Inventory

25 half-pint jars of pickled jalapenos;
25 pints of smushed tomatoes*;
6 quarts smushed tomatoes;
21 half-pints of tomato sauce (to be doctored later);
28 pints of salsa;
4 pints of ketchup;
7 pints of Zydeco beans;
1 gallon + 1 cup pesto (frozen without the $20 per pound cheese);
A lot of ground up basil and oil;
A lot of dried tomatoes;
A lot of roasted tomatoes;
2 ice cube tray-fuls of tomato paste

I need a nap.

*Smushed tomatoes: peel them, quarter them, drop them in a jar and press down. Wide mouth jars work best, unless you have tiny hands.

Produce

It never ceases to amaze me that, despite my utter neglect*, the garden puts out these amazing red balls of loveliness.

These are my annual Super Sweet 100s, I love these things. They have a lovely balance of sweet and acidic, they are nice straight from the garden, dried or roasted. Once we figured out that it is best to back way off the watering, they don't split as much, and the hornworms don't seem to care for them. This particular batch went into the food drier.

The larger tomatoes haven't started ripening yet, at least as far as I can tell, it is a jungle in the tomato garden this year. But I have so far harvest 3 pounds of beans (green and purple). Yikes. I also have a large basil harvest pending. After my first attempt at raising basil seed failed this Spring, I threw the rest of the seeds into a pot. I got lots of teeny plants, but they didn't look very promising, but when the radishes were done, I put the tiny plants in the garden. They have been very happy. Sometime this week (when I find the kitchen, I'm sure it is in the house somewhere) I will make a boatload of pre-pesto (no cheese or salt) for the freezer.

*It turns out I have an excuse for my neglect this year (not that I really need one to be neglectful). I went to the doctor a couple of weeks ago with the very vague complaint, "I'm tired". It turns out I am anemic, which is good news because there is an actual cause and I can do something about it (namely, take iron supplements). The bad news is that, while the cause of the anemia isn't by any stretch of the imagination life threatening, it is caused by something I will need get taken care of, probably in the next 5 years. This time permanently. Not really something to worry about right now. In the meantime, I've been on iron for about a week, so I should be getting back to my normal, peppy self. Any second now.

Garden Goodness

Despite being rather unmotivated to do a garden, not mention the remarkably chilly spring, things are growing. Edible things. It never ceases to amaze me.

A pretty lettuce bouquet. The cool spring has been a boon to the lettuce, when I've planted it before, it usually bolts to seed.

The weather has also been good for radishes. I've never planted these before. An old boyfriend once claimed that radishes are a garden's equivalent of instant gratification. No kidding: these are close to the last of my first planting.

I had no idea how much I love radishes. Len claims to like them, but he hasn't eaten many. I, on the other hand, am totally addicted.

Especially when eaten with a touch of homemade butter and a sprinkle of sea salt. To die for.

I'm feeling a little more motivated now.

Sure Signs of Spring

Tonight's Agenda

I'm exhausted.

I updated yesterday's post to include an e-mail from Penny. I'm thinking it would be interesting and useful to gather this history into one narrative. Something to talk to my aunts and their cousins about when I see them in September (but not a project to start until after canning season!)

The end of last week was very bad. Someone I know got a tragic diagnosis, something broke into the chicken house and killed a chicken, and my cousin's husband died. Nope. Not fun.

My weekend was pure chaotic insanity, which kept my mind off of the ugliness happening elsewhere, but also kept me at the edge of meltdown most of the time (it was achieved at about 9:00 pm on Sunday).

I went blueberry picking on Saturday morning with some friends. Len came home in the afternoon and we went over to our friends' to pick up this little darling:

Seriously, how could you resist that face? I'll tell you more about her tomorrow (and have a better picture).

The rest of the weekend was spent on this: Dilly Beans, Dill Relish, Blueberry Jam, and imagine the Sweet Relish, which I already gave to one of my sisters. I made the jam on Saturday and the rest during a marathon session on Sunday. Somehow Len managed to invite some friends over and his sister stopped by. It was Not Good. But, the good part is that I won't have to do it again for a few days, which sounds like a luxury.

Time to Make the Pickles

I went out to the garden yesterday afternoon to pick whatever may have grown in the last couple of days. I thought there might be a few beans and maybe a couple of cucumbers. I picked almost 2 pounds of beans and, god help me, more than 5 pounds of cucumbers. As much bitter complaining I do about the weather (too rainy, too cold, too hot, too dry, etc.), it has been very good for the garden.

