Hen and Chicks in Haeger planter

Assorted succulents in buttery-yellow art deco planter

Succulents have fast become my favorite plants.  I bought an assortment at Wal Mart, yesterday, and hit antique row after school, today, so that I could find a few vintage pieces to store them in.  Whadaya think?

A Gardening We Will Go

It's that time of year, again, folks.  I'm not going all out this go 'round...same plants, not near as many of them!  We've planted a few heirloom tomatoes:, Brandy Wine, Yellow Pair, and Tigerella.  I've also planted mint, lavender, rosemary, dill, parsley, lettuce, and a few bell peppers.  Wish us luck with all that.

This weekend I may plant some okra and tomatillo seeds.  In addition, I've got Zinnia's (Lilliputs), Batchelor's Buttons, and orange Cosmos.  The Cosmos come from my sweet neighbor and the Batchelor's Buttons are special because the seeds come from my mom's plants which grew from her mom's, and my grandma's grew from her mom's plants.  So, I guess that convoluted trail of words means that I have my Great Grandma to thank for the pretty blooms.  That's four generations of crazy ladies' flowers!

I've got my eye on trying this craft to mark the plants...

courtesy 

Stay tuned to see how my garden grows ; )

Coming up Roses

OR tomatoes, if you're walking through my garden!

Our Easter Lily finally bloomed, too!  Better late than never : )

and these happy little Zinnias (supposed to be the Lilliput variety) are stretching their sweet little selves toward the sky.

Gardening Woes

Well, many plants in our back yard have "Leaf Miners"...never had 'em before and don't know how to get rid of them.  I sprayed an insecticidal soap on them this evening and I've been picking off the leaves where the pesky critters "made their mark."  If you know how to rid your garden of them, please let me know.  If you've never seem them, they leave squiggly lines where they've burrowed on your leaves.  Bummer ; (

Golly Gee!

Would you take a look at these?!?!

The 1st Zucchini

and the first ripened tomato!

Bebe had to give it a bite to see what all the fuss was about...not what she was expecting : )



Fried Green Tomatoes

I never imagined I'd end up with as many tomatoes on the vine as we currently have; I'm thrilled!  I decided to try my hand at Fried Green Tomatoes and they certainly were yummy.

Here's what I did:

Fried Green Tomatoes
Vegetable Oil
4-5 Med. to Large size Green Tomatoes
2 eggs, slightly beaten
1/2 cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 cup ea., Yellow Corn Meal & All Purpose Flour for a separate bowl
Cajun Seasoning

After washing and slicing my tomatoes, I beat two eggs in a medium sized bowl.  In a second bowl, I added a 1/2 cup plain All Purpose Flour.  In the third bowl, I combined a 1/2 cup of each, Yellow Corn Meal & AP Flour.  I seasoned this with Ragin' Cajun Seasoning, but feel free to use any kind of seasoned salt that you like. 

Once you have your dredging line up ready to go, heat oil a 1/4" deep in a cast iron skillet.  Make sure your oil is hot before you add your first batch to fry or else you'll end up with an oil saturated tomato.  Once your skillet has a good sizzle, start adding your tomatoes.  Once they're finished frying, place on a paper towel lined plate.

We served these with Ranch dressing for dipping.

I'm sharing at Designs By Gollum's Foodie Friday event.

TOMATOES!

Big Boy Tomatoes

Yellow Pear Tomatoes

Patio Variety

Beaf Eater Variety

Would you look at all of these tomatoes; I'm so excited, y'all!  Last year I only had three measly tomatoes between two plants all season! 

Now, I've got a question about Fried Green Tomatoes...are there a certain variety that's best for making them or will any kind of unripened tomato do?  It seems that my google search left me a little confused on the verdict so what's your opinion?

Many said there is a specific variety that never turns red, others said that it's just an unripened red tomato.

My thoughts, I can't imagine southerners back in the day being so particular about having grocers "order a specific variety of tomato" just so they could prepare Fried Green Tomatoes.  I think we've over complicated this, y'all.  Wouldn't it make sense that some women saw that they had more tomatoes cropping up than they knew what to do with and so they started plucking them off?  I bet some clever lady sat and thought about what to do with her rock hard tomato and figured, "I'm gonna fry this little sucker within an inch of it's existence." and viola, the fantabulous Fried Green Tomato was born ; )

I think I'll fry some up tonight!  I'll post pics to let you know how it went.

Ta ta for now,

The Kitchen Witch

Growing like a Weed!



Bebe says that you have to check your garden regularly

... inspect the soil

...and pull any weeds!

Check back regularly to see our growth!





Beautiful and Bright

Gorgeous Mexican Flame Vine growing at our entry...

A Gardening We Will Go

This past weekend, the whole family got in gear to do a little yard clean up and gardening.  The weather has been so pleasant we couldn't waste another day indoors so we mulched and mowed and pruned and planted.  Mrs BC had recently blogged about her gardening successes and I told her how we were just starting ours so y'all will have to stay tuned to see if I'll have bragging rights as the season progresses. 

Gardening has not been my forte.  Let's just say I'm better at sauting than growing, for sure.  Last season, I had this to share about my gardening endeavors.  Oh, and let's not forget this post. 

Well, I'll let bygones be bygones. Mmmkay?

