Yesterday Mr. Nake-id and I put the garden to bed for the winter. For the past few weeks, Mr. Nake-id has been diligently pulling spent tomatoe plants and harvesting fruit before the coming snows. We had a bumper crop of green tomatoes, huge misshappen chartruese heirlooms and bright-green, bullet-shaped Romas: Their likely future, the compost bin. Steadily, though they've been ripening, enough so we enjoyed a hearty spaghetti dinner Saturday night and Purple Cherokees dressed in balsamic vinaigrette, Sunday.

The greens have been clear winners, especially the kale, which continues to unfurl curly leaves in the aftermath of two snowstorms. Our second planting of arugula and spinach remains pert and cheerful, too, in spite of the fact that it's only delivered one or two salads to the table.

There were some mistakes: The tomatillo I planted, thinking it was a zebra-striped tomato. It threw off dozens of charming paper lanterns with tiny, walnut-sized tomatillos contained therein; this made for a bitter, acidic salsa.

The crook-necked yellow squash turned out to be this thick-skinned, warty thing, more ornamental than edible. We foisted these aggressively on friends and family.

And, we planted, too many tomatoes, easy to do in Colorado, where our growing season is so short and the chance of slurping down vine-ripened fruit is slim. So we hedge our bets with quantity, thinking it will boost yield and instead create too much shade. Fresh tomatoes will do that to a person; they make you greedy.

Exasperated with the tomato crop at some point during the summer, I decided the fault was our dirt. Friends and professional gardeners have lauded this lasagna method for amending soil. Unfortunately adding layers of mulch and compost and manure to our garden would necessitate the removal of existing earth from our rock-rimmed bed; the very thought exhausted me. Then we heard this piece on NPR.

Being loathe to rake anyway in the hope the leaves will blow away over the winter (they never do), this technique of breaking down leaves to augment a lawn, struck us as a great way to nurture the farm. While Nake-id IT took on the easy job--breaking up the ground with a pick ax--I raked up piles of leaves, then shredded them with the push mower, or more accurately, moved them around a bit with the push mower, a tool not particularly well-suited for shredding. Mr. Nake-id then worked a couple of big leaf piles into the farm. And we bid the farm goodnight until spring.

The nest pictured in this post was invented and woven by Stephanie, a pratitioner of the lasagna gardening method and a happy Colorado gardener who grew baskets of ripe tomatoes. She weaves these lovelies from the leavings of sewing projects on a knitting loom. I love how mine looks in the crab apple tree; it's a hopeful beckoning image that reminds me of the hope and commitment to the future I felt in caring for our future garden, a reminder that spring and fall are the gaudy transitions between intropsection and expectation, and that life goes on.

How did your garden grow?

With the cucurbits coming in fast and furiously, I'm forced to bake--even in this heat. Since there is no turning the oven on after noon, I was at it early making our contribution to tonight's neighborhood dessert party: vegan chocolate zucchini bread. Bet they can't wait for us to show up.

I adapted the recipe from Hell Yeah It's Vegan, who adapted it from another source.

3 tbsp chia seeds whisked into ½ c + 1 tbsp warm water*
½ c oil (I used organic canola mixed with Wildtree butter-flavored grapeseed oil)
½ c applesauce
1 cup organic cane sugar
1 tsp vanilla
2½ cups grated zucchini, packed (~3 medium-sized zucchini)
1½ c all-purpose flour
1½ c whole wheat flour
1 tsp salt
1 tbsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp cinnamon
5 tbsp Dutch cocoa powder

1 cup vegan chocolate chips

½ cup chopped walnuts

Instructions:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease two loaf pans.

Mix wet ingredients in one bowl, dry in another. Then combine, stirring until combined. Spoon into loaf pans.

Bake for 45-55 minutes. Revel in the scent eminating from the kitchen; is there anything better than the smell of baking chocolate and cinnamon?

*A note about chia seeds. Yes, these are the same chia seeds of chia pet fame. Packed with protein and Omega 3s, these little powerhouses are the new flax seeds. When mixed with water and other liquids, they create this viscous gel that acts as both a leavening and binding agent. (The natural food bloggers can't seem to get enough of this stuff as a pudding, but you gotta grok that slimy texture.) They're readily available at health food stores; in the Denver area, Sunflower Farmer's Market carries them in the bulk section.

Not everyone is bananas about raw kale (though the roly-poly bugs in the garden seem to be liking it just fine). Here at Chez Nake-id, we love the stuff. So when organic kale started selling for $3 a bunch, I got out the seed pack and started planting.

Kale is the gift that keeps on giving. While the arugala and spinach went all loose and dishabille in the heat, the kale has kept it togther, producing steadily for months. The kale pictured above is lacinato or dinosaur kale, so named, I imagined, because the store-bought leaves have the consistency of brontosaurus ears. Grow it yourself and you'll be dining on shoots as tender blades of grass; many days I simply run to the garden and pick my lunch.

Two weeks ago in Crestone, our hosts set out bowls of baked kale chips for their guests to snack on. Know what? You can't eat just one.

There are tons of recipes on the internets. You can tart these babies up with everything from lime and chili powder to paprika, parmesan cheese, nutritional yeast and fancy vinegars.

Here are the basics:

1 bunch (or two) of kale, lacinato or curly

1 Tbs olive oil

1 tsp good quality sea salt

2 pinches cayenne pepper, optional

Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Wash and dry your kale. Cut out the fibrous ribs (I didn't do this because *ahem* my kale is so tender) and roughly chop the kale.

Toss the leaves with olive oil, salt and cayenne and spread out in a single layer on baking sheets. (I used two very large sheets.)

