Early Spring Greenhouse Gardening

I went away several weeks leaving a snow mound on the north side of the house this big -

And now it's this big -

Most of the snow in sun exposed areas melted.

I need to remind you that I live at 8000 feet outside of Denver, so kinda in the mountains (tho many of Colorado mountains are over 14,000 feet and Denver is a mile high). So while most of you are starting your gardens, mine starts in the greenhouse to get a head start. And outside I do lots of tricking mother nature with creating mini-climate zones with plastic, rocks, walls-of-water ... Wish it were easier, but then I don't get bugs. Now with an electric fence I don't have the elk and deer pests, but just pocket gophers and voles. I could write my own $64 Tomato book! Lots of stories.

Hot houses on south of greenhouse

Last fall I planted salady seeds in my hot houses that were on the south side of my greenhouse and had been full of tomatoes all summer. I hooked a soaker hose to a barrel that gets the roof-run-off and ran it down the center of the hot houses. Then we covered those with another plastic hung from the roof edge for shedding snow. That plastic finally ripped off with all the extreme winds we've had this winter. But I'd left this area to do what it wanted all winter and just opened them up when we got home. Voila! lots of snow peas on the edges and clumps of salad varieties. So I separated their roots and replanted the space adding some radish seeds.

Replanted clumped lettuces

I had extra lettuces, so planted them in pots in my greenhouse. I can't start planting my outside garden with these early seeds until early May, so this will give us early salad pickings. Two winters ago I had done it all winter in my greenhouse and it was too labor intensive and expense of heating, grow lights, and watering - not worth it!

My greenhouse set up - heat coils and grow-lights

I do overwinter my deck flower pots (which I add annuals to each new summer season) and a fig and lime tree and some herbs. I've had a seedless grapevine growing in here for years and the jackmani clematis is taking off.

Lemon and Fig trees and herbs overwintered in greenhouse

Seedless grapevine with twining Jackmani clematis in greenhouse

Overwintered deck's flower pots in greenhouse - and door into our greatroom

These potato pot pics are from several years ago. Growing potatoes in pots are supposed to work great. I'll try it again this year, but did not buy seed potatoes - using what's sprouting in my pantry. And the key to my problem will be putting them where I can water them easier - thus more often. Where I had them before, I now planted blackberries, more strawberries and interplant with purslane, kale, mustard greens, and of coarse flowers.

Potatoes in bottom of 15 gallon pot. Will keep adding dirt as they grow to the top.

My greenhouse a couple years ago. There's a sink to the right.

Click here for past greenhouse post.

I have lots more seeds to plant. My youngest is getting married in our meadow this summer, with his brother marrying them, so I'm starting more flowers. BUT how to have them flowering at the time will be the trick. I'm going to research. Will most likely keep repotting to larger pots and force feeding them more nutrients. We'll see ...

Posted at Homestead Barn Hop,  Healthy Home Economist, Food Renegade, and Gnowfglins. 

Spring Fever

I've got the fever ... to get out in the dirt! I took these pictures early this morning and my hands were freezing as time wore on. But today is supposed to get up in the mid 60's, so I'm heading out soon to clean up all my perennial beds. I'm going to pull around a tarp the take my giant scissors, cutting back all the dead top growth, and rake the beds. I've got a lot of wildflower seeds - mainly annuals - to reseed some beds.

"Glory of Snow" bulbs in my grass

I used our electric drill and a 1/2" bit to plant 100's of the above flower bulbs in our grass several years ago. I guess that's one way to aerate!

Tansy

To the left of the above tansy plants are my first two perennial beds to the east of our front porch. Monte had brought the soil up from the woods. Wild raspberries came with the soil and I let them grow along with my flowers. So far they are the better producers of raspberries than the ones I've purposely planted. We freeze quite a bit of raspberries. The yellow flower heads of tansy dry beautifully.

Nights still freezing - frozen bird bath and old Sunflower head

I've not successfully planted sunflower seeds and gotten great plants. The chipmunks do the better job of planting birdseed sunflowers. All I have to do is pull out the extra hundreds!

