Corn Triplets

I rarely grow a good crop of corn anymore, but his summer, cool as it was, produced one of my best harvests of the vegetable!  An odd thing, many of the stalks produced 2-3 ears with some of the separate ears having 'extra' ears attached to them!  A phenomenon that I have never seen before! It was some of the tastiest corn we have ever eaten :-}

Impressed!

Scott and Bethany L gifted me early for Mother's Day with the best gardening gloves ever!  They have too often been witnesses to gloves on me with the ends of the fingers worn completely away, since I dig with my fingers to both pull weeds and to plants starts.  Springtime brings a permanent green index finger with brown stained fingernail.  These new gloves have leather fingers and palms. Today I spent the one sunny day we will be having, working outside weeding and planting and generally giving the gloves a hard workout.  By the end of the day not only were the fingers none the worse for the wear, but my hands had stayed totally warm in the moist dirt. No need to take the fingernail brush to my nails either! Needless to say, I am very impressed and pleased with them :-)

MECHANIXWEAR  Leather Palm Gloves

Try them.....

A Curse and a Blessing - The Blackberry!

"Picking wild berries is the sweetest and best of our vagrant summer pleasures." ~ Jager

Though we expend much of our summer energy battling back the 3 different varieties of wild blackberries common to the Pacific Northwest, come Fall when we pick the deep purple, succulent berries, the struggles, backaches and bright red scratches all fade from our memory.

The whitish-pink blossoms turn to seed and the berry starts to form.

They turn from bright green to a reddish hue.

Finally, as the sun ripens and sweetens the berries, they deepen to a dark purple, almost black color.

They are ready for the pickin'!

We have had pies, cobblers and crisps from these jewels this fall!  What is it about free berries that make them all the more tempting and delicious?!?!

Garden Bouquet

Cabbage

“I want death to find me planting my cabbage”

~Michel de Montaigne

Carrots

HARVESTING THE CARROTS

      ~Tom Boswell

Ten years later, when it was finally over,

she confessed she had fallen in love

with me that late autumn afternoon

while I squatted, my back to her,

harvesting the carrots.

My eyes were fixed on the carrot tops, ferny green

filigree promising thick scarlet roots

burrowed in the soil, so I failed to notice

if she changed that moment—her face,

her eyes, the way she walked—

When this thing she later called love swept

over her. I do remember that the corn

was behind us, and how she turned then

to photograph it as I tore out carrots

and tossed them in a willow basket.

I never understood what she saw in this garden

she hadn’t worked, or in the ravaged corn

she’d make into a photo to hang on a gallery

wall, or how these things she hardly knew

could stir such deep emotions, but

I’ve come to trust the way the bandit coon craves

the corn, something pure and simple, lacking

pretense. The photograph was one of those

soft-focus works of hers you could

hang any which way and still

See something to satisfy you, so long as you

were not hungry for corn. There was mullein,

goldenrod and bergamot still in bloom,

and the wild carrot, Queen Anne’s Lace,

which she claimed to love as well.

I teased her, called it a wanton weed, useless

renegade from overseas, but showed her,

as if it was a secret shared by just us two,

the solitary purple blossom shuddering

like a heart at the center of each bouquet.

Gather enough of these over a summer, I said,

and you can dye something—a skirt or shirt

perhaps—a dark hue like the stain

of memory, a thing of beauty and utility.

At least until the color fades.

~Illustration by "Wildman"

It's Time!

Look what has finally ripened in the cool weather :-)

“Doubtless God could have made a better berry (than the strawberry), but doubtless God never did.”


~William Allen Butler

Early Start

My sister asked my yesterday whether or not I had planted vegetable starts this year, as I have not posted any photos of them.  Well.  I have.  Clear back in early March, when the weather was balmy and dry.  These photos were taken several weeks ago.  Before the Vernal Equinox.  Shortly thereafter, winter finally arrived.  We have had hail, sleet and snow.  Blustery days with downpours.  Just plain miserable weather.  The starts grew so tall that I finally was forced to move them out into the cold frame 2 weeks ago.  I hope they survive the COLD nights. 

Thinkin' on Spring

Yes, I know. Winter has only just officially begun. However, the daylight has already begun getting longer, which means less dark time for all of us Northerners who suffer from SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder...... a fancy tag put on those of us who seem to wither without our beloved daylight hours to keep our spirits high). To celebrate the uphill slide towards longer days, as well as my birthday, I am posting about the candied wild violets I made last spring :-)

First, pick a bunch of wild violets, found in the woody areas. They take over my gardens in my yard, so I pull most of them out as weeds. Since they are one of the first flowers to burst open in the spring though, I am in love with them, so I always leave plenty. Anyhow, softly whip up some egg white, dip each flower separately into it, then into a small bowl of superfine sugar and lay on a piece of waxed paper to dry. Sounds simple, right? Deceptive. I will never do these again, fun as they are to use as decorations on cakes, cupcakes or whatever one uses them for. I had a difficult time working with these tiny flowers, and to top it off, when I went to pull them off of the waxed paper, most of them crumbled to pieces. I can check this one off of my 'must do before I die' list. Glad I tried it, after thinking about it for many years, but am ready to move on now to something that works. Kinda like all of those science experiments I had my kids do in high school that failed more than they succeeded.

Spring is on the way! I am sure of it!

Lingonberries

In my garden are 9 lingonberry bushes that I planted several years ago. I have been crippling them along over the years. They aren't flourishing, but seem to produce straggling berries throughout the summer and fall.

