Thinking About Thanksgiving

This year will be the first Thanksgiving that the four of us in our immediate family won't be spending the holiday together. We knew this would happen sooner or later, but I guess we've always hoped it would be a lot later.

Our youngest is spending the semester studying abroad in Italy. For the first few weeks it was novel and exciting, but now I find myself really missing her as well as our oldest daughter who lives closer, but still a couple of hours away.

Thanksgiving has always been a fairly simple affair in our family, as members of our extended family have other plans or live far away, and so it is generally just us four. Some years we have invited students from the department where I work to join us, and that has made the day really special. One year, when my husband was unemployed and I was working two jobs, I actually had to work on Thanksgiving Day. My husband and girls made his day extra special by taking on all the tasks of building the feast themselves, and treating me to a wonderful meal when I returned home.

As I think about it, I realize that the only tradition that follows us from year to year is to gather and enjoy the day. We have spent it in different ways. This year, my husband and I will travel to Florida and spend the days leading up to Thanksgiving with my parents. I have wanted to do this for the past four or five years but we've never felt like we could afford the trip or else had trouble getting enough time off work. This year, somehow, it all worked out. After visiting my folks and doing some touristy things we'll return home on Thanksgiving Day. Our oldest will pick us up at the airport and we will celebrate the day by enjoying dinner at a restaurant and then perhaps taking in a movie. I'm hoping we can use Skype to talk with our youngest daughter and feel a bit like we are really all together. Maybe it won't be a traditional Thanksgiving , but then again, maybe it will. After all, we'll be keeping up our tradition of making the most of the day with the circumstances we've been given, and we will be grateful. It's hard to ask for more than that.

A Walk around Campus

It was such a beautiful fall day that I hurried through my lunch so I could head outside for a walk on campus. First of all, I wanted to get a closer look at a new bronze statue of a horse that was installed near our building. Here's a picture. I'm not sure what I think of it. Actually, that's not true. I really just don't care for it at all...it's sort of creepy. A skeleton horse might be okay this time of year for Halloween, but it is a permanent installation that will be around for years.

On down the street at the vet school are sculptures I can understand and enjoy.

After critiquing the sculptures, I decided to walk through the horticulture garden to see what is still blooming this time of year and that I might want to consider adding to my own gardens. There were some very pleasant surprises. I especially liked the grapeleaf anenome, the bright yellow strawflowers, and the heliotrope which was still attracting butterflies.

The rain is supposed to return tomorrow, so I'm glad I got the chance to enjoy some outside time today.

Winding Down

As is to be expected in mid-September, the garden is really winding down. Fortunately, the tomatoes, which were late this year, are putting forth a valiant effort at producing a modest harvest which is quite welcome. My late planting of green beans is also doing very well. The insects don't even seem to have noticed that there is a new crop and so far have left them completely alone. I have one last bright orange Thai melon yet to harvest. Other than that, the garden is pretty much finished.

Even though we really enjoy fresh vegetables all summer, I am not really all that sad to see the garden come to an end for fall. It really is true that to every thing there is a season, and now I am looking forward to the season to rest a bit, then start planning for next year. Truly, I don't think gardening would be as fun if I had to do it all year long.

This was my second season to garden in garden boxes, and once again I have learned a lot that I will apply to next year. The use of trellises with some of my boxes worked very well. My cucumbers and melons grew healthier and were easier to find and harvest by being trained on the trellis. My experiment growing corn turned our very well, too. However, next year I will put two boxes side by side, long ways, so they can support each other and I can grow a bit more corn with extra spacing. This year, the box would tip over once the corn grew tall whenever the water reservoir went dry. This happened several days in a row in late July when the weather was very hot and the corn was very thirsty.

I am still trying to find ways to be able to leave the boxes for more than a day at a time. If the boxes aren't watered daily when the plants are at their peak, the plants really suffer. This means that going away for a weekend is a problem unless someone can be lined up to water the boxes once a day. I am going to have to do some brainstorming this winter to come up with some solutions to this problem.

For now, I am just focusing on enjoying the last of my harvest, and cleaning up the garden boxes as the plants are finished producing. I enjoy garden clean up chores, because I can then look forward to having the boxes ready when I am this spring. To every thing there is a season.

Nature's Bouquet

While taking a walk after work today, I was struck by the wildflowers, weeds, and grasses that still make a striking display in our meadow. Thistle, dried grasses, goldenrod, and a number of plants that must have names but aren't known to me, are all putting on quite a fine show. My first thought was that these plants would make a lovely bouquet on my desk at work. My second thought, however, was that such a bouquet might activate a lot of allergic reactions among my co-workers. Perhaps it is best to leave nature's bouquet in nature where it belongs, in our meadow and others like it, to be savored on afternoon walks as summer fades to fall.

Good News and Bad News

Excellent customer service--how often do we get that these days? Not often enough, unfortunately. I was so happy yesterday, however, after getting off the telephone with the customer support people for my Canon Powershot camera. It seems the problem with my camera is a known issue so even though it is nearly five years old they will repair the camera for free. They even sent me a shipping label to make sending it back to them as easy as possible. In about two weeks I'll be able to start snapping photos again. Good news, right?! Right. And the quick and courteous service I received from Canon was a breath of fresh air.

