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Again, my apologies for the latest lapse in posting recently. As I mentioned in the comments to the previous post, I've been sick again and work has ramped up considerably, thus cutting into my blogging time. Add in some exhaustion and a lack of inspiration and that will define a "Fall Funk" as far as I'm concerned ... *Sigh* Anyway, we're making do here at Casa IVG as Fall rams its inevitability full into our faces, and as I write, a round of thunderstorms is moving in...
While I was doing some work stuff today, I sent Fernymoss out with the camera (he was already mowing, so this made a good break for him, or so he said) and here are some of the sights he captured in the late afternoon garden. First off is, of course, her Highness, the Most Exalted Queen Pepa (Approximately) posing not so obediently next to our most recently discovered pumpkin in the back veggie garden. As you can see, she could probably care less that we wanted a cute picture next to the pumpkin, her attention was elsewhere. And, as you can also see, Punkinstein has a serious case of powdery mildew, which we're not too concerned about since it's late in the season, it's been rainy and moist lately, and the pumpkins seem to be doing just fine ... at this point I think we're assured of at least 3 decent sized pumpkins by Halloween ... now whether or not they are all perfectly orange, that remains to be seen....
Here's a shot of the original (first) pumpkin I discovered a while back, though now it's clearly in transition from green to orange and has some rather nice markings on it ... if it still looks like this around Halloween, I won't be bothered a bit, and in fact, I rather like this look! 
And here we have the one that has been eluding us for a while ... the one closest to where Punkinstein originally established his territory, the compost pile. We both had figured there were pumpkins back there, but neither of us had found one, until today. Obviously, this one is more advanced than the others so far and will be a prime contender Jack O'Lantern within the next month! Really, this is a banner year here at Casa IVG that we can say we harvested both our own corn stalks and pumpkins (grown totally organically). At least we haven't been able to brag about that in previous years, despite better efforts to that end ... I guess sometimes if you do leave it all up to Chance, it does pay off from time to time....
And finally, here's Queen Pepa looking through the fencing that's supposed to keep her out of the back veggie garden, but doesn't really keep her out. According to Fernymoss, this was one of the few times he could get her to look directly at him while he was trying to get her to pose for the camera. But this is a typical Pepa look ...even with the weedy purple morning glory in the foreground. No matter what she was really thinking at this time, I'm sure that we can all speculate ... but I'm willing to bet that she understands that Fall and Winter are on their way, and it's just a matter of time before things wind down for the winter in the garden. We too, have to accept this and make our peace with the season. I'm just not willing yet, thus the Funk.
Acceptance coming soon, I expect.
It's been a relatively lazy weekend around here, and fortunately I have one more day to savor before back to work, which --as you may have guessed-- has been pretty busy for me the past two weeks. I've got a brief respite before another wave hits me full force again. So, as a small personal reward, I basically allowed myself a relatively slackerly Saturday and Sunday (though I did get caught up with laundry, no small feat there).
Thus the leisurely tone for tonight's post ... since Fernymoss has to work tomorrow, we did a bit of grilling to honor the weekend's official wrap up of Summer (though we're still hoping for plenty more warm weather to come for at least a while). So, in that spirit, this will be a basic "look and see what I saw" tour around the back.
I'm sure no one noticed the first shot did they? 'Sun Showers' is back in bloom again, after a brief rest, and wow, it's as eye popping as always! I'm really not regretting having forked over the big bucks for this plant now ... it's been a steady and profuse bloomer most of the summer... how could anyone quibble with walking out back and seeing a few of these screaming Heeeyyyyy look at me! You know when you're looking at such a fiery flower and realize that the coolest color in the entire bloom is hot pink, you're dealing with truly over the top Hibiscus! We absolutely love it, and will be taking meticulous care of this and 'Erin Rachel' this winter... they both deserve the pampering....
