Is there a greater joy than growing your food....harvesting it....cooking it right there outside....Opening a gift of dreamy wine, and toasting to the real Good Life.
Money can't buy this...this perfect meal.....well, OK, a little money for seeds and a few weeks of time, right?
You cannot get this kind of delicious meal, this satisfaction at any restaurant.....many try, and they fail.
A shasta daisy from my front yard....and a lily from a pot sitting in the side yard....
the beautiful shady blues and sunset lavenders of a mophead hydrangea.........
And ...a little bit lily.....and a little bit edible beauty.
Here's a garden variety basil.....
and an Alaska nasturtium........both of these can be eaten.
The basil of course.........but less well known is the sweet nasturtium. So delicious and so pretty, that they are a major aphid magnet. I plant them with abandon.......I always want a lot of them around to use as garnish, to put the blossoms and the pretty peppery leaves in a salad, or in a sandwich.
The Meal from the Home Garden......
The beauty is that...you've grown it yourself.
Second best is....buying fresh food from the farmer...
Third best is ....buying fresh food from a trusted market...
Fourth best is.... buying an expensive meal made from fresh-grown food.....
and all other meals are perfunctory....
Hell is McDonalds and all their brethren.
The first zucchini.........
Sliced and sauteed with a small onion straight from the garden.....a little oil....a splash of red wine as it is almost done cooking......outside on the little bbq grill..........this is High Living !
Hey look ! it's an orange nasturtium blossom in my martini ..........
and a tiny tomato that I knocked off when watering... I took a bite of it...hey, it was pretty good!
Condiments....and good red wine....
I love Mezzetta pickled veggies....from the Napa Valley....
Yeah, I know.
yum !! There's a veggie burger in French bread....
Before you get zucchini....you get big yellow flowers.....some are boy flowers....some are girl flowers.........and you get boy flowers first, and lots of them.
Often, a tiny zuke will start to grow.....and then one day when it's about 3 inches long ....it gives up because it doesn't grow and it rots....because it didn't get fertilized by bees with boy pollen. Sound familiar?
Get busy you bees !!
Hey look it was a Sunny day and the lady took yer picture.....
The next day we picked this many peas....and Mark shelled them all......some we ate the next night for dinner.........and some we froze to eat another day.
A couple of days later, the sun was hiding so we ate inside....Another zuke and a few small onions from the garden.....and frying inside on the stove...........not quite as good as eating outside.......but hey, I'll take it !
frying.....
this time, a cool white wine....a plate of spaghetti....and those delicious zukes.....
yes, so when this happens in the garden at the beginning of the season....don't fret. In another week there will be some girly zukes and then the boy zukes will do their thing. and they'll grown big like....baseball bats.......
