Oh THAT's not suggestive

First cucumber today--although something isn't quite right with it.  I think it'll be ok on the inside, but I'm not sure what is crawling all over it and making it ugly...  Lucky I ordered the Sunset Western Gardening book yesterday.

Woop there it is!

Eggplant with miso sauce

The Mark Bittman book said that Japanese people traditionally boil the eggplant for this tasty dish.  Naoko says not so, but it was still quite tasty.  Next time I'll grill the eggplant and add a little tofu.  Poor Gordon.  

Ah HA!

Gordon's mom, Karen, solved the bean mystery.  They are yellow beans!  We ate them last night for dinner and they were sweet and delicious.  We also ate one of the radishes.  It was too spicy for me, but Gordon liked it.  Now we're down to one radish.  Karen says we can plant more.  Maybe I'll look for a milder variety.

OOOH Labels!

The labels for the plum preserves arrived today!  I'm so pleased with them I have to share--even though they were supposed to be a surprise for Christmas.  Now I want to order labels for everything.  I'm mobbin' tha niznext set wizzy be fo' tha pumpkin chutney we makes wit our lovely pumpkin.

The unvegetable garden

Gordon and I spent a couple of hours working in the rest of the Garden on Sunday.   It's looking quite lovely.  We're making big plans for the upper deck!

Beans and Radishes

I still don't know when to pick my radishes...

And I have a lot of yellowy beans that are the right size but not turning green.  Not sure when they'll be ready.

CRAZY Spaghetti Squash

I am gonna have a lot of spaghetti squash.  Not only did I plant like six plants--because I had em...but each one is doing really well.  Happy Spaghetti squash birthday to EVERYONE I know!

It's a REAL pumpkin!

This guy is amazing.  I love to see him look more and more like a pumpkin every day.  How exciting.  I'm already thinking of what I'm going to do with him.

Other vegetables are looking quite mature as well these days....

Garden News

On Friday I tried to trim back some of the monster vines, and for about a day it seemed like I had them under control, but two days later and it looks like nothing happened.

On other fronts, I harvested my first lovely deep purple Japanese eggplant today.  Gordon won't be thrilled, but I am!  

It seems I'm going to have a bumper crop of spaghetti squash.  And the yellow zucchini appears to be dying, but I have no idea what to do about it.  Maybe I should take it out before it affects the other plants...