Text and photographs are © by Ellen Spector Platt & Ellen Zachos, all rights reserved.


Wednesday, July 13, 2011

NOW HARVESTING IN NEW YORK CITY

Some years my herb garden looks splendid, some years pretty pathetic, but regardless of the esthetics, it supplies me with enough fresh herbs for cooking dinner (almost) every night and for showing off at parties. Above, guacamole with avocado pit that's supposed to keep the flesh from turning brown, a starling contrast in color and texture to the creamy green spread. Sage, dill flowers and self-sown calendula from my all-container garden decorate the plate, transforming this store-bought staple. (Double or triple click on any image to enlarge.) Fresh corn and mango salsa receives a decoration of cilantro flowers which I needed to pick to keep the plant producing leaves. If you allow the plant to form and drop seeds, it's work is done and it dies. I'm multitasking here, pruning the plant and making the salsa look more enticing.
Below, more of my herb garden.
Top and bottom photos © Alan & Linda Detrick all rights reserved, Ellen Spector Platt design.

7 comments:

Shady Gardener said...

Now, THAT was inspiring! Do you have recipes to share, too? :-)

Only one little Apios Americana plant is growing, but OH! is it growing! I'll take a photo soon. Thanks again for the tubers.

meemsnyc said...

Your herb garden is gorgeous!

Ellen Spector Platt said...

Shady, The glory of using fresh herbs is that you can either make from- scratch recipes using them or buy prepared foods and transform them with a few snips of herbs.
While I often make my own fresh salsa, here I confess I purchased a container of fresh salsa,added cooked corn cut from 2 ears, half a chopped ripe mango and a teaspoon of chopped fresh cilantro. Those few ingredients blended in with the heat already present to make a fabulous, easy dish.

Ellen Spector Platt said...

meemsnyc, yes the garden was gorgeous when the shots were taken, but not so pretty this year. I still have great herbs but I couldn't get a beauty shot because I'm concentrating on finishing my collage book. Such is the life of a garden and a gardener.

Brodsky Organization said...

Kudos on the corn mango salsa...it looks mouthwatering! You are inspiring us to invest in a a couple of terra cotta pots and try our hand at this too. Hopefully we have a green thumb!

Lisa said...

Your herb garden looks very beautiful.

Lisa from Beginner Free Guitar Lessons

Anonymous said...

omg I looooove your use of kitchen cookware as herb containers! I've been looking for ways to shake things up in my own herb garden ~ many thanks for your inspiration. Very glad to have found your blog...


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