When I was able to get out in the garden yesterday morning I was horrified by the weeds, they love this weather. But no time to weed. I was out to harvest. Beans. Lots of them. You thought I had a lot of beans last week! This week I picked even more than before. So much more that Bookman pickled a quart of them and we still have lots of leftovers steamed and tucked into the freezer for later. We’ve never had pickled beans before but when we were grocery shopping at our food co-op Friday night we saw pickled beans on the shelf and Bookman thought he’d like to give them a try. I’ll let you know.
Last Sunday Bookman steamed the yellow and purple beans to make a delicious spicy bean dish that had red pepper flakes and a tiny bit of almond butter in it. Oh, it was so good and we enjoyed a few days of leftovers. Well, I was even more excited about it because it was going to be so pretty with yellow and purple beans. Guess what happened when Bookman steamed the beans? The purple ones turned green! The yellow ones stayed yellow so it still ended up looking pretty but not as dramatically pretty as if it had been purple and yellow. We’ve been laughing about it all week.
Also picked from the garden were two zucchini. One is normal size, the other, left unnoticed in the heat of the week grew
to giant proportions. I should have taken a photo of it but I didn’t think of it until too late. This squash is so big and heavy I am sure if I wrote murder mysteries I would use it as a weapon for the unsuspecting and then clean it up and cook it and no one would be the wiser. Murder weapon? I dare you to find it. The small zucchini will get cooked up in a stir fry or something. The giant one is too big for something like that, they lose a little oomph when they get that large. So Bookman, kitchen wizard extraordinaire, shredded it and cooked it up in a double batch of zucchini bread. He made zucchini bread with walnuts and raisins that we can have with breakfast this week. Then he made decadent zucchini muffins with walnuts and chocolate chips. When you cook vegetables into sweet treats they count as healthy, right? A muffin and coffee made a marvelous afternoon snack, let me just say.Bookman was busy in the kitchen today because he also made bread and butter pickles from the gherkin-sized cucumbers I picked. Bookman loves pickles. Cucumbers and I don’t get along in pretty much any form except sweet pickle relish. Bookman promised that he will attempt to make some with the next batch of cucumbers.
We’ve begun work on widening our garden path before proceeding in extending it further. It is hot and sweaty work and we only got it partly done before the sun sent us scurrying indoors for something cold to drink. We will continue this evening after the sun is out of the backyard.
The garden is a pollinator paradise right now and it makes me so very happy. There are several different kinds of bees including the first of my favorite kind: bumblebees. I love these fat fuzzy bees. There are also several kinds of pollinating flies. The bachelor buttons and calendula which are still blooming strong are star attractions. The anise hyssop is a frequent destination too. And the mustard greens have bolted and are flowering pretty yellow flowers that the pollinators are also loving. I wasn’t going to plant mustard again next year because it didn’t produce much, but because the pollinators love the flowers it will make it back next year.I was hoping for a big patch of zinnias but not many of the seeds germinated. Still, there are enough that they look pretty. Bookman and I love zinnias. He calls them “fruit loop” flowers, and really the colors do harken to that sugar-filled childhood breakfast cereal.
