Even with the warm weather we had this summer, it’s not too easy to ripen tomatoes in Seattle. But of course, I must try. The small ones seem to have the best shot at it, but I’m still learning with tomatoes, as with so many things. These are Husky cherry tomatoes, and the plant is particularly strong and sturdy. The tomatoes aren’t bad, either. I slice them on a sandwich, even the small ones, for flavor that can’t be beat.

Interesting fact: See the little star-shaped caps at the stems? There are five points. Fruits (and tomatoes are fruits, I think actually berries) that have patterns of fives, like an apple’s seeds if you cut it crosswise, are USUALLY safe to eat and not poisonous.

Visit Think Green Thursdays for more ways to live lightly on the earth, besides food gardening, that is.

I love the macro setting on my little point-and-shoot Canon. It lets us really look at something in a way we rarely think to do. These three small pansy blossoms from my garden (from a volunteer plant!), each less than an inch and a half (4 cm) wide show us their perfection. Visit Macro Monday for other interesting close ups, and Mellow Yellow Monday for other photos with some interesting yellow components.

This new (about a year) house is so great. One of the best things is the backyard space, with no fences between us and the neighbors on both sides, and the scenic horse pasture behind us. This view from our patio shows our little vegetable garden near the birdbath, the two columnar apple trees closer to us, and mostly our neighbor’s yard with the big shrubs. It’s like living in a park!

I feel that gardening and feeding the birds is a way to contribute to a better environment for all. Visit Think Green Thursday for more “green” ideas.

Now that the roses are planted they are just taking off, late in the season though it is. This is a Broadway rose, so happy now. For more Mellow Yellow Monday visions, or Macro Monday close ups, or even Color Carnival scintillations, go on and check them out.

This rose is the only one of the 18 we planted whose name I do not know. All the others had tags, but this one had only a lovely pink rose to choose by. I took it. If anyone knows its proper name, that would be great. The flowers are unusually large, and it’s fragrant!

For more flowers from all over the world, visit Today’s Flowers.

Picked these this week. Not everyone knows about lemon cucumbers, upper right. Pick them before they get bright yellow, when they really look like lemons! They are quite delicate and delicious.

Happy Macro Monday, Mellow Yellow Monday, and Ruby Tuesday. We are off camping and will return in a few days. Ta-ta!

This is a newer variety of coneflower, or echinacea. It’s more pink than mauve and the petals don’t recurve too much, and it’s not too tall, either. More like a pink daisy, really. Here it is, blooming in my garden, with geraniums I overwintered downstairs and some peach-colored impatiens behind it.

Next year I think I’ll try doing impatiens from seed, as I hear they aren’t too hard and grow easily, plus I could use a lot of them. I read that with extremely fine seed, the thing to do is get a little clean sand and mix the fine seeds well into it; then you can handle a pinch of the sand fairly easily and not get a jillion seeds at a time.

Visit Pink Saturday for more pinkness of all kinds. Such nice people, such sweet pink photos!

And the Color Carnival folks like bright pink, too, ideally combined with red and peach! If you like color, you’ll LOVE Color Carnival.

So now I have this new rose garden, with 18 new rose bushes. It was so much work to create it, but the rewards are immense. I love to go out and clip the fading flowers so the petals don’t strew around in the wind. Sometimes I get a little over-enthusiastic in my deadheading and then I have fullblown roses looking at me soulfully in the clippings bucket. I rescued five of these and put them in a bowl of water.

For more ruby redness in photos, visit Ruby Tuesday.

Today (Sunday) is the first anniversary of one of my favorite memes in the blogosphere, Flowers For Today. This idea was created by Luiz Santilli Junior one year ago today, and I am honored to be Guest Friend on this special day. Thank you, Luiz! It’s so true that everyone loves flowers.

Below is my photo which is posted on their site today. It was taken just a few days ago on my patio here in Seattle, and I grew many of the plants from seeds. Dusty, our cat who is posing so nicely, is the kind of kitty who loves everyone. If you visit, she will love you, too. She is an inspiration to me.

I thought I’d post a couple of extra flower pictures today, in honor of this special day. Below are flowers from my friend Cindy’s amazing deck and garden, and one of her dahlias. Enjoy this happy day.

This is one of my favorite garden tips.

When cooking, especially in the cold winter months when you make lots of stews and such, save those stubby bits cut off of the bottom of the garlic cloves. Really, those teensy little things! Go outside and poke them into your vegetable bed, maybe an inch under the ground. If you can, put it with the cut side up. It will grow, I swear, into a plant, and in July after the green tops wither you will have a whole head of garlic! No need to buy special “seed” garlic and waste it by putting the cloves into the ground without using them first.

I learned this after observing that the sliced off root ends of onions sometimes sprouted in the compost pile. I moved that first plant into my garden, and I’ve been planting onion bottoms and watching them turn into big plants ever since. But this is the first time I thought to try it with garlic. Look what I dug up a week or so ago! And these two dozen plants grew in maybe a square foot and a half of space, the plants just a few inches apart.

Think Green Thursday is a site about living more “greenly.” To me, growing your own food is one of the greenest things you can do.