Searching for a Muse

Oh, Muse of food, thy name is Pesto.

About a week ago I mentioned harvesting the rest of my basil to make room for the garlic. I gave all of the basil to a French teacher at my school who asked for some in trade for some of her pesto. Now, I've never had basil straight before this year and the only pesto experience I had was a very, very bad one in Venice on our honeymoon years and years ago. I admit, I was trepidatious, yet almost excited based on my recent acknowledgement that basil is not, in fact, the devil's clay.

Well, the long three day weekend passed and I was a barrel of anxiety. Was I going to like it? What if I didn't? What would I tell her?

I received the pesto as promised, but the man's been out of town and I didn't want to embark on the adventure by myself. It sure did look tasty, however. It smelled heavenly, too.

So, tonight the man came home and I made a shrimp, pasta, and alfredo dish and scooped out a generous helping of the pesto to mix in with it.

It was wholly unacceptable and borderline criminal in its yummy goodness. I've never had anything like it before and ate and ate and ate until I wasn't hungry and then went for seconds and ate some more. I NEVER go for seconds!!! To show you just how wonderful the pesto in the dish was, there's none left. I made an entire box of pasta and it's all gone. Usually I can make one box last three or four dinners, but not this one. Gone. G. O. N. E.: Gone. It was fantastic and there is no parallel.

Traci, I find myself in an awkward position. I'm not making pesto. I don't trust myself. You are my sole supplier and I think we need to barter heavily next season to keep us both in supply or I honestly think I'll cry. What in the world am I supposed to do all winter without your pesto from fresh basil? Can I buy 'fresh' basil in the store and give it to you? I'm at a loss, but I can't survive the winter without more, I tell you. More!!!

Have you gotten the gist that I kind of liked it? It was stupid awesome and you're my hero. I have a shrine set up to you in my school cabinet, but don't ask to see it because it will make the other teachers feel bad.

On a Keychains for a Cause note, these three breast cancer awareness and three black cross on pink keychains are headed out this week to Lovie. Thank you for your order, Lovie and the skull key fob you requested is yours free for the order of four or more keychains. Thank you for helping support my school's Relay For Life.
Oh, BTW, speaking of my school...our county just won an amazing 1 million dollar prize for being the best urban county in the entire United States! Check out the link. I'm pretty darn proud. The picture on the front page at first was a picture of the hallway in my school, but the pictures are on a rotating basis, so it's not up there just now and I don't know if it will be back. The prize is granted to award scholarships to students who struggled at first, but have raised their grades enough to attend college. This is a FANTASTIC sub group of kids that work harder than you may imagine and they get over looked for scholarships because they struggled in 9th or 10th grades. They are truly students who deserve recognition and I can't wait to see the first scholarships awarded.

The morning comes early. Sweet basil, scholarship awarding dreams.

I've BeenSkunked!

I've been skunked! Well, not me exactly, the pole beans and the eggplants. The perfume of skunk is undeniable, unavoidable and wholly unbearable. We have full six foot fence around the yard and I've never seen a skunk anywhere in the vicinity before so there's no telling where he came from or how he got in, but he was here alright. He was here and was apparently offended by the eggplants and decided to give them a what-for.

The smell has dissipated a bit, but it's been highly entertaining trying to guess what in the world happened.

The morning comes early. Sweet gardening dreams.

Green Bean Goodness and Bus Driver Appreciation Day

Seriously. I've been so happy with the green bean harvest this fall, but this is beyond fantastic. I still have a full bucket in the refrigerator and went out and pulled these two pounds this afternoon. I thought I'd giggle if I got one solid picking, but I'm on number three or four! Woohoo!Now I've just got to use them all. I could blanch and freeze them, but they just never taste the same. It's not like zucchini which you can masque in casseroles. Frozen green beans taste like...well, frozen, limp green beans. Looks like some may be taking the trip to school in the morning. I know they'll make people happy.

I took a handful of them tonight and made use of them in a soup I made with tortellini, ground beef (sausage would have been better), garden garlic, oregano, basil and rosemary, tomatoes, onions and carrots. Usually I would have used black beans, but these green beans did just fine and were so tasty in the soup that I'll do it this way again.

