Grab a Bucket! The Blackberries are Ripe!

Sugar Snap with a basket for of blackberries, also known as dewberries here in the South.

Sweet Potato and Hubby in the brambles.

It's that time of year here on the Texas Gulf Coast that is anticipated by those of us who pride ourselves on being tightwads.  Blackberry season.  The old timers call them dewberries, and if you grew up on the Texas Gulf Coast you know exactly what I'm talking about.  Free wild berries are in abundance in ditches, culverts and open fields all over our area.  In the evenings you will see folks walking along the ditches wearing long sleeves, gloves, carrying a bucket and big stick (to scare away the snakes).  Yes, the berries grow underneath a tangle of spiky vines that will try to attach themselves to you with their prickles, and the berry juice will absolutely stain forever whatever you wear to pick in, but it's all worth it!  The thrill of the hunt somehow overcomes the fear of the snakes in that moment where you pull back the vines and see the ripe berries shining like jewels, free for the taking.  The berries themselves are plump and a glossy deep purple.  We live on an acre of land just due south of Houston.  We have fenced off part of the acre and outside of the fence more or less sits dormant.  We mow it every now and again, although in the past year we have been in an extreme drought and there has been no need to mow, so we didn't.  Finally, a year goes by, we get a little rain (thank God) and it's time to start getting ready for Easter, which we host outside at our place.  Hubby decided the outside acre (or back 40 as we call it) needed a good mow.  Papa came over with his tractor, and started up and then stopped.  He realized that a huge area in the center of the back 40 was covered in flowering blackberry vines.  We let the vines be, and now the berries are ripe.  We went out last night when it was cool and filled a couple of baskets in under an hour.  The kids were classic: "One for me (pops berry in mouth), one for the basket (puts berry in basket)."  After filling our baskets but by no means picking all the berries that were out there, we came inside, mouths purple.  There will be more for days so the girls can run out there after school for a snack.  Once inside I whipped up a blackberry pie in no time with Sweet Potato's help and guess who's having blackberry pie for breakfast?  Don't judge me.

Breakfast.

The Top 10 Things You Must Grow in Your Garden

These are my garden favorites.  If you live on the Texas Gulf Coast and have limited space, consider growing these:

#1  Green onions, also known as walking onions.  These will grow all year long, will survive drought, heat, and cold.  I planted mine 6 years ago, and they are still producing.  You will never buy green onions again.

#2  Tomatoes.  Duh.  The difference between a home grown tomato and a grocery store tomato is the difference between an aged Bordeaux and Boone's Farm Wine.  Choose varieties that do well in our area - Celebrity is a good performer, Big Boy and Better Boy get good reviews.  I like Yellow Pear (they look like small yellow pears) for the color and shape on the plate.  I recommend staying away from "heirloom" varieties.  They tend to be poor performers.  A great place to get a grand variety of tomatoes and lots of advice is the Urban Harvest Farmer's Market in midtown on Saturdays.  The key to great tomatoes is great supportive cages.

#3  Arugula  Like tomatoes, the difference in the way this green tastes out of the garden and how it comes in a bag at the store is huge.  Out of the garden it is nutty and spicy.  You can plant the seeds in a row and be harvesting baby greens in mere weeks.  A month later plant another row.  You can have fresh arugula all year.   I don't even bother to thin the plants, and they still thrive.  

#4 Sugar Snap Peas  I have never managed to harvest enough of these to turn into a meal because my kids snap them off in the garden and pop them into their mouths while they are playing outside.  That, to me, is garden magic.

Sugar snap peas on the vine.  

#5 Lettuce mix  I plant this the way I plant the arugula, I sow a row and let them come up, and clip the leaves as I need them.  I plant a variety of leafy lettuces - red, green, chicory, etc.  These get planted in October and have fresh salad all winter long.  

#6 Brocolli Raab  I plant this leafy green because it is so delicious and not easy to find in our local markets.  I love the bitter green flavor sauteed with garlic and a little kosher salt.  Plant in October.

#7  Basil  I have planted basil in the Spring ever since I first started gardening, and it always thrives.  Hubby and I both love it.  The first year I was clearing an area for our garden, and I showed Hubby the 4 ft X 4ft area reserved for basil and Hubby's comment was:  "That's not enough."  It was plenty, and at the end of the summer when the basil was going to seed we invited friends to bring pesto ingredients (we supplied all the basil) and had a pesto party.  We made dozens of jars and sent everyone home with pesto to enjoy and freeze (it freezes well!)  We had garden pesto well into the winter.

#8 Lemon Balm  This, in my opinion, is an underused herb.  Here on the Coast, it will thrive in all seasons and even survived the drought.  In the dead of winter it is still green and growing.  It is in the mint family but with a distinct bright lemon flavor.  I use it in muffins, tea, lemonade, salads, pasta, chicken salad, mojitos, and more.  

#9 Squash  My kids and husband will eat it, I have lots of recipes for it, it grows well here, and you can grate it, put it in a baggie in the freezer and use it in zucchini bread (the kids will never know!)  There are all sorts of interesting varieties - patty pan squashes that are shaped like UFOs, eight balls, which are green and round, calabaza, which get HUGE if you let them grow, although they get too tough to work with.  Plant a variety!

#10 Sweet Peas   I believe in nurturing the body as well as the soul, and for me the scent of Sweet Pea blossoms is intoxicating.  They are so pretty in vases all through the house, filling our home with their aroma, and last a good while as cut flowers.  Plant them early, like October, and they will be sure to reward you with armloads of colorful blooms.

What about you?  What are your garden must-grows?

Toe Mopping (if Toni does it, it must be OK)

I am a Stay-At-Home-Mom (SAHM).  My kids are both in school, so my job every day is to do the laundry, cook the meals, pack the lunches, garden, fix broken things around the house, help with homework, and keep the house clean.  I love gardening and cooking, I enjoy helping the kids with their homework, although at about 4th grade my math skills started to fail me.  I don't even mind laundry.  The rest of the housekeeping I, let's face it, suck at.  It's just relentless.  I keep the house more or less clean and free of clutter, but my heart is not in it.  If I could afford a maid I would have one. I am forever seeking short cuts to those tedious endless chores.  So imagine my delight when I walked into Toni's kitchen door and caught her toe mopping.  My friend Toni is also a SAHM, but she is actually good at it.  Whenever Sugar Snap decides to run away she tells me she's moving in with Toni.  She is a professional decorator and her home is tasteful, smells good,  and is put together.    Not to mention, always clean.  ALWAYS.  I would rather eat off Toni's floor than my Fiestaware.  And there she was, mopping her kitchen floor using a damp rag and her pedicured toes!  I have used this half-assed method of floor mopping for years in shame, and here was Toni, the Queen of Clean, using this same method unabashedly.  Apparently, she does it all the time.  She wipes down the kitchen counters with a rag, and then drops said rag on the kitchen floor and using her feet, mops it up.  I realized hey, we are all just trying to get through the day with our sanity intact, and any little trick we use to help us out that isn't illegal is OK.  I'd love to hear your housekeeping shortcuts!

Here's a link to Toni's decorating blog:
The Half Assed Decorator