Happy New Gardening Year

2010 was a great year for our garden! I really enjoyed reading and learning from all of you Great Garden Bloggers out there..........it has truely been a pleasure!! I never imagined that I would meet so many nice like minded people.

Happy New Year from our Garden to Yours!!

Gardening Gifts

"The Italian" did good. He got me some great gardening gifts for Christmas! It seems like I need a new pair of pruners every year. I am really bad about leaving them laying outside and mis-placing them at least once a day! He got me two different types of pruners and a clip-on holder to put them in. I think he is hoping that I won't spend as much time looking for where I layed them down! We will see if you can teach an old gardener new tricks!

I'm not much of a book reader unless it is related to gardening. There were a couple of gardening books that I was interested in from Rodale. The Rodale Institute is about 15 miles from where we live and they have another organic experimental farm about 3 miles from us. They have some pretty good workshops scheduled for next year. I think that I may go to one or two of them.

As you can see, "The Italian Santa" also got me a great jams and preserves book! There are some really interesting recipes in it. I think this means...even more jams and jellies next year!

The Feast of the Seven Fishes

The Feast of the Seven Fishes also known as La Vigilia, is the traditional Italian meal on Christmas Eve. The tradition began in southern Italy and is now celebrated by Italians all over the world. There are many hypotheses of the significance of the number "7". Some people believe that seven fishes are served because it took God seven days to create the world, while others mention the Seven Hills of Rome. There is also the possibility that the seven fishes symbolize the seven scraments in the Catholic Chruch, along with the seven sins. Another theory is that seven is a number representing perfection: the traditional Biblical number for divinity is three, and for Earth is four, and the combination of these numbers, seven, represents God on Earth, or Jesus Christ.

Last night we celebrated The Feast of the Seven Fishes at "The Italian's" parents home. The meal began with an antipasto.

The table is set with traditional antipasto: cheeses, sopressata, roasted red peppers, fava beans, eggplant caponata, wine & bread

Deep fried smelts, shrimp, calamari, catfish & codfish cakes

Clams in red sauce over spaghetti

and...Lobster tail

The evening ended with lots of homemade goodies..........my cookies and my father in-law's wonderful canollis!

Have a Blessed Christmas

The Garden on the First Day of Winter

I decided to venture out in to the garden to take some pictures on the first day of winter. It's pretty cold and windy out today....but, the sun is shining. Boy, I wish we had some snow out there.

The Brussel Sprouts are still hanging in there. I think that I should harvest them soon. I don't know how much longer they will take the cold weather we have been having.

There are about five nice big leeks that will probably be harvested this week. I will leave the other five in the garden for a while and see how they do.

The chard is growing slowly but surely inside the cold frame.

Pak Choi inside the cold frame. I do have some bugs in the cold frames...so, I put some diatomaceous earth down...hopefully that will help.

The radishes are also slowly growing in the cold frame. I'm going to have to get "The Italian" outside to help me take some better pictures in the cold frames.

To my surprise, the rosemary is surviving this cold cold weather. I must get it covered soon if it has any chance to make it through the winter.

The sage bush is doing fine as usual...I think that some of the herbs do better when covered with snow. The oregano and thyme don't have much green on them. I usually harvest them all winter from under the snow.