A Sunday

Caution, dog-noses seen in mirror may be closer than they appear. Really really close. We were asked to come help with a group yard-improvement project at Patrick's parents' house on Sunday. We brought Del. We also brought pickled beets and a bag full of zucchini, but Del, I think, was the most welcome hospitality gift. Patrick's parents' Airedale Fiona, and his sister's terrier/schnauzer mix Piper were also in attendance, and it was a real hoot watching them all get to know each other and romp around the yard.

The thing about being asked a favor by Patrick's mom is that you will be repaid in food. Lavish food. Maybe the best food of your life. The table bore blue cheese potato salad, and chili-basted corn on the cob. Chicken and sausage from the grill, and a kale salad with tangerines and dried currants and pistachios, and very extremely cold Chardonnay.

And lime custard tart with berries. We really don't mind being repaid in food.

Once home, we slouched off our wine buzz (at least I did) and watched the sun set over those sticky 90-degree hills. Foosh. This is going to be a week for hibernating in the cool of the dining room (coolest room of the house, where I make my "summer office") and drinking iced coffee and doing little more outside than picking beetles and watering freshly seeded rows.
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Sundries

Now that the porch is done, it finally feels like I'm really gaining on the house again. Look at that new blue part! Boom! A coat of paint makes such a big difference. With a nice new roof on everything (that'll be after we sell our Binghamton house.... still no nibbles...) the house will really look cared-for. And nothing beats that cared-for vibe.
I'm reminding myself that I'm only about two months into working on the exterior... and I have most of three months left to go. That is a good chunk of time; my goal of getting that whole front side done seems reachable. That's a damn good feeling!
In other news, we took Del to the creek recently. I may have gotten wetter than he did (though he got plenty wet, too). I am not especially good with heat; any day that gets above 85 should be acknowledged with a dip in the creek. 

So happy to have a lovely little one nearby. Happy weekend!
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The progress

May 7th:

May 21st:

May 31st:

June 10th:

June 19th:

July 2nd:

This morning:

Wow. Last night, dinner was a giant salad with steamed beets, potatoes, radishes, and more of that green goddess dressing. The only ingredients not from the garden were a dollop of yogurt and a squeeze of lemon. 

The peas are almost finished, and will be ripped out probably tomorrow or Friday and replaced with a big fat bed of carrots, beets, and parsnips, for fall and winter eating. The broccoli is still cranking away. The raspberries are coming in. The ZUCCHINI, holy crap. I picked the first eight at just a little bigger than thumb-size, and threw them on the grill the other night, to circumvent the tidal wave of behemoths I know is coming. Time to sharpen my food processor blade and shred, shred, shred.

Something is definitely eating my peppers: little unsuspicious-looking brown leaf-hoppery guys. They gut the leaves then sever them from the plant, and make all the flowers fall off, too. I'm looking up row covers as soon as I publish this.

Half my tomato plants, and most of my cukes and winter squash, are stunted-- and the only thing I can think is that I shouldn't have tilled in those hickory leaves. Hickory leaves have a biotoxin, like walnut leaves, that keeps other plants from growing around it. It's an anti-competition strategy. Some plants are immune to the toxin, and some aren't. Last fall when I was swamped with leaves and trying to figure out what to do, I decided to chance it. Obviously, the green beans and broccoli and potatoes have no sensitivity to the stuff, but other crops do. The good news is, the toxin gets broken down by soil microbes, this fall I'm not putting any hickory leaves on my garden, and next year everything should be okay. 

A garden is always a win some, lose some proposition. Fortunately to me, whatever winners there are make up, in spades, the disappointment of the losers.
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Birthday weekend. Summertime. Ithaca.

Thanks to my weekend waitressing career, it had been two years since I'd traveled to Ithaca to properly celebrate Kat's birthday. And, naturally, I'd forgotten that it used to be one of my favorite holidays. Back when we all lived in town together, we'd converge on a gorge or a park pavilion or a state park campsite, always that first weekend in July, always toting plenty of libations, and celebrate.
December birthdays just aren't as much fun. Alexis and I can commiserate on that account. But at least we share a good friend whose birth date seems designed to make up for the mediocrity of ours. 

Friday's agenda: burritos, margaritas, string band, cocktails.
Saturday's agenda: waterfall, picnic, winery, winery, lake, party.
It was splendid.

I hope the birthday girl had the most fun, but honestly, I'm not sure. I'd forgotten how this is the time of year when it feels sooo indescribably good for me to get away from "the farm" for awhile. 

