It's Not Spring, But Things are Green

After a couple frosts, the pasture is a dull brown color.  The leaves of the pecan tree and the water oak trees are falling.  The red, yellow and orange color of the autumn leaves are gone and replaced with brown.   Blah!  All this makes for a dreary landscape, except for the fact that a few things are still colorful outside.

Take for instance the Sasanqua Camelias in the flower beds around the house.  All summer long, their waxy, shiny, dark green foliage waits patiently, playing a background role amidst the pink azaleas, blue agapanthus, and yellow cassia.  And then each year around Thanksgiving when the other brilliant Spring and Summer flowers have faded, it's as if the sasanqua says, "Now it's my turn to shine."  Buds by the hundreds fill the plants and bloom the pinkest pink you've ever seen. They keep blooming and blooming and the petals of the older flowers carpet the ground beneath the plant as new flowers bloom to take their place.

Pretty in Pink

Before the sun punched out on the timeclock, I figured I would walk out and treat my eyes to a visual feast.  The first patch in the garden just a little over a month ago was a jungle of sweet potato vines. We harvested the delicious potatoes out of the rich soil and fed the vines and leaves to the cows.  Just tonight we enjoyed some baked sweet potatoes - actually put them in my chicken and sausage gumbo.

The sweet potato patch is now a turnip patch and the turnip greens are so green it almost hurts your eyes to look at them.  We'll eat a few of the smaller turnips, but this crop was primarily planted for the cows.  When day after day there's nothing for them to eat except hay, I cannot tell you how much they enjoy eating turnips. I'll pull a bucket full and feed them the greens.  Then I'll get my grandfather's pocket knife and slice chunks of turnip and feed it to the cows.  They'll crunch, crunch, crunch on the turnips, eating them like there's no tomorrow.  It seems they are never satisfied.  And then, one of them will burp.  A nasty turnip burp.  And it stinks - bad.  That is my signal to close up the pocket knife and call it a day.  But I have a lot of turnips planted, so we'll do the same thing tomorrow.

The Turnip Patch (Mainly for the Cows)

But we grow things for us too!  I was checking on the progress of our lettuce.  First I have a row of red romaine lettuce growing, but it has been growing so slowly!  It's our first year to try this variety. It certainly has a beautiful color - green on the bottom but then more "sun-burned" on the outer leaves.  I have to exercise my patience here.  These leaves, just as they are now, would be great in a salad - tender, tasty, scrumptious with a nice vinaigrette, some Parmesan and a few capers on top. But they would be all gone quickly.  I want to let them grow for 10 or so more days.

Red Romaine

But they need to hurry.  I went inside and quickly mixed up some fish emulsion in my garden sprayer and sprayed them real good with the smelly liquid fish.  This foliar feeding should hopefully make them jump.

Feeding them Liquid fish

On the next row I have a blend of different heirloom lettuces planted.  The name of the blend is Rocky Top Lettuce mix.  There are many different varieties in this blend.  They are colorful and delicious to just break off a piece and eat right out of the garden.

Rocky Top Lettuce Mix

I'm risking it here a little because a freeze would wipe them out.  I have read though in the reviews in the seed catalog that people have put plastic over them and they've made it through a freeze.  I'll watch the weather and if we have a freeze, I'll simply harvest everything and we'll eat salad for a few days.

Nice Baby Lettuce

I do much better with lettuce in the Fall than in the Spring.  In the Spring, it tends to get too hot too quick for the lettuce and the pest pressure is just too much for them.  I also have to watch out for a little pullet that can get through the holes in the garden fence.  Tricia's spotted her scratching and pecking around in the garden. She'd have a field day (literally) with my Rocky Top Lettuce mix!