One Last Homage to the Summer's Bounty

Fall is now upon us and we've wrapped things up at the garden for the winter months. I wanted to share with you guys some of the photos that I've taken over the summer in one last celebration of the season's wonderful bounty.

As I must have mentioned before, although I've been wanting to play in a garden for a long time our circumstances never really supported that possibility until fairly recently. A couple of years ago I had the good fortune to get involved with a community garden project in the Slocan Valley. A good friend, Larry, generously gave us the use of a portion of his beautiful property to create beds. The soil is simply amazing - it's so dark and rich! - and the garden has full exposure to the sun, not to mention a stunning view of the mountains in the distance. Truly the Garden of Eden! ;-)

I feel that time spent in the garden is so very healing and meditative for me. I love love it! There's something special about being in the presence of growing plants. It gives me a sense of pure connection to Nature, its benevolence and incredible abundance.

It was raining pretty much every day until the beginning of July, but once the sun showed up we scarcely had a day of rain in two months! Woo hoo! This of course meant that we had to go to the garden regularly in order to water. Next year we'll be better organized and have the water system on a timer. Yay!

It being the first year that we've had a garden of our own we took things slowly and mostly planted simple no-brainers, lots of root veggies and greens for our juices and smoothies.

Carrots

We had a variety of beet that was astonishing! (I think they're known as chiogga.) The bulbs were beautiful; dark red with white strips on the inside and super sweet. They grew into the biggest beets I'd ever seen! ;-)

Their greens were also ginormous and very similar to Swiss chard.

Chard

There was lots of kale that volunteered, and while we don't use much kale in smoothies or salads we did make tons of Kale Chips. Mmmmm!

Donnie loves potatoes so we planted a large bed to share with Larry. Many of the seedlings came from left-over potatoes from last year's harvest.

Covering the potato plants with straw to ensure that they're not exposed to light.

We lucked out at the local greenhouse as there was a 2 for 1 sale. Yay! We bought several tomato plants.

Also lots of basil. Yum!

Don harvesting the basil before the frost. I sure got to make heaps of pesto!

At the greenhouse we also bought several summer squash plants, including patty pan. They're so cute and have such a delicate flavor!

A gal who is quite knowledgeable about gardening had beds close to mine, so I got to learn a few tips. Here are some of the veggies she grew.

She also had several sunflowers - something we'll definitely plant next year as I so love them! In case you haven't noticed they've also sorta become the symbol of my Sunny Raw Kitchen. ;-)

I was able to capture a magical moment with little bumble bees drinking their fill.

Bright orange marigolds to help keep the bugs away...

And while on the topic of flowers I'll leave you with some shots I took of our friend Livina's garden.

A lovely Iris

Wild rose

A stunning red begonia

Columbine

Petunias

Foxgloves

Peonies

When I was a young child, probably about 4 years old, my photographer uncle took several shots of me with peonies. In one of the photos I had my nose right up to a blossom which was nearly as big as my head then! lol Now that I'm all grown up, I thought it would be fun to pose with this magnificent flower again. These will warm my mom's heart. ;-)

Ces photos sont pour toi, Jeanne! ;-)

And lastly, a few pics of Miss DaPuss who had a wonderful summer. She was so at ease exploring the woods nearby. We joked that she's turning into a dog as she kept following us around the property. ;-)

A pussycat needs her rest too!

And that pretty much wraps up our summer adventures!

We had our first snow flurries yesterday (Eeek!) so the countdown has officially begun before our departure for the southern US. We figure probably another week or so... Sunshine here we come! Yippee!

Talk to you from the road!