Garden Center Junkie

I should know better than to head to any garden center or nursery because I get so excited and full of ideas for the garden I can't stop tossing new plants into the cart.

Today went to Home Depot (shame shame, we should shop local every time, but it is so near us) just to get a bag of dirt (potting mix) because we needed to transplant our zucchini plants which were looking unhappy and didn't seem about to pop out any actual zucchini. Went in for dirt (potting mix), came out with a sunflower.

Honestly, I have a problem. And I have a new sunflower to love.


In other news, our tomatoes are coming along nicely. Here is a shot of our one orange tomato right now (it is supposed to be orange, that is the kind of tomato it is...); in a few weeks it looks like we'll have a ton of them plus a lot of Romas (which are supposed to be red).

P.S. Turns out there are male zucchini flowers and female zucchini flowers and if you don't have the females ones you don't get any actual zucchini. We......wait for it....have all males. (You'd think I would have researched this before we bought the zucchini plants, but no. Remember my garden-center-impulse-buying-habit from above? Yeah.)

I'm not sure how to solve this zucchini gender-orientation problem, but with any luck it'll call for a trip to a garden center. And naturally I'll come home with a new magnolia tree or something.

Our Table

Our table set for dinner is simple and homey but fills me with pleasure whenever I look at it. It has a comfortable, well-lived-in feel that can't be faked but is certainly the marker of a happy home. No one at this table has to keep her elbows off of the table (though I do draw the line at talking with your mouth full!)

While it can't compare to some of the gorgeous tablescapes out there, I particularly love some of the elements on this table. First, the flowers. I try to keep some kind of fresh flower or small plant on the table, even for a casual weekday meal like this. It adds a sense of occasion, and grounds the whole table. It also give us something prettier to look at than my cooking!

I also set the table with silverware, cloth napkins and gen-u-ine Correlle every night. (I'll have to write about my Corelle someday because I luuuurve it) No character plates or plastic knives here. I even avoid, as much as possible, paper towels or paper napkins for environmental (and budgetary) reasons.

And yep, those are plastic cups. Hey, little kids knock cups over. A lot. (Never mind that we broke 6 of 8 glasses in our wedding set before the kids came along. )

We use placemats every meal as well, these plaid ones are tired-looking but they are well-loved and now that they have been on my table for such a long time they make me think of all the other meals we've had on them, everything from our holiday meals, to birthdays, the first cookout of summer and our first meal in this crappy rental house. Lots of my cooking has passed over those placemats - and they show it!

Thanks for joinging me for a tour of my table - I may someday have another gorgeous, organized, matching table, but it'll never look as much like home and love to me as this one does.