Category Archives: summer

The feijoas are falling.

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I had in mind to do a bit of gardening today, but since it is hot, I’d need to do it early. Early came and went, and even the shady places I had planned to work with my little trowel were not shady enough. Typically our shady places are much cooler than in the full sun, but not this week.

So I just went out and wandered a little while eating a popsicle, and saw that dozens of pineapple guavas had dropped on the ground. That means that they are ripe. So I fetched a bowl from the kitchen and crawled around to gather them — four pounds!

The little squash in the photo above is the only and stunted kabocha that resulted from my first attempt. Next year maybe I will try them again, but in the front yard instead of butternuts. I brought in three of the latter whose stems were not green any longer. After I trimmed off the portions of the long squash vines that are not bearing fruits, I can see spaces into which to insert the starts of leafy greens that I’ve had in the greenhouse.

The fruits of the arbutus (Strawberry Tree) have also been falling for some time, but they usually are overripe before that happens. Right now the bush is covered with ripening fruits, flowers for next year, and pine needles that have fallen — currently including a whole stem of them — as they do on everything that grows on that side of the yard. If I were a terribly tidy sort of gardener I’d need to spend an hour every day picking off the needles of the constantly shedding Canary Island Pine.

I showed Bea how I eat the feijoas/pineapple guavas, and she and I stood around for awhile savoring these exotic gift of late summer.  It’s 101 degrees as I type, and I’m thinking this fruit would be nice about now blended with coconut water and poured over ice…. But I’m headed to Vespers, so I’m glad to see that as to temperature, tomorrow promises to be a similar day in which to enjoy such a drink!

A season soft and warm.

smells, summer, weather, , , ,

I am so thankful that a week and more of warm days has been bestowed on us here at the end of Summer. You can tell I love this season best, if you just look at all the posts over the years that have summer in the title. I am always searching my mind and and heart to find a way to describe what happens to me, when in the final weeks we often get the best of the season — the earth has warmed up, and for some reason the marine breezes don’t move in every afternoon and force us to put on our sweaters.

I’ve been taking advantage of this unusual situation as much as possible, and sitting in the garden to read my book, or just to soak up the feeling of being comfortable. I’m noticing.

(Not soft but stickery.)

When I walked along the nearby creek this week, I remembered another benefit of living in this climate with no summer rain, often for four months or more. The plants that thrive or survive the yearly drought eventually come to the end of their productive season, and if there is heat at this time, it draws out the essences such that I am grabbed by the aromas as I walk past. There is a lot of jammy scent right now, from the Himalayan blackberries that grow wild all over northern California; the ones that never fully ripened back in high summer are now dehydrating on their stems.

And the ubiquitous fennel, also growing wild, though it’s also not native. These exude a licorice flavor into the air about now.

According to the forecast, we’ll have another ten days of highs in the 80’s and even 90’s. I think that is just the best way to transition into October.

September warmed and sweetened.

food and cooking, my garden, summer, wildflowers, , , , , ,

My worries about September being too cool did not come to pass. We even had a sort of heat wave for two days, and one night when the temperature did not drop below the mid-60’s. As soon as the sun set that evening, we opened the windows and started running the fans. It was cooler the next night, back to our usual marine air, and being able to leave the windows open night and day, and even to let the sun shine in.

It’s warm enough to ripen figs, and we have eaten a few, but something is not right with my tree. Most of the figs turn purple before they get any size, and fall off when they are still small and hard. The ground is littered with them. I have spent a lot of time trying to figure out what the problem is, but I still don’t know.

At least, this year I’m happy about the tomatoes. It’s not often anymore that I have home-grown, vine-ripened “love apples” here, other than cherry tomatoes. I suppose one could make a BLT with those, but it never occurred to me. This summer I have Early Girls, and I wanted to make at least one sandwich using slices of them, lettuce and bacon. I accomplished that goal, and it was well worth the trouble.

And I used a few stems of the abundant tarragon to make the wonderful Tarragon Salsa Verde:

  • leaves from 1 small bunch fresh parsley (approx. 20g / 1 cup)
  • leaves from fresh tarragon (approx. 5g / 1/4 cup)
  • 1 spring onion including green part (roughly chopped)
  • zest of 1 lemon and juice of 1/2 lemon
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt flakes or 1/2 teaspoon pouring salt
  • 6 tablespoons olive oil

Mix all in a food processor and use as a dip, a spread for bread or on baked chicken, or eggs. It’s just wonderful. I even froze a little batch one time and used it later.

It comes to mind just now, that this salsa would probably make a nice addition to a BLT… I might try that before the tomatoes and tarragon have become a memory.

