green beans

Garden dinner…

This was the scene from my kitchen this afternoon. I sliced up leeks to fry and crisp up to top some boiled and fried potatoes, cut up green beans for a side dish and sliced a Lemon Yellow tomato to eat with just a little kosher salt.

Yum, yum. The beans were picked about a week or more too late, but with travel and other family things going on, I finally got to them today and my husband and I are both at home together tonight to eat them.
The leeks were originally going to be potato leek soup, but I thought I’d try something different and it worked great. They were browned little crisps that went great with the browned potatoes.
And the tomato was sweet and delicate, with a lot less acidity than your average red tomatoes. They have a very subtle but very nice flavor — I’d plant that one again. The cherry tomatoes on the counter were “Hank” and were sent to me for free with my TomatoBob heirloom tomato seed order in December. My DH said that they were not as sweet as the normal cherry tomatoes we grow, so I don’t think I will order them.
Paired with some pork tenderloin medallions under the broiler, as Martha Stewart would say, it was “a good thing.”

Spectacular signs of Spring

Here she is, Miss Tangerine Crossvine in her full spring splendor. See how gracefully she climbs up into the nearby Live Oak tree?
Her blooms are cheerful and bright – bringing a cacophony of color into the shady corner bed.
And she just keeps on cruising down the fenceline, spreading her beauty.
Out front the little Anacacho Orchid tree that I planted last year is living up to her full expectations with a profusion of delicate white blooms.

The variegated lemon tree is chock full of pink buds, ready to burst into lemony goodness very soon. The bees are eager for the buds to open, too, as they were hovering around just like me!
Green beans peek out of the ground in the veggie garden.
The tomatoes planted before we left for our Indiana Spring Break trip were damaged by the 1 cold night in Austin last week. I think it got down to the mid-30s and the tomatoes all have leaf damage, but they will be fine. See, this one has a BLOOM!!!!! A wannabe tomato…the plants may not be pretty any more, but they are growing and developing, so I won’t complain.
These are the White Icicle Radishes shown in the sidebar photo above. Tasty – and spicy.
Here’s another Bluebonnet blooming in the greenhouse bed. I gave in a planted plants this year as I have not had luck with seeds — we just have too much mulch where I want to plant them, so I carefully amended the soil and pulled back the mulch and put in 15 plants this spring.
The Mexican Plum tree is full of blooms this week, too.
Aren’t they pretty?
This, however, is NOT so pretty. Witness, please the GAZILLION Live Oak leaves that are cascading from my trees. If they were white, you’d think it was snowing in parts of my yard. And they aren’t even 1/2 done with their littering of my beds.

I’m itching to get out there and blow them elsewhere, but more will fall right into their place, so I will wait a week or two. I know, for instance, that there are dozens of wildflower seedlings under here waiting to get out…and I can’t wait to see them…next week maybe!

beans, beans, and a potato…


In spite of the heat that’s bearing down on us and our plants, Mother Nature has a job to do, and do it she does. They might be thirsty and hot and sweaty, but my plants continue to bloom and amazingly, have enough energy left over to make seeds for the next generation to go on.

Pretty amazing, to me.

So, here are some of the lovely seed pods that have just popped up in my garden in the last week or so.

The first is the stunningly beautiful Pride of Barbados that is one of my very favorite plants.  It’s exotic and delicate and hot and colorful all at the same time.  It’s hearty and fern-like and it brings a smile to my face when it finally shows its true colors late in the summer.

These are my Hyacinth Bean Vines, with their leather-y purple pods that look good enough to eat!

My prolific Coral Trumpet Vine makes these huge seed pods, but then again, this specimen is pretty darn big and woody, and I think it would take over the cabana if I let it.
This, gardening friends, is a real bean!  A green bush bean in my veggie garden.  I liek to call the seed pods beans and take a little license with gardening lingo, since they do look like beans!
This Esperanza or Tecoma Stans, is full of slender, little green pods – hundreds of them – waiting to drop and start life all over again deep under the mulch this winter.

Ok, THIS is your laugh for the day.  I kept seeing this big, smooth pink orb poking out of the potato vine in my front pots.  Thought it was a river rock from the dry bed, wondered if I’d stuck it in there for some reason when I planted the vine.
Seriously.
I thought this for weeks!
Today, as I was removing dead plants and adding a few fresh ones, it hit me like a V-8 POP on the forehead!
It’s a POTATO!!!!!!!
Duh.
Double Duh!
Sigh….I am not only not in charge, I am clearly clueless!
I never saw an actual potato on a decorative potato vine that I’d planted before.
I mean, there are some plants that are named after things that they are not, right?
Well, at least I get points for posting it out there for you all to laugh WITH me about!

Beans, beans … you know the rest!

What a delight. I spent yesterday harvesting in the veggie garden. I got a giant bowl of green beans, collard greens, spinach and the last 3 radishes.

The green beans were delicious, as were the collards. Radishes and spinach will go in tonight’s salad.

We have many tomatoes – but they are still very green. It’s already getting hot here, so I’m worried about whether the blooms will continue to set very well. (I admit I bought some bloom set spray. I’m not sure if that works, but I REALLY want tomatoes!)

I found some more blooms on the strawberries, too, so we might have another small helping of those soon.


Thank you, thank you, thank you to Vanillalotus at New Sprout for solving my mysteries from the last post. She tells me:

The lily is called a Jacobean Lily, or Aztec Lily. It’s latin name is Sprekelia formosissima. Here is a website with more information at Daves Garden.

The cool-looking moth is a giant/great leopard moth.

What a wonderful thing – to have you gardening friends as a resource for tips and troubles and to indentify those mysteries that pop up in our gardens periodically.

Thanks for all your ideas and help!

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