The Herb Garden

I made herb labels several years ago out of Sculpey dough you bake in the oven rather than buy the expensive ones at the nursery. They're just tied with twine to bamboo poles. I could see the winter savory, thyme, sage, lemon balm, and oregano starting to send out green shoots. Behind this bed the tarragon, lavender, and sweet cicely bushes are popping up too. And then there's the crab apple tree ready to burst into bloom - by the end of the summer it's totally entwined with a clematis vine.

Chives readying to bloom

Autumn Sedum Joy beautifies the winter garden

Forsythia starting to bloom

Greenhouse garden seedlings started

I started my seedlings a bit late this year, but it'll be ok. There's broccoli, cauliflower, kale varieties, tomatoes, and then nasturtiums, clary sage, marigolds ... I've got to start basil, winter squash and more things next.

Clematis entwined in grapevine in greenhouse and green tomatoes

Grapevine needing to be pruned - starting to invade potted plants

Garden Seeds Ordered

I've ordered my seeds for this coming year's gardening, have you? The seed catalogs start coming in for the new year and every January I love planning my garden. I evaluate past years' gardening. With my short, cool growing conditions, Johnny's Seeds, in Maine, develops seeds that produce well for me. I have garden drawings and notes going back over many years (this is the longest I've ever, in my lifetime, lived in one home - wow ... twenty-six years!). Every year there's things I tell myself to never waste my time on again!

Speaking of Johnny's Seeds ... In Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, Johnny's is mentioned amongst many others as having seeds from Monsanto. When you do the research you find that Johnny's is owned by the employees and any seeds that had been used from a source that got sold to Monsanto are being phased out.

I'll be starting seeds in the greenhouse pretty soon. This winter I've successfully got lettuces, green onions, and herbs still growing. A fig tree is looking beautiful and tomatoes are setting fruit! I'm going to have to vacuum the brown grapevine leaves, as it'll be putting out new growth soon. We froze most of the grapes, but left some to dry as raisins, and guests love finding them and eating!

Speaking of guests, it's been another week of men underfoot! - geology related. Rick's an investor, owning coffee shops in California, but I'm not letting him make me coffee any more! He uses three to four times more coffee grounds than me - I buy them freshly roasted at my local store - I thought I had enough for a month! His coffee keeps me awake all night!!! No wonder he's a bundle of energy!

They all left for the airport an hour ago. One to Virginia, another on to Vancouver, and Rick back to California. We had Italian Monday night with spreading pesto on chicken breasts and rolling them with prosciutto - I thought them too dry and salty. Tuesday lunch was a potato leek soup with Kielbasa; supper, lasagna. Sourdough pancakes were served for a breakfast with raspberries from our garden (in the freezer) and homemade yogurt, - and since I make extra, liking them as a snack with almond butter and raspberry jam, they ended up sticking them in the toaster for another breakfast. Then of course there's always my homemade bread. I wasn't going to be around, and them doing other things off and on for two days, so the lasanga and soup were great for them to have leftover. Today's lunch was fish tacos. I marinated mahi-mahi in 1/2 cup each Tequila and lime juice with some chili powder, sugar and salt - then smoked/grilled it.

My food and our hospitality is greatly appreciated and even with winter's garden dormancy, the beautiful rock garden walls, fencing, bamboo ornamentation and dried stalks all add to our home's wonderful retreat atmosphere where people like to hang-out. Again, our wonderful Velveteen House!

Extending the Gardening Season

I'm currently cleaning my greenhouse, getting ready for winter. I've been deciding what potted plants I want to bring in and have them live longer for either their pretty flowering or produce they'll give us. Doing this usually introduces insects into the greenhouse. Tho they don't look to have insects outside, and the cooler temps keep them at bay ... bring them into the warm environment and voila, bugs! I usually spray them some with a safesoap for awhile, before deciding to add them to the compost.

