Tag Archives: fennel

Our Kind of Fall

my garden, , ,

Reading as many blogs as I do has the subtle effect oP1110742crpf making me want to bring my neighborhood in line with the music that autumn plays in most other places. For example, I found a November poem that is all about the violent wind, when we usually have to wait a month or two later for that sort of thing. It didn’t fit with my reality.

It’s definitely Fall here, but our notes sing a quieter background harmony, linking us more obviously to summer. Even the window art at the grocery store is mostly sunflowers to go with the pumpkins and turkeys.

All of the pictures from my garden were taken on this sixth day of November. A strawberry is ripe, as “ripe” as ornamentals get, but is decorated by a few of the telltale fallish pine needles that are slowly covering everything in that part of the yard.

P1110775sunsugar or sungold 11-6-14

The sign for the orange cherry tomato is hiding deep under the exploding foliage, and I can’t remember if it is a Sungold or a Sunsugar, but the fruit is still ripening, and nearly as sweetly as a month ago.

P1110737 Nov 1 14 sky

Mr. Glad stopped us on the way to Vespers last week to take this picture of clouds in a blue sky. Not rain clouds, sad to say. The grass has that November look, from having dried up and then been rained on a little, not enough to create any new green color. Our autumn is drier than usual, which is a hard kind of gentleness.

The furnace has been turned on, which means that we keep the windows closed, though with the days mild, and the air so fresh and soothing, I wish we could have them open. I just have to go fully out of doors if I want to get into the natural atmosphere.

It’s still not really cold enough to have a wood fire, and we haven’t had a frost yet, as you can tell from the tomatoes.

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These are the hens and chicks near the new planting bed out front. I set out all the new ground-cover starts this week, and some of the thyme is blooming still.

October is the month to plant peas of any sort, and this year I bought sweet pea (those are the flowers) and snow pea seeds, but I never got around to actually putting them in the ground, which means that the failed flowering fennel and the nasturtiums are free to paint an impressionistic scene. The background music is called “Flowery Fall.”

 

What’s growing in my garden.

my garden, , , , ,

I’m enjoying the garden so much these warm summer days, I had to take some pictures. I guess it is something like having a new baby who is always changing — makes you want to capture some of the wonderfulness before it’s gone forever. My memory alone is not up to the task, that’s for sure.

Most of our vegetables this year are just to the right when we step out the back door, just off the patio.

veg 6-14

In the last couple of years we made a big effort to improve the soil and ended up with such a huge crop of tomatoes we couldn’t use half of them. I gave away a lot, and froze many quarts, which are mostly still in the freezer.

When I started popping cherry tomatoes into my mouth like candy last July I suffered some ill effects from all the acid, so I have learned to be moderate, and Mr. Glad always was restrained in his consumption of the fruits. This year we planted half as many tomato plants so that left room for some zucchini, which is bearing now. It’s been several years since we grew zucchini; I love to stir-fry it with red bell peppers and maybe some chili powder until it is toasty brown on the edges.

Remember the seeds my friend bought me at The Seed Bafennel 6-14nk? Now the little fennel plants that came up from them have grown taller, feathery and bright. I have to keep pulling out the nasturtiums that are trying to take over that area. Don’t know if the fennel will have enough summer to mature, because as I mentioned, the Baker’s Seeds packets don’t tell you how many days to maturity, and who thinks of looking up that kind of thing once you have got back in the house and need to get on with other things.

I like to do my gardening and garden-thinking in the garden. I guess that’s one reason I can’t settle down and enjoy Gladys Taber. I borrowed three books by her from the library hoping I could share the joy of her with other bloggers. I found that I don’t have the patience. I can’t enjoy reading about her homesteading because my own is more compelling. And if I’m going to ignore my housework and garden it has to be for the sake of reading and writing about some other realm.

blues and greens from sw 6-14
Blues and Greens – lamb’s ears and salvia

Or maybe just writing a blog post about my garden or house. Don’t you think if Gladys were alive today she would have a blog? And I would read it, I’m sure. Though I prefer to read the blogs of people who are alive and with whom I can have more of a give-and-take, practical relationship.

Then there is the fact that Gladys lived in New England and so many of the plants and the climate are unknown to me. I’d rather spend a couple of hours trying to identify a local plant than read Gladys’s truly lovely prose about her world. mystery salvia plant 1

Here is a salvia plant I spent a good hour trying to identify, anmystery salvia bloomd which has been growing in my garden for a few years. The leaves get to be more than 10″ wide, and the flower spikes over 3″ high.

