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About a year ago, we went walking around the neighborhood looking for interesting rocks for Derek’s collection. It was our second day of rock collecting and the kids were excited - we’d packed a special bag with equipment, our logbook to record the date and locations, digging tools and paintbrushes for excavations. After an intense walk down one street and up another, my bag already almost too heavy to carry, we turned the corner on a street with no houses. The north side of the terrain rose sharply from the street, with a house perched up at the top, and the south side dropped down into the forest. Just a little ways down the street the bluff turned into an impressive small cliff of red clay, with swaths of varying rocks and sediments. Jackpot! Lily immediately started scaling the small cliff, and Derek lingered to examine the geology right underneath her.

It happened too fast for me to think about the consequences. Next thing I knew, her foot dislodged a rock or mud ball about the size of a tennis ball, which fell right onto the peak of Derek’s forehead. His cry turned into a screams of fear and hysteria as bright red blood started dripping over his eyes. Our afternoon shattered, we went back home to wash off the blood and survey the damage. He was more scared than hurt, and the little cut healed up in no time, but he’d lost the desire to keep collecting rocks on the inclines around our house. We finished our collecting last year at the river, where he found some real treasures that he proudly presented in his blue-ribbon science fair project.

Today as we got home from the school there was a lull in the rain and I knew I had my chance. A few days ago the wild liatris started to bloom on the street on the way to my house. I’ve become obsessed with trying to create a native wildscape in my yard, and clearly these beauties are adapted for our soils. I told the kids we were going to go for a hike to collect seeds. They grumbled a bit until we started to pack the bag with the camera, extra batteries, ziplocks for those seeds and others we might want to collect, a journal to take notes, dog biscuits just in case we needed a bribe. We headed up the street, Lily running ahead to examine the flowers, Derek pausing frequently to gather rocks, Apricot straining on her leash to smell all the new smells.

The liatris isn’t in seed yet, but I’m determined to check on it at least every couple of days until it is. It’s even more gorgeous in person, and has a delicate, sweet scent. I’ve never seen as many of them as this year, I intend to facilitate spreading them even further.

By the time we’d passed the liatris the kids realized where we were headed and they started to get jazzed. Injury and fear long forgotten, we made our way back to the spot that had so enchanted them last year.

Today Derek christened the cliffs “Headcrack Mountain”. We collected many rocks, different colored clays, a flower that might be a wild oxalis. This time it was the rain dripping on our faces instead of blood that made us turn back, a much better ending for our expedition.

I’m experimenting with different ways to prepare my eggplant. This was yesterday’s harvest, along with some okra. I went ahead and harvested a few smaller ones because they were on the ends of branches I needed to trim on the plant, it’d become too sprawling and tree-like, and was making too much shade on my new little fennel patch:

Last night we tried it fried. I sliced them about 3/4 of an inch thick. I did not sweat them in salt first, since I knew the eggplant wouldn’t be bitter. I dipped the pieces in flour with a little Tony Chachere’s Creole seasoning. Then I dipped them in a mixture of beaten eggs, a little milk, and more Creole seasoning. Finally I patted them with a mix of 1/2 panko bread crumbs, 1/2 flour, and more Creole seasoning. We love Tony Chachere’s.

I put the slices in the fridge for 30 minutes or so to set the coating, then fried. Before frying:

After frying:

I also made a homemade ranch dressing for dipping. Derek liked it:

Lily said “is this your way of tricking us into eating more vegetables, by making them taste good?”:

It was good, the panko helps make the coating very crispy. Perhaps not the best possible fried eggplant yet, but a step in that direction.

After a very slow July and most of August, the garden is picking up again.

Here’s a Black Champion eggplant being true to it’s name. This is the exact same plant that I started from seed in the winter and was producing in the spring. I tried to get a shot that would capture just how many fruit are on it, and this is after I harvested two earlier this week! Definitely one of my top producers so far this year. Earlier this week we had them grilled, and it was divine. I sliced them about 3/4 inch thick then dipped them on both sides in extra virgin olive oil beaten with a little lemon juice, salt, and garlic, then put on skewers to cook. The flesh is so sweet, no trace of bitterness at all. It was heavenly. I had some leftovers to bring for lunch the next day and spent all morning drooling just thinking about it. Of course the kids were not quite as appreciative, but only because they adore fried eggplant and are trying to convince me to make it that way next time.

