Woo! Gardening!

Well folks, the May 2-4 long weekend has come and gone, and I've managed to get a bunch of stuff into the ground.  And in pots.  I may have gone a little overboard.  Here's some photos for you - keep in mind that this is a small backyard plot in the downtown core - it's amazing what you can cram into a space if you try!

These are the 3 pots that are on the steps of the back porch.  The top one has a marigold and some purple lobelia, the middle one has 2 long cayenne pepper plants, and the bottom one contains potatoes.  When I went to check yesterday, the potatoes already had little shoots with baby leaves!!

The strawberry plants are flowering nicely.  I'm not expecting any of these to make it very far into the house when they turn into ripe fruit.  Nothing made it to the kitchen last year.

This is a Corno Di Polo sweet pepper.  It's an Italian heritage shepherd style pepper.  I've never grown this variety before, so it'll be interesting to see how it turns out.

These pots are along the fence near the back of the yard.  From left to right, there's rosemary, thai basil, a pot that's been planted with opal & spicy globe basil seeds, and a pot with pansies, petunias, white lobelia and marigolds.

This is the back corner of the yard where I've got a black plum tomato, underplanted with purple ruffle basil.

Celery, purchased on a whim, and stuck between the red pear cherry tomato and the radish/beet patch.

Hopefully by this weekend, I'll have some better photos of the other plants to share.

Weekly Blogging What?

It appears that I briefly fell away from the promise I made myself to write something & post it every week.  Oops!  To make up for it, here are some delicious brownies that I made:

I used the recipe found here, minus the nuts.

Since May 2-4 weekend is the traditional start of planting outdoors in this region, I've been busy prepping for, and actually planting things in the garden, in the brief respites between rainshowers for the last week. The onions, chives, garlic, thyme, oregano & strawberries all overwintered nicely, which saves me quite a bit of effort :)
So far, I've got the following seeds into the ground this season:
Yellow, white & red carrots
2 kinds of leaf lettuce (black seeded simpson & red flame)
a lettuce mix packet
a sunflower mix packet
chioggia beets (a striped variety)
yellow wax beans (they seem to have failed to germinate, so I think I'm going to have to replant these)
green beans
sugar snap peas (not as many as I'd hoped germinated, so I'll probably replant some of these as well).

I've got French Breakfast Radishes, yellow beets and several herbs waiting to be planted this coming weekend in addition to POTATOES!!
This is the first year I'm going to try growing potatoes.  The variety I got is called 'Purple Viking' and how awesome is that?!  I'm going to be sad if they get ravaged by the raccoons or squirrels.

I also stopped by the Dufferin Grove Farmer's Market on the way home today and picked up a Black Plum Tomato, Red Pear Cherry Tomato and an Italian sweet pepper variety (I don't remember what it's called at the moment). 
The last thing on the garden list for this year is to get my hands on some hot peppers - I grew Hungarian Hot Wax peppers last year and they were okay, but I'm hankering for something different.  What kind of hot peppers are you growing?

Election Day Tomorrow!

Tomorrow, in Canada, it's election day.  It's been a bit of a weird campaign so far.  It started off with a lot of voter apathy.  About midway through the campaign, there seemed to be a big turnaround in terms of voter engagement.

I'm really hoping that this doesn't peter out when it comes time to actual follow-through on that involvement tomorrow.  The advance poll turnout was promising, so here's hoping that continues.

If I had a bigger kitchen, and more supplies on hand, I'd try to bribe everyone into doing their civic duty with some chocolate chip cookies.  Unfortunately, after this afternoon's baking extravaganza, I'm out of chocolate chips and only have about five dozen cookies done.

I hope you all go out and vote tomorrow, for whoever you feel the best choice is (assuming you weren't one of those who didn't go to the advance polls).