It is risen

I recently provided the venue and food for a baby shower for my daughter.  The menu included angel food cake, which I had not made in a while.  The recipe on the box said the cake pan had to be at least 4" x 10", and while my angel food cake pan is what I would consider standard, still I measured it.  Yep, 4" x 10" - but just barely.  With trepidation, I watched it rise...

... and rise...

... and rise.

But it never overflowed.  In fact, it shrank back down to a normal height.

Then I tried not to butcher it when cutting it out of the pan.  Not quite successful there, but it was very edible. I've never tried an angel food cake from scratch - I'm daunted by what to do with the left over egg yolks.

With a little rearranging of furniture and a lot of decluttering, the West Wing proved to be a nice place for the gathering.  With the newly laid mulch, the backyard was almost presentable.  If everyone hadn't been focused on the food and the gifts and the mother-to-be, they might have noticed that, while the coneflowers are fading, the goldfinch visit them often to feed on the seed heads.  Their yellow is matched by the brown-eyed Susans and zinnias and the gooseberry tomatoes as well as the swallowtail butterflies, but the marigolds and monarchs are orange.  Then there is the almost-black purple of the pokeberry, the rich purple of the butterfly bush, and the lavender of the Russian sage.

I was hoping my garden would provide most of the food for the repast, but the potatoes aren't quite ready (and I think the experiment of growing potatoes on newspaper under straw is not going to produce a great harvest), it has been too hot for the zucchini and peppers to set blossoms, and I don't grow sweet corn.  A local farm stand helped me out, though, and we enjoyed a summery feast that at least used up some of my tomatoes.

*****

There is something about the light in mid August that whispers, Summer is almost over.  With the help of my SO, I accomplished many of my gardening goals this year.  Now it is time to reap what we've sown, put food by for the winter, and start dreaming of what we hope to achieve next year.

You say "frittata" and I say "frittahtah"

One nice thing (among many!) of occasionally working from home is I can make myself a fresh lunch.  Today's entree was based on a recipe for Baked Zucchini Frittata for One or Two (found here), but really, all you need to do is saute some garden produce, mix it with eggs, milk, and herbs, top with cheese and bake.  I used zucchini, onion (lots!), garlic, sweet pepper, paste tomato, all from the garden, cilantro and cayenne for spices, and sharp cheddar and parmesan for cheese.  Yum!  No pictures - I ate it before I thought of blogging about it.  And, yes, I ate it all by myself, but this recipe could serve two if there were a couple of side dishes.  Like bacon?

Like drinking a vine-ripe tomato

The tomato harvest has begun.  In an effort to clear the decks (i.e. my breakfast bar), I decided to juice the current crop, using my super-duper Roma Food Strainer and Sauce Maker.

Talk about easy peasy!  Put the thing together (like most things, it gets easier after the first time), wash and stem the tomatoes (I cored them a bit, too), fill the hopper, crank the crank, and presto!  Tomato juice!

Seriously, it is that easy.  No peeling, no cooking, no Foley Food Mill to wrestle with.  Ten pounds of tomatoes filled five 1.5-pint jars, which I put in the freezer.

There was a little left over, which I drank.  My first reaction:  this does not taste like tomato juice from the store.  My second reaction: it tastes much better!  Up next:  my own V8.

In other news, my SO and I trimmed the privet - a much easier job than last year - and trucked the trimmings to the biosolids site, returning with our final load of mulch for the year.  It did not quite stretch to cover everything that remained to be mulched, but close enough.

Summer doldrums

I was out of town for a week and my SO did the honors of keeping things watered and somewhat picked.  It was a "safe" time to abandon the garden, though, as not much was happening.  My intention was to pull up the onions and let them "rest" in the sun for a day before I left, but I forgot until late in the day.  I still pulled them up, but my SO - who is allergic to onions - had to transfer them to the shed for me.  There they are curing, in the doodad I use for screening compost.

That should last me all winter.

Before I left, I also picked the first tomato.

Okay, not much to look at, but I still cut off the blossom end rot and ate the rest.  And it was good.

As you may recall, I purchased a paste tomato sampler last spring.  The plants had to be nursed back to health before I could transplant them, and in the process, the varieties got mixed up.  One variety, despite regular watering and an application of calcium, seems susceptible to blossom end rot.  Too bad I don't know which one, so I can avoid it in the future.

