Delicious Dumplings

One week left!  School resumes next week!  Where did the time go?

The weather was lovely today, so we intended to have an outdoor lunch.  Then the bees showed up.  Wasps, mostly.  We do not like them.  We ate inside.

It was delicious.  All three lunches were identical; only one is shown.

Today we had seafood dumplings (kinda steamed, kinda pan fried) in our favourite, romaine lettuce.  The cherry tomatoes and purple carrots are fresh from the garden.  I steamed the broccoli today.  It seems to have made the colour more vibrant.  The orange bell pepper is not from the garden, but is local, and so are the free-stone peach slices.

Garden Week 13

I found the sunflowers!

Way back at the beginning of the summer, I planted sunflowers in the window box.  One of them even came up, a little.  Remember?  Since there was no sign of the others, I assumed the seeds were duds.

I was wrong.

My garden has been altered.  By (I think) a chipmunk.  Or possibly a squirrel.  We've seen several chipmunks eating the cherry tomatoes in the garden, and I've had some plants spring up where I didn't plant them before.  This time, the sunflowers are beside the driveway.  They look rather nice there.  Perhaps the mystery garden re-arranger had a good idea.

In other garden news, the peas are done, beans nearly finished, lettuces all gone to seed, basil flowering, mint trying to escape.  The cabbages are starting to form, the cauliflower is forming a teeny-tiny head, and the broccoli shows no sign of anything other than leaves.

The oregano continues to thrive.

Garden Week 12

"....and it exploded!"
(One of my favourite lines from the movie Galaxy Quest, spoken by the character Teb.)

Well, Stella kinda has.  She has also produced an abundance of cherry tomatoes.  I think the oregano had something to do with it.

Yes, the oregano I've been whining about all this time.

I know.  Don't look at me like that.
 
The oregano has produced lots of flowers.  These have drawn all kinds of bees.  The bees are doing lots of pollination.  So, we have lots of tomatoes, and lots of beans.

Garden Week 10 &11

Hi there!  Did you miss the garden posts?

We were travelling last week, and part of this week.  Many thanks to EveningGoose and Sneopack for watering our plants while we were away! The planters lived! Yay!
I guess this region got not a lot of rain while we were camping.  We were in a tent, so of course it rained quite a bit where we were.  Peanut was delighted.  She got to show off the skills she'd acquired at camp.   She built a shelter with a tarp, and got to build and start the campfire.

The beans in the window box have even produced some slender green beans.  The buttercrunch lettuce is doing well.  The basils are doing well.  The romaine seems to have exploded over the past few days, and is now going to seed.
The pea plants in the windowbox have just about reached the end of their lives, I think.  Yesterday I scared a chipmunk who was trying to remove a peapod.  He managed to rip a section of vine off, and left it on the deck when he ran away.

Bunwich

No, it's not made with bunnies!  George is fine, thank you.  See?  Here he is with a friend the girls have named Dandelion:

The bunwich was the girls' lunch on Friday.  I was feeling very, very guilty last week.  The girls are at a day camp, also attended by friend-of-the-blog Evening Goose's son, Name-to-follow.  He's chosen a cool alias, but alas I can't remember it right now.

Anyway, Darling Husband had been preparing the lunches last week.  Friday came and we realized he'd done all of them!  This was not fair!  Plus, I had no new food content for the blog...

It's a sandwich.  Yes, for the girls who don't like sandwiches.  But it's on a bun!  Yes, a sesame seed topped bun.  It may even have come out of a bag with the word "Hamburger" on it. 

The bunwich is made with ham and garden fresh lettuce, and accompanied by a garden-fresh tomato. (From Stella! Yay!)  The girls also have green seedless grapes and slices of yellow bell pepper.  While we do have wild grape vines in the yard, we won't be getting grapes from them ever.  I may be able to harvest some leaves from them next year, when the vines are a little larger.

Update - July 13, 2011
Evening Goose's son goes by Sneopack.

Cute Culprit

Look at this guy:

Sweet, innocent little bunny-wunny, right?  A fluffy little bundle of Awwwwww?

Ha!  That's just what he wants you to think!

I was chopping some peppers for dinner the other night, and out of the corner of my eye, saw something brownish moving on the deck.  I startled it when I moved toward the door.  The soft brown thing bounded down the stairs and ducked around the yew tree.  I grabbed my camera, totally expecting to get absolutely nothing. 

Instead I found Mr. BigEyes here, pretending to be a bunny shaped statue near some clover.  Acting all innocent.  Like he knew nothing about the two (2!) Pea Knight plants that were now totally missing from the flower box on the deck.  Eaten all the way down!  GAH!

On the bright side, he doesn't like basil.  Or oregano.

(No, I don't know for sure if it's a boy bunny or a  girl bunny.)