This was the first year I had enough berries to make about 2 cups of lingonberry jelly.

Might be a nice addition to the Thanksgiving table this year :-)

Bounty

I am frantically trying to harvest and put up the garden before I run away to the East Coast for 3 weeks. Weather-Wise, it was a magnificent summer, and in turn the garden is producing beautiful vegetables!


You need to be from the Pacific Northwest to fully appreciate these tomato pictures. I cannot even remember the last time I actually harvested a red big tomato! But this is the year! Doesn't take much to make a gardener happy up here........ just give her a few red tomatoes!

I have, though, managed to eek out a few cherry tomatoes over the summers, but this year they are coming like bees to honey! These are Sweet Millions.

A Bowl Full of Cherries!

My friend, Erika, shared this really simple meal with me many summers ago. Mix a bit of olive oil, a goodly amount of minced fresh garlic, a bunch of cherry tomatoes cut into halves or quarters, a ton of fresh basil and a tad of sugar. Cook up some angel hair pasta, and scoop the tomato mixture on top. Generously sprinkle with some freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and you have one tantalizingly delicious supper! We have eaten this for the last 3 nights now. It is that good! Plus we have tons of tomatoes to use up :-)

It's difficult to think anything but pleasant thoughts while eating a homegrown tomato. ~ Lewis Grizzard

Cabbage

"I want death to find me planting my cabbage”

~Michel de Montaigne

Early Morning Garden

I wandered out early this morning, still in my jammies, and picked our dinner for tonight...... can you guess what it will be? Yes, of course, a stir fry is in the works!

Peek-A-Boo

Rising above the beans, which trail up a 6 foot support structure, our sunflowers seem to be peeking over the garden to see what is happening! They remind me of our curious ducks, stretching their necks up high as they wander and investigate the yard! Big doesn't necessarily mean better. Sunflowers aren't better than violets. ~Edna Ferber

Or are they? ~Beanball

Harvest

Last week an unexpected cool and showery (and welcome) day lent me the opportunity to put up some of the summer harvest. I experimented by making some Raspberry Rhubarb Relish.

It turned out a deep shade of red, and though it sounds a bit sketch, it tastes pretty dang good! I think it is mainly a meat accompaniment. Like with chicken or turkey. I will try it out on the sisterhood gang next week, as it is my turn to host it.

This is Strawberry Raspberry freezer jam. Mmmm, mmmm. One of our all-time favorites!

Zucchini and other summer squashes are screaming to be picked now, too.

Every few years I make up a grand scale batch of Zucchini Relish that will last for several years.

It was time to roust up another batch this year.

It is a sweet relish that I use in sandwiches such as egg salad, and potato salad, amongst other things. It has a nice and mellow flavor to it.

Several weeks ago Anna Lyn and Joy and I made up Strawberry Freezer Jam. I had a mother load of strawberries in the garden this year!

The difference in this particular jam, though, was that is has only a minute amount of sugar in it. For example, most jams have close to, if not equal, amounts of sugar to fruit proportions. This one uses xanthum as a thickener, and to 8 cups of crushed fruit, only uses 1/2 cup sugar! Amazing!

It tastes almost like the fresh, slightly tart fruit right from the garden. So delicious! There still is much to put up this summer, but I am feeling good about what has been accomplished thus far :-)

While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease. -Bible (Old Testament)

Rose Garden of Days Gone-By

My mother had a rose garden. By all accounts, it was lovely in its hey-day. By time I grew old enough to remember it, a tree my parents had planted close-by had grown so tall so as to totally block any sun from reaching the little patch of roses. The once-beautiful bushes had by then been reduced to a few straggly sticks sporting but few leaves. Actually, one could hardly tell from the remains that such life and beauty had ever existed there. The Secret Garden. It is helpful to have the good fortune of possessing some pictures from days long ago that I don't even remember. I can see in my mother someone who loved the outdoors and gardening. She passed that love on to her daughters, though she didn't live long enough to see the realization of it. I also see a charming, petite woman who took care to dress herself well, in addition to dolling up her little girls. Later on, my sister and I became such avid tomboys that my mother surely must have wondered if she had given birth to any daughters at all! Hopefully she had her fill of girliness in our younger days! I think my mother loved her rose garden while it lasted.

Like the rose that emanates a lingering fragrance, so a photo issues a lasting memory. ~Beanball

Summer Growth

Cauliflower is ready for eatin'!

In case Bethany does another where-do-pumpkin-pie's-come-from demonstration for her classroom this year ;-)


Beans, cauliflower, zucchini, etc

A favorite sitting spot of mine

The ducks have grown up, and their pond is dried up. It has been an exceptionally hot summer this year. We are now in the process of digging it out more and lining in with plastic to help keep it from drying out during the latter summer. Meantime, they enjoy a bucket of water to wet their whistle with.............

.....as well as a small wading pool to float their boats on! Such characters they are. We also turn the hose sprayer nozzle on them now and then, much to their delight! They run around flapping their wings, snapping their bills at the droplets at an attempt to drink from the air, primping and squawking. So much fun to watch :-)


In summer, the song sings itself. ~William Carlos Williams

Stump

While my observant husband was weed-whacking the other day, he hollered at me to come take a picture of this picturesque sight. Sometimes I take all the beauty on our property for granted. We are so fortunate to be surrounded by such sights.....

Roses red and violets blew, And all the sweetest flowers that in the forest grew. ~Edmund Spenser