Eggplant, Luka, and A New Blogger

The rain came last night, and the outside world around me is wet and dreary. But I am extremely excited about it. Hopefully some of my vegetables will perk up and continue to grow strong. Obviously, the season is over for some of them. But there is always a hope that the others continue to yield more vegetables and fruit until the October frost.

I harvested those two beautiful eggplants that were growing strong. After considering all my options, I decided to cook a Vietnamese stir-fry with garlic, Thai chilies from my garden, and some Vietnamese soy condiments.

Below: The beautiful, long eggplants


Unlike the first eggplants I harvested, which looked completely seedless and young, these had small seeds. Its flesh was soft, which made cutting it very easy. The knife cut into its flesh, and it was a clean cut each time. I loved the contrasting colors between its white flesh and its purple body.


Below: The eggplants’ flesh (on our bamboo cutting board)


The final product was delicious. I ate it over white rice. No need for extra seasoning. It was spicy because of the Thai peppers, but I like things a little hot. I also cut up one small cucumber (the remainder from the garden) and ate that on the side. Delicious meal!

Below: Yummy in the Tummy


And now some overdue photos of Luka. She’s growing and is SO hyper. I do love that wherever I go, whatever room I am in, that’s where you’ll find her. She sleeps most of the day when I am working, but at night, she gets all crazy and tries to attack my legs. It’s not her claws that bother me, it’s her teeth. It’s annoying, and I play fetch with her to try to calm her down. But this is no regular cat. She seems to have more energy than anything I’ve ever seen. She will continue to play for hours at a time. I’ll be playing with her sometimes, and she’ll start to pant like a dog. I stop because I think she’s too tired. But she runs up and down the stairs for fun, even when she’s panting. She doesn’t want to stop.

Is this odd for a cat to pant?

Anyway, enjoy!


On a final note, I want to introduce my friend Jan to the Gardening community. After working in the publishing world, Jan made a career move to become an artist. And she is a beautiful artist at that! Check out her art blog.

Recently, Jan decided to start gardening. Because fall is upon us, she has decided to try some veggies in containers. Please check out her gardening blog and welcome her to the community. Her gardening blog is at http://squarefootgarden-jan.blogspot.com/

Welcome Jan!

Presents From TN Bloggers Dinner & Plant Flesh

All of the garden bloggers that I met on Tuesday (I think it was) have already posted about our meeting. You can see photos of our gatherings at the various blogs:

Tina at In The Garden
Frances at Faire Garden
Dave at the Home Garden
Donna at Mother Nature's Garden
Gail at Clay and Limestone

Did I leave anyone out? I hope not.

I'm extremely late in blogging about our visit, but I must say that it was wonderful. It's great to finally meet people you've only been reading about. And it's interesting and funny how everyone has such a distinct personality and voice... and I feel like I've known them forever because I've been reading about their gardens.

I wanted to show you the gifts I received from our gathering.

First, Tina's extremely thoughtful and beautiful gift. She makes the most beautiful marker stones, and she had asked me what I wanted mine to say. I choose "Cam and DP."

Below: The beautiful marker stone! It now sits in the front vegetable bed. Everyone who walks to the front door will see it.


Frances and Gail handed out some plants to everyone. I got some daylilies. I still have to find a place to plant them. I'm thinking I will plant them near the mailbox. I just have to dig up all the rocks that the bad construction workers left there. (It was not a good company, and I am SO happy they are now out of business.)

Since I am not a flower person, I'm hoping that these don't die before next spring. LoL. My American grandmother tells me that daylilies are very easy to grow, so I am hoping this is true. She used to grow over 10 varieties in her garden, so I trust that she's right!

Daylilies sure are pretty. The only drawback is that they don't have an aroma, or a flowery smell to them. But they are pretty, so that's good. And they'll be perfect for cutting and putting into a vase. So I'm very excited.

Below: My new daylily plant.

Finally, I wanted to show you the flesh... the "body" of some of these delicious veggies and fruits that I've been eating.

I know some of you have been dying to see "Barney." He wasn't ripe when we picked him from the vine. I just got very excited because he was so big. And plus, we had so many new watermelon growing on the vine. So I decided to just pick him. He was picked way too early, but he was still pretty juicy and delicious. He doesn't look like he would be that good, but he REALLY was. Lots of flavor and very yummy! I can't wait to taste some of his other brothers and sisters. I bet if I let them ripen on the vine, they'll be 100 times better and 100 times more delicious. But he was pretty delish!

Below: Barney's "Bod"

I'll end with the flesh of the corn that my family ate last week. Remember, we had an amazing bounty, and it was ALL so delicious. We did take a picture of one of the corns before we boiled it. It was yellow and just so pretty.

Below: Yellow corn


Have a great weekend everyone!