Easy Party Foods

Last night Kendel taught a class on easy party food.

I missed the class, but got to help with the prep work. These cooking classes take a lot of preparation. This was his example of simple decorating. Use solid colored linens and serving dishes, then make centerpieces from things from your garden and frig. He brought the art glass pieces from home. I love the yellow striped tall vase and bowl.

He also demonstrated making edible centerpieces. These were lots of fun and turned out really well.

Put a head of lettuce in an urn. Pineapple slices cut with a cookie cutter, topped with a melon ball on a bamboo skewer make the flowers. Grapes and strawberries threaded on skewers add some height and color. We filled in the spaces with leaves off a lime tree. Cute, isn't it? And easy to make. We figure it took about an hour of time to put together.

This is another centerpiece/buffet decoration we constructed.

Start with a ball of floral foam, put it on a dowel rod and anchor it in a pot or bowl filled with more foam. Cover the foam ball with leaves (we hot-glued bay laurel leaves onto it). Then stick a toothpick into the foam, leaving about 2/3 of the pick sticking out. Impale a strawberry onto the toothpick. Repeat and repeat until you have the ball covered. We filled in the gaps with bay laurel tips.

In my next post I will tell you about all the delicious ( and beautiful) food he made for this class.

Kendel will be doing a "Holiday Entertaining" class on October 22 if you want to get more great ideas. As a former caterer, he has lots of tips on cooking and decorating for a crowd with going crazy.

The vine that ate Blue Moon

It's nice to see that some plants are thriving in this heat. I know we certainly aren't. We moan and whine a lot these days. We are now into our 26th straight day of temperatures over 100 degrees. It is miserable with no end (or rain) in sight.

One of the plants going gangbusters in the heat is sweet potato vine. This relative of morning glory has many new forms and a few new colors now. Tricolor is one of the original varieties with lovely variegated leaves of pale green, creamy white and pink.

It is usually not as vigorous as the black or chartreuse varieties, but this year its runners have spread 6 to 8 feet in every direction. The other plants in the bed - roses, lantana and Lollipop verbena - were becoming totally covered up by the vine. And our garden art disappeared under the sprawl. So today I got out there and cut it back severely.

Here's another bed with sweet potato vine. Tricolor on the right and a newer 'Sweet Caroline Purple' variety on the left. The 'Sweet Caroline' line was bred to be more compact and it seems to be much tamer than its older cousins. They grow into mounds about 3 feet around instead of sending out long runners. Much nicer for containers and smaller flowerbeds.

Fleur de lis glory

We set up this Fleur-de-lis garden last spring. It has three tiers, made with wood-look board that are actually molded, recycled plastic. It was quick to snap together and became a beautiful garden. But our plantings did not thrive last year. This summer it is glorious.

We filled each section with SoilMender Raised Bed Mix. We were sceptical at first; the mix looked very rocky with chunks of expanded shale. But it has been a great mix. Sharon uses it at her house and is pleased with the results there. It drains well, but not too quickly, so you don't have to water too often (this bed is not on our sprinkler system so we have to keep up with that).
In the top tier is Lemon Grass, creating a symphony of movement and sound when the wind rustles it.
The middle section holds Scaevola, blue fan flower. It has thousands of blooms on it.

The lower sections have different colors of Graffiti penta in each. We weren't sure how the colors would look together, but they are separated enough that is very pleasing to the eye, not a clash.

 The Graffiti variety is a short penta, growing only 15 -18 inches tall. We have not deadheaded these once and they are still fully in flower.

This color is called "orchid" which never appealed to me, but I do like this shade, especially juxtaposed with the blue fan flower. We have a solid white penta in the fourth lower section.

The Fairies go to Bed

We have a flowerbed next to the gift shop that looks like a bed. We gave it the very original name "The Bed-bed". It has had a number of incarnations throughout the decade or more it has been there, but we have struggled to find just the right look for it, and plants that would flourish in the harsh western sun it recieves in the afternoon.

Sharon and Connie decided to make it into a fairy garden with all the architectural odd and ends we have leftover from the fairy gardens we did for several years at the Texas State Fair. It is beginning to take shape. In the upper right hand corner you can see where they planted a dwarf cherry laurel for some shade. We will have to cut it often - the one in front of the gift shop is now about 10 feet tall.

This hypertufa cottage is one of a new shipment we got in this month. Isn't it cute? And, it should hold up outside for decades - certainly longer than the fairy garden.

I love this stone-look parterre that creates a formal, European look in one corner. It is flanked by a white patio entered through an elaborate arbor.

This scene is restful with adirondack chairs on an island reached by crossing a bridge.

I have no doubt that we will be adding little accent pieces and ornaments as we find them, and more plants to soften the look once we get a bit of relief from the heat. But this is my favorite look for this bed in its history.

Glorious basil

Basil thrives in this awful heat. It can bake out in the full sun without skipping a beat. I wish I could say the same about all of us but we are wilting. It has been over 100 degrees for too many days.

Or sweet basil is going strong. I have to cut the flowers off about once a week. Time to make pesto!

The Siam Queen Thai basil is lovely but I must admit we haven't tried cooking with it yet. I love Thai food, I will have to look for some recipes online.

The purple basil is looking a little sunburned; the bottom leaves have taken on a yellowish cast. The new leaves on top are still richly colored, perfect for use in flower arrangements, where they add spicy fragrance as well as color and texture.

The dwarf bush basil, aka Spicy Globe, stays nice and tidy in a 15-inch mound. Sometimes we have trouble with this variety flowering, but this particular plant has not shown that tendency.

Above is African Blue Basil, my favorite ornamental basil. It does have a nice fragrance and mild flavor, but I never use it for cooking. I like it as an accent plant in the summer garden. One plant can grow to 3 feet in height and diameter. We have 3 planted on either side of our front gate and from now on we will be trimming it back weekly so we can get in the gate. The flowers are spectacular and a favorite of honeybees. I cut only the oldest flowers off this variety to keep it blooming.

Grilling Workshop

It was a very warm night but the grilling class was a lot of fun. We had plenty of iced tea and the lemon verbena syrup was a hit.

The umbrellas helped provide shade and the fans moved cool air around. The participants were real troopers in the heat and  no one complained.

We enjoyed grilled steak, chicken, lots of fresh vegetables and peaches and nectarines for dessert. Delicious!

The happy cooks did a great job.