I’ve looked at a slew of pictures and descriptions of salvias but not one looks like this one. Maybe the nursery where I bought it developed it – I might take my pictures there and ask them. [Update: It’s Indigo Woodland Sage.”

salvia manzanita valerian 6-14

I think it looks really pretty growing into the peeling manzanita, with a little red valerian in there for accent color.

new olive 6-14I bought a new little olive tree! It was at the grocery store and was marked down 50%, and I thought it had been pruned into a very nice shape….could not resist.

So now I am the proud owner of two olive trees. The one I received as a birthday present a few years ago grew very gangly before Mr. Glad pointed out to me that it needed some training. This one seems to be off to a better start already, but it will want a bigger home soon.

I still have roses and more in pots. This last picture features the bushy variegated thyme that I always like to have around. A couple of times a year I shear it to keep it bushy, and it is forgiving if I am irregular with the water. I’m a pretty irregular gardener all around, and I specialize in growing generous and longsuffering species. Summer is also the generous season in the garden, so I am blessed.

pots & foot 6-14

Fennel and Curd

food and cooking, shopping,

Monday when I was on the cooking roll it was partly to use up some produce I’d bought when I shopped unwisely. It’s always unwise to make purchases when sleep-deprived, and I’ve had lots of experience with making tired and muddle-headed decisions.

Fennel: In this case I’d been shopping at Trader Joe’s and I was trying to make it the only stop, even though I needed some vegetables and don’t usually buy much produce at that store. The fennel bulbs seemed to be a good price, so I picked up a package of two medium-sized bulbs (20 oz.) for $1.99.

The wisdom I lacked was from being too tired to know that I was too tired to cook. I didn’t have a plan for using fennel, so I got along for a couple more days by raiding the freezer. But I didn’t want the vegetables to go bad so eventually I read recipes online and opted to make a simple soup.

I started by chopping and sauteeing the vegetable. Already I can’t remember if I used olive oil or butter, but some people liked to use a combination. I was looking for a caramelized or roasted effect, and I didn’t want to heat up the oven for such a small amount, so I used a cast-iron skillet. I sprinkled on salt and pepper and cooked the fennel slowly. Some of the pieces were too large to actually caramelize, but there was enough sweet roasty flavor coming from the licorice-flavored bulbs to make for a great taste in the resulting soup.

After all the fennel was at least tender, and some was very brown and some was even black, I blended it with water (I meant to use some chicken broth but forgot), then tasted and tested as I added small amounts of cream, sugar and lemon juice, more salt and pepper. I chopped up some of the unused ferny green top to sprinkle on top before serving….and Mr. Glad declared it fantastic. I didn’t take a picture of it, but it was brown and full of browner flecks. We ate the whole panful.

Curd: The big bag of lemons I bought even earlier would have lasted weeks more in the cold garage, but lemon curd was easy to put together, and it makes a prettier picture than brown soup, too.


Lemon Curd

1/2 cup butter
grated peel of 1 large lemon
1/2 cup lemon juice
1 1/2 cups sugar
1/4 teaspoon salt if using unsalted butter
3 whole eggs
3 egg yolks

Beat the eggs and yolks together slightly. Melt the butter in the top of a double boiler and stir in all of the other ingredients. 

Cook over boiling water, beating constantly with a wire whisk, until thick and smooth, about 20 minutes. Store the refrigerator up to 6 weeks.

Lemon curd makes a nice gift if you put it in a little canning jar with a flowered lid. Too bad for my friends, I just happened to have a pint jar that conveniently held my whole batch. But if you come by for tea really soon we can makes some toast together and slather it on.

 

Comforted

California, church, nature, time, trees, wildflowers,

This afternoon I “had to” run an errand to my stomping grounds of yesteryear. It turned out to be a surprise gift, to drive home on the narrow roads winding through foothills where the sweetness of oak trees filled the warm air. Dark grapes were hanging close to the ground in the vineyards, soaking up the last of the sweetening rays. And wild fennel way higher than my head lined the roadsides.

All these scents and more combined over the half hour’s drive in ever-changing proportions to create a soul’s real comfort food. I had only recently been grieving the loss of a nice garden, breadmaking, my wits, and several other things I couldn’t even put my finger on. Today it was as if God through the instrument of Summer put His arms around me and said, “It’s o.k., Honey, the best parts of your Life That is Past remain, and will be here for you in the future.” And Summer was telling me that she is going to sit a spell yet and likely give me a few more hugs.