Tomato Vegetable Soup

Tomato Vegetable soup recipe, served and enjoyed at the SHA convention, from member Beth Graas. We hope you enjoy!

Tomato Vegetable Soup 3 tbsp. butter 1 cup diced onion 1/2 cup diced potato 1/2 cup diced carrot 3 Tbsp. flour 1/2 tsp. salt 1/4 tsp. pepper 2 cup chicken stock 14 oz. canned tomatoes crushed 1 tsp. sugar 1/2 cup cream or top milk Put butter, onion, potato, and carrot in saucepan. Saute until onion and carrot are soft and clear. Mix in flour, salt, pepper. Add chicken stock (slowly). Stir until it boils and thickens. Simmer 10 minutes. Add tomatoes and sugar. Heat through. Stir in cream. DO NOT BOIL after adding cream. Makes about 4 cups. I do not use the cream as I find it "creamy" enough without. Does give it a different flavour though. I do not use canned tomatoes - just cook the fresh ones from the garden until they are the consistency I want them and add to the soup when required.

Groundcover: Forget-Me-Not

Forget-me-not makes a fantastic groundcover for areas that get a lot of shade. It will bloom in part shade or full sun but it does tend to wither in full Saskatchewan sun. It is a biennial that self-seeds so it does not take long to grow from a few plants into a very large patch. My patch has white and blue flowers. The blue flowers fade to pink so at more than one point each year, there are 3 colours of blooms in this spot. I grow Forget-me-not in 2 spots here. This shady spot, under trees and with Hosta and in a sunny spot where it needs afternoon protection provided by an old slide. One of the nicest things about Forget-me-not is that you can pretty much ignore it and get at least 3 waves of blooms in a single patch. If you treat it nice, you will get more! 

contributed by member Danielle Carrier

Anyone still harvesting?

A little while ago, member Denise Mlazgar sent in these photo's. Sharing her harvest and the fun that her daughter Chanelle and grandson, Aidan had while helping put the garden to bed for the season. For me, little Aidan reminds me of all the things I loved about gardens when I was a child.

 

I look at these and then out my window, where pots of daylily and bags of iris rhisomes still need to be planted, and I wonder... is mine the only garden not ready for winter?

New Gallery Photos

Be sure and check out our gallery. Member Beth Graas has shared some of her garden photos with us. Check out her kitchen view in March vs. September!

Annual General Meeting

RHS Annual General Meeting Notice is up on the website now. Details are: Thursday, October 24,7:30pm
Neil Balkwill Centre,2420 Elphinstone Street (map)

Mark your calendars! We hope to see you all there!

Groundcover: Pinks

The name is deceptive since Pinks are not always pink. There are many varieties of what we commonly call Pinks and all of them are great groundcover.

One of the nicest things about Pinks is that their foliage does not look weedy at all. It is clear, even when they are not blooming, that they are a plant. And quite pretty foliage it is.

Flower size and colour can vary but none of them become large, tall plants or have big flowers. There are pink, red and white blooming varieties. Foliage ranges from blue to dark green and most shades of green between. This makes them very versatile in every garden.

Some of them are spring blooming and slow spreading while others bloom all season long and spread faster with seeds that germinate easily in the garden. All of them are delightful!


contributed by member Danielle Carrier

Misprint - Birds in the Backyard

Just a heads up that the Prairie dog incorrectly published the date of our "Birds in the Backyard" event.  It is Thurs. Sept. 12 at 6:30 (Meeting at the entrance of the Neil Balkwill).  Thanks to one of our members for catching that!

Birds in the Backyard
Thursday, September 12, 2013  |  6:30pm
Neil Balkwill Centre, 2420 Elphinstone Street (map)
Meet at the front entrance.

Trevor Herriot, of CBC Radio's Birdline, will lead us on a short walk from the Neil Balkwill Centre across Rotary Park to his home to talk about backyard bird feeding. Returning to the Balkwill Centre, he will show slides and talk about common back yard birds for people who live in Regina and area. Bring binoculars if you have them.

Join us for this three part session! 1) Short walk and talk. 2) Tour of Trevor's backyard feeders. 3) Short presentation.

Trevor Herriot is a prairie naturalist, illustrator and award winning writer. His new book is Grass, Sky, Song: Promise and Peril in the World of Grassland Birds. It won two Saskatchewan Book Awards, and was short-listed for the Writer’s Trust Non-fiction Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction, and the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing (non-fiction).

His first book, River in a Dry Land: a Prairie Passage, won the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Award for Best First Book, as well as the Writer’s Trust Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize, and two Saskatchewan Book Awards. It was also short-listed for a Governor’s General Award. His second book, Jacob’s Wound: a Search for the Spirit of Wildness, was short-listed for the Writer’s Trust Award for Non-Fiction.

His writing has appeared in the Globe & Mail, Canadian Geographic, Nature Canada, and several anthologies. He has written two radio documentaries for CBC Ideas and is a monthly guest on CBC Radio Saskatchewan’s Blue Sky.

Trevor’s blog, Grass Notes, discusses many of the stories and issues raised in Grass, Sky, Song.

He lives in Regina with his wife Karen and their four children. They spend as much time as possible at a piece of prairie south of Indian Head, which they share with two other families.