This year, I'm hopeful that I'll have better luck.  We've planted five tomato plants of various varieties.  We've got Big Boy Tomatoes, Yellow Pear, Patio, and Beef Steak (I think).  Too, we planted Strawberry plants, Dill Weed, Italian Parsley, Cilantro, and Basil.  I'm hoping to buy another Bell Pepper plant despite the mini peppers that I got last year and possibly cabbage.  I'd like to add a bag of manure, also, as my mom says this does well for her.  Of course, she lives on a ranch and so gets hers right from the source and since her cows are of the organic grass-fed variety, I'm thinking no harm some fowl (odor, that is).  She'd laugh thinking that I'm paying for crap, literally, but I'd do just about anything to get this garden to produce.  I've already Miracle-Gro'd every living thing in the yard.  Fingers crossed and here we go...

Rows of Tomatoes

Getting up close and personal with the herbs.

Hot Stepper

The battle between man and beast rages on in our neighborhood.  It's been a little over a year that we've lived in this home.  During the last summer, we ripped up the wood deck that was built into our entry courtyard area and lovingly planted all sorts of shade loving plants.  We've fed, mulched, pruned, and watered our courtyard area...delighted to see our investment thriving.  It really is beautiful...and SMELLY.  See, the house across the street from ours just happens to be hobo-cat headquarters and I hate them one and all.  Now, before you tear into me about the poor, innocent, homeless cats, remember that I've got two shelter pets of my own.  The difference is that I took these angels into my home and have cared for them.  They are fixed and vaccinated and groomed regularly.  The neighbor, on the other hand, tosses out kibble on a paper plate.  I've counted over twelve different cats and the numbers are only increasing because they keep breeding.  Our next door neighbors have traps to catch cats and other varmints.  They call the city to pick them up on a regular basis.  They've gone 'round and 'round with the neighbors for sending their "sweet babies" away, but really?  If they cared so much, wouldn't they do something to reduce the number of strays instead of promoting their increasing numbers?!

My husband has been so kind to point out that their is not much we can do to change the neighbor's ways, but I've been doing my damnedest to change the cats.  Yesterday, at a friend's suggestion, I planted Society Garlic which is supposed to be a deterrent since cats supposedly hate the smell.  Too, I literally peppered my yard.  The guy at the plant store told me that he's heard sprinkling your garden with a dusting of Cayenne pepper has done the trick so away I went with red pepper covering every inch of visible ground.  The result-

A cat crapped on my welcome mat.  Seriously.  My daughter almost stepped in it coming in from school.  So the battle continues...

This morning, I went to check on the peppered plants and Society Garlic.  Much to my dismay, I found their mess right next to the darned plant.  It's enough to give up...almost.

If you have any suggestions for keeping critters out, please share.  I'm open to revenge  suggestions : )

There's a tear in my beer

With a heat index of 115 degrees my poor plants are just barely hanging on.  I'm sad to say that my lavender plant is fried : ( 

so I think I'll go over to my sweet neighbor's garden and dig up that "pesky" rosemary that's come up where she least expected (or wanted) and see how it fairs being transplanted into one of my pots.  I love gardening but, I have to admit that I wasn't blessed with a green thumb.  With so many factors (grasshoppers, heat, rain or lack there of) that are out of our control, I wonder how people who depend solely on farming survive.  It's a tough life, I guess, and I respect those who put forth the effort so cheers to farmers.  May their crops be blessed!

sweet little toad that crossed my path this morning

I grew a garden for a gnome

Let me begin by telling you that I've been planning a garden, in my mind, for some years now.  With ideas of grandeur sprouting about in my head, I thought I'd be the queen of canning this year because my bounty was going to be that BA!  Through years of living as a single mom in an apartment in the city I had plenty of time to plot and scheme.  Finally, I decided, this was the year!  I was really excited to begin planting in the back yard of my new home, with my new husband, and the shiny new gardening tools blah , blah, blah.  Needless to say, somebody forgot to mention to me that the plants I was buying were meant for wee people.  You know, garden fairies and gnomes and the like.  I know this because nothing produced has been larger than a walnut.  Seriously; a walnut!  I was quite proud of the figs (as small as they were) that grew, as you can tell from one of my previous posts.  That is, until my eighty year old neighbor dropped by to see how our new floors were coming along.  I held out the two tiny fruit in the palm of my hand for her to see and she said, "Oooh, so tiny!"  and continued on about how angry she was that the birds had been eating up her fist sized figs.  Fist sized.  Yes.  She said, "fist sized!"  What the crap?  Now my tomato plants (of which only produced 3 walnut sized tomatoes all season) are about petered out and my dill looks like it's going to pot.  The above picture is of the bell pepper that my daughter plucked yesterday afternoon.  That, my friends, is the straw that broke this camel's back.  Maybe Dr. Evil aimed a shrink ray gun to my plants.  Um, yeah.

FIGS!

Figs from the backyard; what a treat!

Aghhhh (sighs), Whiteflies!

We've recently completed our entryway courtyard.  I've laid down all sorts of shade-loving plants in the courtyard and a host of flowering ones along the front of the house.  Unfortunately, not but just a few weeks after the plants moved in did these damned little whiteflies rear their ugly little wings.  My Hibiscus looks terrible; though, the asian jasmine and esperanzas seem to be fairing better.  I'm beginning to notice them in the back yard, too, around my tomato plants!  Why me?!  I've sprayed the plants with SaferSoap and followed up with seven dust but, these seem to be pesky little critters so I think I need to pull out the big guns so to speak.  Any suggestions? My favorite local plant store is closed today so I'm having to wait 'til tomorrow to see what they suggest.