After a week of eating food-that-I-am-not-used-to, it was delightful to come home and whip up an omelet with my own onions, peppers, and tomatoes.  Last night's supper included my own potatoes, green beans, and cucumbers.  I'm not being as anal as I need to be re weighing the harvest because I just can't wait to eat it!

Is that safe to eat?

The search for a stoneware crock has a happy ending.  My SO, who also serves as my personal shopper, found said crock at Grabill Hardware, which is a Do It Best that serves the local Amish community.  This crock is made at the same place in Ohio as all the other crocks I have looked at, but costs only $16.99.  I can check that item off my to-do list.

And why do I need a stoneware crock?  Why, so I can try some of the recipes in Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz.

While most of the time, I live in a state of denial, I sometimes vacation in a place called What If.  A side trip to this land goes something like this:  Instead of our seemingly unending and uninterrupted access to electricity, What If there were brown outs or even black outs?  How would we get water and food?  If I grow some of that food myself, how would I preserve it?  Dehydration is one answer, but I could also ferment a wide variety of foods with little or no extra ingredients or fancy equipment.

Some people have a sweet tooth; I prefer salty and sour.  Sauerkraut, brined garlic, sour dough, yogurt all appeal to me.  One of my great disappointments of middle age is losing my tolerance for alcohol, but sometimes I wonder if it is the alcohol or the adulterants added to the alcohol that is the culprit.  Consequently, I am eager to try some hard cider, flower wine, and ginger beer, even kombucha, if I can find a mother.  Recipes for all these and more are in Wild Fermentation. 

Some of the recipes include instructions to skim mold (a.k.a. scum or bloom) off the top of whatever is fermenting.  That idea tends to turn me off.  While Katz believes that the cultures used in fermentation discourage bacteria such as salmonella and he has never heard of anyone getting sick from home fermented foods, he is smart enough to urge the fermenter to trust his/her nose and/or taste (but don't swallow!) to decide whether to chuck the item in question.

Anyway, once the tomato season (which has yet to start) dies down, I hope to try some experiments in fermentation.

It must be summer

Yesterday I ate new potatoes and fresh green beans for lunch, and supper included a stir fry of zucchini, sweet pepper, hot pepper, and onion.  Today for lunch I ate the leftover stir fry, plus burpless cucumbers.  All of that came from my garden.  Ooh, yeah.  Can't wait for the first tomato. 

The unbearable heat continues, sans rain.  That means I spend too much time watering.  Last year (or the year before?) I purchased some irrigation equipment from Lee Valley, but never set it up.  I would look into that, but it is too hot. 

Some time in the past, I also purchased a soil test kit, also never used.  And some plastic edging that I never installed.  And doohickeys for organizing garden tools that never made it out of the box.  And after the construction of the raised bed, there is still more treated lumber that never morphed into the intended backyard project.  Also, two new smoke detectors are still in their packages.  (Don't worry - my old smoke detector is working just fine.)

At least this is done: 

Now,if someone would install the clothesline that has been sitting in its box on the dryer for about 8 months, the new laundry room would be really complete.

IMHO

I think fresh grass clippings make the best mulch for garden beds.  Not only do they create a dense mat that discourages weeds, as the clippings decompose, they heat up enough to kill weed seeds.  Summers have been so dry in recent years that I have not had much grass to mow, but this spring was wet enough to produce a decent amount of mulch.  For this, I am grateful.  Not that my garden is weed-free, mind you, but with grass clippings I have a fighting chance.

All those weeds come in handy, though, because I pull them up and pile them up in my compost bins, and they magically turn into this:

Black gold!

My current dilemma is that I don't seem to have much time to cook.  I am looking forward to using some of this garlic:

It is curing in the shed, soon to be joined by the onions

which are starting to topple.  (Notice the weeds, most of which are growing in the path.  I'm thinking they need to be smothered with cardboard.)

Today I harvested the first handful of green beans, but what I am really looking forward to is zucchini

and cukes.

Planting the beans inside of the pea fence was not the best idea.  They are protected from rabbits, but the peas shaded them enough that they grew quite leggy.  The cukes I planted at either end of the pea fence, so they can grow up instead of sprawling on the ground.  This works quite well.

My SO helped construct a raised bed by the patio.  The wood was leftover from another project that never got off the ground.  Since it is treated with some unknown preservative, we lined the walls with plastic.

The castle block is to help level the thing; I plan to disguise it with potted herbs.  The fill is part dirt from where my neighbor dug a fire pit, part peat, and part grass clippings.  When the potatoes in the grow sacks are done, that soil will be added as well.

The weather has been ridiculously hot and humid lately and is effectively making me a prisoner of my AC.  The to-do list for this year has been whittled down significantly, but where there is a weed, there is a way to make me feel guilty for not doing more.  I hope it rains tomorrow and cools off a bit.

Is it garlic yet?

This is my first time growing garlic.  I planted two varieties last November, and so far, so good.  Unlike onions, garlic needs to be harvested before the tops completely dry down, or so they say.  Some also say it is best to protect garlic from rain a week or so before harvest; how one does that is never explained.  However, we are in a stretch of fair weather right NOW and the Broadleaf Czech looks like this:

And the German Extra Hardy looks like this:

So I dug up one of the Czech bulbs:

Looks like garlic to me.  Let the harvest begin!

The snap peas are dead:

Long live the green beans!  Last year, the rabbits ate my green bean seedlings before they had a chance to do much of anything besides poke their leafy heads out of the ground.  This year, I planted the green beans inside of enclosures, the early ones inside the pea fence, the later ones inside a contraption of my own devising.

By god, we are going to have some beans this year!  But I am also going to finish rabbit-proofing the backyard.  Last year, my SO helped me line the chain link with poultry netting, but we did not do the gates, which - go figure - became bunny super highways.  My only concern has been that I would inadvertently trap the bunnies inside rather than outside, or - worse - separate a momma from her nest of babies.  But last night, while mowing, I found where momma is keeping her current litter:

Doesn't look like much, does it?  This "nest" is in the middle of the front lawn.  I actually mowed over it, but noticed it move as I did so.  I kicked at the dried grass, thinking it disguised a mole hole or something, and much to my surprise, uncovered some squirming bunny babies.  Then I noticed momma watching from the neighbor's yard, so I covered the nest back up and finished my mowing.  Hope she doesn't abandon them.  (I know - I am nothing if not conflicted about rabbits.)  ANYWAY, my neighbor across the street has a humane animal trap, so if any (like the teenager living under the shed) are trapped inside the backyard, I can catch them and punt their cute little asses outside the enclave.

After the construction of the West Wing, my backyard was a mess.  It still is, but I am slowly starting to fill in the gaps.  Toward that end, I populated one corner with a 'Limelight' hydrangea and two 'Big Daddy' hostas.

They don't look like much now, but if they get as big as their plant tags predict, this corner will be full.  Since my electrical and telephone service enter the house in this corner, I called the underground utility people and after they marked where the utilities were, dug holes very, very carefully.

Despite its youth, the hydrangea is blooming nicely, although I think the blossoms look more white than lime.

Maybe the soil needs some amendments?

The primary hosta bed north of the garage is FULL.  My spring to-do list included dividing these, but I did not get a round tuit.  I think they can be divided in the fall, though, so I may try that.

In the lower right is 'Love Pat' which fortunately likes lots of shade.

The newer varieties of hostas are a lot prettier than the old standbys I started with, but I love them all.

When is Ace Hardware not

I have been in the market for a good stoneware crock.  There are some at the Vermont Country Store, but the one gallon one is $36.95 plus shipping, plus an extra shipping charge of $5.  And they are made one state to the east of mine!  Surely I could do better.

So I tried Amazon.  Yes, there were crocks, from secondary sellers, including Ace Hardware.  They wanted $21.52 (yay) plus $19.99 shipping (boo).

So I went right to the Ace Hardware online site, where the same stoneware crock was available for $19.99 plus FREE shipping to the store.

But where was the closest Ace Hardware?  The phone book listed two, neither of them exactly close to my house, but one I drive past whenever I make a mulch run.  Maybe they had them in stock.  I called.  Thanks to my diminishing hearing, I didn't hear exactly what the young woman said when she answered the phone, but she put me on hold while she directed me to the person who could answer my question.  Except the hold "music" was a commercial for Do It Best.  Huh?

