My neighbor grows this plant. I’m not really sure what it is. It has a vine sort of structure, creeps along the ground, and has this nice variegated foliage that sticks around even in winter. I guess now I grow it too, for it has escaped my neighbor’s planting and also grows near my doorstep. It’s a nice little plant.
Gardening
Magnolia Tree Leaves with Blue Sky
GardeningWhile these photos were taken during the warmer months of last year, the magnolia is still green right now (though the sky is a different shade of blue)!
What are you looking forward to in next season’s garden?
GardeningI love cooking with my walking onions. They have a strong onion flavor even after they have been cooked for a while, and as a perennial, I only have to plant them once. The onions that grow on the flower tops look like alien creatures growing in my garden.
Remember the Green? Yarrow and Violets
GardeningThis is a photo from when the weather was warmer this year. Wild violets nestled beneath the yarrow I planted, all such a nice, vibrant shade of green.
Holly Against the Sky
Gardening
The weather was warmer when I took this, but holly is an evergreen, and thus related to the coming winter season.
Fall Roses
Gardening, Nature WalksDuring one of my walks in mid-fall, I noticed this local planting of roses. They were one of the last things I saw bloom before winter set in. Their bright pink color was cheering as all the gardens around them went to sleep.
Delicious Mousemelon Harvest
Cooking and Household, GardeningThis post may be slightly out of season, as the garden has now been put to bed, but as I plan the next year’s vegetable garden, I want to shine a spotlight on the delightful Mousemelon Vine I grew this year.
It was very slow to germinate, but managed to fight off weeds in my survival-of-the-fittest gardening style. This plant hails from the southern part of our continent, so it’s a bit slow to grow, in my opinion. The harvest was a small basket full- maybe a couple cups in total volume, and most were eaten in the garden. All the tiny fruits were eaten before I could make them into a dinner salad. Delicious. Being perfectly honest, I could have probably increased my harvest if I had spent more time cultivating and babying the vine, however, I prefer plants that are strong enough to make do on their own.
The fruit are so tiny and cute! They really do look like mouse-sized watermelons. The taste is a most refreshing blend of cucumber and lemon, though it is not related to either. You can generally find mousemelon seeds in the cucumber section of your seed catalog. Make sure you get a catalog that provides heirloom seeds. Not only will you be supporting our agricultural heritage and encourage biodiversity, you’re more likely to find unusual gems in their selection, such as this mousemelon.
Fall Mums
Gardening, Nature WalksThese beautiful fall flowers were nearby on one of my walks.
Purple Potato Harvest 2019
Cooking and Household, Gardening
Cross-section photo taken mid-slicing for dinner.
I grew some purple potatoes this year. They were delicious potatoes that had purple skin, purple marbled with white insides, and the whole thing turned a deep purple when cooked. I was told that purple potatoes apparently originated from more mountainous regions, with the pigment to protect any potatoes near the surface of the soil from the sun due to the thinner atmosphere. The purple pigment is a sign of the higher content of healthy compounds in the potato!
I love how cool and whimsical this type of potato is, and it is used just the same as any other potato. Cooking with them makes my dinners more interesting visually.
Pink-Fleshed Moon and Stars Watermelon
Drawing, GardeningThis year, I grew a watermelon I’ve wanted to grow since I was 12: the Pink-Fleshed Moon and Stars Watermelon. I read about it in a heritage seed-saving catalogue, and the description of a watermelon with markings like a starry sky took my imagination and gave me ideas of a faerie garden. Moon and Stars Watermelon is an heirloom variety of watermelon that was once thought to be extinct, but careful preservation has brought it back. It produces a lot of seeds, and grew easily in hills with zero assistance. I had a bit of trouble with the weeds this year, but the watermelon didn’t. It out-competed them and produced plenty of fruits.
The watermelons were just as delicious as I imagined they would be. Very sweet and tasty, with plenty of watermelon flavor! It’s so much better than a grocery store melon. One of the watermelons was one yard (91 cm) in circumference!
I painted the watermelon and the leaf in watercolor. The entire plant has these little yellow specks on it, like a whole galaxy of stars. Even the leaves are speckled when healthy, and the seeds are mottled with dark and mid-tone brown flecks. The watermelon also has a single larger yellow spot on it where it sat on the ground, making a “moon” on the dark green sky among all the tinier speckles of “stars.”
The season for watermelon has already passed, but this variety deserves attention. I’ve saved the (numerous, huge) seeds from these watermelons to grow next year.
