The summer garden is over, but there is still plenty of life in the garden. The roses are happily blooming now that the dreaded Japanese beetles are long gone. The crepe myrtles are still blooming, and the parsley is a beautiful, huge green mound, ready to eat.



There was a heavy mist going on when I took these pictures yesterday. It felt wonderful. Although officially it is still a few days away, the scent of autumn is already in the air. I love it! I'm ready for pumpkins and scarecrows and leaves blowing in the wind. I will miss the flowers, though, and especially the fresh tomatoes.



These are the Texas Bluebonnets that I planted in June. I became fascinated by the raindrops puddled in the center of the leaves. They did not bloom this year; hopefully they will come back next year.



It misted rain most of the day yesterday, except for when it flat out poured down (known around here as a "toad-strangler"). It was a nice day to stay in with a cup of hot tea and a good mystery.



Most of the vegetable garden has been put to bed for the winter. We pulled up all the tomato plants today, along with the two remaining squash plants. We were still getting a few squash every couple of days, but they were tough and a little bitter. It was time for them to go. We still have a couple of red long bean plants and I planted a patch of Swiss Chard a couple of weeks ago which has started sprouting.

We pulled up one patch of zinnias, but there are many more to go. They looked good for a long time, but that time is over, I'm afraid. I need to order garlic this week. I usually plant it around Halloween. I already have a couple of packs of hyacinths and grape hyacinths that I will plant at the same time. I would still like to get a couple of rose plants in the ground before winter. Since school has started, it has been hard to find time for the garden. Winter holiday is twelve weeks away, and believe me, I am counting down every single day! It will be time for a long nap and a chance to plan my spring garden. That's what cold winter days are for, right?

Now that the tomato plants are almost dead they have begun to produce heavily. The rabbit must have had its fill and has stopped eating them, so now we have plenty to eat. Too bad the plants are almost finished for the year. This evening I will be pulling up what is left of the squash and cucumber plants. It's time to clean up and give the beds a rest for the winter. Soon I will be ordering garlic, which I usually plant around Halloween; it will be ready to harvest early next summer. I'm also going to plant a small section of Swiss Chard, which will hopefully be ready to harvest before the first hard freeze. The red long beans should be ready soon, so we will have a colorful fall season in the garden.

Butterfly Festival

A couple of weeks ago we went to the Butterfly Festival at Close park. They have a butterfly garden, which, strangely, appeared to be butterfly free. All the butterflies were in the new butterfly house, along caterpillars and demonstrations of the entire butterfly life cycle. It was geared to educating children, but it seemed the house was just as full of adults hoping to see a chrysalis transform to a butterfly.

No such luck, but there were plenty of beautiful butterflies to chase around the building with my camera.

We had been to Close Park before and had enjoyed the rose garden and the hosta garden, then walked around the lake. But until this event, we had no idea of the many gardens that were in the park. There is an English garden, a Lily garden, an ornamental grass garden, and many others. This will be a place I will return to again and again to see what is blooming throughout each season. Did I mention that it is free?

The amazing thing is that the garden is strictly a volunteer effort. Donations and public funds keep the garden up and running, and each garden is designed and maintained by volunteers. Ultimately, there are a total of 41 different garden styles planned. Volunteers (Friends of the Garden) have worked for years to raise interest and money for a Botanical Center in the park. That goal has been reached, surprisingly enough, during the most difficult economic environment in many years. The Center is scheduled to open in 2010.

As for my garden, the Black Beauty zucchini is dying and the Lemon squash is producing heavily and taking over the back yard. The Lemon cucumbers are doing pretty good, as well. The rat-tailed radish plant is still producing, thankfully in much smaller quantities. Long beans everyday, along with a few snow peas. The zinnias are blooming all over the place, but they look horrible because of the blasted Japanese beetles. I have a row of pink crepe myrtles (plus one white one, it was an accident) along the neighbor's fence in back , but they only have blooms on the bottom because the beetles apparently started feasting at the top of the plants.

I'm not tired of squash anymore since we started grilling it or roasting it in the oven. Steamed or sauteed squash was really getting old. I'm still waiting impatiently for some tomatoes. I found two perfectly ripe Snow White cherries on the plant this evening, but something had partially eaten them. I'm really not into sharing my tomatoes with birds or rabbits.

Tonight I picked sixteen squash, four cucumbers, and a handful of long beans. There may have been more to pick, but I was having trouble getting to everything. I didn't wear my garden gloves because they are dirty and I didn't want to mess up my manicure, so I was trying to pick squash bare-handed. It was very painful, so I didn't dig too deep under the leaves. Besides, lately every time I lift a squash leaf I come face to face with an angry sounding bumble bee. So I just move on and try to pretend I don't notice.

I diced up about a dozen squash and froze them. They were ones that had been laying around for a couple of days and I hated for them to go to waste (and I did just pick 16 more), so I thought I would just freeze them and this winter they would be good in soups or stews.

Tonight I read in Organic Gardening magazine that many heirloom tomatoes can take as long as 100 days to ripen. That made me feel better about my lack of ripe tomatoes. I thought it was some gardening defect on my part, but it is apparently just the nature of the kind of tomatoes I grow. That's OK, they are well worth the wait!

Rat-tail update

I rushed home after work to pick the radish bean pods before the rain started, and in no time I had picked 400 rat-tail beans! No kidding! Plus various squash, cucumber, snow peas, and long beans. A few squash and cucumbers got a bit larger than I would have liked, but the green varieties stay well-hidden behind the huge leaves. The lemon cucumber plant is finally producing, although the cucumbers look white to me. The lemon squash plant is loaded with what look like miniature lemons dangling everywhere. I planted a couple of red long-bean seeds last week and one has sprouted. I can't wait to see these!

Back to the beans, after washing 400 rat-tail radish beans, I chopped off the ends of one and popped it into my mouth. Guess what? It tasted like a radish. Go figure. It was somewhat hot and spicy, and not being much of a radish fan, I wondered what in the world I would do with 400 beans. I went ahead and chopped up a few and added them to our salads, and mixed in with everything else they weren't half bad. So, we can use a handful of them for salads, but I don't know what I am going to do with 400 bead pods. Did I mention that I picked 400 beans today, with more growing of the bush as we speak? Once I was finished with the picking, it didn't really look like that many beans, but it sure sounds like a lot.

Still no sign of any tomatoes turning red, or white, or yellow, or whatever color they are supposed to be besides green. I should have planted nothing but Green Zebra plants this year, then I would have a reason to still have nothing but green tomatoes.

Long Beans

Chinese long bean, Asparagus bean, and Chinese Green Noodle are just a few of the monikers of this versatile bean. Although it is best not to let them grow longer than two feet, we let a few keep growing to see how long they would get, and the longest one measured three feet. At this point, they are no longer edible but are good for show and tell.

Sow seeds directly outside around mid-May and seedlings will appear in about two weeks. I have also had numerous volunteers show up from last years remnants, usually in places where they were no longer wanted. The long bean plants like to vine and sprout sweat pea-like flowers that are beloved by ants.

Long beans can be used in stir-fry, soups and salads, or just about any recipe that requires green beans. Plant a few more seeds every couple of weeks in order to keep harvesting into early fall. Eventually, the plants seem to tire and stop producing.

Long beans are a staple at Asian markets and are now frequently found at farmer's markets, as well. Next year I plan to grow a variety of long bean called "Chinese Red Noodle", available at Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds.