Monday, October 21, 2013

Beautiful Basil

 It's the time we dread - saying goodbye to our gardens.

Yesterday, we finished preparing our community garden plots for the winter.  We probably won't get a killing frost until Thursday morning, but, per the rules of our garden, the last gardening day is October 27 (frost or not).  Some community gardens allow you to keep plants there all year round (for example, allowing you to grow perennials); ours doesn't.

Fences had to be taken down, sunflower stalks had to be stomped to the ground, and produce had to be picked.  Debris had to be put in dumpsters.

Today, its the turn of the small garden at our house. We have a garden in our front yard - mostly flowers but a couple of food plants (basil, a pepper.)
Our dahlias will need to be dug, but we will wait until after the killing frost.  We dug our glads up (more on that later in the week).

The focus today was on our basil.  We had both taken today off from our jobs for a trip that ended up not happening.  But instead, we lucked into what might be the warmest day of the rest of the year.

 In the front yard, we had our Italian basil.
In our back yard, Thai basil, which were volunteers from last year.  We've never had volunteer basil before and the several plants were a pleasant surprise.

I sat out in the back yard, in our 60 degree (and breezy) weather, stripping off the leaves. This was te view from my tiny porch.

The perfume of basil quickly filled the air, and, after I brought the leaves inside, the house.  (Where is that smell-o-blog plug in when you need it? )

Then, my spouse, the cook, took over.  While I wrote my blog post and took pictures, he got out the food processor, and blended the leaves with a little chicken stock, to a fine cut, not a puree.  This is an experiment - because of watching our weight, we didn't want to use oil.

Then, into the ice cube trays they went.

Spouse will use this for various purposes, including flavoring tomato sauce.  We don't do much with pesto, but I will wish I had fresh basil leaves for a nice tomato/fresh mozzarella salad.

I'll be dreaming of that salad until next summer.

How did you spend today? I hope it was a beautiful one for you, too.
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7 comments:

  1. Bonnie CopelandOctober 21, 2013 at 5:46 PM

    Wow, You are so blessed to have such a lovely garden. I can almost smell the basil from looking at your pictures. I wonder how a few of those might grow inside for the winter so you can still have your fresh basil for salad? Hmmm, now I have a thought for what's for dinner tonight!

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  2. UnknownOctober 21, 2013 at 8:41 PM

    Oh I LOVE basil so much!
    That must be a little sad to see the community gardens go quite over the Winter.

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  3. Cerebrations.bizOctober 21, 2013 at 10:13 PM

    We're lucky to have our hydroponic garden provide us our herb needs all year round.. Enjoy your basil.

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  4. Chef WilliamOctober 22, 2013 at 4:07 AM

    Ah to have fresh basil all year from your own garden, that would be nice, but you are doing the next best thing by saving what you have to use later in the year. That is great.

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  5. AmyGOctober 22, 2013 at 8:19 AM

    Brilliant, Alana and Alana's husband!! Sometimes preserving a bit of the harvest is so easy that it makes me kick my backside that I didn't think of it first!

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  6. Sophie BownsOctober 22, 2013 at 9:47 AM

    I love basil too, the leaves are delicious in a fresh salad!

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  7. UnknownOctober 23, 2013 at 2:13 PM

    I love how fresh and delicious basil is! I'm sure yours is very tasty since you grow it yourself, such a cool post!

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