Galatea and Aphrodite Photograph Google Ranking

The other day I noticed that if the phrase Galatea and Aphrodite were Googled and then images chosen, my photograph ranks highest and is the first returned. 

Is that an accomplishment?

Of course, there were photographs of sailboats and a handbag returned, too.

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Taste of Garden Harvest

The best producers measured by weight have been reported. Now it's time to talk about taste.

Since the majority of plants in the square foot garden were tomatoes, that is where I will start. Here is my list, starting with the best taste.

1. Black Krim
2. Mr. Stripey
3. German Johnson
4. Super Sweet 100
5. Husky Cherry
6. Big Boy
7. Early Girl
8. Chocolate Cherry

The first three tomatoes are heirloom varieties. The taste of all the heirloom tomatoes far exceeded the taste of the hybrids, except for the Super Sweet. The Super Sweet were just delightful, small, sweet with just enough acid to say tomato. The taste of the Husky Cherry was good but the thick skin detracted a great deal from the eating experience. The Big Boy and Early Girl were just pedestrian compared to the heirlooms. Compared to tomatoes available in supermarkets these two were much better as was their texture. Probably because they were vine ripened. I had great expectations for the Chocolate Cherry. Thinking that they would taste somewhat like the Black Krim because of their similar color, they fell short of my target.

The cucumbers had good taste and very few seeds. There was quite a bit of flesh compared to seeds. The cucumbers were firm and great raw in salads.

The bell peppers were crisp with good taste but there just weren't many of them. The cayenne peppers were productive for one plant but they were not spicy. At least not as spicy as I thought they would be.

The green beans had a strong taste. Especially when eaten raw in a tossed salad. They were good when boiled or steamed.

The potatoes, as small as they were, tasted quit good and very fresh. I will adjust the method of growing them next year with hope that they will grow larger.

In the early growing season the snow peas were very sweet and much fresher and smaller than if bought in the supermarket.

Even though the lettuce had a slow start the taste was delightful.

After evaluating the fruits and vegetables from the garden in 2012, I have decided which will return in 2013. And the winners are, in order of priority -

1. Super Sweet 100
2. Black Krim
3. Mr. Stripey
4. German Johnson
5. Snow Peas
6. Loose Leaf Lettuce
7. Burpee Burpless Beauty Cucumber
8. Russett Potato
9. Yukon Gold Potato
10. Red Norland Potato

Planning of the square foot garden for 2013 has begun.

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Summer's Garden Gone - Recipes Needed

The last day of summer and the plants in the square foot garden had just about given all they could. Many of the leaves were yellow or brown and the fruits were very slow to ripen. The daytime temperatures were fluctuating between 68ºF/20ºC and 85ºF/30ºC, the night time temperatures dipped as low as 51ºF/10ºC. Not much more ripening was going to happen this year.

It was actually a couple of days past the last day of summer when I cut down all of the plants in the square foot garden. There were already signs of cold temperature damage.

There were some ripe fruits.

and even more immature fruits.

Once the produce was weighed and put into a bowl, it looked like this.

Above you see Mr. Stripey, German Johnson, Big Beef, Early Girl, Husky Cherry, Chocolate Cherry, Super Sweet 100 and some green volunteer grape tomatoes. There are also Cayenne, Red Bell and Orange Bell peppers along with cucumbers and two green beans.

I have been weighing all the square foot garden produce since first I planted a seed. I will post the graphic once I have it ready. For now I present some figures from just this one harvest.

Total weight of ripe fruit was 2187g / 4.8lbs. The immature fruit weighed 2889g / 6.4lbs. for a grand total weight of 5076g / 11.2lbs. 

The ripe fruits will go into salads, grilled cheese with tomato sprinkled with oregano sandwiches, omelettes and fritattas. I am not sure what to do with the immature fruits. I guess, what I need are recipes for fried green tomatoes, green tomato relish and the like. Maybe a mixed pickle would be good? If you have favorite recipes for green tomatoes and or cucumbers, please leave a comment so I can get to work.


