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After two years of trying, we decided that our yard is just not right for a summer garden.
There’s not enough sun, space or good soil.

Luckily, this year a community garden opened up in the little park just around the corner. After some time on the wait list, we received our plot. And it’s just right.

We’ve planted eight varieties of heirloom tomatoes, purple bush beans, padron, anaheim and ancho peppers as well as zucchini.

A wonderful added bonus is that we’ve gotten to meet several townspeople we hadn’t had the opportunity to meet before.

All the gardeners are getting together tomorrow evening for a summer solstice celebration. If it’s not too hot for this 8.5+ month pregnant lady to attend, I’ll post photos of the garden party later on this week.

Finally! We harvested our first tomato:

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Though it is just now starting to get too hot in the Napa Valley for peas to grow, we harvested our first crop only yesterday.

Tom added them to his Wild Mushroom Pappardelle (recipe below).

Wild Mushroom Pappardelle with Garden Peas

Ingredients

Fresh pappardelle
1/4 cup good olive oil
1 medium shallot, diced
1 cup chicken stock
1/2 cup dry white wine
1 tablespoon fresh thyme
1 cup peas
2 tablespoons butter
Salt & freshly ground black pepper
Some fresh Italian parsley, chopped
Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

Cut mushrooms into 1″-2″ pieces.  We like Shiitake, Oyster and Chanterelles.

Start a large pot of salted water to boil. Heat a large sauté pan on medium.

Once sauté pan is warm, add olive oil and let it get hot.
Add shallot to pan and sauté for about 2 minutes–until you can smell the shallot.

Add the mushrooms to pan and stir gently.
Cook mushrooms for about 10 minutes stirring regularly–until they start to caramelize.

Add chicken stock, white wine, thyme, and peas.

Cook for about 10 more minutes.

While mushroom sauce is cooking, add pappardelle to the rapidly boiling water.

Boil the pasta for ONLY 2 to 3 minutes. Drain and set aside.

Add butter to mushroom sauce and stir gently until butter is melted.
Season with salt & pepper.
Add the pasta to the pan and gently fold it in to the sauce.

Serve sprinkled with the parsley and Parmesan cheese.

Enjoy with a nice glass of Pinot Noir. We especially like those from Robert Sinskey Vineyards and Ken Brown.

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This season’s first harvest from the vegetable garden:

This weekend, we noticed the first of our heirloom tomatoes.

It’s officially (finally) summertime here in the Napa Valley.

Seems to me that, this year, a lot more folks are doing vegetable gardens.

Maybe I’ve just been paying more attention, maybe it’s the ever growing popularity of everything organic/slow food/locavores/food porn or maybe it’s thestupideconomy.

Anyway, this is our first year of gardening in the new place. And it’s been a challenge–so different than in past years.

And I realized that, with last month’s focus on kid-friendly Napa Valley, I haven’t done a garden update recently.

So, we’ve been harvesting the pole beans and are almost at the point where it’s “Are we having green beans again tonight? Really?–again?” The zucchini and green zebra tomatoes should be pickable this week. The other heirloom tomatoes are not doing that great; we think there’s just not enough sun in this yard. But we’ve been harvesting herbs on a daily basis since March.

In all, we have some success and some failure–but we are learning a lot this year.

And, most importantly, we are enjoying our garden.

Zucchini Blossoms

Basil

Pole Beans

Green Zebra Tomatoes