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It is a beautiful autumn weekend in Niagara and we spent some time out working in the garden yesterday. This time of year means there is a lot of clean-up to do, but we also got one final harvest — we dug up two big buckets of potatoes! (If anyone wants any just let me know…seriously)
We decided to make potato soup today. We wanted a basic, classic potato soup. We looked online and in cook books for a recipe that we liked, but most were a bit too tarted up — rice in potato soup? I don’t think so! We came up with the following recipe and were quite pleased with how it turned out.
-6 medium potatoes, peeled & chopped
-1/3 c. onion, chopped
-1 clove of garlic, chopped
-1 900ml container of veggie stock
-1 Tbsp. cooking oil
-2/3 c. milk
-1 Tbsp. butter
-1 Tbsp. flour
Saute onions in oil until translucent. Add in potato and garlic. Cook for 5 minutes and then add veggie stock. Cover and let simmer until potatoes are soft.
In a separate pot melt butter and add in flour. Use a whisk to smooth out the lumps. Take 1 c. of the veggie stock from the pot of simmering potatoes and add to the butter/flour mixture. Stir until thickened.
Add flour/butter mixture to the pot with potatoes. Blend soup until smooth with an immersion blender. Blend in milk. Serve with grated cheese and (meatless) bacon bits.
It has been a beautiful summer day in Niagara! (and, as this article discusses, it is about freakin’ time!) This evening was one of the first nights we have been able to sit out and enjoy the weather and the garden.
As we were sitting out on the back patio, enjoying a drink and the summer evening, the most bizarre, yet lovely, thing happened. We saw a pair of hands emerge over the back fence, and then we watched as the disembodied hands lowered a bag down into our yard via a rope. We just sat in stunned silence as we watched the bag being lowered, but finally Laurie got up and went over to speak through the fence to the person dropping off the bag. Turns out it was the neighbour (who we’ve never met) sharing his garden bounty with us. Apparently he used to leave little bags of garden goodness on the fence for the previous owner of the house.
I love this neighbourhood!
Look what we discovered in the garden today!
As Guy Clark asked, “What would life be without homegrown tomatoes?”
When my beloved orange tabby cat, Taz, died a couple of years ago Nikki gave me a beautiful orange lily plant to commemorate his life and the happiness he brought so many of us. Each year when the first orange bloom opens I always stop and take a moment to remember one of the best cats that ever lived.
For some reason the transition from ASLE/Vancouver Island adventures back to normal day-to-day life in Niagara has been a tough one. I felt out of sorts all last week, and I’m sure it wasn’t just because of the difference in time zones. I guess it was a busy week — laundry, unpacking, getting caught up on emails and all the other things that pile up when one goes away.
Yesterday we decided to slow down and just spend the day out in the garden. It was wonderful and exactly what I needed to feel connected to this place again. We weeded, tidied, trimmed and planted. The last of the seedlings we started indoors are now in pots or in the herb garden. I’m sure I’ll never get over the sense of amazement I feel when I look at a happy, healthy plant in the garden and remember that a few months ago it was a tiny little seed planted with lots of hope in the makeshift greenhouse we rigged up in the living room.
I just read a news story about fake grass. I don’t know what to say.
I guess I could say something about how tired I am of this ridiculous obsession our society seems to have with perfectly uniform lawns. I could also say something about how so-called “weeds” like dandelions seem to be important for the health of bee populations, etc. I could probably also ponder the reasons why someone who doesn’t like to deal with plants bothers to live in a dwelling surrounded by yard.
I think instead I’ll take solace in a good book and dream of a day when more interesting approaches to gardening dominate our yards and neighborhoods.
UPDATED: Here is another story on the same theme. Sigh…
Ok, so articles like this one really irk me. If you don’t feel like clicking on the link I’ll summarize: the title is “Impatient Gardeners Lose Out to Jack Frost” and it goes on about some poor guy who “gambled” on planting early and “lost”. He didn’t lose because his plants were died of frost exposure, he “lost” because he had to go out and cover his plants with sheets the past two evenings when the GTA region got a little chilly overnight.
Dramatic overkill much?
It got chilly in Niagara too, so we covered the wee veggie plants with sheets. It took about 3 and a half minutes to cover them and the plants were protected. There is one lettuce plant that looks a little unhappy, but all the rest seem to have survived. I certainly don’t feel too hard done by and, as I previously posted, if the worst case scenario had happened, if the frost had zapped the life out of all the veggies we planted it still wouldn’t be as dramatic and dire as this reporter makes it sound.
This weekend we got some more veggies planted and we’ve now got rhubarb, grapes, raspberries, strawberries, potatoes, corn, beets, runner beans, garlic, onion, tomato, lettuce, red and yellow peppers, dill, mint and lavender growing. I still want to get some spinach and some basil in, although we are quickly running out of room.
Right now most of the garden is planted with seedlings we bought, but the seeds we started in the house are trucking along and hopefully we can plant them outdoors soon too. We’ve been hardening off the seedlings on an almost daily basis and transplanted some into bigger containers this weekend. Below is a snapshot I took during the transplanting activities. I call it “Tomato and Basil sandwich in the Making.” 
We harvested a whack (that is the technical term!) of rhubarb on the weekend. The scent of rhubarb pie, rhubarb chutney and rhubarb sauce lingers in the air as I write this. Yum!
And in other gardening news, I was delighted to hear that Gayla Trail (of You Grow Girl fame) will be a regular columnist in The Globe & Mail. This makes me want to renew my subscription to the paper!
