Vintage Home and Farm

We've never seen garter snakes get as large as they do here. You may recall a prior year when we had a mama snake living in the flowerbed up by the house ( see the story here ). She would come out of her hiding spot and sun herself near the front door, and we'd be startled to see her there. She grew to at least 5 feet long and was a good four inches in diameter, if not more. Over the weekend, we spotted a new giant garter snake hiding in our garage. This one is maybe three inches in diameter at its thickest point, and about two-and-a-half to three feet long. But it's early in the growing season yet, so I'm sure she'll get much larger. Here she is slithering out from the garage. We also managed to get her on video. Paul happened to be washing the car at the time. When the snake was still inside the garage, he saw her in the corner near the car-washing supplies. I had to go in there to get his supplies (he's squeamish about snakes), and let me tell you, even thoug...

For about five years now, I have been harvesting our garlic scapes and making garlic scape pesto ( see our article with the recipe ). This is the first year I've harvested leek scapes, although I've been growing leeks for several years and have noticed they develop a flower on top, similar to garlic and onions. Last year, I observed that our local natural foods grocery store, Country Aire, had bundles of leek scapes for sale in their produce section. At the time, I hadn't known that the flower and stem of a leek are called a scape, similar to garlic, so when I saw the sign on the basket of leek scapes in the store, I was super excited and decided that I would harvest my leek scapes the following year (which is now) and make something with them. Above is my harvest. The tall, long scapes at the front are from leeks. Behind the leeks are the curly garlic scapes. Only hardneck garlic varieties produce a scape. You should always harvest garlic scapes when they are still curled,...