Joanne's Potager and other stuff

My garden is a weedy, dry, bug infested mess. Isn't that the way it is when you work in a garden center? No time for your own garden. But the tomatoes, peppers, squash, cabbage and zucchini just keep on growing. I have four small cabbage that look forward to becoming some vegetable soup along with carrots, a potato, and some green beans. And some bacon.

Two bags of cucumbers will turn into refrigerator pickles and I will grill or fry the four zucchini my plants have struggled to produce or I could make more zucchini pickles. The tomatoes are being roasted and packed into the freezer for pasta sauce and fresh tomato basil soup as they get picked. G has already eaten 2 quarts of tomato soup.

I picked up four books at the library today. Politics on television. Yuck! Between erasing my Suduko mistakes and reading the books I should be entertained until the conventions are over and the new television season begins. SurvivorAfrica begins on my birthday.

My birthday (and the entire month of September) has always been my favorite time of the year -- last year was horrible, remember? So I was worried about this year. So far, I have a date with a wonderful person for coffee "D", a lunch date with my walking buddy "N" scheduled, a quilt show to visit with G, dinner with G, flowers from work and now Survivor. Looks like this year's birthday will be extra wonderful. I will even bake myself a nice Kahlua chocolate cake and serve it with ice cream. Yummy. How much has changed in the past year. I have a new job I love and am happy. That saying, "when one door closes, two new ones open" is SO true.

I have TWO classes to teach (and I use that descriptor loosely) on September 6 and 13. Composting and Native Plants. Last weekend I "taught" Dividing Perennials with J. He dug up huge hostas and I attacked them with a butcher knife and divided them into nice new plants which we gave to the audience. We served donuts and lemonade. Total number of participants - 20 for the two sessions. The donuts and the free plants made everyone very happy along with the 10% off coupon.

For my Composting 101 talk, I plan to build a miniature composting set up and fill it with good composting materials during the "talk". Grass, vegetable peels, coffee grounds, chopped leaves, shredded paper. We will also play "which of these things doesn't belong in the compost?" I love all those classic Sesame Street learning songs. I will also demonstrate the composters we have for sale in the garden center serve cups of "Jello pudding DIRT with gummy worms" and give everyone their coupons.

The Native Maine Plants was "gifted" to me yesterday. I know nothing about this topic so I did what I do best and found interesting, informative stuff on the internet and printed it all up for the class handouts. My Dividing Perennials handout was outstanding. I now have a detailed listing of native Maine plants and the garden centers that carry them across the state of Maine. The 20 page handout and a nice display of the native plants for sale at our greenhouse should be all we need for an hour of info and questions and answers. Plus Native Maine blueberry muffins. And the 10% coupon.

G is outside watering the garden and being eaten by bugs. I think he deserves a nice big ice cream cone. I know that I think I deserve one. Strawberry.