the garage over the winter. I can plant them in the spring after all danger of frost is over. I'll be able to enjoy them all over again next year.

Late Summer Crops from the Garden

It's been raining for weeks now here in the Pacific Northwest, and it finally stopped long enough this morning for me to venture out into the yard and garden. I turned over my compost pile and then headed to the garden, seeing how beautiful everything was after the rains. Even though it's been wet, it's been warm and the plants have responded to this combination of conditions. Everything is making its one last effort for growth and maturity before the first frost arrives. Since the autumnal equinox is only four days away, the weather could change very quickly in the next few weeks.

There was some beautiful chard in the garden, and I picked my first bunch of green beans. There were two very small yellow tomatoes that were ready for picking, and I'll probably just eat them as is and not bother with a salad.

As I progress through my Master Gardener training, I am learning so much about plants and shrubs and soil, and this week we are concentrating on composting and fertilizers. This training will be so valuable to me as I start to really develop my property here in Maltby after living here for 9 years.

Plum Tart

I was browsing for recipes today to use all of the Italian Plums I've picked this week, and found a recipe for a plum tart. It sounded good, and it required just the right amount of fruit to finally use the remaining plums I have left from the harvest this year.

The smell of this pastry baking in the oven for an hour tonight was intoxicating, and the aroma permeated every room in the house. There's nothing like a late summer evening with a hint of Fall in the air to want to find a cozy spot in the house to relax over a cup of tea and smell something wonderful baking in the oven. When I finally took the tart out of the oven, it was everything I had hoped it would be--fragrant, lovely to look at, and hopefully (once it cools) it will make a wonderful dessert for dinner tomorrow night. Bring on the creme fraiche!

Italian Plum Harvest

This week, we got the ladder out and climbed up into the Italian Plum tree and picked all the plums. Rainy weather was in the forecast, so we wanted to be sure to bring all the fruit in before the rain hit and split open the crimson fruit.

Once picked, the fruit must be used in jams or tarts within a few days. Tonight after work, we washed and sorted the plums and cut them in half, removing the seeds.

One of our favorite memories of our childhoods involved our mothers making jam from the plums that grew in our yards. The fruit is such a lovely color, and the jam tastes just like fresh fruit when spread over buttered toast in the morning. It's a great way to start the day with a cup of Earl Grey tea.

Here's to a bountiful crop this year, and many more years of prolific production and harvest from a single tree. What a great investment an orchard is!

Gladiolus (Iridaceae)

Gladiolus is a perennial from corms, with sword-shaped leaves and tubular and ruffled flowers in unbranched or branching spikes. In all my gardening years, I had never planted these flowers. I planted the corms in the garden late, and they still came up and flowered, every single one of them! The colors are stunning, with shades of red, pink and peach. The tallest flower in the garden is about four feet high.

I'm going to find another place in the yard next year to plant more of this lovely perennial. They make excellent cutting flowers, and today I brought in my first bouquet of glads for the house. It's a nice way to celebrate the waning days of summer.

A Perfect Gravenstein

A year ago, my granddaughter and I went to Flower World, a wonderful multi-acre nursery close to home in Maltby. We were shopping for an apple tree. The selection was amazing, and we spent quite a bit of time looking at the trees and the pictures attached to the trees, showing us what the apples would look like.

The Gravenstein apple has some red blush and stripes over yellow flesh, and this new tree has produced only one apple this season. It is perfect in every way. I'm looking forward to future years when the tree gets larger and the crop gets more abundant.

This summer, I found a great old sign at an antique store that says 'Apple Orchard'. I hung it on the fence by my new tree, and it points to the other apple trees in our burgeoning orchard.

I can already smell the apple pies and applesauce and apple crisp of future years, all to be made possible by this one new tree. A tree is certainly an investment in one's future.

September

Today, the sun was out and the air was crisp. Red leaves have appeared at the top of my neighbor's maple tree across the street, and I know that fall is on the way. The air is cooler and moist, and the grass and the garden love this respite from the heat of the summer. I coiled up my garden hose today, as I probably won't need it for a while at least.

I worked in the yard and garden all day today. The grass clippings went into the new compost bin, and I spoke to a Master Gardener today at Home Depot, wanting to know more about the process that I am learning about in my own Master Gardener class. I weeded the garden, admiring my September garden of peas, beans, cabbage, lettuce, onions, and pumpkins. The tomatoes are still green, and there hasn't been enough warm weather for them this year.

This was my first year raising gladiolas, and they all came up and flowered. The colors range from hot pink to light pink to light orange. They are lovely.

I extended my rose flower bed, and created just enough room for one more Julia Child rose bush. I'll have to go down to the Antique Rose Farm next Saturday and pick one up, along with a couple of climbing roses for the picket fence in the front yard.

Tomorrow I'll be testing the soil in my yard for a class assignment, and this will give me valuable information for future reference. I'll be able to amend my soil, apply my own compost to the soil where needed, and learn more ways to take care of my plants and trees.

It was a good day.

Master Gardener Program at Oregon State University

I just completed my first week of the OSU Master Gardener/Home Horticulture program! I was very excited to be accepted into this 12-week online program, and I've enjoyed doing my reading and my homework this week. I just took my first quiz, and got 14 out of 15 questions correct! A good start, I think.

