This is the JFK rose that I planted from Jackson & Perkins this year. I've been buying plants for my Dad from J & P for years and they have a reputation for excellent quality.



The rose plant blossomed nicely with three pure white blooms, and I'm glad I took this photo when I did. The montrous storm we had battered them to pieces just a few days later.

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I went hunting in the garden in the rain and managed to find a few edible items, even though we've seen mostly cloudy days (if not hurricanes). Everything was from our garden, except for a couple of items.

Roasted CSA potatoes with chives.



Squash blossoms stuffed with ricotta and parmesean.



Balsamic salad with lettuce, tomatoes, CSA peppers and baby onions.



Sauteed baby carrots and baby leeks. (Hooray for thinning!)



Cupcakes with strawberry-cream cheese icing (strawberries from our neighbor's garden) and iced tea with mint.

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This is one day's harvest from the garden. Who can eat this much lettuce in a day? We're trying.

The blueberries and raspberries were part of a fruit salad for the Isle La Motte Annual Flotilla picnic. The cucumbers turned out to be fairly bitter. This is apparently a well-known problem and especially common in Burpee Picklers, the variety we planted. The bitterness can be peeled off with the skin or pickled out. I hear that Dave has a pickling recipe all picked out.

Today, the zucchini (plus others from subsequent days) is going to make it into a zucchini pie.

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I thought I had rhubarb in my garden, but I have nothing compared to our neighbor Neil.

I found some spindly little red stalks with broad leaves poking out of a woodpile last year and determined (via Google) that they were rhubarb (which I love). I harvested just enough to make a pie and I rearranged the wood pile to give them more room to grow. This year, the stalks are more robust and I might be able to get two pies from them. I was so excited... then I stopped by Neil's garden.

He asked if I wanted some rhubarb and I agreed, thinking I'd accept a couple of stalks to add to other fruit so I wouldn't make a dent in his harvest. Oh, how wrong I was. I got out to the garden to find that Neil has a fifty-foot row of waist-high rhubarb plants packed tightly together. Enough to seriously feed the entire island with some left over.



I took a hefty bunch, then Neil came over and asked what I was making with them. When I replied, he said I surely didn't have enough and handed me a bunch more. They're gorgeous stalks, and they made a lovely rhubarb crisp that afternoon. There's still some in the fridge. Be right back.

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After a decade in apartments, I have finally my first garden! There was a community garden in Eagle Heights, but we never got around to becoming members. And the backyard on Barbara Street was fenced, locked and off-limits. Aurora Street was a concrete jungle where residents used planters for cigarette butts and Melville Ave had a little strip of dirt (not soil) where we failed to grow anything but used car parts that kept turning up with the digging.

In order to make up for lost time, the plot this year is 35 feet by 50 feet. Because why fail at something small when you can go down in flames on a huge undertaking instead? (Speaking of failure, I have one more bread recipe suggestion from a good friend that arrived recently. More on bread difficulties after I give that one a try.) There's a five-foot strip down the center mulched with hay for the cart to drive through, and about ten rows of plantings on either side.



I found MyFolia.com -- a site that helps you track your garden plantings, trade plants with other growers, and connect with gardeners in your area. You can also blog on the site, but I tend not to post in other blog-friendly places (like MySpace) because I have Liloia.com. The site is in beta, so the closest active gardener is three hours away; however, I did find someone with a few registered window boxes in Burlington.

What I'm curious about are the trading features. While I'm more than willing to share plants, there are definite rules for doing so. The site appears to be UK-based, so I doubt it's legal for us to ship plants to each other. I suspect the site will be more useful to trading as more people come on board. Vermont is a grower-friendly state and when more of us register, we can swap in person.

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