garden! and juice.

The heat has not been kind to our flowers and garden (or the forests in BC, for that matter). The lettuce has died, our squash plants are fried. The broccoli bolted. What can you do?

We have a surprise in our garden this year - sunflowers. The birds have been dropping seeds in the garden from our feeders, and now we've got some lovely sunflowers growing. I hope they do it again next year.



This tangled mass is our tomato patch. So far we've harvested maybe a handful and a half of cherry tomatos, and there are tons of little green tomatos, and lots of blossoms to go. The Super Fantastic plant has produced lots of good sized green tomatos. Hoping they start to redden soon, but then again I do love Fried Green Tomato Sandwiches, so I'll be ok. There are also some small heirloom tomato plants hiding in there, Black something, or something Black.



My potato plants! After the sunflowers this makes me the happiest in the garden.


The herb and onion section.


The surprise of the garden this year - peas! Scott planted these on impulse and neither of us expected much. They are doing very well and 2 nights last week we stood over the plants, snacking on our delicious pea bounty.


The raspberry plants and hanging in there, but are still really small. We added another plant to pump up the volume.


Another experiment of Scott's - carrots. He planted these late, so we'll see what happens. But they are off to a good start.


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I love juice and smoothies and they are so easy to make at home. At least 3 or 4 days a week I try to make a smoothie to take to work with me. Here are 3 of my current favorites.


This one took me by surprise, how much I liked it. You need a juicer, which I have been using less lately cause it's a pain to clean, but it's always worth it.

Strawberry and Grapefruit
adapted from Thirst by Nigel Slater

1/2 large grapefruit, rind removed
1 orange, rind removed
10 strawberries

Juice the 3 fruits together, stir and drink.


The next one I don't have a photo of, but it's my favorite because you can change it up. All you need is one part fruit (my favorites are strawberry, raspberry or pineapple) to two parts apple juice. If the fruit is fresh, I'll add a couple of ice cubes. If the fruit is frozen then I omit the ice. Yum yum yum.

This is the best photo I have of this last one, because the minute it came out of the Magic Bullet we drank it all. This one is heavy on the sugar, so we don't have this often, but it's so refreshing.

Lemon Lime Slush
Rachael Ray

1/4 cup boiling water
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon grated lemon peel, plus 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice and 1 lemon slice (I omitted the peel and the slice)
1/2 teaspoon grated lime peel, plus 1/4 cup fresh lime juice and 1 lime slice (I omitted the peel and the slice)
2 cups ice cubes

Using a blender, mix the boiling water, sugar, lemon peel and lime peel until the sugar is dissolved, about 15 seconds. Add the lemon juice, lime juice and ice cubes and blend on high speed until slushy, about 15 seconds. Serve with the lemon and lime slices.