Heather's Garden

ISLAND LIVING

This post is being filed from Marco Island, Florida, where VPH and I are happily vacationing.  Well, he's vacationing, I'm spending some time working remotely.  But it's so much nicer to work remotely in my bathing suit and take my lunch break by the pool.  Today we ventured out to the Marco Island Farmer's Market (every Wednesday until 2pm).  Let me tell you, these people know how to hold a Farmer's Market, complete with a pretty decent band and kettle corn for my addict husband (I just don't get the appeal of kettle corn).  For the most part it was pretty standard Farmer's Market fare...heaps of veggies as far as one could see: 

 

But wow, the orchids (and the band in the background):

 

And more orchids.  I wish I could buy a bunch of these inexpensive poinsettias and bring them home with me, but I think the drive would kill them:

 

And you know me and herbs:

Wondering what we weren't able to resist?  Tomatoes, a fresh baked sourdough loaf, a French baguette, crab-cakes, an avocado, pink grapefruits, fresh orange juice, and the aforementioned kettle corn.  All for under $30 -- and $10 of that was for the crab-cakes.  Which, since I'm eating them as I blog, I can tell you are freaking delicious!

PICTURE THIS PHOTO CONTEST

I've been so bad about keeping up with reading my favorite gardening blogs.  It seems like I check Gardening Gone Wild just after their Picture This contest closes each month or just before the new subject is posted.  I just happened to look today and found out I have a few hours before the deadline for this month's subject: The End of the Line.  Unfortunately I'm not really in the mood to pour through all my photos -- this FL sun has really sapped my energy. 

But I mustered enough energy to glance back into my archives and I quickly came across this one from December 2007:

It was a little tea rose that a friend picked up at the grocery store and gave us when she came over for dinner.  I think roses are beautiful, but I'm not interested in the amount of work they require.  Still it was pretty resilient and bloomed very late into that gardening season.  And it was an interesting photo subject during that season's first snow.  I doubt this photo will be honored, but I'm too tired to find something better!

THIS SAYS IT ALL

This article in the NY Times says it all.  Thank God this horrible gardening season is over.  I just keep imagining if this had been my first season gardening instead of my 3rd, but really I'm just glad I don't rely on my garden for more than the relaxation tending it brings me and the added benefit of whatever produce it yields.  I can't imagine what it must have been like to watch the rain fall and the crops fail if your livelihood depended on it.  Until yesterday we've actually been experiencing beautiful warm fall weather giving VPH some lovely days to get outside and get the leaves picked up: 

That photo was from day one of the clean up...he did get all of the leaves that were on the ground shredded and into the compost pile, but you'll see that quite a few of the trees around the house still haven't dropped their leaves:

And there are weird things happening all over the garden.  The petunias are hanging on:

 

Which is a good thing since I never got around to potting up the mums:

And I include this last photo so you can get an idea of how large the spider by the front door really is.  The post it's on is 4-5 inches wide:

 

Slightly freaky!  It's been raining solidly for 2 days now and we're supposed to head out to FL on Tuesday, so I'm not sure when we're going to get outside to get the dahlias into the basement for the winter.  We could take the chance that they'll hang on just fine until early December when we're planning to return home, but I think the ground will probably freeze by then.  Would it be worse to put them in the basement wet or let them potentially freeze?

CREEPY

I'll steal an idea from Layanee and say Happy Halloween:

 

Looks like she has her dinner ready...what will you be dining on this evening?  I'm making stew and am excited to use my own carrots harvested expressly for said stew:

 

Those 4 habaneros (the only ones harvested this year) will probably heat up some chili.  No salsa for us this year, just not enough good tomatoes.  Though some parts of the garden still think it's growing season:

 

Those little eggplants will never make it to harvest, but the flowers are pretty to look at.  As are the zucchini's that likely won't amount to much either:

 

That's it for me on this beautiful almost 70 degree Halloween.  I almost wish we would just have a hard frost already so I could pull all the plants and get this horrible gardening-season behind me. 

DOES THE TITLE REALLY MAKE YOU READ THE POST?

I hope not, because I am having the hardest time coming up with titles these days.  I put off drafting this post for an hour or so while I tried to come up with a good title...no luck.  I considered NIMG (Not in My Garden - originally coined by Carol of May Dreams Gardens?):

Yes, those are topiaries, anchors, lengths of huge rope, and no, you're not insane, that's the Three Stooges in golf gear on the pedestals:

 

We pass it every time we go for a walk, but today was the first time the home-owner wasn't out there playing around so I dared to stop and take a few photos.  Then I considered a fall theme of some sort, but the only fall color I could find was this cinnamon fern in my garden:

 

A post about dahlias was a legitimate possibility, with these colorful specimens all blooming in my garden, and now decorating my kitchen windowsill:

And these beauties:

 

In the living room next to the couch, as viewed from the couch:

 

But nothing clicked.  It was nice to get outside for a little while on such a beautiful day.  I probably should have spent time cleaning up the garden, but our trees are all still green and no leaves have fallen yet.  Maybe by next weekend.