School days
Heavenly blue morning glory
School days mean early mornings for me this fall, an 8am class to teach three days per week. Thank goodness our best crop of morning glories ever will be there to greet me as I leave the house. (This is just the first FGB entry on them.)
Seven pints of tomatoes went into jars this week too. School days are harvest days.
Munsinger & Clemens Gardens
Part of Clemens Gardens, Saint Cloud, Minnesota
Original fountain in Munsinger Gardens, Saint Cloud, Minnesota
My home town is in many ways an arm pit on the surface of Earth. It is therefore amazing that along the eastern bank of the Mississippi River the city has a set of gardens that are renowned for their beauty.
The original site is called Munsinger Gardens. The stonework you see in the second photo above is a legacy of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).
The Clemens Gardens were an addition of the 1990s.
We arrived a little late, so what you see here were shot in fairly low light. I’ll try to add a garden blogging special edition on Clemens and Munsinger Gardens if there is time before we leave town.
Trans-Canada Highway
Mackey Lake
Shield rock in the Nickel Belt
These scenes were photographed while driving Rt. 17 across Ontario today. That second shot was taken out the car window while at a speed of about 80 km/hr. The rock is that close to the road.
Lunkers
Yellow crookneck summer squash (Cucurbita spp.)
We’ve been pulling up these things for a couple of weeks now. They’ve pretty much taken over the whole place (spread out much, much bigger now than here).
They’re great for the grill–slice & wrap in foil with some cut onions.
Brandywine tomato
After being sluggish, they’re coming in too fast now. September weather has been excellent. The flavors from these beauties have been exquisite, every bit as good as advertised.
Scarlet nantes carrots
We do not have many of these because of poor germination. Apart from a few oddballs, most of the ones that have come in are champions — flavor is unbelievable when compared to the blankness of store-bought carrots.
Salad
Well, yes, it’s Saturday. But we had to wait so we could show some great produce from the Saturday morning farmer’s market in Orono. We wanted to be life-affirming on this infamous day. Check out the celery! The tomato and cukes come from the backyard, but all else is from Orono.
Sluggish
Tomatoes, get going! A few are coming in, but it’s time for more to ripen. They have been very slow. The complaints were even worse in Minnesota where widespread frost on the morning of August 21 shut down a lot of stuff.
The last few days have included a great deal of driving, as we made our way across Canada and back into New England. East of Montreal (terrible traffic, don’t go that way) I noted fields filled with what I believe are rye grasses. Note how this vast field of the grasses with rich brown seed structures bend in the wind along a stretch of the 10 expressway near Granby, Quebec.
Deep Blade has been on vacation in Minnesota for the last week. Hope I left you with enough material last Friday. But I can’t miss vegetable blogging this week. Here is a very fine example of a midwestern vegetable and flower garden by a master gardener in Pine County, Minnesota.