Making a comeback this year in my front yard prairie plantings is hoary vervain. Except it decided to relocate. It is
growing in a different bed than I planted it in a few years ago and not at all in the original bed. I am glad it has found a place it likes because I really like it. I also really like rattlesnake master. It is such an unusual flower. And wild bergamot. Oh, it has such a lovely scent, not sharp and flowery but deep and earthy and sort of herb-y. It is planted next to the sidewalk and I love walking by it in the afternoon when the air is warm. Someone described it once as a “Mediterranean” kind of scent. It is in the monarda family, just like bee balm except I can’t get bee balm to grow but the wild bergamot goes crazy. The yellow coneflowers are now starting to bloom. These are called yellow coneflowers but they aren’t echinacea like the purple ones. These are ratibida pinnata, a member of the aster family but they look like coneflowers. They have grown rather tall this year, taller than they ever have, and are technically too tall for the city’s boulevard garden height regulation. But the city doesn’t enforce it unless someone complains and why would someone complain about them?The liatris is about to start blooming so I’ll have photos of those next week. I love them so much I really have to plant more. And in the veggie garden there will be more beans to pick. The pumpkins are vining like crazy and one of them grew about 4 feet (1.2m) just this week. They are flowering like crazy too. I hope that means lots of pumpkins this fall! And the cantaloupes that I had almost given up on, the week’s heat and humidity have been good to them and they have begun vining and flowering too. The stunted bell pepper plants are also starting to grow and have tight little flower buds on them. The tomato plants have gotten taller and are trying to recover. One of them has a golf ball-sized green tomato on it. I didn’t think the other two were even going to flower but I noticed this morning that they each have a few flowers on them. Not a banner year for tomatoes so if we get one we’ll count ourselves lucky. Except we will have to be lucky since it is so late in the season. We will need a long autumn in order to get either tomatoes or bell peppers. Fingers crossed!
In July, I firmly believe humor is essential for the gardener. I enjoyed your post so much I read it twice! Foot-long zucchinis would make good murder weapons. I see a lot of biggies around these parts; many people believe that the bigger the zucchini, the better it is.
I had a hearty chuckle over your purple-to-green beans! That dish does sound tasty though.
I have a coworker who makes dilly beans. The beans are pickled with dill and they taste delicious. I hope you and Bookman enjoy your pickled beans.
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Vanessa, so glad you enjoyed it, thanks! How interesting in your area that people think big zucchini are great whereas here big is thought to be bad. The purple-to-green beans continue to make us laugh. We should have known but we wanted them to stay purple so badly. Neither Bookman nor I have had dilly beans before. We had them with a big salad for dinner. Bookman liked them lots. For me they were just ok. The vinegar was too overwhelming for me to really like them. I’m hoping the beets do well because pickled beets is something I like quite a lot.
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LOL re the purple beans. I remember the same disappointment. I’m not sure I ever bought (we didn’t grow them) purple beans again, such was the trauma! I love Bookman’s creativity with the 30cm zucchini! Hmm … that doesn’t sound as good as foot-long does it?
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whisperinggums, food changing color when you cook it, imagine. Those tricksy beans! It’s like the blue potatoes that don’t stay blue. I completely understand your own trauma. I’m wondering if I should grow purple beans again. But they do look pretty in the garden and purple beans are a lot easier to find and pick. We’ll see what the seed catalog offers next year. No, 30cm just doesn’t sound as impressive as a foot. Bookman is a creative kitchen genius. Everyone should be so lucky to have one.
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And purple carrots … I think they stay purple don’t they! I’ve cooked them once but somehow after the shock of the beans I can’t remember! As you say purple ones are easy to find … Amongst the greens in the fridge too!
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Purple carrots? I’ve never seen any of those. How cool! I eat a lot of carrots so it’s easier to buy them than grow them in the garden but I will be sure to look out for them in the seed catalogs this winter and give them a try just for fun.
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I must buy some again too … We eat a lot – of the orange variety anyhow – also. They seem harder to grow, well, to get nicely shaped ones, though we’ve only done it once or twice.
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heh, yeah the few times I’ve grown orange carrots they look like they belong in a horror movie or something because they turn out shaped so weird 🙂
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That’s it! How do the growers do it!
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I buy purple beans at our produce stand out here on the island. When I first bought them the proprietor told me they would turn green once cooked, so I anticipated that and so wasn’t disappoint. I love pickled beans. And I agree, how could anyone possibly complain about those beautiful coneflowers? Do you really have a height regulation for flowers?? Wow. Happy to see lawmakers are concentrating on the really important stuff. It looks as though I might have two bell peppers growing as well. Also, I’ve had the same problem with the failure of tomatoes to flower – too much rain maybe? We are way over normal averages here.