I made some "cloches" of PVC piping and clamps and floating row cover (remay) material. I've put some in the kitchen garden over the peppers for a little warmth boost and frost protectant. Some are covering the bed on the south side of the greenhouse. I used to have a coldframe there, which produced salad greens most of the winter. Now it's a nice rock-lined raised bed. There's some pepper and eggplant plants there and two grapevines, but I planted some salady seeds.

I've put the same white material over lots of the tomatoes in the garden. Travis, I'm not growing Brandywine or Caspian Pinks (heirloom) again! I can probably start you some, but I've gotta grow smaller tomato and shorter season varieties in my neck of the woods! I've got to start looking up green tomato recipes! It sounds like the green tomato pie is like an apple pie. I've never cooked green tomato anything. I will be pulling out a lot of the plants eventually on to a large tarp and pull them into the garage. Then one-by-one most of them ripen.

In the greenhouse I've already got seedlings sprouted of carrots, raddishes, beets, green onions, cilantro, tomatoes, spinach, kale, mustard greens and lettuces. I'll be transplanting these to permanent bigger pots and planting snow peas too. I've got heat coils, and grow lights. This is the first year I'm going to see how growing over the winter in there works. It does get cold at night and hot in the day and sometimes freezes, but we'll put heaters in then for preventing freezing plants (and the sink pipes). Monte's going to do some insulation. I've started my garden seedlings early spring, but never fall planted for winter.

I'm pulling in (the big pots are on casters) a lime and fig tree, jasmine vine, four potted eggplants, two large pots of acorn squash plants, and herbs. I love gardening!

Italian Meatloaf in Zucchini

volunteer squash at bottom - chipmunk planted sunflower

We are having the warmest September ever, and still no rain for over a month. Watering just doesn't compare with rain. I planted so many salady type seeds for fall to winter harvesting, but the ground is so dry from below, it's just immediately sucking away anything I contribute, so I'm not seeing many sprouted seedlings. And we did get a little frost - like a ghost frost that whipped about at ground level nipping at some things. I've got these volunteer squash I let grow at the kitchen garden's edge, and their leaves took the brunt of the frost, as did most of the zucchini leaves. Basil and beans, which are tender, are still going, as are the tomatoes. I've got most of the tomatoes covered now with a white 'floating row cover' material. You can see some of the material over the peppers in the garden picture.

So I think my zucchini season is over. I've got several large zucchini sitting on the counter for making a zucchini, potato, onions soup, which I'll eventually post. This soup tastes great over winter as I pull portions from the freezer.

Every year I say I'm going to batter and fry squash blossoms. But I still haven't. The flowers with long stems are male flowers. Those are the ones you'd harvest. The short stemmed flowers are the fruitful females.

This recipe is from AllRecipes.com. I get daily emails of recipes from them, giving me great ideas.

ITALIAN MEATLOAF IN ZUCCHINI BOATS

1 large zucchini
Cut in half and scoop out the seeds. Sprinkle these halves with 1 tsp garlic salt. I don't use garlic salt, just granulated garlic. I got to thinking that if you don't grow zucchini, you rarely find large zucchini in stores. This time, because of a smaller zucchini than they must use, I had enough meat mixture that I tried filling a halved pepper to see how it would work. It tasted great. So I think smaller zucchini and peppers can be used in the baking dish. Eggplant slices would be good too, I bet.

Saute 1 chopped onion in
1/4 C olive oil
Mix together -
1 pound ground beef (they use 1 1/2# and I never have)
2 eggs
1 1/2 C seasoned bread crumbs (I never buy bread crumbs, using my homemade bread, dried and ground in the blender, and season myself, so used 1 tsp of an Italian seasoning mixture)
1 tsp minced garlic
1 Tb dried basil
1/4 C grated carrot
1/3 C grated parmesan
add in the sauted onion, mixing all well and mound in the zuccnini

Pour a jarred spaghetti sauce over, covering the meat and letting drip over edges. Bake at 350 for about 45 minutes till meat is cooked thru.
Sprinkle 1 C grated mozzarella cheese over all and return to the oven for another 5 minutes.
You can serve with more spaghetti sauce if you want.
These are great leftover!

