Rather than lament the end of summer, the first day of autumn 2011 seemed like a perfect time to share a few photos of what’s growing around My Earth Garden.

This stair step raised bed was home to tomatoes, cucumbers and squash in the spring and summer. For the fall it has been refreshed and planted with onion sets, garlic, radishes, collards, turnips and kale.

Radishes

Kale

Collards

We had such beautiful herbs throughout the season, I couldn’t bear to see them all go away. Still, we needed to be able to prepare the old herb bed for colder weather.  We dug the herbs up, trimmed them back and potted them, allowing us to keep the herbs growing indoors well into the winter months.

Parsley

Peppermint

Sage

Yesterday was my birthday and while I’ve never been big on lavish celebrations and such crazy shenanigans, it was nice that some of the locals came by to pass along their well wishes.

This dragonfly has claimed the tomato stake as its own. We could touch its tail and it would simply move to the other side of the stake.

The biggest surprise of the day was when John found this little guy (girl?) not only in one of the raised beds but also climbing the tomato plants to eat a tomato.  The tomato in the upper right is now nearly obliterated by this Eastern box turtle.

A second view shows the turtle and the tomato it wanted.

This beauty is a Red-spotted Purple Butterfly feeding on a rotting tomato. I first encountered this butterfly last year when I found a swarm of them feeding on felled pears in the yard.

As I have been neck deep in busy lately, I wanted to take just a few moments to share some of the beautiful that’s going on around the homestead.  Here is today’s mini photo essay:

The first Asparagus Bean seedling of the year has been up for a couple of days now.  The other 4 are breaking the ground today after last night’s storms.

Asparagus beans are delicious and unusual, with the average bean measuring in at well over a foot in length.  Each bean.

I will be growing bush beans off site at the secret gardens, but I am excited to see these “yard long beans” get their start.  The climbing wall will be built for them next week and in no time will be covered with green!

I’m ready to dig out my canning recipes for dilly green beans, and the asparagus bean is a perfect candidate for it.

The onion bed is full of activity, with three different types of onion sets already growing incredibly well.

Purple, yellow and white onions are all sharing half of a large bed that will soon be home to horseradish and a few annual flowers as well.

These onion sets were a great find on a recent trip to Virginia to visit family and I am looking forward to using them in the kitchen for a cool summer salad.

I can’t say enough about these Georgia collard greens.

Remember that these greens (three plants in total) were salvaged from my old farm a few weeks ago where they had overwintered in the garden untouched along with a bed of turnips.

I transplanted these three babies and  have had some delicious meals from them.  Sadly it appears that the next batch I pick may be the end of these diehards for the year.

I will be sad to see them go!

Don’t wild flowers rule?

These have the most vibrant purple blooms.

I’m afraid that I am going to be forced to cultivate these.

How is your garden growing?  Seedlings will be making their way from inside to the outdoors over the next few days here, and the tomatoes will be in the ground.  Nothing says Garden Season like tomatoes in bloom!

Just a few words to live by on this beautiful Friday afternoon.  Have a safe and happy weekend!

This heart was cut from a large piece of rusted tin on the homestead property.  I plan to use as much of it as possible for decorative and utilitarian purposes in the gardens, such as this one.  Here is what the tin looked like when I pulled it from the woods:

And here’s another look at the heart in the tree:

After yesterday’s whirlwind workday for us both, neither complained much that today was a day best spent indoors.  I wrapped up some writing deadlines yesterday and did my first radio show to promote the book, so keep your ears open and you’ll be able to listen to the show on Saturday February 12th at 10am EST. 

Thankfully there was no shortage of things to do inside, including checking in on the seeds that were started on 1/26.  As of today the 4 Large Cherry Tomatoes have all sprouted, as have all of the Sweet Basil, 10 plants worth. 

I spent a few minutes this evening lusting over a beautiful list of heirloom tomatoes making me more than a bit sad at having lost much of my heirloom seed stock last year.  I do have a few remaining seeds from some of my favorites though, so all is not lost.  In a perfect world I would have a tomato garden that had any heirloom variety you could imagine.  Yes, I’m that obsessed with tomatoes.  I’m pretty sure there should be a 12 step program for people like me.

In the next few days we will be picking up my compost tumbler and bringing it home.  I’m hoping that it will give the homestead’s freshman composting year a nice boost as there is a batch of goodness inside that has been brewing for a few months.  There’s also a few pallets that need to be brought over as well as some other miscellaneous pieces of lumber and my old cedar raised beds from a previous residence.

Pretty sure we’re gonna need some liniment that night…