©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Ripening Continues

Only a few days remain in August and only one month remains 'til the first day of Autumn. As the evening temperatures dip below 70ºF/21º the tomatoes will struggle to ripen. It won't be long before I will be looking forward to next summer's garden tomatoes.

I harvested the lot above on 29August. In the bowl are Black Krim,  Husky Cherry, Super Sweet, Early Girl and a mystery yellow tomatoes, along with a cucumber, green bush beans and one cayenne pepper.

The total weight of all the produce was 6.5lbs/2957g. The largest total was in Early Girl tomatoes weighing in at 2.4lbs/1101g.

A few cucumbers remain to ripen as well as many Husky Cherry and Super Sweet tomatoes.




The potato towers need to open, as well. A Super Sweet tomato was planted atop one of the towers and a Husky Cherry tomato atop the other tower. I don't think I will do that again. Because of the tomatoes planted atop the towers, I must either wait until the tomatoes are finished producing with the potatoes possibly being ruined or open the towers now and the tomatoes will be ruined. I will decide soon which I will do with only the hope that the potatoes will be in eating condition when I do open the towers. With Autumn approaching and cool evening temperatures, the decision will soon be made.

I never did get my third planting into the ground. I will blame that on the hot weather. No broccoli, cabbage, radishes, carrots or lettuce to harvest. Laziness had something to do with it, too.

Of course, planning of next season's garden will begin soon enough. Enlarging and raising the bed is a main consideration, at the moment.

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

June - Late Spring Flowering

I stopped to photograph some blooms in my garden the first week of June 2012

Flowering Thai Basil a Bonnie Plant purchased at Lowe's

Common Mallow - Malva sylvestris

Hardy Geranium:Wargrave Pink with bee

Brown Eyed Stella Day Lilies

Clematis

Hollyhock

Yellow Loosestrife:Lysimachia punctata'Alexander'

Common Daylily - Henerocallis fulva

Rhododendron

Climbing Rose - Rosa' Zephirine Drouhin' thornless Bourbon

English Lavender 

Hosta

Eastern Purple Coneflower - Echinacea purpurea

I also finished transplanting flowers I purchased at Lowe's.

Red, White and Blue Petunias at the foot of my driveway. Note the soaker hose.

Red, White and Blue Petunias at the foot of my driveway

Planted under the umbrella of a Korean Dogwood - Cornus kousa-planted to memorialize by son, are begonia, impatiens an New Zealand impatiens. Notice the soaker hose in position.

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved 

Snow Peas Blooming

The snow peas began blooming on 19May. The plants have reached the top of the wire supports, which is 12"/30cm from the soil surface.

Images captured 20May2012

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

The Original London Sightseeing Tour

Wednesday we ventured out, again via bus, to the Original London Sightseeing Tour.  The tour consisted of a double decker bus around London and a boat ride on the Thames to Greenwich and return.  My wife and son started the tour the day she broke her foot but was in too much pain to go on the boat ride.  Together my wife and I would finish what she started.

Source:GoogleMaps

We caught the 276 to Hackney Central then the 38.  We disembarked at Piccadilly Circus, in front of Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum.  There was only a short walk to one of the stops along the yellow route of the Original London Sightseeing Tour.  There were three tours, each with a different route and corresponding color.  The yellow tour hit all the mandatory sites.  We boarded the double decker and were told there was no live tour guide on the buses that day.  We settled for listening to a recorded tour in English.  We didn't expect to leave the bus except for the river tour, so we settled in, under cover, at the front of the top deck.


There was a constant change of sightseers on the bus from stop to stop.  I heard many languages spoken.  The few I could discern were French and German.  On all of our travels in London, many different languages were spoken all around us.  I would guess I heard Russian, Polish, Arabic, Indian languages, Italian and others I couldn't discern.  On this tourist ride I heard mostly German and French, more German and French than I heard all week.