Sedum turning from green to soon, a deep rust red

Crustless Quiche (can add zucchini/green chillies ...)

Mistress Karey,
somewhat contrary,
how does your garden grow?

I've been harvesting zucchini and beans primarily. Next week will be the broccoli. I planted more salady type seeds all over in gaps - next to the greenhouse too. It's a southern exposure and a warmer mini-climate than the rest of my gardens. I had a cold frame there that kept us in greens thru most of the winter. I'm making a pvc pipe protection for that space now. It's a raised bed lined with rocks and I think I'll put water bottles in it for further warmth.

Elk are bugling. We've had a bear visitor. It's cooling off. Supposed to go down to 36 degrees tonight. We've got guests again. Three men. One, Monte's long time partner in geology, Stan from AZ, gets the guest room. Two new acquaintances from California say they want to sleep in the bunk house! We'll see ... I'm waiting on going out to eat - they want to treat me. Tomorrow I cook.

I'm a MOPS (Mothers Of Preschoolers) Mentor Mom - been one for almost ten years now. The new year has begun. I brought an egg dish I somewhat created. I had to take a small bit to taste and see if it was good ... it's a keeper. What I added was a grated zucchini and chopped roasted green chilies.

I always get a bushel of green anahiem chilies roasted about this time of year. LOVE that smell in the vehicle! I bag up 3 chilies per sandwich bag and put about 8 of those sandwich bags in a gallon ziplock bag for the freezer. The 3 chilies are the equivalent of a 4oz can of chilies. I don't remove the blackened skins till I'm ready to use the chilies, and then chop or use them whole.

Crustless Quiche

1/2 C butter, melted (could probably use oil)
1/2 C flour (I've used whole wheat, spelt, or even masa)
1 C milk
6 lg eggs
1 pint ricotta cheese
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Mix all this together and pour over 1# grated cheese (like jack - I typically have colby-jack) in greased 9x13 baking dish.
Bake 45-60 minutes at 350 degrees.

Like I said, I put a grated zucchini and 4 oz chopped green chilies in the greased dish, and then put in the grated cheese. I left out a cup of the cheese to sprinkle on top. Pour the egg mixture over the cheese, mix it around a bit. Top with the extra cheese and bake.

I'm betting all kinds of things could be added to this dish. Like you could use cottage cheese instead of ricotta. Cumin could be added, and maybe cilantro. Or go a more Italian route with basil and zucchini and tomato and some parmesan cheese on top. Alone as is it's a great brunch dish!

This Velveteen House is turning moreso into a retreat center for science, with me on call for cooking. I often get paid in some way. I like it. Young adults are less frequent now that Dawson's living by school.

Curr(a)nt Harvest Happenings

I thought I'd post a bit about what's currently happening around here. Karey's kitchen is so amalgamated with Karey's garden and greenhouse. On my calender this month I've recorded that I've frozen snap peas, sliced zucchini, currants, raspberries, kale, and pesto. We'll soon be cutting grape clusters in the greenhouse and bagging the whole clusters for the freezer - tiny grape popsicles! And there's so many tomatoes trying their darnedest to ripen, but our nights are going down to 40 degrees now, and that slows the process. Lots of green beans are coming too. I need to go check out our old garden.

We actually started our old garden before we built our house 25 years ago. As I said in a rhubarb post, rhubarb and chokecherries were already here. There's evidence of an old homestead. In fact, Monte's writing a book called The Secret Of Singing Springs incorporating some historic stories fictionally intertwined with some of our own stories. One historic occurrence in the vicinity is with Jessie James. Our old garden has a 6 foot fence to keep elk out. If we could keep voles and pocket gophers out it would be almost perfect. We put an old sink in the garden which adds to the atmosphere being next to the woods of pine, fir, blue spruce and aspen. There's springs in that thar woods - thus the "singing springs" (we sing ... and I guess the breeze thru the trees sings - we named the road we live on Singing Springs Ln).

