Garden Delights

OK, I know I keep posting pics of my garden. But please indulge me. After so many years of wanting to have a real garden and being stuck on apartment patios with no sun, I finally can put plants in the ground! It really makes a difference. So does good sunshine and water.

My herbs overwintered inside, but once it finally got warm out, I potted them all together in this awesome soil. They almost got drowned in a few long weeks of rain, but they are now vibrant and doing great.


You can see parsley, rosemary, and basil here.


The basil is especially abundant. Oooh, it smells so good when you brush up against it! And all the herbs are so handy to cook with.


Here are a few of my tomato bushes. I did have problems with several of my beauties getting mushy from too much rain right before they were ready to be picked :( But the ones that weren't mushy have been yummy! I have some large round tomatoes and a roma plant. The romas taste good but aren't juicy really. I prefer the "regular" tomatoes when I can get them before they get spots! I adore the smell of tomato plants.


My collard patch. Grasshoppers keep attacking them and making the large leaves into lacy fans. That sounds pretty, but it's actually really annoying when most of the leaf is eaten up! I have to keep up my spraying against the pests. Maybe I can continue the fight tomorrow...


Here is my happy flower garden! I had hoped it would have many more flowers, but they are a steady set of blooms and I can have a fresh vase of flowers in the house most of the time. Most are zinnias, with some tall marigolds, a few sunflowers and the occasional unknown-to-me flower.


A close up of a lovely pink zinnia. I have red, orange, pink and purple zinnias, if I am not forgetting any of them. I really love these flowers. The gorgeous concentric circles, the little, tender furled petals around the center, the rich velvet colors, how long they last, and how quickly they bloom. And they are so cheerful!


A really stunning lacy marigold. This one is on a tall plant - so unlike the short bushy ones I plant along the perimeter of my veggie garden to fend off pests (which they don't actually seem to do...)


I planted two bare root roses in a container and they have really done great their first year. They are a gorgeous orange at first, then lighten as they mature to gold and finally to a yellow. Here is one that is fully bloomed. They smell glorious too! I would love to have a bunch of roses one day, with lots of bright colors and fragrances and some that climb. Tennessee seems to do well with roses, so that's been great. Actually, Tennessee is much friendlier for growing than Florida or Texas were for me. Again, it helps a lot to actually put stuff in the ground. My dad has a huge bounding garden in Texas, but it is a lot of work keeping it from dying in heat.

The flower bed I tried to start from seeds at the front of the house just hasn't done much. There are about four zinnias coming up. Very disappointing. It wasn't turned over like the garden patch was, so I guess there wasn't as much for roots to take hold of. But I think I'll keep trying with it once I have a little funding to try again. It gets partial shade, so it is quite different from the side garden.

OK, I have to confess that our mower stopped working. It's so disappointing. I got a new spark plug and cleaned the outside of the engine as well as I could. But no luck. Our grass got quite high in places before we had a chance to borrow a neighbor's mower. I really don't like mowing! My roommate, Missy, got busy and did all of our mowing. So now it's my turn. I just wish it weren't 100 degrees outside!!!

The Perfect Weekend Breakfast

This is my ideal weekend breakfast:

Ingredients:

1. Gorgeous flowers from my own garden - the roses actually SMELL like ROSES unlike supermarket ones that smell like air conditioning.

2. A book I am enjoying, on my book stand from college, so I can read with fork and knife in hand.

3. Cute napkin (this one has a "T" on it...for "Tina". Wild, I know!) I got this for cheap at TJ Maxx.

4. Fresh hot coffee. The weekends are the only times I have coffee in the morning at home. On weekdays, I wait to have it at the office.

5. Bacon. My favorite is a nitrate/nitrate free, natural dry rubbed type you can get at Trader Joe's or Whole Foods - it is 40% less fat than regular bacon but it is more of a "real" bacon than "regular" bacon anyway!


This weekend's breakfast was the more easily available center cut bacon. Still usually 1/3 less fat and pretty good taste.

6. Over easy egg and buttered toast. These go together. This one got too hard in the middle. But what I like best to do is to pierce the yolk and squidge it around on the toast like it's jelly, then put the mangled egg white remains over the yolk, and eat it. An open-faced egg sandwich. These are cage-free brown Egg-Lands' Best eggs. They are so good and good for you! Much less cholesterol than usual eggs.


7. Behind me, a window, so I can read with natural light.

8. To the side of me, my parakeets, talking and singing while I eat.

9. Below me, my dog Sean, waiting for the meal to be over so he can lick the plate. He knows the sound of me putting down the silverware. It says, "Tina is done. Now I can lick!"

10. Off in the hallway or on the hardwood floor in front of me, Meg lays, wondering when she is going to get any attention.

11. NO CLOCK WATCHING!!!! I love not wearing a watch as much as possible on the weekends. This is an integral part of an ideal breakfast. Drinking my coffee slowly as I read. Finishing up when I want to get up, and not before.

12. Did I mention another important part of the ideal breakfast is sleeping in?

There you have it. My ideal breakfast. At least when I'm making it at home. If I'm out, I wrestle with also wanting pancakes (blueberry or chocolate chip?) and biscuits with sausage gravy and maybe some grits. MMMMM. I like breakfast!