Unsurprisingly, Derek announced tonight after trying some fried okra that he’s really more of an eggplant fan. Lily and Zane on the other hand thought it was fantastic and it was gone in a flash. I wish I had more of it, but I’m only getting a few pods at a time from the three plants in the garden. After a year of observation, I’m pretty convinced that they’re in the shadiest part of the garden. Next year not only will I plant my okra in a sunnier spot, I’ll plant it outside of the fence as a part of the landscaping. Never having seen it grown before, I had no idea the plant was so handsome - large ornamental leaves, beautiful flowers. I will definitely do more of this variety, Hill Country okra, it makes very large pods with almost no slime. I also want to try a red variety, the entire plant is red and is quite attractive.

Here’s the plant flowering last week…

… and the pod that came from that flower, along with it’s neighbors. We ate these tonight::

Here’s a Poona Kheera cucumber I planted in mid July extending it’s reach outside the garden, with a Table Queen winter squash underneath on the left and some black-eyed peas on the right. I’m really looking forward to the cucumber, it gets rave reviews on the gardening forum I frequent and the fruit is just starting to develop. The squash is coming along nicely as well. The black-eyed peas produced decently, but I did not plant enough of them to have a proper pot of beans. Next time I do cowpeas I’m going to go for a vining type and hopefully be able to increase production in the same amount of garden space by going vertical.

This is a Sleeping Beauty melon, and the plant is going nuts. The vines cover a good quarter of the garden, mostly in the paths between rows, and it extends outside the fence. A few melons started to get big than stalled, so I’m really hoping this one reaches maturity. If not, there are lots of babies on the vines, hopefully a few will make it.

I’m a bit worried about the huge amounts of white flies that are all over my cucurbits. I had a cuke and two squashes that I pulled up today that were heavily infested. They never did produce anything for me, I planted them at the same time as the tomatoes earlier this year and the tomatoes shaded them out. When I first took the tomatoes down they started to recover, but this last week they became very sickly. The white flies are everywhere, on the melon, a sad summer squash that’s not doing all that well, the winter squash, even some on the mint, corn, and eggplants. I’m going to try setting yellow sticky traps for them tomorrow, once we dry up a bit from the much needed blessed rain we got today.

The only other excitement in the garden is that the red corn has tasselled and the silks are out, but I’m not real optimistic about their outcome. With only 5 stalks in total, only hand pollination will work and when I went to pollinate them it had just rained and I couldn’t get anything powdery and pollen-like to come out. I think this will be the last year I try corn for a while, it just takes up too much space for what you can expect to get out of it, even if I do pollinate them properly.

What is the rest of the family doing while I’m in the garden? Zane’s been working on the patio and on brewing beer (as you can see from his Facebook posts). I’ve been doing some landscaping on the patio too. Lily and Derek are enjoying school, and of course enjoying the dog, as usual:

Camps

Watering

Ruellia

Philodendron

New Patio

Swimming Lessons

Myrtle Beach, the highlight of the summer but devoid of pictures.

Dererk’s Bowling Birthday Party

Gardening

The vegetable garden is just starting to go again now. Pictures are from today.

Corn, Swiss chard, melon, sage.

On the right: eggplant, winter squash, cucumber, black-eyed peas that are starting to produce.

6 more days until school starts… sigh.

We are currently getting more tomatoes than we can eat. Today’s harvest was a bit more than normal, with so many of the larger tomatoes ripening. I pick them slightly under ripe and let them finish inside, if I leave them to ripen completely on the vine the bugs get to them:

That’s Fox Cherry, Arkansas Traveler, an unidentified larger red tomato, Yellow Pear tomatoes, and a Black Prince. They are all quite tasty. My favorite is the mild and sweet Arkansas Traveler, Zane likes the prolific Fox Cherry best.

This is the third season Lily participated in acting classes for the local community theater at the Bastrop Opera House. She loves being on stage, performing, singing, and making people laugh. The first season she was part of a beginner class that did a couple songs within a larger production. The second season she was in a very cute musical production, where she earned herself a solo in one of the performances. Naturally, after watching Lily perform for two seasons Derek decided he’d like to give acting a try. I signed both of them up for the spring classes/production.

Engela Edwards, the wonderful and kind director, choose a really cute script for this season: Peggy the Pint Sized Pirate, by by D. M. Bocaz-Larson. With pirates, sea monsters, mermaids and whales in it, the kids were thrilled. After a couple weeks of “auditions”, she selected the roles for the cast, with Lily in the coveted Sea Monster role, and Derek as the very silly pirate Sam the Smelly.

Immediately I began thinking about how I would make the Sea Monster costume. I had several ideas, but crucial, in my mind, was that the Sea Monster and Momma/Papa Sea Monster costumes should match in some fashion. I had tons of an icky olive green fabric leftover from old curtain swags, and I thought we could use those - I’d give some to the parent of the child playing the adult Sea Monster, and we’d both incorporate it into their costumes. Perfect.

