Gardens are for Giving, Maybe also for Receiving

      My daughter Barb is so busy with her house, three kids, her husband, a job, and a study load for a Masters Degree, that she has no time for gardening.  Did I mention two big dogs and a cockatiel also live there?  Yet last year they put in cold frames and loved the extended harvest.  I have been hoping to get down to her house to plant some veggies in her frames, and it happened that my wife was down there and could help me transplant.  The voles have been chomping plants to the ground in my frames, so in self defense, I thought I would move some of the crop to a location where it might survive.

Transplants from Pop,  December 3rd,  2012

      This year has been a bust for volunteer veggies due to the drought in mid summer preventing a lot of self seeding.  And of course I procrastinated and did not plant all of the fall garden stuff that I wanted to get started.  But some of the arugula and red lettuce that I had started were on the short side of the cold frame where they would touch the glass.  And therefore freeze to the glass when the weather gets colder.  So I figured if I should dig those out, I could give Barb a very good start.  The picture above shows stuff I dug out of my two gardens: dill, thick stem chinese mustard, black seeded simpson lettuce, chives, garlic plants, and escarole.  And lots of Barb's beloved arugula.
      Barb and Rob had raked a bunch of leaves into the cold frame beds, so it was an easy job to rake them back out to have a nicely prepared bed to receive the transplants.

Thank you Barb and Rob

In they went

And a second frame

      Mission accomplished.  Grow well my little veggies.

      Today, in early December, the temperature hit a wonderful 63 degrees.  So I had to go back to the park to putz around and clean things up.  Bob King was there today.  Bob had some plots at the park nearly thirty years ago when they first started up the community gardens.  He was standing next to a plot that had lettuce, spinach and beets. 

About to be plowed,  December 3rd,  2012

           I asked him what he was up to.  

           "Cleanin up", he says.  Said he was coming back tomorrow to plow everything under for the winter.

           " Bob, you can't do that.  Would you mind if I dug some of this stuff up for my cold frames".
           "George, have all you want.  I am just going to till it in in the morning".

      I grabbed my shovel, borrowed a wheel barrow, and started loading transplants onto my truck.

      Red oak leaf lettuce on the left, spinach in the middle, and cos lettuce on the right.  I went back over to Bob and asked him why he was tilling under the spinach.  I told him the spinach should survive the winter, though the lettuce would turn to mush with a hard freeze.  So I won the spinach a reprieve.  He will till around it to see what happens in the spring.  I hope that spinach prospers.
      So in the morning I gave Barb a bunch of transplants from my garden.  But by the afternoon, I had been rewarded aplenty, with loads more than I started with.  Barb, you want some more goodies?

Bald Eagle on the C & D Canal

      I went down to my daughter's house today to plant some of her cold frames.  The road between her house and my desired route home is closed due to construction, so I decided to take the most direct route, the dirt access road along the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.  Half way along the road, I glanced up in a tree above the road and saw a Bald Eagle.  I stopped the truck to look at him, he stayed put.  Wondered if I could catch him on camera for proof.  He stayed put.  Turns out the first shot through the windshield was fuzzy.  Duh, the camera focused on the windshield.  I wondered if I could get a shot if I just cracked the door open.  Worth a try.  He stayed put.  I took a shot.

Bald Eagle on C & D Canal, December 3rd,  2012

    There he is, see his pretty white head?  Let me crop the picture to try to enlarge it a bit.

      There, that is a bit better.  Now you can see him in all of his glory.  But oh no, I see he is taking off.  Wonder if I can catch him in flight?  Fat chance, so turn and click.

      My lucky day.  Got him.  With a little hand held camera and a lot of luck.  Let's take a little closer look.

      Bye bye beautiful bird.  You made my day.

Second Time Consuming Hobby

New Sheepshead Minnows,  November 29th,  2012

      Many of you don't know that I have a second time consuming hobby that has afflicted me since I was a kid: fish keeping and other small critter keeping.  Having found a great benefit in keeping gardening notes and pictures in the blog format, I have reluctantly started a second blog, George's Bio Lab.  If interested in this new adventure, please drop in for a visit at:  http://georgesbiolab.blogspot.com/
      Gotta go check on the fish.  They love the cold weather when I am not spending soooo much time out in the gardens.