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Grad, oh you were saved from great disappointment by the farmer telling you the beans would turn green when you cook them. Boulevard gardens, the strips of no-man’s land between the sidewalk and the street, have height regulations of 36 inches for safety reasons–tall plants would keep drivers from being able to see children or animals that might run out in front of them, that sort of thing. It’s a reasonable regulation. But the city doesn’t enforce it unless someone complains. And since mine is the only boulevard garden on my block there aren’t rows and rows of tall flowers hindering visibility. Still, I try to keep under the height limit, it just doesn’t always work!
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I grew purple beans once for the kids’ amusement and was surprised when they turned green, too! What to do with a giant zucchini? Stuff it, I say! My kids liked stuffed zucchini better than any other preparation.
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Jeane, I’m glad I am not the only one to be fooled by purple beans! That’s a lot of stuffed zucchini for two people. The smaller one is more our speed. But still, something to keep in mind should another giant zucchini make an appearance.
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I love ratibida and used to grow it in my garden. And liatris …oh, you’ve made me yearn for gardens again, both flower and vegetable!
If you like reading about some of the bees you enjoy, you might want to see if you can find a copy of The Passionate Observer by Jean Henri Fabre. I have a set of six of his older insect books, as well as this compilation of selections from his books. He was French, lived in the country, and observed and wrote about nature in a literate, narrative style, not dry and dusty like some science writing. I was always amazed by the many different kinds of bees / wasps and other insects that visited my gardens.
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Joan, I love it when there is a slight breeze and the ratibida starts gently swaying. And watching the liatris grow all season is great fun and then suddenly it starts to flower. It’s really eye-catching.
I do want to learn more about bees so thanks for the recommendation! My library has it so I’ve put in a request for it. It looks like Project Gutenberg has several of his other books too. Fun!
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I nearly choked on my cup of tea reading abt your giant zucchini ( better known in my corner of the world as courgettes). When they get huge they lose flavour I think.
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BookerTalk, I am glad you didn’t choke! Funny story for you, back in 2001, my husband and I took a trip to London and stayed with some friends of the family. They wanted to make us dinner one evening, know we were vegan was asking us about what we could and couldn’t eat. She asked if we liked courgettes and we had no idea what she was talking about until she showed us one. Oh, zucchini! We all had a good laugh about that one. Yes, that’s it, they lose their flavor when they get so big and I think they get a little “woody” too. But shredded up in bread, you don’t notice it.
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Yes, big zucchini do get woody but they grow so fast! As Marge Piercy said…
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Melwyk, yes! I forgot about that Piercy poem! Thanks for reminding me 🙂
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I think your title’s begging for an inappropriate joke, but I got too lost in the enjoyment of wandering through your garden. We’re in winter at the moment but have lovely flowers in abundance and the bees are so happy. Nothing like the sound of happy bees!
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It does beg for an inappropriate joke, doesn’t it? Zucchini in general does I think. Flowers in winter? You must live somewhere it doesn’t freeze. I too love the sound of happy bees, there is something uplifting about it that never fails to make me smile.
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we don’t get much deep freeze in Australia, light frostings, yes. A meadow with flowers and happy bees – that’s how I think the afterlife should be!
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Do you remember the Alfred Hitchcock Presents shows that were on ages ago–I only saw them in repeats–in one a woman murders her husband with a huge leg or lamb or some other piece of frozen meat and then cooks it. When the detectives come to question her she offers them a delicious cooked meal–I thought it funnily ironic, so your zucchini story made me laugh! I don’t get on very well with cucumbers either, though will occasionally eat them–I like them sliced thinly on a veggie sandwhich for a little crunch. Lucky you to have a hubby who is not only good in the kitchen but likes it, too! 🙂
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Love that story! Though I think it all might have gone south if she was forced to use a giant zucchini instead…
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