Tulips

I entered the Westcott Bulb raffle last fall and won my choice of prizes! It wasn't a difficult choice considering one of the options was a basket full of a variety of spring bulbs. I was doubly lucky to have a wife who was happy to plant them all!

The crocuses have come and gone and the daffodils now are on their way out. Maybe today's rain will keep them around a little longer. The tulips, though, are spectacular right now. These are some shots from the front of the house yesterday.

You might be able to see the tiger lilies behind the tulips and some poppies coming up here too. One mission for this spring is to plant some more summer blooming flowers between the sidewalk and the street, probably in another bed. Any suggestions? It gets lots of morning sun and a fair amount more the rest of the day.

Asparagus is here!

We planted the asparagus in spring 2006. A rare perennial vegetable, it must grow a few years, building a root system and gathering energy through its fern-like vegetation, before it can be harvested. You can see what midsummer asparagus looks like in this photo of July of last year. You can see the ferns at the far edge of the image.

After two years of waiting, the time to harvest has arrived! April has been particularly warm and dry this year. I'm not sure how that has influenced the asparagus, but our first harvest came after a week or so of 70 degrees and sun.

We've now been picking for a week, just snapping it off at the base when the head looks mature, before it starts sprouting off it's branches. Tuesday, April 22nd was the first harvest.

The stuff grew like crazy the first week! We'd pick about 10 stalks for dinner and have 10 more ready the next day. It seems to be slowing now. Maybe it was too dry for awhile. Today it's 40 degrees and rainy, so we'll see how that impacts things. I've also been picking asparagus beetles off the stalks.
Here's the asparagus on April 23rd, the evening after the first pick. I didn't leave a single mature stalk the day before this picture, now we've got plenty for dinner!

So how do you like your asparagus? Our favorite is to splash some marinate on it and throw it on the grill. The fall back is a quick balsamic vinaigrette. This week we had a good Italian tofu marinate left over that I've been using up all week on it.

Here's our first meal on the night of the 22nd. The asparagus is paired with wild Alaskan sockeye salmon. A frozen cube of last year's garden basil pesto is on top. It's tough to beat this meal!

Welcome!

As the new garden season begins, I decided I should finally keep a journal. How things are growing...what the weather's like...dates of planting and harvesting...that sort of thing. I've never done this before out of laziness, but then I figured if I make it a blog I can share it with all ya'll and also post lots of pretty pictures. If you're so inclined, feel free to check in and see how the garden (and the kids) are growing.