Smokin for Thanksgiving

      My neighbor Rick has a neat gizmo for smoking foods, and he has been kind enough to let me take things to his house to smoke when he has the fire going.

Rick's smoker,  November 21st,  2012

      This neat smoker reminds me a lot of a steam engine.  The fire is maintained in the smaller drum off to the right.  The fire heat and smoke enter the larger drum where they are connected.  The food is therefore not on top of open flame, so you don't have to worry about flare ups the way you do cooking on a grill.  I bought a turkey and a nice slab of salmon to smoke, and decided to experiment with some sweet peppers and garlic cloves.  The dill is from some plants I potted up and moved to the porch.

Salmon, peppers and garlic cloves

      There is my turkey in the back right corner, with Rick's pork loin in front.  He also had bought a bunch of turkey wings and legs at the store.  They probably smoke more thoroughly as they are smaller pieces.  The turkey neck that I included had very little meat, hardly worth that experiment.

We be smokin

       Rick threw on a large salmon fillet he had bought.  I know that will be delicious as the taste test we did on my salmon last night was a resounding AH, yummy.  In just a few hours, we will eat our smoked turkey, as well as his friend that was cooked in the traditional manner in the oven.  With two turkeys, we get double the giblets in the gravy!  And enough left overs for everybody to take home.  Simply scrumptious.
       Gobble, gobble.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving.

Thanksgiving Tomorrow

      Happy Thanksgiving to everyone tomorrow.  It is my favorite holiday.  A time to gather with friends and family to enjoy the day.  To eat. To eat, then eat some more.  Probably to nap in front of the TV while a slow football game is on.  It gives me great pleasure to have a fall garden, to be able to pick fresh veggies to add to the Thanksgiving Feast.  Direct from Pop Pop's gardens.

A beautiful radish harvest,  11/20/2012

Swiss Chard to pick,  11/20/2012

And lettuce for a salad,  11/20/2012

Total haul,  11/20/2012

      Wow, what a nice haul, and so much fun gathering it.  The radishes in the middle, salad greens to the left, arugula to the right, and a mess of swiss chard greens at the top.  Plenty of delicious fresh veggies to go along with the turkey.

Planting More Garlic

      There is a saying that you can plant garlic on the shortest day and then harvest the bulbs on the longest day.  That should mean that I am not too late to still be planting cloves.  A friend who recently moved from our neighborhood had been growing some named garlic strains.  That is pretty cool because my garlic has been from the "three for a dollar" variety at the store, or from plants thrown away on the park compost pile.  In any event, I am pretty happy with my current garlic strains, but look forward to trying something new.

On left: Red Russian, on right: Music

      The two bulbs that my neighbor gave me were separated into the individual cloves.  The Music variety, on the right of the photo, had only seven cloves, but they were quite large.  These cloves were planted on November 10th, 2012.

Broken into individual cloves

      I cleaned up a section of bed #9, where I planted the Music cloves at the east end.  The Red Russian cloves went in the west end of bed #9.
      Today, 11/16/2012, I planted 100 cloves of my next to premium size cloves in the west end of bed #1.  I still want to put in more cloves, as it is so easy and productive to let the garlic do its thing over the winter.

Been Fishin

Nassawadox Creek, Virginia,  November 10th,  2012

      We just came back from a wonderful visit with some friends who have a second home on a beautiful cove on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.  My friend Rick and I always enjoy the fishing, as the scenery makes a fishing trip a success even when the fish are not biting.

Just across the cove

      This fallen tree is very near their dock, and is slowly falling apart after several years.  There are many pieces of driftwood around the creek.  Even a couple of pieces have found their way to my garden back here in Delaware.
      But fishin is always more fun when there is also catchin.

      And eatin.  We caught four keeping size rockfish the first morning.  And had some extra fresh fish for breakfast just hours later.  Simply scrumptious.