4 posts tagged “garden”
I'm just smitten with the fact that every tomato and pepper from my
garden this year hails from a plant I started from seeds in my basement
in February after returning from our vacation in FL.
Every time I get back from FL, I'm all, WTF, people? Winter is over! Let's get this garden party started right!,
but then I have to wait for at least a month before I can even plant
potatoes. This year, after a much-needed but somehow slightly
unsatisfying vacation, I babied these seeds under lights for eight
weeks until they were cute little plants and then I babied them some
more until it was time to plant.
Sweet peppers, hot peppers, leeks, potatoes, tomatoes, and herbs all
look so fantastic in the August sunlight, filtered through cumulus
clouds and late summer greenery. Summer's leaving. Oh, I know. It's
going to get hot at least once more, and bring it!* But the angle of
the sunlight betrays the temperature, and I can smell it in the air -
certain foliage falls and dies this time of year, and certain flowers
start to bloom. The goldenrod is blooming, and at night the Big Dipper
occupies a different corner of the sky than it did at Solstice.
Even if it's not yet time to break out the sweaters, it can't be a bad idea to at least locate them...
*that's for my friend J's husband J, who will mock me eternally for wishing hot weather upon the midwest last summer
All weekend long I've been thinking about the update I was going to
do, and how awesome it was going to be, all the stuff I was going to
write about, the witticisms, the anecdotes, etc.
And now I'm just... tired. It's been a good weekend, busy. My garden
was really suffering and still is, for the most part, but she doesn't
seem so neglected. I finally got the fall greens in the ground, and dug
up some of the potatoes, and pulled some of the crazed weeds. I gave
the chickens some attention and weeded the kitchen herb garden. I
cooked quite a bit, since I don't do as much of it as I used to.
Sometimes I feel like my work away from home is more acting than
anything else - I'm getting paid to do certain things and to learn
certain things, and I do them and learn them quite well. I like what I
do, and I appreciate my good fortune, but really? I'm myself on the
weekends.
Last night the four of us sat in the backyard after 10 PM and waited for meteors.
Lilly and Cody had been out for a few minutes already when I arrived; I
found my shoes pretty fast when I heard them yelling with utter
surprise and delight after seeing two streak across the sky in the span
of about three minutes. No pun intended, but it was heavenly being
outside in the cool night air with the three people I love most in the
world, waiting for what really does seem like a miracle.
Anyone up for some thrift brogging? I got a couple:
Five excellent Hanna Andersson dresses slightly larger than what Lilly wears
(what are the odds??), three of them barely worn and the other two only
slightly more worn, for a buck apiece at the thrift store that's moving
next week. The total for that trip was $5.73 - I got a righteous silk
scarf for myself for a quarter.
This is the much-coveted (by me) full (again! What are the odds!!??) Woman's Day Encyclopedia of Cookery (1965). For total gravy, I also snagged The Cooking of Provincial France,
published by Time-Life Books in 1968, written by MFK Fisher and
assisted by Julia Child. The photos are priceless. My pal J gave me the
Scandinavian book last summer. Oh, nineteen-sixties.
I spent a couple of hours today at our much-better-than-average
library. I worked a little and read a lot from this terrific book about
the music scene in Laurel Canyon in the late sixties/early 70s.
I could use a couple of hours alone in the library every week, so i think i'm going to take them.
Home improvement tasks on the horizon: painting the gutters, doing a new basement window, and painting Cody's room.
Freezer canning continues.
'Course, I can't have both - they don't match.
Oh, come on. At $200 or so a clip, I can't have either one.
[If I had to choose one, though? The boots.]
When I was in high school - back in the Dark Ages - we started
getting the J Crew catalog in the mail. Despite the punk rock I
favored, despite the ripped out jeans and Sharpied jackets and old-man
sweaters, I was smitten with J Crew and its rugby shirts and its
blonde-bobbed models and its clean-cut boys, its fascination with
sailing and parties and old-monied, Kennedyesque romping. My mother,
who wasn't particularly fond of my thrift-shop taste, had to admit that my affinity for
looking like a senior citizen was certainly less expensive than trying
to look like my J Crew "peers".
Now? I think they have good corduroy pants, and their color sense is
terrific. The few J Crew items I own (all gifts - I don't think I've
ever ordered anything from them personally) have been well-made and
have lasted around ten years or so. Well, except for the black
turtleneck sweater - it was wool, had this great boxy shortcut fit,
kind of a big turtleneck, and I just abused it. I wore it out at the
elbows and around the neck. I think it was circa the Fall 2000 catalog.
I still own it, of course.
This photo is for K, who wants more garden. Well, I'll tell you, K. My garden is out of control.
Stuff is everywhere. I plant things too close together in the spring,
because everything looks so depressing when it's small, and by August
I'm all, OH MY GOD, the Accidental Amaranth has taken over the herb
garden, at least the part where the cucumbers and watermelons (both of
which are dying) haven't yet traveled, and I cannot find my sage plant,
and some large creature, perhaps a befuddled deer, has walked through
my 24 tomato plants, and who will dig the potatoes, and please remind
meto never again plant morning glories, even if they're purple, and if I see another goddamned squirrel taking a bite out of my sunflowers there's going to be some serious hijinks.
Does this mean I hate my garden?
Absolutely not. It just means I'm a lousy manager of my time. I will
say I've fake-canned* whatever tomatoes we don't eat - I just do
another batch every night. Having garden tomatoes for sauce in January
is a little bit heavenly.
xo
* Fake canning: what people like me do when they have jars and lids and
rings and even a water-bath canner, but lack time. I have two large
Pyrex baking dishes - I wash and quarter all the tomatoes I have, place
them in the baking dishes, fire up the oven to 450, drizzle the
tomatoes with olive oil, salt 'em, and put 'em in the oven to roast for
about 30-45 minutes. If I'm not lazy and my shoulder isn't sore, I'll
put the results through a food mill. Last year I think I sustained a
chronic injury to my right shoulder while food-milling tomatoes (I'm
serious), so this year I'm putting the tomatoes in the jar with the
skins and the seeds and everything. Just let the tomatoes cool a
little, then put into clean jars using a slotted spoon. Seal and cool
further in the fridge, then place in the deep freeze the next day. Yum
yum!
The melons are slow in coming on this summer. If all goes well, this
little thing will be a 25# watermelon with orange insides by the end of
August.
Exhausted. Pulled weeds, took care of the chickens, watered thoroughly, harvested the last of the peas.
Ate raw today. Hm.
