Institutional Landscaping of the Damned, A Continuing Series (Part 2)

I suppose I should give them points for trying, but these are just about the most depressing containers I've ever seen.  I'm not crazy about red geraniums (people have this dreadful tendency to combine them patriotically with those bluish and white petunias around the 4th of July), but this is awful.  It's hard to even blame the smokers for tossing their butts on the ground here.  It hardly affects the aesthetic at all.

It's so tempting to liberate these planters in the dead of night to prevent another atrocity in the spring--plus, those half barrels are really pricy and would look so much nicer in my garden!

Breaking News: Brussels Sprouts Not a Total Disaster

So, I've harvested two batches of sprouts.  The first batch I roasted in the oven with just olive oil, salt, and pepper, and they came out quite well.

Yesterday--yes, I actually harvested something from the garden on Thanksgiving, it was quite satisfying--I added garlic and a handful of grapes, which were supposed to break down and help caramelize the sprouts.  It didn't totally work; I think you have to halve the grapes, and the sprouts got a bit overdone because I was also making gravy and blanching broccoli, and I really am incapable of doing more than one thing at a time.  However, I think there's potential here.  Next year I might plant a few more seedlings so that we can have Brussels Sprouts more than twice, although they take up a lot of room for a pretty small yield.  Maybe I need to stake them as they grow also--my sprouts were all twisted and hunchbacked, which they never are in the store.

Summer's Last Gasp

The nice thing about annuals is they seem to hang on a lot longer than any other flowers or foliage.  My hostas are already melting into yellowy decayed nothingness, but the begonias still look pretty good actually:

And one final shot of this season's marigolds:

I've always kind of felt like annuals are cheating, from a gardening point of view--somebody else starts them and gets them flowering and you just come along and chuck them in the ground and water them for a few weeks.  It's like horticultural plagiarism.  Even if you start your own annual seeds, it's not the same as perennials that you nurture for years and years.

However, I think I'm going to do more with annuals next year because they really provide a ton of great color and structure in the garden and last a lot longer than periennials.

What the Hell Happened to My Brussels Sprouts?

They still look too small to harvest.  WTF?  I'm ready to hibernate and I've still got unripe shit in the garden to deal with.

Ok, well, obviously, I should have consulted some experts before panicking.  First, according to Growing Great Vegetables in the Heartland, Brussels Sprouts taste a lot better after a few frosts.  Second, the book recommends snapping off the tops when autumn starts, to encourage the plants to put their energy into the sprouts rather than into growing ever taller.  All right, they've got maybe another week or two to get their act together.  Then, off with their heads!

The Under-Blogger Hard At Work

As useless as she is at helping in the garden, she's even more useless when it comes to churning out new posts.  In fact, she thinks my laptop is actually a heated cat bed.

Raptured While Raking?

On my way home from work the other day, I noticed that one of my neighbors had apparently been zapped up to the mothership or something, right in the middle of raking. The next day, it was still there!

Naturally, the more logical explanation is that they simply forgot, but these particular neighbors have a very small, very immaculate yard (I don't know them, but I kind of hate them), and it's just not like them to leave a rake lying about.  I think the rapture finally happened, and hardly anyone noticed.

Suck It, May

Check out my November flowers!

I love these hardy chrysanthemums, even though they do have an unfortunate tendency to flop over.