That garden used to be our only garden, but now I've planted a lot of fruiting bushes and small trees: native plums, saskatchewan bred cherries and blueberries, black and red currants, and gooseberries. Besides the chokecherries on the back fence and rhubarb, there's asparagus and raspberries. Next spring I'm going to plant more strawberries. Monte's tending this garden. He's weeding it and keeping all the cabbage family watered: broccoli, cauliflower, brussel sprouts, rutabaga, cabbage, and then leeks - are what we planted there this year. One year I froze 30 pounds of broccoli. This year will probably be one of those years! I planted some fruit bearing siberian mountain ash trees, but don't know yet if the voles killed them.

The currants we just harvested and froze were from one bush, an old bush. The newer planted ones aren't bearing much yet, and I've just been eating them. They're sure tedious to harvest. I wrote on my calendar that I froze 13 cups, having first spread them on cookie trays to freeze, then bag them up. We like them in homemade ice cream, and I have homemade yogurt every morning with frozen/fresh fruit, and dried sprouted flax seed. Wow, when the others do start bearing, we'll have a lot. Maybe I'll consider drying some. Dry or frozen currants could be used in muffins and quick breads. Currant pie? Hmmmm...

I grow and harvest kale for its nutritive value, not that I love it - like vitamin C and calcium, for example. We have it in all our salads, including spinach, beet greens, and occasionally mustard greens. I just froze the red tinged kale, next I'll be doing the curly kale, then tuscan. I'll be freezing spinach pretty soon too. Greens, as do most veggies, need to be blanched a few minutes, before freezing. It's been tested, and they retain more vitamins when blanched first. Monte likes to pull a small bag from the freezer, chop it up, saute, and add parmesan and lemon juice. I'll add it to lasangas and stews.

This year in my closer kitchen garden I planted five varieties of beans. The four pole beans are planted together, for their varying colors, climbing the bamboo teepees. Scarlet runner beans have bright red flowers and larger beans - I'm trying to pick these before they get large. Then there's two purple varieties: the Hyacinth bean has purple vines and deep purple flowers, the other has pale violet flowers. Neither are purple bean pods. Then I planted some bush beans because they bear earlier than pole beans. But the Scarlet Runner beans are a close second. Then there's these Fortex pole beans I've never grown before. They sure are skinny. It's all so fun!

I made spaces in my kitchen garden, pulling out older greens and volunteers, and harvesting things so I could plant more salad stuff seeds to carry us into fall, and by covering with floating row covers (a white cloth looking like sewing interfacing) these greens might grow into winter. I did some stripping of tomato branches and leaves too - to allow more sun to get at the plant base for more warmth, and to force plants to focus on ripening tomatoes.

We've got these volunteer squash. I pulled out most, but some were growing where it was ok to let them do their volunteer thing ... But what are they?! They're starting to turn from green to yellow ... and maybe orange ... are they pumpkins? We shall see ...

Harvesting Peas, etc

My sugar snap peas have been beautiful this year, the best ever. I planted them early this year for the first time - my veggie garden just happened to be ready early this year. Timing: weather cooperating and husband/son cooperating. The compost piles were screened and piled for me to distribute. We had manure ready. And then a beautiful day. So I tilled, planned my gardening layout, and planted lettuce, spinach, kale, greens, radishes, carrots, and onions. I say early for me, but really not early according to the books. Those things are cooler tolerant plants. Then a visiting friend said my climate is good for those veggies - cuz, if you haven't noticed, we're in the middle of summer, and in most places these veggies would be fried. But then my timing between frosts is typically 90 days. And that's why I can't grow some HOT weather veggies - it's why most of my tomatoes are in walls-of-water, and I might get a couple peppers before frost.

Monte decided to help me freeze the peas by picking them. I froze 3 lbs. Sugar snap peas give you pea choices: eat them like snow peas, in the pods, or let them get large and shell the fresh peas. I thought I'd shell these, so I'd left them. Monte said, "No. Let's have them for stir frying over winter." AND I really don't like shelling peas. I like to do it for an occasional meal, but not for doing a bunch for freezing.