Kat knows a lot of farmers and gardeners, and even an orchard manager or two. So, naturally, the food at her party was... oh, sweet heaven. Everyone flooded that kitchen with towel-wrapped bundles of summer onions, and bowls of fresh cherries, and bags of ruby-speckled lettuce. 

And gin. Gin, too.

It was a fine time. Happy birthday, Kat!
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The Fourth

Sometimes the little thrown-together gatherings are best. Two cold salads, a few glasses of wine, camp chairs and hickory shade. My mom and dad came out yesterday, ostensibly to swap plants and seeds and show photos from a big trip they just returned from. But mainly, we visited. 

Patrick was with us briefly, before he had to leave to play his gig (being in a country band means ALWAYS having a gig on the 4th of July). But that was okay. Del and Pete helped me extend the best in hospitality, as always.

And we ate nectarine pavlova for dessert. Who can beat that? Hope everyone had a happy and warm holiday!
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Garden update: July on the verge

Two weeks ago, above.

... and yesterday afternoon. You know how last week I told myself I'd commit to a big harvesting and preserving session every week? (I imagined that would be sufficient to get everything in.) Well. So far this week I have frozen a gallon of peas, a gallon of broccoli, a gallon of spinach, and a gallon of beet greens. I made another batch of arugula pesto and froze it. And last night I pulled beets and did four pints of pickled beets, plus sesame noodles with peas and scallions and kale, and salad with steamed baby beets (the ones too small for the jars) from the garden. HEAVENS.

Heaven and HEAVENS, all rolled into one. Every afternoon when I let the big chickens out, they bee-line for the currant bushes shown here, loaded. Nothing funnier than a chicken running.

And you know what? I just better settle in and get used to harvesting like a mad woman. I have four zucchini hills with three plants each, and they all look more or less like this guy, above. Hoo boy.

I'm loving the little pockets of flowers that have sown themselves all around: catchfly, coreopsis, and three different kinds of poppies. Bright-colored, self-seeding flowers will always be welcome in the vegetable garden. 

I feel like this photo is going to appear in a big "before" blog post in like five years, when the shed and the garage and the rest of the house are teal, and maybe we've built new back steps, and when we're probably driving something more exciting than a 14 year old Altima and my father-in-law's truck. So I hope, at least.

The potatoes are flowering. So pretty, and so weird to see such pretty flowers on such a homely plant.

This year I grew bona fide grocery store-size beets. I think the key is in the row spacing. I've always thinned my beets within each row, but this year I left a solid 16 inches between rows-- partly on accident, as I was counting on carrots growing between the rows, but they never showed. Happy accident, then, that these beets are so stellar.

Amiright?

I'll close with Delmer's opinion of the canning-kettle-steamy house on an 83-degree day.
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Garden eating: June

I love summer eating. I write about this every year, the turning point when garden produce goes from fun meal accessory to mainstay-- and what a good point it is. Second or third week of June, usually, when the spinach and lettuce are joined forcefully by peas and broccoli. 
This summer and fall, I want to do one post per month that's just a week's worth of meals from the garden. It'll be a way of celebrating the abundance, and also a way of documenting how we're eating now. So much fun, I imagine, to look back on in ten years.
Above, we have a vegetable tart with garden broccoli and arugula pesto, and of course salad from the garden. This tart is one of our favorite go-tos: a light whole wheat crust-- not a buttery pastry crust-- filled with our eggs and whatever vegetables we have on-hand. It's such a nice break from the easy stir fry/soup/pasta rut we get into from time to time.

This was a sweet potato and broccoli curry with coconut milk. I made curry paste from an onion, some frozen garden jalapenos, and a bunch of cilantro and basil from the garden. I just started making curry paste regularly, actually-- in the food processor, I can make enough to use fresh and freeze for several more dinners. And it's worlds better than what comes in that little $5 Thai Kitchen jar.

Sesame baked tofu with peas.  I swear I've made this every June for the past five years.

Giant salad with deviled eggs. This was yesterday's lunch. The tomatoes are not from my garden, but they are local. And I made green goddess dressing (basically a really amped-up ranch with basil and spinach included) to drizzle over top. 

Which brings us to.... more peas. Good thing they're so delicious. This was just a simple stir fry with turnips, peas, bok choy, and a peanut butter sauce.
There were a lot of Asian flavors in our meals this week-- I guess inspired by the peas. The snap peas I love to grow just go best in stir fries, with sesame oil and soy sauce and those sorts of flavors, though this week I'm planning to use some in a pasta carbonara. 
For all these peas we've been eating, I've still managed to give some away and freeze nearly two gallons' worth. Amazing, how fast they come on and how fast they go. For now I'm just making the most of pea time, and broccoli time, and speculating how long it will be before we have zucchini to eat, too. 

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