Random Cuttings

Lately, I keep finding myself with random little snippets of posts, and no good way to tie them all together into a coherent bundle. Weeks later, I log into Blogger and find draft after draft cluttering up my account... so I end up just deleting the drafts to clean up the mess.  In addition to wasting any effort I've put into writing, I don't always remember to go back and chronicle the items in the deleted drafts for posterity.  This may not seem like such a big deal at first glance, but it is, because the primary function of my blog is to serve as a gardening journal.


As a result, I've decided that I'm going to just cull these little post snippets into an occasional post seriess called Random Cuttings. I hope that they turn out as nicely as this little scrabbled-together garden bouquet:

Garden bouquet, September 2009.

Plants include 'Hopi Red Dye' amaranth, 'Sweet Kate' tradescantia, Russian sage, Japanese bloodgrass, and coleus.

I like to take random cuttings from the garden and put them into various vases around the house throughout the season. Some don't live up to my standards and are either revamped or sent to that big compost bin the sky--er, the backyard. But others really work for me, and I'm very happy to have brought the garden inside on days when I can't go outside into the garden.

Remember those apples from the last post?  The ones Steve and I picked off of his grandfather's tree? I'm still whittling down the pile, slowly... but here's how the Apple Pie with Walnut Streusel looked while it cooled:

I'm not sure how the apple crisp turned out, because we dropped it off at Steve's grandpa's last night and haven't heard any reviews.  I used a new topping recipe and made it gluten-free for Steve's uncle (who often eats dinner there) so that makes me a little nervous... but as Steve pointed out:  "It has yummy apples, cinnamon, sugar, butter, oats and oat flour in it. Really, could it have turned out that bad?"  Good point!

The edibles had a really rough year in my garden--and it's all my fault.  I got everything into the ground so late this year that I can only hope for the cold temps to hold off long enough for me to harvest some tomatoes.  My lemongrass hardly grew, the birds got all of my grapes, it was a not-unexpected "off" year for the blackberries, and so on.  But the worst was finding scale on my potted, 3-year-old bay laurels!  I immediately cut the whole plants down below the infestation and harvested the salvageable leaves.  They look pretty drying on my dining room table:

I have no idea whether cutting the bay back will work, by the way.  Since I don't spray, it was just a gut-instinct action as an alternative to throwing out the infected plants.  I keep watching the branch stubs for signs of scale, or for signs of additional leafing out... and see none of either, yet.  I'll keep the blog updated on their progress (or lack thereof) as autumn progresses.  Please keep your fingers crossed for them!