from the garden

This is my garden. We don’t actually have any “yard” to speak of in our backyard – the redwood deck you see covers almost the whole yard, and the corner that doesn’t have deck on it has giant overhanging trees that provide 100% shade. So, we can’t have a plant-it-in-the-ground type of garden. On the little table, we have thyme, marjoram, oregano, basil, and sage, as well as a red bell pepper plant and an heirloom tomato “Mr. Stripey” plant. On the deck in the rectangular containers we have bell peppers, “patio” tomatoes (roma sized), and yellow pear tomatoes. That plant is just going crazy producing these amazingly sweet bite sized yellow tomatoes. Almost more than I can eat. (Almost). At the top right is a rosemary plant – the last one remaining from our wedding. Out of the picture to the right is our Satsuma orange tree. I’m completely shocked that I’ve been able to grow anything at all to fruition. Normally I accidentally kill everything.

I have two peppers on this plant, and this one has started to turn red. I’m a little confused by this process. I bought this as a “red bell pepper plant.” The rest of my plants are “green bell pepper plants.” But I always thought that a red bell pepper was just a green bell pepper that had further ripened.

These are two unripened yellow pear tomatoes. They’ll probably turn yellow in about 4-5 days. See how, in the one on the left, it looks like it’s in two sections? Like it has an abdomen and a thorax? Like an insect? This really kind of freaked me out at first. I thought I was growing mutant tomatoes. It turns out that the little “waist”-like midsection fills out as the tomato gets bigger.

Last night I made cheese ravioli (ok, Mr. Sam’s Club made my cheese ravioli) with a sauce of patio tomatoes from my garden, garlic, Vidalia onion, olive oil, white wine, and a mixture of basil, oregano, sage, thyme, and marjoram from my garden. YUM.