These posts are about plants and flowers.
I’m sorry about the blog being so quiet this past week, things got really busy around here, but we should be back to normal starting next week. And look out for a little DIY project sometime soon!
It’s the end of the summer and you know that means harvest time. Even our little minitomato plants on the windowsill are producing tiny red tomatoes.
We found this little steel tray at a trift store last weekend.
You all probably know that we have our own little garden on our kitchen window sill. The very first herbs we planted were sage and lemon balm. One pot per plant. After two weeks we planted more herbs: more sage and lemon balm and some mini tomatoes. Soon, we noticed that the sage we planted later grew much quicker than the sage we planted first.
During the summer we have observed our sage pots closely. The sage, or should I say “sage”, that we planted first (in the white pot) looks totally different from the other one (in the yellow pot)! It has long stem and small leaves with sleek edges. The real sage has much larger leaves that are furry and have round serrated edges. There hasn’t been much other kind of action in the “sage” pot, but lately small new leaves have been peeking the air next to the “sage”. And the new leaves look just like the real sage’s leaves! This is very bizarre because all the sage seeds are from the same sachet. Apparently there were one or two stowaway seeds among the sage seeds.
Today I took the “sage” pot and looked and smelled the leaves of the unknown plant. Katja told me to pull off the “sage”. Once I grabbed the stem and pulled, the whole contents of the pot followed. The alien plant couldn’t be removed without dismantling the whole dirt clod. So, we decided to leave the “sage” in its place because it looks quite nice as it is. After I put the pot back on the window sill, I noticed a strong scent of something familiar. I smelled my fingers. Oregano! Alive and kicking oregano! Yeah, it can be something else too, but it sure smells like oregano. We’ll let the “oregano” be and grow in the sage pot for the rest of the summer. In addition, we have observed that oregano seems to be stronger plant than sage.
Update: Title of this post got an indefinite article.
Look what we have here! Our very first tomato from our little minitomato garden on the kitchen windowsill. It’s so tiny and cute!
Happy Friday to everyone and to all that celebrate mid-summer (or Juhannus as we call it here in Finland), have a safe and fun weekend!
It’s been cold and raining non-stop for a couple of days now. While the world looks grey outside, inside of our home there are bright colors that cheer me up. I bought a big bag of tomatoes yesterday - they taste so good and bring a great splash of color into the kitchen. And they are in season now so they are very inexpensive, too. I always try to buy Finnish vegetables and fruit as much as possible so I really enjoy the summer season when there is more to choose from and the prices are down. I feel so guilty if I buy produce that’s been transported from another country, but obviously sometimes it’s unavoidable if we don’t want to stop eating grapes and bananas and such alltogether. But I try to balance it out with buying Finnish produce when ever possible.
Our minitomato plants on the windowsill are doing great. Lots of little yellow flowers on them. We are eagerly waiting if we’ll be so lucky as to actually see a minitomato or two this summer. We’ve been talking about moving to a rowhouse apartment in the future and my only hesitation with the plan is that most of them have such small yards. I’d love to be able to fit a small vegetable garden on our yard. I love it how gardening makes you feel so much more connected to the earth and the changing seasons. And I love the idea of tending a garden that then provides food on your plate, even if it’s just a few carrots or tomatoes. I always think there’s such an element of love in gardening, whether it’s tending a garden of vegetables or flowers.
We’re dreaming of having a house with a little yard so we could garden but before that’s possible we enjoy our little herb garden on the kitchen windowsill. All the Minitomatoes, Sage and Lemon balm we planted earlier are growing nicely. Above is a picture of Watercress, our latest addition to the garden.
