You Light Up My Life

Here are photos of some of the light fixtures we admired in Salt Lake City.

 My sweetie posing next to a magnificent fixture.

Loved the details on this one, especially the finial on top.












The one below hung from the ceiling of the Tabernacle.

All these fixtures were in Temple Square.

The ones below were seen around town in public
places.

This art deco sconce on the outside of a building really caught my eye. I have always liked deco style.

Morman temple

We flew into Salt Lake City and decided while we were there we would tour the campus of the Latter Day Saints, which takes up about a square mile in the center of the city. We were not particularly interested in Joseph Smith or the Mormons, but we did hear an organ concert on their immense pipe organ in the Tabernacle. It was a good show with lights and a interesting selection of music.

We spent a little time touring the grounds. Those Mormons sure know architecture.

We admired the buildings, the lights, the sculpture and even the hardware on the doors.

Salt Lake City

We visited Salt Lake City briefly. It is a lovely town; clean, great architecture, lots of green space. I expected it to be very conservative, but we found lots of interesting, contemporary venues-and great bakeries!

I especially enjoyed driving through neighborhoods, looking at the houses and gardens.
We happened upon this nice neighborhood near Liberty Park, a huge park with a pool, tennis courts, playground, amusement park and bike paths.

A lot of thehouses were bungaloes and many had fabulous front yards

 This was one of my favorites. I love the fence and the pots flanking the walkway to the porch.

enjoying spring again

We are vacationing in Utah, Idaho and
wyoming for 10 days, When we left Texas it was already summer.
Temperatures in the 100s, hot and  dry. Here in Utah it is just Spring.

Look at these beautiful tulips.
this was in Park City, Utah, a nice little town where the Sundance Film Festival is held in winter.

These pink and white parrot tulips were lovely.

This mauve poppy is as big as my hand.

The leaves were bigger than the ones on the poppies we grow.

We enjoyed seeing lilacs, iris and daffodils again. 

Easy Vegetable Gardening

Here's a photo of our garden this week. It is starting to get out of hand with weeding, training, harvesting and bug scouting.

I would prefer a much smaller garden, easier to manage. Like the vegetable garden we have at Blue Moon Gardens. We used the square foot, lasagna garden method.

We have 5 boxes measuring 4 feet by 4 feet. We layered in newspaper, hay, leaves, compost and mulch to create the soil. The box on the left has cucumbers on the trellis, Ethnic Biscayne peppers and in the front right corner, beets.

This is plenty of space to grow veggies for 2 people. You can plant densely, so weeds are not a problem. Here is the harvest of beets I took out of the box. If I had thinned them earlier, I could have gotten twice as much.

I pulled up all the Thumbelina carrots the same day. They were delicious - sweet and crunchy. I planted more basil in there spots to make pesto.

I started harvesting carrots out of my garden a few weeks ago. I planted Sweet Fingerlings. They were disappointing. A nice size, but not sweet. This week I dug some bigger carrots. I don't remember their name; my sign faded. They were nice and sweet, and big enough to grate for salad.
Tomatoes are getting ripe this week. I can report which varieties have the best flavor.

The art of slowing down

Now that the spring rush is over I enjoy taking the time to notice the small, subtle views around me.

The red stems and faint blush on the leaves of Silver Anniversary abelia.

Here's the delicate, yet beautiful flowers on a cleyera shrub.

In spring I love the look of Taxus, true yew, sprouting out its new growth.

It's important to appreciate the rewards of all your work in gardening. Be sure to take the time to see the small details of nature, pick a few flowers to bring inside, and smell the roses. 

Taming the wild tomato

Tomatoes are like other wild, unruly beings we have tried to domesticate – dogs, horses, kids – they need training. And the earlier you get started the better the results.

 We just got the trellis up for our tomatoes this past weekend, and none to soon. They have been in the garden for about 6 weeks and I haven’t had time to get out their and start their training. So I had to be really tough with them. [Picture me here in dominatrix gear. No, scratch that, picture Dana Delany in her outfit in Exit to Eden. Much prettier.]

First I hoisted the plants up onto the fending and tied them up. Then I cut off all the suckers I could find. These are the branches that shoot up above a leaf.

It helps to cut these off when they are very young because they will be the first branches to flower and fruit and you will be loathe to cut them off when they have the only little tomatoes you see.  But I was ruthless. It didn’t matter if these suckers had little green tomatoes already, off they went. If you are a regular reader you will know already I love to cut and prune.

  

Then I cut off all the branches that touched the ground. I read this tip in my Fine Gardening, Vegetable Gardening E-letter. This is a Tauton Press publication; they do good work. Cutting off any foliage that touches the ground helps prevent the spread of foliar disease. Made good sense to me.

It looks like we will actually have a tomato crop this year. In the past couple of years our tomatoes have refused to respond to our tender care and succumbed to leaf-footed bugs, and the heat. With our unusually warm spring, we were able to get our tomato plants in early so they are starting to fruit already. I can’t wait to try the first tangy, ripe tomato. We will have taste tests of all the varieties to determine which we like the best.