Someone finally came on the line and told me that, no, they did not have any stoneware crocks.  I asked him if this was still an Ace.  No, both of the Ace Hardware stores in town were now Do It Best stores.  The closest Ace is in a town north of here.

The next day, my SO and I headed for Wisconsin.  We stopped in Plymouth for some lunch, and right there, in the strip mall next to whatever fast food joint we ate at, was an Ace Hardware.  It couldn't hurt to look, so we did.  They did not have stoneware crocks, but they had knock-off Crocs for two bucks.

I figured I could always use them for gardening, if I don't mind the resulting dirty feet.

I guess I do have some pix

But Blogger is acting weird re photo placement.  Anyway, catmint above, Shasta daisy below. 

Now the text alignment does not want to cooperate.  Coneflower above, butterfly bush below.

After years of milkweed in my front yard, I have finally convinced them to grow in The Meadow.  Maybe someday there will be monarch butterfly pupae on them.

   

Yarrow in pink and yellow.

And an impossible number of mushrooms in the mulch.

Wish I knew wheather these were edible.

Measure once, cut twice

Last year, the rabbits ate the green bean plants, much to my annoyance.  So this year, I decided to be proactive and fence in the bean patch.  To this end, I purchased some PVC pipe and connectors and built a frame which I wrapped in chicken wire.  I knew at the start that my garden beds are approximately 4' x 20'.  Approximately.  So I cut the pipe into 4-foot sections and connected everything together and discovered that the beds are not quite as big as I thought.  And I did not take the connectors into consideration.  So I trimmed 3 inches here and 6 inches there and it's close enough.  The PVC pipe is not very rigid, so the whole shebang is propped up with stakes, but I think it will do the trick and also be disassemblable at the end of the season.

If it weren't so breezy and so freakin' hot out, I would have some photos to show, photos of not only the bean fence, but the yarrow and penstemon and butterfly bush and Shasta daisy that are making the meadow such a delight to look at.  And the promising potato and tomato blossoms!  After today, we are expecting a long siege of temperatures in the 80's with the chance of thunderstorms nearly every day.  Perfect growing weather.

Chickens! Squirrels! Ducks!

Once upon a time, in a previous life, I lived in the country and kept chickens.  Chickens are great.  They are small, their requirements are minimal, and they take little care.  They are two-legged garbage disposals, efficient manure producers, and just plain entertaining to watch.  One or two learned to fly the coop, and their patrols through the garden kept it bug-free.  And the eggs!  The eggs were delicious.

Now I live within a city that outlaws "agricultural operations" within its borders.  There is a city park nearby that includes a demonstration 1930's farm.  They have chickens, but it's part of the educational experience the park offers.  And maybe that is the key:  education.  Because while walking the nabe with my daughter last night, we passed the private school on the hill that buffers my addition, and lo and behold - they have chickens, too!

I would love to have two or three chickens in my backyard, but I assumed such a thing was an impossibility.  After last night's poultry sighting, though, maybe it can come to be.  Must investigate.

In other animal news, my daughter and I also spent some time sitting in the West Wing, where we observed a rather clumsy squirrel trying to negotiate the telephone wire along the back of my property.  It's clumsiness was due, no doubt, by the birds that were harassing it.  Seriously.  One bird repeatedly attacked the squirrel as it scrambled down the line.  We had never seen such a thing before.

And this morning, what do I see in my backyard but a pair of mallards.  I know it has rained a lot this spring, but really, my yard is not that soggy.

You turn your back for one moment

I was on a business trip this week, Monday morning to Thursday afternoon, and while I was gone, this...

... turned into this.

And the snap peas plumped up enough for a first harvest.

Last night I had my first salad from the garden:  leaf lettuce, radish, scallion, and snap peas, with oregano and parsley for the dressing.  After eating such fresh food, I understand why those who rely on the produce section at the grocery store don't like vegetables.  The difference in incomparable.

I usually don't spend a lot of money on annuals for the yard and garden, but since I grew my own marigolds this year, I felt I could splurge a bit and add some color for my personal enjoyment:

Sometimes birds like to nest in hanging planters, so I will be curious if any do that with this one.  I doubt it, because it is about four feet from the West Wing westside windows, but we'll see.