From the top deck of our moving bus we passed most of the following, 

Piccadilly Circus	Buckingham Palace& the Changing of the Guard	10 Downing Street	Southwark Cathedral
Statue of Eros	St. James's Park	Horse Guards' Parade	London Dungeon
The National Gallery	Westminster Abbey	St. Martin-in-the-Fields	HMS Belfast
Nelson's Column	Big Ben & Parliament	Covent Garden	Tower Bridge
Trafalgar Square	Lambeth Palace	Fleet Street	Tower of London
St. James's Palace	The London Eye	St. Paul's Cathedral	Shakespeare's Globe
Ritz Hotel	London Aquarium	Bank of England Museum	Tate Modern
Hyde Park	Westminster Pier	Monument	Speakers' Corner
Wellington Museum	London Bridge

We disembarked the yellow route bus when we arrived at the dock from which we would board the boat tour.  We walked down the long ramp to the rear of the line of tourists waiting to board the boat.  There was no boat at the dock.  It was still out on its return trip from Greenwich.  We didn't wait long before the boat was docked and empty of tourists.

We boarded and did a quick spin around the enclosed lower deck and it's snack bar.  I helped my wife to the upper open deck where the view would be better.  She settled on the first bench at the top of the stairs which was the last bench at the rear of the boat.  The weather was a bit cooler than the day before.  My experience from working outdoors over 34 years, is that whenever you are near water, there always seems to be a breeze.  The breeze put a chill in the air.  I returned to the snack bar and bought some coffee, hot chocolate and a few snacks.  I then juggled the hot drinks back to the upper deck. 

Westminster Clock and Portcullis House

I caught this piper on the Westminster Bridge

London Eye

London Eye and County Hall

There seemed to be quite a bit of time before we launched into the river.   I quickly drank most of my coffee and left my Twixt on the bench under my wife's knee.  I unsheathed my camera and went into photographer mode.


Once we got under way the boat went right across the Thames to pick up more tourists.  That got me closer to the Eye.

With the new tourists aboard, we set off towards London Tower.

There were several bridges to glide under, Jubilee, Hungerford, an unnamed RR bridge being restored, Millenium and Waterloo, before we arrived at Tower Bridge.

 All along the way the tour guide provided a package of pseudo-historical banter, wrapped in an East Ender slang, tied with a dazzling witty ribbon.  I remember tourist bus drivers delivering the same kind of banter in Boston.  I wonder if there is a school of witty edutainment that teaches all the guides, worldwide?  I can see the school offering Cockney and South Side speech lessons and bawdy details lectures.  Of course most of the learning would happen in the evening, after formal classes, when the worldwide students get together at the bar or pajama parties.

However they are trained, we enjoyed it.  I even tipped them at the end of our tour when the guide held out a small galvanized bucket to receive the coins.  There must have a gutsy class, too.

The last leg of the outbound tour was to Greenwich a bit farther down river.  There were some great views along the way.  Many of the new apartments were quite pricey, we were told.

The boat was tied up at Greenwich for five or ten minutes.  By that time it was getting dark.  The darkness was partly due to the overcast and partly because of the latitude of London near 50º N, closer to the Arctic Circle and mostly the time of the year.  On the trip back to Tower Bridge the guide was silent and we spent sometime on the enclosed, warmer, lower deck.  I composed my map and British money image there.

The boat docked again at Tower Bridge to take on more tourists.  I captured a few more images of Tower Bridge.  I underexposed some of the images on purpose.  I wanted to darken the tower and catch the moon in the same frame.  The gull was an added surprise.  I think the gull adds some spookiness.


When we returned to the dock at Westminster Bridge we boarded a tour bus that took us to Green Park where we caught the mother ship, the 38, that took us back home.  We finished what my wife and son started the on their very first day in London.  The end of our visit was Friday.  We had only one more full day in London.  That happened to be my wife's birthday.




©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved