The toms were amazing with fresh basil and some olive sourdough I made from my starter. 

There are many peppers ready to be eaten green (or purple as with the Filius Blue peppers), some are picked to encourage more flowers, and the others will get left to allow the peppers to turn red and spicy.

There are still lots of blueberries on the shrubs out front, and now that I have divided my yellow alpine strawberries into a lot more room, I’m getting heaps of those as well (thanks for the advice, Laura!)  And with all the kale growing at the community garden, I just had to have more kale chips.

I thinned out a bunch of small beets this week for both the sauteed greens and the roots.  I’m growing at least 4 types this year: Detroit Supreme, Red Ace, Chioggia, and Golden.

It has also been a big week for flower harvests.  With so many cutting blooms growing, my house is filled with colour both inside and out.  The crocosmia below is one of my favourites – both the firey orange crocosmia and the larger upright lucifer crocosmia look just a good indoors as outside from my hammock.

And “old friend” is certainly appropriate.  I started 6 plants from seed in January 2009 and this year just one of the 2 remaining plants gave me an artichoke.  I watched it for weeks nervous that someone would take my prize from the community garden (theft is unfortunately a problem there) and just when I couldn’t stand the suspense for one more second, out came the clippers and I snatched it myself.

I brought my green gardening trophy and gave it a good rinse in the sink.  Then I cooked it for about 45 minutes in a steam basket.

Then late on a summer evening, I enjoyed it with a Caper Mayo Dip.  To make the dip, blend a 1/4 cup mayo with 1 tbsp drained capers, 1 clove garlic, 1 tsp lemon zest and add olive oil, salt, and pepper to taste in a mini food processor.  Serve immediately with prized steamed artichokes and, of course, enjoy!  I did. 

This time of year these ugly suckers can be seen mating in the trees at dusk and each one can lay up to 50 eggs in the surrounding lawn.  Those eggs turn into grubs (ick) that feed on the roots of grass until they get ripped out and munched on by crows, raccoons, or skunks.

Since this introduced pest has limited natural predators (besides the aforementioned grub-snackers) we are seeing turf around the GVRD is being destroyed in a street-by-street wave all by a beetle no bigger than a penny.

What can you do to about it?  In my opinion, replacing and reseeding your lawn every year is futile and expensive – you are really just planting gourmet micro-greens for grubs.  Why not take the hint and get rid of that thirsty high-maintenance patch of grass and replace it with a vegetable garden or some ground covers?  Here are some lovely ideas of lawn-free landscaping that look better without grass – and never need mowing.

Landscaping with rocks, water features, and flowering ground covers is an attractive and environmentally-friendly grass lawn alternative.

Low growing flowering perennials also make great groundcover - try Heather, Snow In Summer, and Lamb's Ear for different texture and colour options.

So far my lawn hasn’t been too badly damaged but I leave the grass long and full of clover, speedwell, and moss.  I think it looks festive with various flowers in bloom and full of bees.  And if what lawn I do have can’t withstand the grubs in the future, it’s just an excuse for more garden.  It’s a hard thing to say goodbye to an old friend, but if change is forced upon us, perhaps it isn’t worth the fight but instead is opportunity for something new.  Like a water feature or a heirloom tomato garden or a herb wheel or a rockery or….

If you’d like to learn more about Chafer Beetles then check out the Vancouver Park Board’s brochure.  And stay tuned because over the next few months I’ll be posting more on Chafer Beetles (read: future studio shots of the grubs) as well as ideas on how to deal with our changing landscape.

At very least there are some nice bloomers in my garden and many of the wee vegetable flowers have burst into food I can soon eat (or have eaten in the case of peas that don’t ever make it into the house).  So here’s my long overdue Bloom Day photos which I post in hopes of some long-needed sunshiny days to tease more blooms out for July. 

PS:  Hover to see the names / click to see a larger photo.

So far it has been a MAGNIFICENT May.  I adore what’s blooming right now.  I’ve been eating veg from the garden daily.  I have plenty of warm afternoons in the garden.  Now add that to the fact that the sun is out until 9PM, you need a sun hat, and my back patio officially opens for entertaining this weekend and…

Hell yeah, summer is here!