FREEZING SUGAR SNAP PEAS

Either boil or steam blanch for 3 minutes 1lb of peas at a time (I didn't wash them or anything, just removed blossom ends).
Cool quickly by either very cold water (which our mountain tap water is - I often need a bit of warm water running too if I'm washing much, like lots of spinach, cuz our water freezes my hands!) or an ice water bath.
Drain and pat dry on a towel.
Distribute on a tray and freeze.
When frozen solid, pack in a freezer bag.

These frozen do not retain their crisp texture. They could be removed from the freezer, cut in bite-size pieces, and added to a salad a few minutes before serving. We typically use them in stir-fry: slightly sauteing veggies.

Now for the rest of the story ... Monte often hates to get rid of good stuff. Just like my baby veggie starts from the greenhouse. He made new planting spots for extra kale, broccoli, etc this year that I had so much extra of (I always have extra and he just happened to be around this year helping). I tried to tell him the price of seeds - like 30 plants - is the price of buying a 6-pack of the veggie at the nursery. So we can throw them in the compost. I know, it is hard even for me. Some years I've frozen 30+lbs of broccoli, and I get tired of kale! So we had this leftover water we'd boiled the peas in ...

Monte loved the taste of this water and wouldn't let me throw it out. It's in a large jar in the refrigerator. When Dawson came home from his mountain bike ride, Monte told him to try the "Pea tea"! The next morning Monte tried it cold saying it would be better sweetened, thus, "sweet pea tea"!!!! ;-P

Our table grapes in the greenhouse are almost ripe. This year there's probably a hundred clusters! - some hanging down at head level and Monte ties up higher, since I'm often busy doing my textile art dyeing in there. I called them table grapes differentiating them from wine grapes. I used to trim them back hard like you have to if you want a lot of wine grapes. This process did not give us grapes, so I had to research. Now I don't trim them, but for cutting back the too long ends wanting to take over the greenhouse. I just bang down the dead leaves in January or February.

Raspberries are now producing. Tho I've now planted raspberries, everbearing ... and we'll see how they do. The raspberries we've got are wild. But they're growing in two of my flowerbeds. They are my oldest flower beds and Monte had brought dirt up from the woods by some springs (that's why we called our road Singing Springs Lane). The raspberries came from that dirt. They try and take over the beds. I do pull out a bunch periodically and last year I cut them all back in the spring. I thought our wild variety were everbearing. But no. We didn't get any raspberries that year. Everbearing bear on current year branches and bear throughout the growing season off and on. Others on older canes. I don't mind them mixed in with the flowers. My gardening style is 'cottage' and I've got veggies and fruit co-mingled with perennials.

Freezing Produce

A friend in Florida posted on Facebook about putting up peaches, commenting about all the work blanching to remove skin, and slicing. I commented on what I've done now for years, and thought I'd post some comments here.

First off! ... I've never peeled my fruit, whether canning, freezing, or drying. I figure that's where the majority of the nutrients are. The books say to, but after 30 years, we and guests are still very much alive and well! I suppose tho, that putting tomatoes thru either my hand cranked berry press or my Bosch one, the peel along with the seeds get eliminated, and too with apple sauce and pear sauce. But beyond those types of things, I don't work at removing the skin. Call me lazy. I like pies and cobbler, etc with fruit skins in the equation. When we'd eat canned peaches, the skins often fell off anyway, but in eating them they'd be full of flavor.

I don't can anymore. Canning loses 40% of produce's nutrients. Freezing and Drying only loses 15%. If I were to still can anything, it would be tomatoes, but with the two of us, and Costco having organic cases, and my garden doesn't produce that much of tomatoes (our 1st frost is early to mid September - so I pull out tomato plants onto a tarp and pull the tarp into the garage and pick off for eating the ripe tomatoes on into November). The best book for these techniques (tho they still peel stuff) is the classic Stocking Up. I love all the Rodale Press books (tho it may not be published by them now), having learned so much from them. Mr Rodale in the 70's was a maverick for health when American culture was moving into modern processed foods, and poor agricultural practices (A great book on the story of food is The Omnivor's Dilemma - I like all of Michael Pollan's books - I'm currently reading his older book Second Nature).

I've been freezing peaches whole now for quite some time. Since I don't cook a ton of desserts, we use them mostly "fresh" on granola/oatmeal/cereal, mushing on toast, frozen yogurt, in a smoothy ... Just take out however many peaches you want. If you don't want the skin, it slips right off. Slice and use.

Today, since it's cooled off quite a bit with cloud cover and forecasted rain, I'm going to be pulling up all the volunteer kale I let grow in my kitchen garden. It's been helping shade the garden soil all over the garden, so it doesn't dry out so fast, but it's now needing to be pulled out. I'm going to be freezing up a bunch.

Some veggies need to be blanched before freezing. I've not blanched corn in years since an old-timer told me she never blanches hers. But the Stocking Up book has done studies on testing produce's nutrients over time and found that most veggies hold nutrients better if blanched a bit. I freeze a lot of kale and spinach every year (and I get plenty of broccoli, cauliflower, and beans to freeze too). I like pulling out a little bag of kale or spinach, chop it up and thro in spaghetti/lasanga sauces, stews and chilis, or even just saute up a bit and put on a bit of lemon juice and parmesan and eat. Kale has more vitamin C than does citrus.

Mexican Zucchini Salad

We had house guests: investors interested in Monte's swashbuckling geology. It was an all-of-a-sudden event, and one, the only one we knew, stayed the night. Our typical first meal for guests is Mexican and usually I'll grill stuffed poblanos (I'll post that recipe another time), but didn't do that this time. Since it was a quick throw-together we repeated our mexican chuck roast and radish salsa meal I recently posted about. I did a rhubarb crisp, already posted too, along with rhubarb-ade, and tea. I also made another favorite guests like - Mexican Zucchini Salad. (Monte told me I better take a picture of his plate - he always makes a great presentation of food!)

I have a cookbook from when we were first married, so thirty-five years old, that this recipe idea came from (idea... since I don't totally follow). When Travis got married, Monte and me catered the rehearsal dinner all the way to Ft Collins from our Evergreen home - a Mexican fiesta! This salad was one of the dishes well received.

MEXICAN ZUCCHINI SALAD

3 medium zucchini
1/2 tsp salt
Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise and again in 1/4" slices. In a bowl, salt these with the salt, toss to mix, then spread on several layers of paper towel to sit and drain for 30 minutes. Pat dry before adding to bowl mixture.

Combine in a bowl-
5 Tb vinegar (I like to mix some balsamic, red wine vinegar and maybe brown rice, apple cider, sherry vinegar - the recipe uses all white vinegar - how boring!)
2-3 cloves minced garlic (instead of recipe's 1 - I always do more garlic in recipes)
1/4 tsp dried thyme (use more of garden fresh thyme)
1/2C good tasting olive oil
1 can drained garbanzo beans
1/2C sliced olives
1/2C+ sliced green onions (I always do more green onions and love the green tops)
1 canned chipotle chili in adobo, seeded and minced (I always keep these in a jar, once a can is opened, and when I take out a chili I make sure to shove all the chilis into the adobo for better keeping)
1/2C crumbled queso anejo (which I don't usually have, so I use cows milk feta [we don't like goat feta - fresh goat milk and cheese is good, but something happens to it in the processing and time])

I'll make this a bit ahead 30 minutes to 4 hours, and occasionally stir for the flavors to marinate.

After supper, and a rain sprinkle, we walked around the gardens, enjoying the flowers, texture, and mountain air. I had them all eat a sweet cicely seed pod - an after dinner mint. The plant is behind my tarragon plant - both a type of licorice/anise flavor. Sweet Cicely is very ferny and mine has been reseeding (I think last year's moist summer did it) so I moved them about the garden this spring.

An artist friend, Sarah, and me made my Sculpy Dough herb labels last year. They are weathering just fine - I didn't know how they'd hold up. Garden twine holds them to bamboo poles.