This shot is just one of the several (at least) progeny of Punkinstein, who is still trying to conquer the entire garden, and we keep putting him back on the ground ... that is, until he sneaks out of bounds again. We haven't been able to inspect the total sprawl of this plant for pumpkins, but we're sure they're in there hiding somewhere... while he was shooting this one, Fernymoss also discovered a much smaller one set on not far away from this one, which is the largest we've yet found. We're getting excited about them hanging on all the rest of the season so we don't have to buy any this year, but again, time will tell....
Let's venture down into the corn patch ... here you can see one of the many Zinnias we have planted in various spots around the veggie garden, and more importantly, a few ears of corn nearly ready to be picked just behind it. I think that this Zinnia, one of the 'Cactus Bloom' varieties we had mixed in with what we planted, is a particularly pretty one, but then I'm slanted to the fire colors, so take that as you will. Anyway, this shot serves two purposes: to illustrate a bit more detail of the corn patch and also to show a bit of brightness amongst all that green....
Today was our first harvest of the corn, and we picked 6 ears, of which we kept 3 and gave 3 to our neighbor behind us ... but what she's really looking forward to is when we have more ripe tomatoes, uh huh! Well, so are we, so I'm hoping that some of the myriad green ones out there start ripening a bit more quickly, but then again, given the weirdness of this summer, we're lucky they're still growing so well! As long as we can keep the warmth up in September, I think we should be in luck, because I have photos that remind me that in past years, I've had a bumper crop of tomatoes into September, so again ... patience is still difficult at times.... 
Finally, here we have an arrangement of just what we brought in from the back garden today. We're a bit disappointed in the onions, because though most of the tops had died back, they just aren't very big, but they'll certainly get used all the same, and some chopped onion may well go into the burgers I am planning for tomorrow's grill fest (along with my usual, trusty companion, A-1 Sauce). Obviously, these are the 3 ears of corn we picked and consumed within about 2 hours ... as well as some of the tomatoes we got today. These need about one more day to ripen inside, and then BLTs are going to be on the menu, and I finally got the bread, bacon and lettuce today ... one of those summertime pleasures I've yet to experience this year, and we're both looking forward to it!
On tonight's menu: Marinated Pork Tenderloin (with El Rey hot sauce, A-1 and Dijon Mustard), along with sweet corn of course, and some sliced fresh tomatoes I picked a few days ago. Aside from the pork, everything else came from the garden .. finally! In years past, we would have had such a meal weeks earlier, but given that none of the veggies got planted until almost late June (Memorial Day in May is usually my cut off for planting), I think we're heading into a bit more of the feast part of the cycle. Except for those pathetic peppers of ours. We had a work meeting the other day, and I asked one of the women there (who has a huge veggie garden out in the country) how her peppers were doing. She replied (just like everyone else I've asked) that hers were the worst in years, and she wondered if she'd get any at all. I don't know what it has been (erratic weather? that's a good scapegoat) this year, but no one I know has had any success with them. Ours are starting to perk up a bit now that the worst of the blast furnace heat has abated a bit, but I have no expectations that we'll see anything significant. More likely, they'll get their second wind right before frost and put on tons of tiny, useless ones not worth harvesting. That is, unless we have some minor miracle combination of warmth, cool nights and frequent rains, I've just about written them off. Next year I may just elect to plant them all in pots and try that again (I used to have great success with that when I first lived here and had very limited space). How disappointing ... I used to be reputed for making the greatest fresh garden salsa, but again, this year, that's unlikely to happen, alas.
There are good garden years, bad garden years, and then there are the downright bafflingly odd ones, and this year seems to represent a good exemplar of the latter. But tonight, we dined well from the garden, so we give thanks for what the earth has given us so far, and look forward to more for at least a little while!
Photos taken August 31, 2008, Hibiscus and Veggie arrangement by IVG, Pumpkin, Corn and Zinnia shots by Fernymoss.
As regular visitors know by now, recently I've been allluding to Punkenstein, our inadvertent pumpkin patch growing out of the compost in the back veggie garden, so I wanted to give an update to my original post, which explained its appearance and location.