It wasn’t until last week that I got around to bringing flowers into the house, a bouquet of zinnias, with sweet peas and basil. This year I seem to be content to just stare out at the garden, or wander the paths doing little things, and procrastinating on this year’s Fall Reorganizing. Living where the winters are mild makes it possible — and often beneficial — to put off planting or transplanting until October. But extending the season has its down side; I hope next year I won’t have to do any of this moving-plants-around kind of work — but that’s what I’ve said for three years now.

I opened up one dried flower of the Queen Anne’s Lace that had self-sowed next to my driveway, and sprinkled the seeds among the Mexican Evening Primrose that grow in that arid corner. The latter needs a least a little water in the summer, and is always overrun by weeds. The Queen Anne’s Lace grows vigorously all over the place without any summer water. Maybe it will thrive, and crowd out a few of the less beautiful weeds.

On one of those hot days I did loads of laundry, and used the clothesline. The overflowing basket of items that needed special treatment in the sink is now empty! These two pillowcases that are a hundred years old are fresh and clean. I inherited them from my husband’s aunts or grandmother, and they were a little yellow in places. Now I will start using them. I’m not certain about the monogram… I think it might be FLK? If it is, I don’t know which relative that could be.

Now that Bea is living here, my kitchen is getting more use; it’s really fun to have a girl around who likes cooking and produces things for me to taste. Recently she made meringues from aquafaba! I knew that liquid from canned garbanzo beans was a versatile ingredient, but I had no idea it could substitute for egg whites in this way. She used aquafaba, sugar, and vanilla. When I was first eating the cookie, I didn’t realize it wasn’t a regular meringue, because she had made them after I went to bed. They were very nice.

Flowers, cookies, tomatoes and figs — September so far is warm and sweet.

 

The garden in August.

my garden, summer, , , , , ,

Today workers came, to repair and paint various places on the exterior of the house, including replacing part of a pillar near the front door, that is rotting because of all the dirt and plants around it — uh-oh. The plants needed to be removed, and I wanted to do that myself, and save them to put elsewhere. While digging I accidentally cut into an irrigation hose, but the handyman took it in stride and said he would fix it, so I didn’t need to have Alejandro over here just for that.

amaranth

Once I was out there digging and pruning, I didn’t want to stop. But I had to leave after a while and drive halfway across the county to the dentist. That was a pleasure, too, because I listened to the beginning chapters of Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy, which our women’s book group at church chose just yesterday as our selection. I am loving it so far; the writing is a feast for the ears; I ordered a print edition so I can read it with my eyes as well. The only other thing I’ve read by Hardy is The Mayor of Casterbridge, which I also liked a lot, but it has been a while.

And at the dentist, I had to wait, so I read on Kindle on my phone, poking around into various books I have there. There was no drilling today or anything uncomfortable. Mostly I got to talk with my dear dentist, whose family and mine have been slightly connected and acquainted since she was a child. She’s also an excellent dentist, and a mom who likes to talk with me about our families. I’m so thankful for her and other members of her family who are also dentists ! and that they have stuck around, so we can still be in the same community after all these years, and I can have dentists I trust.

When I returned from that outing the workers had gone for the day. But I got to work again, and filled my neighbor’s green bin with all that had been left over after we filled mine a few days ago. Even though that area by the front door is in upheaval, and there is a lot of work to be done all over the property, I felt, rightly, that the garden is thriving overall. The figs are coming on, and the zinnias, and what do you know, I discovered an amaranth plant!! I did throw out all the old amaranth seeds into the planter boxes in the spring, along with others in the bottoms of packets, so evidently one of those managed to sprout and survive.

Fig tree behind the giant milkweed leaves.

The tarragon is extravagant:

Willowherb

The two weeds that are thriving right now are spurge and willowherb. Spurge is ugly and covers the ground like a mat, but willowherb is tolerable, as it looks like it could be something one meant to grow, and it hides among the ones you did plant — until it goes to seed, when it still doesn’t look bad. And it’s always easy to pull out.

Two plants I had to trim severely.

In the remainder of the week I need to repot a few plants, and to plant kale and chard in the front where zucchini did not make it. The basil is abundant and wants to be made into pesto. So far I have about six butternut squashes on the plants that are overflowing on to the driveway; it seems that I should have more fruits, because there are eight plants there, in full sun, but oh well, I will be happy to have a few. In the back, the kabocha and delicata squashes haven’t done well. I have a solitary delicata, which is very small…

After our little heat wave a couple of weeks ago, it has cooled down to about 80 on the warmest days, and the smoke has not returned. I’m loving August, and so glad that I am not one of the people who has to go back to school, when there is still a lot of summer left. September is my favorite month, but August may be my second-favorite. But I know many of the U.S. bloggers I read do not appreciate this month. Whether you are trying to stay cool, or cozying up in the Southern Hemisphere, I hope you find a way to enjoy the season.