Green beans seem like the only things I've got to harvest! Check out Daphne's, however, to see the bounty everyone else is hauling in.

The week of October 18 is National School Bus Safety Week and here in Georgia, it also coincides with Monday, October 18 being Bus Driver Appreciation Day. Bus drivers are an integral, yet under recognized and appreciated force without whom out schools could not function as we want them to. You can show support for your students' bus drivers this week or for the holidays with a small bus driver key fob from Keychains for a Cause. Proceeds go to support the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life.

Mr. Helms, this keychain is for you. Thank you so much for keeping our children safe. You are most certainly appreciated.


The morning comes early. Sweet garden, green bean, soup dreams.

Green Bean Goodness

Sometimes Mother Nature is kind and where she taketh away in the summer - say as in a lack luster green bean crop - she giveth freely in the fall.

Yes, I'm obsessing about my fantabulous fall green bean harvest almost as much as I obsessed the lack thereof in the summer.

Why can I do that? I'm a woman, and I can obsess over miniscule things that are meaningless to anyone else but me. It's my obligation to my sex and I won't let them down. :)

Another Autism wristlet from Keychains for a Cause ships out today, this time to a teacher at The Monarch School right here in Duluth, GA. She works with Autistic children and plans to use the wristlet for her school and home keys to show her support for her students and her cause.

The morning comes early. Sweet greenbean gardening dreams.

Holy Cabbage

As I reevaluate the seasons in which I plant things, cabbage is on the list to be a one season crop. It seems like the cabbage worms are less prolific in the winter/early spring, quite unlike the compound that the worms have created out of my cabbage this fall.

Here's one of my cabbages just laden with holes.

This one's worse if you can judge by the amount of poop stuck down in there.

Good thing is....the cabbages are preoccupying the cabbage worms and they're staying out of the broccoli. I think I'll just leave the cabbages in as a sacrificial crop in hopes to keep the broccoli pest free.

A request was made for Keychains for a Cause to carry religious themed keychains, and the request has been honored. You can now find this pink and black cross design in both key fob and wristlet size. I made the promise to cut and resew the back side of the keychain so the cross would not appear upside down on half of the keychain.

If you've got a good link for additional religious themed ribbon, let me know. As well, if there is another cause or design you'd like to see us carry, shout it out!

The morning comes early. Hopefully they're as cabbage worm free as the broccoli.

Harvest Monday - October 11

Late fall harvests are almost as exciting as the first summer harvests. I'm just thrilled beyond belief at these beans. This is the third such picking I've gotten and the bush beans are just now starting to look good as well. I can't wait until those start producing. Then I'll be rolling in beans.
The vining cucumbers gave me two more and the eggplants that I chopped down to the ground sprung back and gave me another eggplant. I'll have to remember that for next year. I honestly thought that would kill them, they were so bug ridden, but they grew back lush and beautiful to give me a second helping of eggplants all around and I'm not complaining.

Football wasn't so bad this weekend, either. EG, bet you were smiling there for a while.

This Autisim Keychain from Keychains for a Cause is headded out to Tennessee this morning!
Thank you for your order.

Stop by Daphne's to see what everyone else is harvesting!

The morning comes early; sweet late fall gardening dreams.

Hallelujah - The Dog Days Are Over

The dog days of summer have thankfully gone. At first, I thought we had skipped the 80's altogether and just hoped straight into the 70's, but this week has brought the 80's back in style....we'll revisit this later. ;)

With the cooler temps, the dog, who avoids the dog-days like the plague, refuses to come inside. See how he's even ignoring my taking his picture?
Ah, the dog. His name is Gibson and he's been alternately blamed for tomato eating and lettuce eating. We've come to know Gibson fondly through the almost two years I've been blogging on the garden.....Two years, huh? Two years and all you know my children by are the terms, "The Boy" and "The Girl." I think the time has come to change that. My friends, here are my children.

Luke Skywalker:

and Daphne.

Yes, the 80's are back in style!

Mom, you can start breathing again.

The morning comes early. May the Scooby Snack Force be with you.