I go to pick up the kids from rehearsal with the excess fabric, intending to drop it off with the child who’d been cast as the Papa Sea Monster. As I walk over to him, I over hear the conversation between he and Engela. “You know” she says to the boy “I really don’t think you’ll have enough time to do a costume change between your other role and the Papa Sea Monster part. I think you’re funnier as Bob the Brave, why don’t you stick with that one?”. The kid agreed and walked off. “So who’s going to play the adult Sea Monster?” I sputtered out. Ooops!

It’s four months later, and we had our last performance earlier this afternoon. The show was great, hilarious, all the kids did fantastic and had a good time doing it. I loved interacting with the kids and I especially enjoyed making the costumes, which in the end didn’t include that awful green fabric after all. Still, it’s highly unlikely that they’ll ever get me to do lines on stage again. I don’t really get stage fright or anything like that, but I just don’t love it the way the kids do. Next time I’ll be sticking to costumes and sets.

Here’s Derek as Sam the Smelly, on his pirate ship with his crew:

Lily the Sea Monster, about to sink another pirate ship:

Sam the Smelly hamming it up:

The Sea Monster talking to her Momma:

Momma Sea Monster contemplating pirate dinners:

Yesterday’s harvest, in front of the boy who loves cucumbers:

In the foreground is our weekly handful of Roma II Bush beans, left over from one of Lily’s early science fair experiments. They’ve been nice steady producers even in a less-than-ideal section of the garden bed.

The cucumber is an Yamato Extra Long, an Asian variety. It’s the second we picked and we haven’t eaten it yet, but the first was perfect, with thin skin and crisp flesh. The vines too are gorgeous, they’ve been covered with flowers for a few weeks now. I could easily see them planting them on an arbor as an ornamental:

This next beautiful flower is from a Black Champion eggplant, another Asian variety. I took the picture late last week, today there are more flowers opening and from this first flower the fruit is starting to swell:

In strictly ornamental flower news, I am completely in love with the Rose of Sharon in Derek’s bed and must plant more this fall. Notice how the flowers come in two different colors on the same plant!

Most of my focus has been on the tomatoes - keeping them supported, keeping them watered, trying to decide if I need to feed them or they’re getting too much nitrogen, trying to decide if I should prune them or not. There’s a wealth of information about how to care for tomatoes, with a lot of debate and disagreement. What I’m doing seems to be working so far - tonight we sampled our first four red ripe Fox Cherry tomatoes! Zane, Lily, our friend Joan and I each had one (Derek is not partial to tomatoes) and they were delectable! The vines are huge and covered in green fruit. This photo is to illustrate the support system I’m using at the recommendation of an idigger, I pounded in rebar for the 1/2 X 10 pvc piping, with twine strung across. I have to add more twine every few days to keep up with the growth:

The next photo is of one of my two Arkansas Traveler vines, it’s a variety that is supposed to hold up especially well in the southern heat.

We are looking forward to feasting on those soon!

There’s a lot going on in my garden lately. I’ve been resisting posting about my massive tomatoes on purpose, waiting for one to actually ripen and get eaten before I document the full saga of their life on earth. Likewise with the impressive cucumber vines. Frankly, the garden isn’t producing much right now, but the future does look promising.

Currently I get about a handful of Roma II Bush beans every week from a few rather small but happy-looking plants. The Swiss Chard isn’t looking it’s finest, but I’m sure it will recover. As per usual herbs are doing well. I’ve got enough sage and mint to feed the whole neighborhood, the borage is blooming, and the parsley is still there although it’s looking a bit ragged. My summer standby, basil, would be coming along nicely, if it were not being eaten!

Basil is one of those plants you do not expect to find bugs on. That intensely wonderful basil flavor is, in theory, produced by the plant as a defense against predators. To make matters worse, these evil, nasty, spring-roll savaging, pesto-preventing, DESTROYERS are… cute!

I turned for advice to the brilliant gardeners at the idigmygarden.com forums, my latest favorite internet hangout. Apparently this enchanting little bugger is likely an eastern lubber grasshopper, and not a welcome pest in any garden. Alas, it is now my quest to hunt down and slay each little cutie in an effort to prevent total annihilation of my beloved garden. Not an easy task, but who ever said a hero’s life was easy? Tomorrow at dusk, I go to war…

Lily has a brand-new hairdo:

Derek just lost another tooth:

Carol, Zane, and the animals remain unchanged… for now…

She’s adorable,silly,and lots of fun…. But she a so much nonsense!

Here’s a cute picture to make you laugh!

So as you can see she has goten much cuter!