The Garden on the Menu

The steam made this photo a but difficult to catch. I should have taken pictures of the chamomile flowers before I brewed the tea.

Most days we toss a few pea pods or tomatoes into a salad.

Other days we make bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches. The summer has gone buy so fast that we really haven't had time to explore recipes and try other things.

I like to experiment with fresh teas, This time I added a strawberry blossom to the chamomile tea and loved both the scent and the flavor as well as the fact that the fresh flowers made it pretty.

Our radishes failed again this year but the radishes and potatoes look promising. Time will tell.

We make a lot of things with new potatoes. I seem to spend more time eating them than photographing them.

Painting the Garden

You may remember the summer day that I picked a few things from the garden after tea. We ate them for lunch so there wasn't time to do a painting with them then. Now I'm chasing the winter blues and working from the photos that I took last summer.

I went back through my files and found more of the photos that I had taken.

The more I look at the photos, the harder that I feel that this is going to be to capture in paint.

Next summer I'm going to work harder on my photos, I think they convey a pretty good message all on their own.

Just looking at this puts me right back in that wonderful day and I can't wait to get back into my messy, crazy garden again.

Garden Tea

We went out for tea in the garden today and I noticed  there were more pea pods to pick so I put them on my saucer. When I'd finished drinking my tea I figured I'd pick a bit of lettuce for a salad too.

It looked so cute that I couldn't resist taking some pictures to make note cards with and maybe use as an idea to do a painting of.

I shot the photos on several different backgrounds to see which way they'd look best.

I don't know why but this image really appeals to me and I think other people will like it too.

I was just talking to a cousin on the phone and told her what I was doing and she thought it was odd so apparently it won't appeal to everyone.

It still won't stop me from exploring the possibilities... and enjoying a good salad.

Pea Pods

We've got pea pods planted in pots and planter boxes in 4 different places around the garden and I've staggered the planting so that they won't all be ready to harvest at the same time. They all seem to be coming along well.

I like to pick the small and tender ones whenever I'm making a salad or stir fry but today i just tossed a few in some rice.

 Having grown up in the city with a front step that went right up to the sidewalk, it gives me great pleasure to have lots of lovely growing things around me. Sometimes the bird songs even begin to drown out the traffic noises here and I'm the closest to paradise that I've ever been. 

A walk in the back garden

The radishes are from the recycled plastic planter box and the peas are growing next to the climbing roses in the new cedar box.

Here are the roses inside the box

Here are the climbing roses from the outside of the box. I've also got wildflowers and sunflowers planted around the base of them because I was a bit afraid that the roses wouldn't transplant well. It looks now like I didn't have to worry, they're doing great!