The bad news is that by the time I have my camera back, the garden will be pretty much finished. I regret not being able to take a picture of the bright orange Thai melons, or the first giant red tomatoes. Of course, I should be able to pick tomatoes until frost because they are so late this year, and I will likely still have beans for a few more weeks. My first planting of beans has had it, but my second two plantings are still giving me plenty to eat, freeze, and share for now. However, the cucumbers are on their way out, and the cantaloupe aren't too far behind. The corn and beets are long gone. As is the case this time of year, I secretly don't mind all that much to see things winding down. Even gardening in the garden boxes is quite a bit of work, and like some of my plants, I'm a little tired. To everything there is a season, after all.

Just Facts, No Photos

I feel like I am blogging in the dark or with my hands tied. My beloved Canon Powershot A70 camera has nearly quit working and I feel lost without it. It still takes pictures, sort of, but they are blurry and pink, and, well, just strange looking. Not pretty. Most of the shots I've taken of my garden and harvest look anything but tranquil and appetizing. They look more like something Salvador Dali would have painted. It is really sad. I really didn't realize how much I liked taking and sharing pictures until I found I am unable to do so. "Get Camera Fixed"-- one more addition to my already lengthening to-do list.

The garden is slowing down in some ways, and just getting started in others. The corn is finished, but not after producing about 10 very tasty ears of bicolor corn. My experiment was a most definite success! I still have lots of beans and peppers to pick, and some days can barely keep up. The Minnesota Midget cantaloupe are just days away from being ready, and we have already enjoyed one of our very delicious Thai melons. Best of all, the tomatoes are FINALLY ripening. Our cool July really set back these heat loving plants and many of us thought we'd never see our first red tomatoes before frost! There is really nothing like a fresh Indiana tomato, and once again they have most definitely been worth the wait.

Thank you for reading and I'm sorry I don't have new pictures to share. Hopefully this will be a very temporary situation.

What's New?

This is probably the best time of year to be a gardener. The garden is producing well and many of our meals these days largely of what I picked only an hour before the food is placed on the table. I don't have any ripe tomatoes yet, but we've sure had some delicious green beans. I highly recommend 'Masai' as an easy to grow, tasty bean. The beans don't get real large but instead are tender and thin. So, so, good. We have also been enjoying cabbage and carrots. The cabbage are 'Mini Gonzales' and are the perfect size for a meal for two. The carrots are 'Little Finger' and I'm not sure I'll grow them again. They do pretty well in containers, but I've tasted better. The last of the beets have been harvested, and I decided to make another planting of 'Masai' beans in that container. We picked our first cucumber this week, and we are getting lots of basil. The jalapenos and two other varieties of peppers are nearly ready, and I can already taste the fresh salsa! The top picture shows the garden box containing our 3 pepper plants and some basil plants. Our trellis of 'Minnesota Midget' cantaloupe is full of baby melons. There are also 3 of the Thai melon on the vines so far (pictured below). The Thai melon will ripen to an orange color.
















Nick told me recently that he thinks this may be the best garden we've ever had. I really am sold on growing the garden in the garden boxes. The amount of work it takes to produce a good quality, bountiful harvest is much less than when I planted everything in the ground. I learned a lot about container gardening last year that I applied to this year's garden. The boxes are spaced further apart, and I've added trellises. I also decided to plant tomatoes in the ground rather than containers. I also found that the zucchini do better when planted only two to a box to give them plenty of room to spread. I have to agree that this year's garden is a good one.
















We had another garden surprise this summer outside of the vegetable garden. We were given a couple of large bromeliads that had been thrown out of a commercial greenhouse. Supposedly, bromeliads bloom only one time in their life. (I haven't yet done any research to see if this is indeed the case.) It seems these bromeliads were discarded because they've already bloomed and thus were no longer of interest. Well, either the once-in-a-lifetime bloom theory is incorrect, or someone was mistaken about them already having bloomed, because much to our surprise both plants have produced a beautiful and unique looking pink flower. The flower doesn't even look real. It looks as though it is made of plastic, and it even feels a bit like plastic. We have really been amazed to watch as each bloom slowly made its way out of the throat of the plant. Ironically, for a couple of weeks these plants sat mostly ignored on our front porch because we kept forgetting to buy pots and soil for them. I guess bromeliads thrive on neglect because they started flowering while lying unceremoniously in a box on the porch. Now they have a proper home worthy of their beauty.

This has really been a fun and rewarding gardening season so far. Much more is to come. I can hardly wait to taste the cantaloupe and Thai melons. We are still waiting for two types of beans, 'dragon langerie' and a yellow wax bean (I can't remember the name just now!). We also have two nice volunteer acorn squash plants growing in each back corner of the garden thanks to some seed hiding out in the compost. Ahhh, July...what a wonderful time to be a gardener!