More salad fixins

Various lettuces (and other things)

Spinach

Even if the tomatoes take a hit, we should have plenty of salad greens by Christmas. I'm not sure which kinds of lettuces are coming up in the picture to the left, but in addition to the ubiquitous nasturtiums, I see several tomato seedlings and I think a potato growing in their midst. Because spinach doesn't sprout very readily, at least for me, I started seedlings in peat pots a few weeks ago and moved them outside once they sprouted. Now that true leaves are appearing, it looks like I will actually have some spinach this year.

This little mandarin orange tree is loaded with fruit. In the winter months, when we generally don't have tomatoes, I like to use citrus sections in green salads. We should have plenty from this tree!

And the race is on...

As I continue to harvest way more eggplant than I can use or give away, there are dozens of green tomatoes on the surviving tomato plants. These include Roma, Early Girl, one of the heat-adapted varieties, a mystery plant with oddly shaped fruit that came up on its on, and a grape tomato.

The problem is that tomatoes ripen very slowly due to the shorter days of fall. There's been very little change in the color or size of the ones above for weeks, and temperatures are dipping into the forties at night. If we wind up having freezing temperatures in December, that will be the end of them. If mild weather continues for another month, we may have fresh tomatoes on the table for our Christmas dinner.

Only time will tell.

Plumeria- lots of leaves but no flowers.

We lost several of our plumerias last year due to frost damage. This one in particular had grown too tall to be transported into the garage, and the frost warnings weren't that severe. It lost about half its height and came back later than usual in the spring, but has leafed out nicely and really looks better than it did when it was bigger. Unfortunately, it hasn't bloomed yet and I expect it probably won't before it goes dormant for the winter.

So if you want to see our plumeria flowering, you'll have to go here and here.

Time to squeeze the key limes

Key lime tree

I'm not sure how old our Key lime tree is, but it is very prolific. Back when we planted it, I didn't consider that there was a size difference between Key limes and the fruit one usually sees labeled "lime" in grocery stores. The taste is similar, but Key limes are much smaller; they're ping-pong ball size or slightly larger. Also known as Mexican limes they're often served as a garnish for Mexican beers. When fully ripe, they are yellow rather than green.

Average-sized key lime

Yesterday we picked quite a few, and today I decided to juice them for limeade. It's a time consuming process because it takes about 100 of them to equal a pint of juice.

A sink full of limes

First, I threw them all in the sink to wash them. There are a few of the larger Bearrs limes in this batch, too.

Juicing limes

Then I cut them in half and started juicing. I've found that this kind of hand juicer works better on smaller fruits than the electric juicer I use for lemons, Bearrs limes, and oranges.

The juice of about 200 limes

It took about an hour to juice them all, and I got about 4 cups of juice...

Future compost

...and a big bowlful of rinds, which I'll pulverize in our Vitamix and recycle into the garden as compost.

Fresh limeade!

To make limeade, I used about 1 1/2 cups of sugar, 2 cups of juice, and 6 cups of water. It's really a "to taste" kind of thing, but this yielded what to me was a tasty glass of limeade. Cheers!

Taking the narrow road

Snap peas and nasturtiums

The snap peas are about three to four inches high now, and are in some danger of being distracted from their trellis by nasturtiums. Attractive as I know the nasturtiums will be when blooming, I probably need to go and remove them from the pea-growing area. Otherwise the peas will follow the path of least resistance and snake their tendrils around the nasturtiums instead of climbing the trellis as I intended. The result will be a tangled mess, and I'll wind up breaking the delicate pea vines at harvest time.

As sometimes happens when I'm wandering in the garden, my thoughts turn philosophical. Isn't that how life often works? Taking the easy way...the path of least resistance... often seems very attractive, yet it can lead to consequences that are not so attractive.

I think the key is thinking ahead. What is it I want to happen? If I want a harvest of peas, the nasturtiums (not to mention the hollyhocks) that sprouted here are going to have to go.

The peas can't think for themselves, or plan ahead. But I can. And sometimes I need to do things not because they are easy or attractive, but because they are right.

A little fall of rain

 We'll take all the rain we can get here.

Recovering roses

Our climbing roses seem none the worse for the wear after being blown down a few days ago. All our roses are getting a second wind after the heat of the summer. The blooms aren't quite as big or as prolific as they were in the spring, but we should see blooms well into December. In January, we'll prune them back severely to force them into dormancy so they can rest up before the cycle begins again.

"Don Juan" climbing rose

"Iceberg" climbing rose

Bearrs limes by the dozen, key limes by the score

Key limes

There must be hundreds of Key (Mexican) limes ripening on this tree. They are a pain in the neck to juice because they are so small. The best device I found for this purpose looks similar to a garlic press, but it's still time consuming to collect enough juice for any useful purpose. I have yet to make a key lime pie.

Bearrs limes

Our Bearrs lime tree is younger and there are probably a couple dozen limes on it this year. These are the larger, lemon-sized limes that can be juiced in an electric juicer, and they will most likely become limeade.