The weather has been sunny and perfect, low 70's to low 80's. But all the bees have mysteriously vanished already, which is strange and upsetting, especially given that the obedient plants are still blooming. There are still a couple of syrphid flies, small butterflies, and skippers hitting up the marigolds and remaining thyme and chamomile blossoms, but they've been ignoring the obedient plants for the most part. ???

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I dunno if anyone likes recipes (errr, scylladakylla, I guess?), but here's an extremely vague approximation of the potato and string bean salad. All of the vegetable amounts are highly adjustable depending on what you like, so I basically made up the numbers below.

- 4 cups potato (russet potatoes are prettiest, since they match the onion and contrast with the beans :P but any type works)
- 1-2 cups string beans
- ~1/4 of a medium red onion
- 1/4 cup olive oil
- 1/4 cup vinegar (any type works - balsamic is great)
- Black pepper
- Any herbs you like (I used rosemary, thyme, and chives)
- Several garlic cloves (I actually used pickled garlic because that's what we happened to have)
- ~1 tsp salt, if you want

1. Cut the potatoes into eighths, then into half-inch slices.
2. Cut the string beans into about inch-long pieces.
3. Dice the onion.
3. Boil the potatoes for 10 minutes.
4. Add the string beans and onion to the pot, continue boiling for 5 minutes.
5. Mince the garlic cloves.
6. For the dressing, whisk the olive oil, vinegar, pepper, herbs, garlic, and optional salt together.
7. Take the vegetables off the heat and drain. Let cool for a couple minutes, then transfer by portions into a large dish, adding a little dressing to each portion and mixing as you go.
8. Serve warm or cold.

Uh, obviously it's all stupidly easy, and you could easily substitute frozen green beans if you can't get any fresh ones... the only part that I think you could mess up is overcooking the potatoes, which I did once when I didn't have enough room to chop the string beans quickly enough. It just turns out as mashed potato salad that way, which tastes fine anyway.

To folk of the Northern Hemisphere, at least.


Crocuses just about done blooming in my garden.

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I'm sitting in my grandma's house and monching sparkling cider and brookies (= brownie + cookie) that my second oldest leetle cousin baked :D; (I was amused to find that her big sister, who's in eighth grade, now wears eyeliner and skinny jeans and purple Converse, and reads Gossip Girl and the Twilight books. How time flies, etc.!) Said younger cousin has gone out with her parents to adopt a cat for my grandma, who's having mouse problems around the house - yay cats, and yay Thanksgiving. I hope that all the Americans on my flist had a great holiday, and that everyone in general has been having a good November.

Yeah, I haven't had time at all to keep up with LJ, either my own or everyone else's - I apologize for the lack of reading and commenting. This semester has been really rough, and I'm not sure how much better it's going to get before winter break, but I figure I'll survive. Browsing Etsy, watching Dexter with my roommate, and fiddling with the dollies all keep me sane, haha. How has everyone been doing?

Some highly belated photo updates from the garden - it looks nothing like this now, of course. :P Remember what the peony seed head looked like in this post? It turned out like this a few weeks later:


Peony popcorn, yum!

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and at leisure to play with my garden. :)



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So far I haven't had much to do apart from deadheading the marigolds, lavender, and beebalm - the growth is thick enough this year that weeds aren't really a problem, thankfully. I'm really pleased with how the marigolds are doing! I planted them this year to balance out all of my other flowers, which are purple, lavender, and blue. Although not particularly attractive to pollinators, marigolds are super easy to grow and pest-resistant, and the fact that I have lavender and obedient plants makes my garden popular with bees and butterflies anyway.

I'm disappointed though, that my pasques keep on getting smothered by the quicker-growing plants, despite my efforts to germinate the seedheads every year. They're my favorite flowers, with their fuzzy purple petals and yellow sepals. :3 They also have really pretty, feathery foliage. Next year I'm thinking of brute-forcing it and just buying a ton of adult plants to put in, haha.

Trying to work through my photo/posting backlog still... !

Just a couple of photos that I took of my irises after evening rain.



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Also posted to laceandflora, for the record.

Labwork has been rockin'. Gots to go work on a presentation now, though!