Flowers in the bed - Tomatoes turning red

Around the base of our live oak trees and intermixed with lariope, Tricia plants caladium bulbs each year.  She digs them up after they are done and stores the caladium bulbs over the winter in a pair of old panty hose that she hangs in the garage and then pulls the bulbs out and replants in early Spring.  They are looking nice right now.  The leaves look like a big heart.  In fact, I read that some people call them Heart of Jesus.



Caladiums

In the flower beds around the house, she also has planted some agapanthus.  They are also known as Lily of the Nile although according to Wikipedia they aren't a lily and they are indigenous to South Africa.  Maybe Lily of the Nile is easier to say than Agapanthus?  The name Agapanthus is from greek words, Agape "love" and Anthos "flower".  So the Love Flower.  We do love the color of them. 

Agapanthus - Lily of the Nile

It is not uncommon to see bees and butterflies around these flowers.

Now to some photographs of some items that you can eat!  The tomatoes are loading up and soon we'll have plenty to eat, freeze and can.  This is a mystery variety that grew volunteer in the garden in the late fall.  I dug it up and brought it in the garage and was able to get it to live over the winter.


Mystery tomato variety

After looking at them closely, I'm going to venture a guess that they are Money Maker variety tomatoes, one of the heirloom varieties we grow.  They are a prolific producer of nice, but smaller sized tomatoes.

Money Maker Tomatoes?

I like the color in this picture.  You can also see the concrete reinforcement fencing that I'm trellising these on.  The tomatoes are a vivid bright green color.  Which reminds me, Russ has a batter mix that he bought his mom to make Fried Green Tomatoes.  We're going to have to try it out.  Impatient, I guess, waiting on them to turn red...


Fried Green Tomatoes, anyone?

But as I brush back some of the foliage, I can see that we won't have to wait long. 

Tomatoes beginning to turn red.

We normally blanch the tomatoes, pull the skins off and freeze a bunch of them whole in gallon Ziploc bags.  I like to make salsa and can a number of jars to last us through the season.  We also can stewed tomatoes and tomato sauce as well as just eating them raw with salt and pepper.  Tricia also makes a Greek tomato salad with feta cheese, black olive, red onion, oregano, olive oil and fresh chopped tomatoes.

I almost forgot one of the things we like to make with them - Pico de Gallo.  In English that translates to Beak of the Rooster.  I have no idea why it is called that, but the dish uses fresh chopped tomatoes, cilantro, onion, jalapeno, and lime juice.  We eat it by the gallon! 

Unfortunately, as you'll see in the photo below, we'll have to buy cilantro to make it.  Our cilantro bolts to flower quickly as the plant is more of a cool weather plant and we can't time the tomatoes and cilantro to ripen at the same time.  We do eat a lot of it during the winter - just wish we had fresh tomatoes to pair them with at that time.


Cilantro plant bolting (flowering)

We don't even need to save cilantro seeds (called coriander) anymore as they come up on their own all throughout the garden every year.