At this point (exactly one month later), it extends much further than this shot really shows ... it has advanced several feet further and is clambering over the top of the old jungle gym skeleton we inherited in the middle of the veggie garden. That part is definitely going to have to be cut back, because it's starting to shade the tomatoes, and we don't really think it's a good idea to have pumpkins dangling from the top of the rungs! We also need to go out and do some bloom clipping to make sure the ones that do set on get bigger ... we're hoping we can get enough larger pumpkins to use for Halloween, so we better hop to that! If you think some of the leaves look a bit battered, they are ... from that sudden storm that erupted Monday night, bringing us that round of hail...
If you look in the top left of this shot, you can also see our ever expanding Horseradish. I suppose we should dig some roots again this year and make some more, but talk about a painful experience, lol! If you're a fan of Horseradish, just plant some and wait 2-3 years before you dig the roots and prepare it ....
Now I'm going to put on my sci-fi-geek-Brit Humour hat (I don't wear it that often, honestly) to give a big shout out to the BBC for finally releasing their series Spaced on DVD in the US. If you've never seen this --all too brief-- series starring Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Jessica Stevenson (of Shaun of the Dead fame), you may be in for a real treat. Spaced only lasted two seasons from 1999-2000, but it has achieved a pretty respectable cult following since then ... we first saw it about 4 years ago on BBC America, who was annoyingly erratic about when they aired it, and not necessarily in sequential order, quite a frustrating introduction to this brilliant series. We fell in love with these lovable slacker late 20-something Brits and their sometimes surreal, always comical adventures which most often paid homage to (or downright parodied!) classic sci-fi movies, as well as other films. To say it's quirky is an understatement, because at moments it is truly disorienting and downright bizarre, but always with a gentle "spacey" sense of humor that should disarm most viewers with an open point of view.
When I discovered Shaun of the Dead, (the best zomedy of all, even though Fido comes close), we knew that Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were headed for bigger things, which culminated most recently with their quite different --yet hilarious-- Hot Fuzz. I read a while back that Simon Pegg was cast as Scotty in the new version of Star Trek that has probably finished production by now ... so it looks like Simon has met at least the near big-time in his career. In one sense, Simon Pegg has already become quite the star in Britain after the success of Shaun and Hot Fuzz, and he even had a guest starring role in 2005 playing "The Editor" in an episode of season 1 of the new Dr. Who.
I'm glad to see Simon making a bigger mark in film and TV, but I fear that the wonderful work he did with his core compatriots Nick Frost and Jessica Stevenson (now Hynes) in Spaced and Shaun may suffer a bit, but with any luck, I'll be wrong about that! Still, the remarkably natural (improvisational at times) characters they played in Spaced are what really endeared these people to me ... Tim, Daisy and Mike, along with the other oddball denizens of their apartment building created a series that managed to be edgy, innovative and just downright hilarious thanks to the brilliant writing from Pegg and Stevenson, coupled with the spot-on direction from Edgar Wright (who also directed the subsequent films mentioned here).
I bet you'll never guess I got the newly released box set on Tuesday ... so we're working our way through from the very beginning with no more commercials, no more bleeped out words, no more blocking out the end sequences for promos ... Ah, the way this series was meant to be seen! And it's been even more enjoyable than seeing the scattered episodes that BBC American occasionally deigns to toss our way. After all, there are only 14 episodes, and then, alas, the series ended. If you're a Spaced fan or a novice, the set offers plenty of extras that we're looking forward to exploring, once we see the whole series again. Tonight we watched Episodes 4 and 5 and totally enjoying revisiting these old friends! (And we're also noticing some small things that were obviously snipped for the American audience, so that's a nice treat too....) If you've seen Simon and Co. in the films I referenced and liked them, you truly owe it to yourself to check out Spaced if for no other reason, then to see where this great group of actors started out. (I'm sure Netflix has this now if you don't want to plunk down for the set.)
Oh, and a note to Gail: It doesn't look like Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown is available for purchase as a single disc right now, only in the boxed Almodovar set I mentioned recently. I did search Netflix though, and it's available for rental if you want to go that way. And a disclosure, I've never used Netflix, and have no vested interest in this comment, lol.