Ordinarily, the plants on the east side of my house suffer a bit because the bed is mostly landscaper's sand.  This provides excellent drainage, but the plants get thirsty.  However, this year, we have had buckets of rain - over nine inches in May.

The photo above shows that, not only is the transplanted sedum happy, the ground covering 'Dragon's Blood' is equally ecstatic.  I have never seen it so dense.

After a slow start this spring, the smoke bush is, well, smoking.

I have had trouble growing anything at the southeast corner of the house, but this fellow loves it here.  We are looking forward to years of happiness.

And lotsa potatoes as well.

This is the first grow bag of potatoes.  It's difficult to tell from the picture, but the plant height above the bag is greater than the height of the bag.  And the plants are starting to bloom.  Can you say "new potatoes"?

While away (and missing my garden), I made a list of what still needs to be planted.  It is a bit late for some things, but I don't feel too bad about where I'm at.  All that rain has boosted weed growth, though, and more rain is in the forecast, making it difficult to get out there and tackle those weeds.  Thank goodness for grass clippings!

I could blog about gardening or I could garden

And that goes for photos as well.  Since today is overcast, though, I may try to snap a few between showers.

Veggie highlights:

• I planted a hill of cukes and a hill of zukes.  Both are up and on their way.
• I managed to revive ten of the tomato plants from the paste collection, and in the process of transplanting them to the garden, mixed up which were which.  I doubt the individual fruit will be that distinctive visually, but one can hope.  Then maybe we will be able to have a taste test.
• The snap pea vines are about five feet tall this year, and starting to sport pods.  The Blue Lake bush beans that I planted inside the pea fence on one side are up.  I planted Provider on the other side this past week, and only then remembering that I was going to plant the Provider first because they are supposed to be a good cool-weather bean.  Not that it has been very cool around here.
• One of the garlic varieties developed scapes, which I dutifully trimmed off.  Both varieties are starting to turn brown at the tips.  All the onions are in the ground.
• The potatoes are finally shoving their way through the straw.  I was beginning to get worried.  There is one more variety that needs to be planted, and they are going into more grow bags.  
• More grow bags means I need to blend more container mix.  Vermiculite and perlite are kind of difficult to locate, and then can be found only in smallish amounts.  Does anyone know a good online source?  If you buy baled packages of sphagnum peat moss, Menards is the cheapest, then Lowes, then Home Depot.

Avian update:

• The baby robin in the clematis flew the nest last Thursday while I was dragging the mower past the front door.  Still unable to fly properly, it scrambled through my open garage door, so I had to (gently) chase it out of there.  It continued down the driveway and across the street, parents in hot pursuit.  I hope it found a good bush to hide in.  The three eggs in the juniper nest are now one naked birdling.  Wonder what happened to the others.
• Robins take baths even when it is raining.
• The wrens were showing an interest in the bluebird house where the sparrows live, so I put up a second wren house.  Within minutes, wrens, sparrows, and goldfinch arrived to check out the new digs.  It was like an open house in a seller's market.  Only the wrens could fit inside.
• Still no takers for the bird bottle.
• I think the cardinals have a nest in the "John Clayton" honeysuckle.
• Hummingbirds are back.  They seem interested in the wave petunias, but I'm not sure they actually get any nectar from them.

Pest post:

• From where I am sitting in the West Wing, I can see a young rabbit in the garden, nibbling on whatever.  As long as it leaves the good stuff alone!
• My SO and I filled up one side of the compost bin with Canada thistle, and there is still more!
• While chatting with my neighbor the other day, I witnessed two carpenter bees duking it out over the prime real estate of said neighbor's shed.

My pretties:

• Most of the marigolds have been transplanted.
• The smoke bush is starting to smoke.
• The blooms on the 'Chicago Luster' viburnum lagged the ones on the 'Blue Muffin', so I don't think there will be berries this year.  I wonder if it is the difference in the ages of the two shrubs, and in future years, their bloom time will overlap?
• The phlox are about done.  Now they look kind of ugly.
• The Stellas are blooming, as are the coneflowers.
• Roses are red, and so are keys of heaven and columbine.  Tiger lilies, on the other hand, are orange.