June 30, 2012 -- no water

As result of storm last night we have no power and therefore no water. So I put some tomatoes in a glass bowl and added them to windowsill with an arrangement from another day.  I'm also working on battery power, so this post must be short! 

June 29, 2012 -- green shouldered tomatoes, etc.

I guess you can tell what's here: ripe tomatoes, a little bit of basil (in red vase), and a green pepper. They are just so pretty to look at, although this display started differently. I had planned to just display some tomatoes with "green shoulders," because I heard a piece about them on the radio yesterday. Evidently, lots of heirloom tomatoes have green shoulders (tops that don't turn red when the rest of the tomato does). This trait, so the expert said, has been bred out of most modern tomatoes, because consumers want an all-red, perfectly round tomato. But it has been discovered that older varieties, which are often misshappen and have green-shoulders, taste better than newer varieties because all that cholorphyll on top is helping the rest of the tomato develop its sugars. Anyway, I now see green shouldered tomatoes, like the ones below, in a new light

June 28, 2012 -- hot and wilty

These are some materials I've been wanting to harvest for a windowsill arrangement (my first sunflower, from a self-seeded plant, and a droopy, lime-green amaranth), but today was the day that they said "cut me!" (There are also a couple of orange daylily flowers and some foliage from daisy wingstem in this bottle, which you can't even see in the photo.) The amaranth flower scape is so long and droopy that this had to be displayed on the second tier of the window. And the irregular, struggling sunflower seems perfectly symbolic of this hot and challenging day.  Over the course of the past week I've battled yellow jackets (5 stings that left my hands looking like catchers' mitts) and a copperhead that refused to be killed. So wilty flowers seem like the worst of my worries, but .... still... I wish we were both less challenged.

June 27, 2012 -- blue ageratum, garlic, and basil

This is a vase of Blue Horizon ageratum nested in a larger vase with basil in it (so that it looks like the basil skirts the bottom of the ageratum). The wacky stems stretching out in several directions are garlic flowers.

There is also some Queen Anne's lace emergaing from the top of this arrangement, but it's cut off in the photo (and it should probably be removed from the arrangement!).

June 26, 2012 -- elephant garlic

I harvested lots of garlic today. Then I looked up the directions as to how and when I should have done it!  Oops. Seems I should have cut the scapes back weeks before harvesting the bulbs. Anyway, there were lots of flower heads with strangely twisted stalks and I put them in vases all over the kitchen.  Here's one that went in the windowsill.

There's also one gravid daylily bud in this vase. It's a leftover from a previous arrangement.

June 25, 2012 -- bulbing fennel

I had harvested this fennel for my daughter, and put it in a vase of water to keep it fresh, when I realized this could be my windowsill arrangement today.  The fennel foliage is so beautiful and the "bulbs" so interesting. 

Truth be told, I have no idea whether or not I'm harvesting this at the right time, and I'm only half certain that the bulbs are the modified stems just above the roots.  A friend served me a chicken dish with fennel bulbs in it last year and that prompted me to grow "bulbing fennel" this year. Here are what I believe to be the "bulbs"  up close.

June 24, 2012 -- butter n'eggs

This post is for Kim Cannon, from Australia, who spent the year 1989 with our family as an exchange student. Never was there a better exchange student/host family fit. Kim's father was a biologist, which may explain why, as a teenager, Kim was willing to spend a day with me at Flower Camp (then Higher Ground) messing around with plants. She and I moved several clumps of this beautiful little wildflower, Butter n' Eggs, to 6 different places on the property. At the time, I thought our chances of any of them succeeeding were pretty low.  Truth be told, the chances of anything succeeding at Flower Camp, given the soil, the exposure, the critters, the neglect, are pretty low. But here we are 23 years later and today I could have harvested these diminutive wildflowers from any one of three places. Three out of six:  not bad, Kim! 

There are some river oats in this bottle, too. And here's a closeup of Butter n'Eggs.