Siamese twin flowers, using the Roo and first pesto!

When I went back outside to try to determine if the melons growing are male or female, I found out that one of the flowers I had photographed in the melons post is a mutant!

You see that flower on the right?  It has two flowers growing out of the same caylx!I tried my best to get a picture of the base of it, and you can hopefully see through the blurriness that the calyx is a fused one.  I’m not sure if this is common.  I’m not sure it will make a difference, as I’m pretty sure it’s a male flower.  My understanding is that plants from the family Cucurbitaceae often produce male flowers before female flowers. I wonder what this melon would look like if it grew from a double flower like this… I wonder if it could.

This weekend had a lot of garden excitement.  David finished weeding the flower beds and spread the rest of the mulch yesterday. We finally tied up our rambling oregano, replanted parsley and thyme and planted the last of the tomatoes, tomatillos eggplant and peppers.  Yes, I’ll probably write about those soon, but my biggest thing that I am excited about (and even sent picture texts to my gardening friends) is that I got to use my new Roo!!

I first read about the Roo on Garden Betty, and knew that I wanted one but wasn’t sure that I needed one.  This spring, as we expanded our gardens, I decided that I needed one (and it came in purple).  You see, I used to wear long skirts quite often, and I would fill them with the harvest.  The Roo is much more practical. Here’s some pictures of me demonstrating it’s use after harvesting our first batch of basil.

I’ve already used to Roo to hide Rosie’s ball.  She hasn’t figured out how it works yet.  You can see the basil peaking out of the giant pocket. When I went inside, I enlisted David’s help to photograph how the Roo works.

The ropes are easy to unhook.

After unhooking the ropes, I opened up the pocket.

The harvested basil was hiding inside!

With a gentle shake, the mass of basil fell onto the towel. 

A little more shaking for this action shot. 

And soon it was out!  I have a feeling this will be much easier than the paper bags I used to fill. 

I checked to make sure all the basil was out. (It was.)

And here is our first crop of basil!  We have basil growing in both the side yard and back yard. Some of it was beginning to flower, but it was perfect timing as I only found two opened flowers in the whole harvest. I took pretty big cuts off the basil, shaping it for growth throughout the summer.  Typically David and I harvest basil about 4 times during the summer, and I think we have twice as many plants.  This shouldn’t mean twice as many harvests, it just means twice as much pesto (we hope!).

When we make pesto, the first step is cleaning the plants. I enjoy doing this in the morning and love the smell and feel of it. It sometimes reminds me of when I worked on a farm in Vermont, and we would gather around the table to begin our workday by prepping basil for pesto.

David then takes the basil leaves and makes pesto! I prep, he cooks. We’re both happy with that deal. The cleaning part is still undecided.

We freeze it in ice cube trays, pop them out and keep them in bags that last the year.  We are now cleaning out the leftover ones from last year, and will be having pesto with as many things as we can during the next couple of weeks.

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Project update

This evening, while bringing out an egg carton to add to the compost, I heard the alarm call of a bushtit.  It reminded me of the noise the squirrels make when they’re trying to get avocados and Rosie is protecting the tree.  I’m not sure if the bird was annoyed by Rosie, Shadow or me but the cats have figured out that the nest is there. David and I are thinking that when it’s fledgling season, we’ll have to try to keep the cats inside.

I’m not sure Mardi knows there’s a nest yet, but  I caught him staring up at the angry bird. Notice the nest on the right side of the picture; he’s pretty close!

I’ve been meaning to post pictures of the garden growing up.  We have so many little projects happening right now, I wanted to update on those first!  We’ve had two days of rain, which is a special treat in Los Angeles.  Our front yard is watered with the sprinkler irrigation system, and the back yard with a hose or watering cans.  It was nice to not have to worry about watering the back yard for a few days, although it’s back to needing it.  Just today, while I weeded our freshly sprouted Scarlet Runner Beans, I flushed out a whole mess of ants.

Because of the rain (and the sprinklers), our seedbombs in the front yard are starting to break down!

It’s great to see the clay breaking down and the seeds being revealed! This bomb is right next to our wildflower mix/ sprouted compost mystery garden.

The mystery garden was devoured by snails, and then re-sprinkled with seeds about two weeks ago.  Here’s what it looks like now:

Notice the seedbombs and sprinkler in this picture.  The two nasturtiums were not eaten by the snails when everything else was, so that’s why they’re a little bigger. I also recognize cosmos and calendula.  Hoping to recognize some more flower friends soon!

David spent a day prepping the sink that was full of sauerkraut.  He recently purchased a 5-gallon crock and the cabbage is now fermenting in it.  Five gallons?  Yes! He wants this to be the only crock he ever needs!

David also purchased weights and lids but they were backordered until next week, so he’s getting creative with the bag of water and saran wrap.  It’s been working out pretty well so far.  We were worried the cats would climb on the top of the crock, as they like sitting on things, so we covered the top with a towel.  I don’t think they’ve been sitting on it, but we did find the towel soaked in cat urine…. ew.  (We have three cats and cat pee is sadly part of our life.)

Sauerkraut should be ready for eating and storing in two weeks! We’ve been storing away as much food as we can, and we (David) just finished making two jars of nasturtium “capers”.

Last weekend, while I was deadheading the roses, I noticed that we had a nasturtium plant that was dense with flowers.  When I looked underneath the plant, I was able to easily pull off handfuls of fresh, young seeds. David helped me pick and clean them, and then we looked up the recipe I had read earlier this year for nasturtium pod capers.

The recipe itself was simple. Picking the seed pods was a bit time consuming. Between David and myself picking over this one plant, we were able to triple the recipe! It was great timing on our part, and if we like them we will have plenty for the next batch when these finish flowering.

We cleaned the pods, separated each of them, and soaked them in salt for 3 days.  Tonight Dave heated up the vinegar and sugar and we put them in a jar. Can’t wait to try them! I hope they’re not too strong for me.

We’ve also been spending the week eating chard. I pulled out one plant to eat, and there’s another one that has to come out. We’re making room for one more tomato plant. We have three more tomatoes to plant: Prudens Purple, Black Krim and Abe Lincoln.  I’m not sure which will go in the raised bed or where we’ll even put the other two, but they still have a little ways to grow.

If you look at the chard compared to the coffee maker, you can get an idea of how immense the leaves and stem were. We ate it that night with pasta and last year’s tomato sauce from the freezer. The stem and more chard went in our quiche cups, which is my daily breakfast.  The stem has such a nice crunch!

The yard is starting to bloom more and more. The succulents, herbs and tomatoes are all flowering.

The daffodils by the front door are blooming, one at a time. This was our first year planting the bulbs, and it’s a fun treat to see them blooming.

Mardi can’t resist a camera!

We’re excited to get more projects underway and to see how these all pan out.  Our new mason bee house just arrived in the mail, and we’re brewing beer this weekend. As if we didn’t have enough to keep us busy…