My classmates/cohort group are located all over the world! I love this aspect of online courses. One guy is in Kabul, Afghanistan, and another woman is in Pennsylvania. The rest of us are scattered from Arizona, California, Oregon and Washington.

We are getting acquainted with each other on our online Discussion Board. This will be a great way to talk about our assignments and share our botany questions and answers. It's been a dream of mine for about five years to find an online course so I could gather together all of the information I will need to care for and nuture my trees, plants and shrubs, and to make my property look like I have envisioned it.

By December 1, I will be finished with the course, and then the real work begins. Wish me luck!

Heirloom Tomatoes from the Farmer's Market

Yesterday at the Woodinville Farmer's Market, I found these beautiful heirloom tomatoes. The colors and patterns are amazing. It's kind of humbling to think that these tomatoes were grown from seeds over 100 years old!

I'll slice them and put them on a plate for my Labor Day barbecue tomorrow, and they'll look as good as they taste!

A Shelf for the Garden

I spotted this unique hand-made shelf at an antique store a couple of weeks ago, and I knew it would look perfect in my garden. I hauled it home and nailed it to the fence. I've got some great clay pots that would look festive sitting on the reclaimed wood, so I'll dig them out of the shed and put them up soon.

I love the rusted antique trowels that are used to hold up the shelves. It's a very clever idea!

A Peek Into My Late Summer Garden

My garden this year is a crazy-quilt of everything I love--yellow and purple irises sharing a raised bed with rhubarb, peas and beans fighting over the same trellis, and beets and onions growing tall in a straight row like military men. It is all so lush and orderly and wild at the same time!

The cool wet weather has slowed down the crop growth, but the greenery is beautiful and everything looks so healthy. Interspersed among the vegetables are three rose bushes (Julia Child, William Shakespeare, and Ebb Tide. They are still blooming!). Also, this is my first year growing gladiolas, and the scarlet and burnt orange colors illuminate the garden.

I'll pick and shell the peas this week, and I'll also keep a close watch over the beans. The radishes and beets are small but colorful, and their foliage is as compelling as their edible crop. The Sugar Pie Squash is growing over the garden fence, reaching for the trellis on the side of the solar wood shed. The vines are huge!

This year has been my best garden since I've lived here. The picket fence has kept out the rabbits, so that was a worthwhile addition to the garden area. I can't wait for the final harvest, when I can bring in the results of the planning and planting of seeds, the watering and nurturing that has to happen all summer long, and finally, the fruits (literally!) of all of my labors. Gardening is truly a labor of love.

Indian Blanket Sunflowers (Helianthus)

Today, my friend Alex and I visited Bob's Corn, a lovely, pastoral farm in Snohomish nestled in a lush valley. We were checking out the place so we could come back in a few weeks and go through (run through!) the corn maze. It's become an annual event for us, and we are looking forward to this year's exercise.

While we were visiting the country store on the property, we took a look at the pumpkin patch. With the cool and wet weather this summer, the pumpkins are only large yellow blossoms the first week of September. Behind the pumpkin patch, however, there was a beautiful display of Indian Blanket sunflowers. Their rusty-red color is striking, and it's a nice change from the traditional yellow sunflowers. They were at least 10 feet tall, and the picture I got of the flower featured a bee right in the center of the flower. Pollination is still going on this time of year! (there are two kinds of sunflowers--pollinless and pollin-bearing. This was a pollin-bearing variety).

As a border in front of the large Indian Blanket sunflowers was a row of small, yellow miniature sunflowers. They made a happy statement in the afternoon sun, enjoying the warmth radiating from the old red barn that they adorned.

Food from India and Beyond

Our favorite restaurant is in a small space in Kirkland tucked into a little mall next to an organic grocery store. We have been going there for the wonderful Indian food for over 15 years. Our visit a couple of evenings ago was a real treat--we ordered tropical iced tea to start, and there was no need to even look at the menu. We always know what we want even before we get there!

We started with an order of Garlic Naan, a tasty, hot flatbread slathered in butter and garlic. We added the Chutney Trio to this, and it was fun trying the coriander chutney, the mango chutney, and the tomato chutney. It added a lot of flavor the the bread. While we were enjoying the naan, we ordered our dinner.

First up was the Major Grey Chicken Curry over pulao, a highly seasoned curried rice with pan-fried onions on the top. The Major Grey curry is the most popular dish in the house--it's made from mango chutney in a rich cream sauce. Someone once asked me what Major Grey ever did to deserve having a curry named after him. I've often pondered an answer to that question!

Next, the Coriander Ginger Chicken arrived, served on a bed of pulao. It's a large portion of chicken medallions grilled with coriander, and the flavor is incredible. Paired with the curried rice, it's a great dish.

We enjoyed the whole meal (as always!), and I know we'll come back soon, perhaps to try something else. We always mention that it would be fun to try something else, but secretly, we know that these are our favorite dishes, and it's unlikely we would trade the security of a perfectly-prepared Indian dish for the unknown. Brave food warriors we are not.