Check for crispness after 20 minutes. Depending on how tightly you packed your kale on the baking sheets, you may need to bake a bit longer. You want them very crisp.

Serve them at your next do. They make for a great conversation starter.

We know what's for dinner this evening. And the next...and the next.

But thanks to Susan (Reflections of a Bad Catholic), winner of our Vegan What's-for-Dinner Contest, we also have Sweet and Crunchy Quinoa Salad and Three-Bean Salad with Olives to look forward to.

Thanks to all who played. Susan will receive two Vera Neumann dishtowels.

Now, what to do about Super Zuke? Zucchini boats? Zucchini air-craft carriers?

A couple of years ago, Sundari from Heirloom Gardens sold me some purslane along with other greens. It's an au currant vegetable, full of omega 3's and vitamin C. And, like she said, it's also probably growing in the cracks of your sidewalk.

I chopped it up and put it in a salad, and as we ate, I had that queasy feeling you get when eating something with questionable provenance--like chicken beak or eel roe. Or anything Andrew Zimmer ingests. So with a bumper crop of purslane invading inhabiting our garden, I thought, what if we could obviate its identity? Out came the food processor.

Take your favorite pesto recipe--for basil, sage or parsely--and substitute the leaves from these ubiquitious plants. I used two large weeds, a healthy handful of walnuts, one garlic clove, one lemon, sea salt and enough extra virgin olive oil to get the mixture to "pesto."

We spread it on homemade flatbreads and topped it with grilled vegetables. Lovely. Organic. And free!

N.B. After separating hundreds of purslane leaves from their stems, I've realized that no matter how satisfying it is to eat the enemy, there are more efficient weed mitigation strategies.

There's a bus to catch, so this will be brief:

My entire theory of gardening boils down to parsimony: Plant the stuff that's too expensive to buy organic in the market. Like arugula.

Last month the garden happily killed off a zucchini, three basil plants and stunted the tomatoes, putting us aboiut $25 in the hole, but the leafy greens and broccoli are thriving.

If you are similarly blessed, try this easy non-recipe with your arugula of lemon, olive oil and your very best salt. So good you'll be tempted to spring for the greens in the super market.

Here's the thing: One day you have no sprouts, the next day you have so many that you're going, "Here, kitty, kitty...nom, nom!"

Having gone all vegan, I've read that living foods--sprouts--are particularly beneficial. (Though once they hit the hydrochloric acid swirling around in your tummy, no doubt, all bets are off as far as health benefits.) So I ran off to my favorite source for all things herbaceous (Mountain Rose Herbs) and loaded up on sprouting seeds and a hemp sprouting bag, developed by a guy who calls himself, Sproutman. I'll just leave it there. Sproutman.

It's all very easy. You water them. Drain them. Keep them in the dark for a time. Give 'em a dose of sunlight, pumping them up with chlorophyll and before you know it you have...food.

The germinating seeds pictured above in the little bag are radish sprouts, the ones in the jar are red clover. What in the world are we going to do with them?

A good pal, who just moved in to a new-to-her Midcentury Modern, has a birthday. The house is being done up in shades of gray with splashes of Modernist art and carefully selected High Modern furnishings. The kitchen accents? Lime green and orange.

I plan to post a pattern--for knit and crochet versions--but may sell it to benefit a local food equity program. Denverites tend to be passionate gardeners, in spite of (maybe because of!) our short growing season. And there are wonderful organizations who transform parking lots into garden plots.

As the crab apple trees display their dramatic pale-pink toppers and the tulips display their pretty dresses, it seems appropriate to help spread some fertilizer in those neighborhoods where access to a convenient grocery store is limited.

Plus they make quick housewarming gifts!

What with the tulips being so fleeting, well, you know, they just make my heart swell. With the new green just tipping tree branches and the wind scorching the brown earth, they are a welcome burst of color.

Besides, you'd rather see miles of stockinette or the wonky kitchener job from last night?

Liberal medicinal herb laws notwithstanding, the above baggies contain basil pesto. Really.

Though we could be hiding anything in our tangled garden at this point. The black cherry tomato plant overwhelms and the herbs have gotten all leggy and flower-topped, which makes for happy bees and not-so-tender leaves. Temps threaten to graze 90 today but inevitably we'll get a killing frost, and the herbs, tough as they are, will be toast.

Hence the wrestling with the Cuisinart. Fresh basil, costing what it does in the dead of winter, well, an hour or two in the kitchen is a small price to pay for some easy weeknight dinners come January.

Feeling in a bit of a pesto rut, I consulted Bittman for inspiration. I love how he offers loose formulas and ideas not dogma. His pages on pesto, for example, include notes on basil, dill, mint, parsley, arugala and cilantro varieties and how to serve. More on some of these other condiments later.

Back to the basil at hand. Classic Genovese Pesto, he writes, is made with a mortar and pestle. I'm sure it's divine. I'm sure it's superior, but I registered for a Cuisinart for a reason. Moving right along. 

He also writes that one needn't add cheese to the mix, plus his ratio of basil to nuts seemed high but intriguing.

With a food processor there is no labor to pesto, except for processing the vegetable matter. The whole mess has to be washed and the leaves and flowers stripped from their woody stems, a dreary, painstaking chore. Then whirrrrrrr and it's done.

The result? About a cup and a half. 

And he was right about the nuts.

Instructions follow:

Wash and stem about four cups basil leaves.

Sautee 2 cloves garlic in a dollop of olive oil.

Toss a healthy handful of walnuts into the food processor.

Add 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup olive oil.

Toss everything in the food processor with a good pinch of salt.

Grind up. Taste. Adjust seasoning. Serve with fresh pasta.

Enjoy.