When the cat is away...

...this mouse gets out and does some gardening. I put my husband on a plane to Chicago this morning for a work trip. So I got outside and played in the dirt some.

We have two garden beds in our front yard. When we moved into our home, both had newly planted palm trees. Not long after, despite my best efforts to keep the palms alive, the very front ones died. We pulled those out, leaving us with this:

Lovely isn't it? I especially love the weeds. Let's pull back for a better look:

For dinner tonight

Japanese eggplant, yellow zucchini and crimini mushrooms tossed with salt, fresh ground pepper and minced rosemary. Roasted at 425 for about 20 minutes. Eggplant and zucchini straight out of my garden.

Tomorrow I take my Midwifery Board exam. I have two recipes to be posted after all is said and done, including one with farm fresh Oregon produce.

A few things I've learned recently.

1. The dogs haven't been interested in digging in the garden, they were trying to clue my husband and I in to the fact something was paying us a visit.

2. Skunks like green tomatoes. And leaving scat on our driveway.

3. Skunks don't seem to like cayenne pepper, so the internet didn't lie to me.

4. I need more cayenne pepper.

5. My garden is otherwise doing fine:

Dear vegetable garden,

I wanted to thank you. I had started to doubt I had any kind of green thumb after failing to keep so many plants alive while container gardening in one apartment after another. You've proved me so very wrong on that count and I appreciate it.

Now a few words for each of you.


Dear Early Girl tomatoes,
You can stop growing bigger and start kicking out ripe tomatoes anytime now.

See that white thing you just bypassed? That's the fence, it indicates the end of your garden area. I can no longer guarantee your safety from the two wild and crazy dogs that run free in the yard.

Dear cucumbers,

Nice seeing you again. Was hard keeping track of you under all the tomato branches I moved off and onto the other tomato cage this morning. You are also delicious. Keep up the good work.
Also, see that little sprout there?

That's one of my eggplant seedlings, don't kill it, ok? You and the zucchini are pushing far too close for comfort.

Hello Parsley, You are growing well. I just need to start using you more. I promise I will.


And finally, thank you lettuce for proving I can grow things in containers and not have them die. I appreciate it.

First Harvest.

Monday proved to be a good day in the garden, I was able to harvest my first zucchini! A lovely little thing, it grew so rapidly, I only noticed it was there on Sunday, and I was outright shocked at how big it already was. The rest of its current brethren are only about the size of small limes, so how this one escaped my attention, I don't know.

I am not growing a traditional zucchini variety, this one is called Eight Ball. Same wonderful dark skin in a cute, little round package. It, like the other variety of items growing in my garden is unique in some way, I have white cucumbers, tiny currant tomatoes, small dwarf eggplant, and these rotund zucchini.

In celebration of my harvest, I threw a very quick dinner together that night. I had spent the day doing online classes for work then moved on to cleaning house, so I was exhausted by the end of the day. Thankfully, I had some turkey meatballs from Trader Joe's in the freezer and a new jarred pasta sauce to try out.

My Mom discovered this sauce recently, made with heirloom tomatoes and the only sweetener is organic evaporated cane juice. We gave it a whirl, simmering the meatballs in it until everything was hot and tossing it with whole wheat penne. I added some fresh basil and parsley from my herb garden to finish it off.

As for the zucchini, I tossed it with some olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted it in the oven at 425 degrees.


The results were wonderful. I would have to say the Eight Ball is a little sweeter then your standard zucchini, it could have been my choice to roast it, or it could be inherently sweeter. It was delicious though.



The sauce was also very good. Nice tomato taste and not too sweet. One I think I will look for again for these nights I need a quick dinner.
I am thinking for the next zucchini(s) of thick slices grilled up with some salt and red pepper flakes. The round shape seems like it would lend itself nicely to a sandwich as well, maybe panini.

Garden Porn.

Now to sleep.

The setup

I will not title this "First Post" or anything else silly, but I will set up who, what and where I am.

I am a nurse, married, mother to three cats and two dogs, living in a suburb of San Diego. We just purchased our home back in October, and I am trying to make it more a home than a house. I am also going through grad school to be a midwife, growing a garden (my first) and trying to expand my cooking horizons. In turn, my husband and I have expanding waistlines.
I truly am using this as a diary for myself, if I pick up readers along the way, yay! If not, I won't cry. I just need a place to track what I am doing and when along with pictures.

What I have for today are current pictures of my garden, and to compare, ones from when I started.

In the beginning, I had a lot of expensive dirt and some child labor to help water it:

Then there were some plants:

Tomatoes, cucumbers, and zucchini to start.

Now I have herbs, obviously separate from the veggies:

Giant tomato plants:

Cucumbers:

And zucchini, which I am most concerned for:
Concerned in a good way really, I wasn't sure I'd get to this point. When I set out to grow this garden of mine, I started my seeds indoors, and these ones took off. By the time I had the raised bed in, the seedlings were leggy and just lay on the soil. It was rather sad looking. One of the original four did die, but these three struggled along and over the last two weeks have turned into this. I am only concerned now I will have the traditional issue with summer gardens; more zucchini then I know what to do with.