Cherry Season is Here!
Don't you love it when new fruits pop up at the Farmers' Market? This week's Mar Vista Bounty Hunter is all about cherries and what to do with them:
It's a Cherry Jubilee at the Farmers' Market
...
Italy Travelogue: Umbria’s Beauty and Hotel Montali
I've just returned from 12 days in Italy filled with gelato, pasta, cheese and beautiful countryside. May is a wonderful time to be there - just before the stifling heat, but just after gardens have been planted. If there's one thing you see a lot of in Italy, it's front yard gardens. They are not obsessed with the idea of a grassy front lawn like we Americans. They use their land to grow food - lots of food.
Driving through the green rolling hills of Umbria, we saw small Medieval towns dotting the ...
Local Organic Blueberries – Get ’em at the Patch
Here's the most recent post from our forages through the Mar Vista Farmers' Market:
Organic Blueberries Give Kids a Sweet Snack Alternative
...
Dream Garden Grows Up
I stopped by the Dream Center garden in downtown Los Angeles yesterday to see how things are growing in and I was delighted to see what has transpired since my last visit. It's all grown up!
Not only did the flagstone and decomposed granite get installed in the pathway, but the mulch had arrived (free from the City) and it was all in place.
Pathway complete, plants growing in. Happiness is a thriving garden!
Some of the tomatoes even had fruit set already: ...
Venice Garden Tour 2011 Review
Every gardenerd needs to "fill the well" sometimes, to take in beauty and inspiration that will generate ideas for future gardening projects. Today was filled with sparks of gardening inspiration at the Venice Garden Tour. There were 31 houses on the tour, so we set out on foot to take them all in.
Venice Beach, for those who aren't familiar, is an eclectic town populated with artists, architects, landscape designers, and hippies. It was the epicenter of pushing the envelope in the 20s, where the world's first swimsuit competition was held. It's the ...
Eat Your Heart Out Popeye – Kale Lasagna Beats Spinach
We have a steady stream of kale coming from the garden these days, and while I make my favorite raw kale salad almost every week with it, there is a need for a new recipe. Enter Kale Lasagna from the January/ February issue of Vegetarian Times magazine.
Along with a slew of other kale recipes, this one caught my eye. Anything that calls for no-boil noodles increases the odds of actually making the dish, so I gathered the ingredients and went to work:
...
Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase 2011 Review
There's nothing like a good garden tour to get your spring gardening juices flowing. Last Saturday, we set out on our bicycles to take in the third annual Mar Vista Green Garden Showcase in all its glory. This free garden tour is put on by the hard-working volunteers of the Mar Vista Green Committee, and while our house has been on the tour during the first two years, we wanted to get some inspiration and see what our neighbors were doing with their land.
With over 70 houses to see, we had ...
Cinco de Mayo Celebrations Started Sunday
The latest edition of Mar Vista's Bounty Hunter is on the virtual news stands. See what's cooking for Cinco de Mayo at the Farmers' Market:
Cinco de Mayo food tips from Nana
...
Crustless Quiche – Farmers’ Market Style
Adventures in cooking start with a trip to the Mar Vista Farmers' Market to round up the ingredients. Read all about it on Mar Vista Patch:
Crustless Quiche, Farmers' Market Style
...
Random cherry tomato volunteers suspiciously in the location of a recent potluck table.
Volunteer Tomatoes – Nature’s Slap in the Face
There is either a great blessing or a humbling cruelty to the fact that volunteer tomatoes grow bigger, faster and stronger than cultivated varieties. By volunteer, I mean the little sprouts that pushed out of the soil all on their own, not planted by me, not planted in rich garden soil, and not necessarily in full sun or even near any source of water. Yet despite these conditions, nature prevails.
I have two, possibly three volunteer tomatoes that popped up in the most unwitting locations. Observe specimen number 1:
...