it’s a start…

April has been a very educational month! Last week was that wonderful Thai cooking class, yesterday was a day of garden lectures at one of my favorite local plant nurseries,The Great Outdoors. They offered a day-long free series of half-hour lecture/classes and I was lucky to have the ones I most wanted to attend bunched together at the end of the day.

I attended “vegetable gardening”, “herb gardening”, “native plants”, and “making fountains” (lots of fun and slightly splashy). Even better, I went with a friend, which always improves an activity!

So I am here to tell you that while I admire, greatly admire, folks who start pretty much everything from seed, I am a fan of buying reputable locally-grown guaranteed organically-raised (yes, fingers always crossed, but I trust these guys) plants to start my short-growing season central Texas garden.

small treasures

I mean, look, how can you not want to take all of these home with you? Here we explored Mexican oregano, several lavenders, sage, lemon balm, fennel, Greek oregano, lemon verbena, several thymes, chives, and a few other treasures – and you could (at this point, anyway) fit the whole garden on your lap! Looks like pesto, salads, and general mmmmm to me!

lovely nightshades

I showed restraint, though. I usually over-buy but this time I got away with nothing more than some barley pellets for my pond (more on that as the summer progresses) and a few ground cherries. These tomatillo cousins (you know I love those nightshades) grow looking like tiny paper lanterns, each with a slightly smoaller than cherry tomato-sized fruit inside. They are deep yellow to orange when ripe and they are sweet as sugar. I’ll keep you posted on their progress as the season moves along!

patience, patience...

And, speaking of small, I ate the first cherry tomato from this year’s vines two days ago. I really meant to take a picture but, well, I just ate it. It was wonderful. All six of the plants are coming along nicely so far, although some have more flowers than others. I have no idea if this is a varietal thing or if some get a few more minutes of sun or whatever. No worries, I’m turning the pots from time to time and they all seem happy. Mmmm…

So, no specific recipe this week. Let me know how your gardens are doing and what you are planting this season, OK? Meantime I have to go repair the coon damage to my pond (again… sigh) as best I can. I’m happy to provide them water, but do they really have to pull out all the plants every night? My water lilies are looking kinda sad…

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