An update – the garden’s not done yet! 10-30-24

Whew. This summer was interesting on so many levels. My contract job ended on July 31, and I immediately jumped into Canadiana Fest, a festival of all things Canadian that is the brainchild of a dear friend, Channon Mondoux. I am her right hand and things got VERY busy in August and September and I’ll admit my garden sufferered for it.

That said, I learned a lot about website management and development and managing social media platforms on the fly, and I found that I enjoyed it! So much so, that I am currently in college again at age 57 for web and graphic design. It will be nice to actually KNOW what I’m doing instead of Googling everything as it comes up. That worked, and I have indeed retained some of that knowledge, but being able to fully understand the Creative Cloud apps will keep me employed through retirement and beyond.

Now on to the garden. Because of the aforementioned demands on my time, my garden was not a focus for me this year. Between that and the weather and the ridiculous animal predation, I got exactly three tomatoes from the garden this year. You read that right. Three.

I did get potatoes!

And I got a LOT of garlic! This is but on example of the many, many cloves of garlic the stand I planted last fall produced. I cured both the potatoes and the garlic in my cold frame on screens. I jarred the garlic, and the potatoes will be eaten in the next week in a colorful roasted melange of carbo goodness.

Where the garden truly shone this year is in the herb beds. I had garlic chives, oregano, thyme, and other delights all season long. My porch pots are STILL producing heavily on parsley, chives, cilantro, and basil.

I cut the basil back hard a month or two back and you’d never know I did so, they have regrown so vigorously. I had a lot of good quality Parmesan Reggiano, so I decided to make pesto. Here’s the original pile of leaves.

After cleaning and sorting, this is what I had left.

I got out the food processor and whirled up the cheese, some good quality olive oil, and the basil.

Then I put it in ice cube trays and froze it. Come wintertime, I’ll pop one of these beauties into some pasta and feast on this taste of summer.

I’ve been happily picking parsley and cilantro to add to various things and I know that good quality dried spices like my beloved Penzey’s are fine, but nothing at all compares to fresh. Many dishes have been enlivened by something from the herb beds or the porch pots! I’m baking bread these days, so I see a basil cheese or cilantro jalapeno loaf in my future.

There are two volunteer tomatoes still holding on in the bed outside the back door. I’m giving them space and I hope I can get a fourth tomato without the jerkish animals taking a bite. I also have eggplant setting flowers a little late in the game, but I’m babying that along too. It’s been very mild in southwest Michigan so far this autumn, and I have hope this may last long enough for me to harvest a few things more.

I’ll leave you with some photos of the aurora borealis that has been a frequent visitor to southwest Michigan. It’s been unreal having this much activity and much of it can be seen with the naked eye, without looking at them through the night sight on my phone camera. There have been substorms that have painted the entire sky with dancing lights. I get my info from Michigan Storm Chasers, as they follow aurora development pretty closely. This has allowed me to see some pretty incredible lights that I never thought I’d see this far south in Michigan.