I decided to put up some jars of Half Sour pickles, which are cured in a salt brine rather than a vinegar brine.

They aren't canned, so they won't keep for more than a few weeks. But I expect to have cucumbers into September, so I can make these all summer.

The flavoring is pretty simple: coriander, black pepper, garlic, and a chili pepper (I used jalapeno). The recipe calls for a bay leaf, but I forgot to put it in two of the three jars. I have a feeling I'll be making my first batch of relish this weekend, but I think I can take a break from produce tonight. Maybe sew something. Or knit.

Beans and Broccoli

With very little attention from me, the garden has begun spitting out produce. On Sunday I picked 12 ounces of beans and two heads of broccoli; yesterday I got 1.25 pounds of beans and four heads of broccoli. For the record, that first harvest of beans was 11 days earlier than last year.

I planted a row and a half of a mix of green, yellow and purple beans. I went with a bush variety since dealing with tomato staking is such a pain so, despite how back breaking the harvesting can be, I haven't wanted to add bean structures to the garden set up fiasco (and it is always a bit of a fiasco).

We had some of the beans for dinner last night. They were wonderful.

I'll start freezing the beans (in half pound batches) tonight, but I'm not sure what to do about the broccoli. I put in several plants because once the main head is harvested, the plant continues to put out single florets and I wanted those to be useful. The problem is that I don't know what to do with 6 (so far) heads of broccoli. Freezing is out, since neither of us have had good experiences with frozen broccoli (mushy, watery, blech!). Probably we will eat it until we get sick of it, then start pawning it off on friends and colleagues.

Hard Labor

Way back in March, I assured Sharon that when Spring finally hit, I would be up to my eyeballs in dirt and would have no time for anything but staring vacantly at the TV late at night.

Now that it is mid July, that time has finally arrived. The garden had gotten completely out of control due to lack of attention, a whole lot of rain, and horse poo. Yes, horse poo. A neighbor has horses and gladly gives us all the manure we can use, but with that rich-soil-making-poo comes an awful lot of weeds. How bad did it get, you ask? I was much too embarrassed to take pictures, but last year's messy garden pictures don't even come close to this year's nightmare.

I managed to get one picture this morning before my camera batteries died. I've spent the last week and a half getting the garden to this state and staking tomatoes (which was supposed to happen when the plants went into the ground, but didn't). Without much attention from me, the plants are healthy and happy; I've harvested two heads of broccoli and a few jalapenos so far, but everything else is gearing up. We have tiny cucumbers, tiny green, purple and yellow beans and a lot of green tomatoes. I think canning season is going to hit soon and hard.

In the meantime, we are hoping very hard for rain on Saturday. We need both it and a day off.

Gardening at Night*

And so it begins:

Garden, version 2008. We did not manage to raise seedlings this year (except for leeks), which didn't seem to be an auspicious beginning, but things are growing now. We've had a goodly amount of rain, which is good at the start, but I hope it backs off now that most of the plants are well established.

We will have a lot of tomatoes, 36 plants in all -- Supersweet 100s, which are small cherry tomatoes and are perfect in salads and for drying and roasting; Brandywine, so I can say I have at least one heirloom tomato in my garden, Romas and First Lady (I don't know anything about these). Len and I are strange, we don't really like raw tomatoes very much. But I make and can salsa, sauce (plain), ketchup, plus canning them whole(ish).

A row and a half of green, purple and yellow beans. They freeze really well. Obviously we will continue to grow our usual crop of weeds. They don't freeze well, but insist on showing up anyway.

Jalapenos and something called cherry peppers (which look pretty), for the salsa and pickling (honeyed pickled hot peppers are to die for!) No red bell peppers this year, they are much too frustrating.

Cucumbers for pickles (my sister, a niece and a friend of ours like my kosher dills, I don't know why, I think they're weird) and for dill and sweet relish.

And finally:

Broccoli and Brussels Sprouts.

Whew. It will be a labor intensive summer and fall. I'm glad I have the knitting retreat** in the middle of canning, I'll need to get away.

*I'm having an REM moment. I have a whole discourse on REM but I'll spare you the pain. Gardening at Night is from Dead Letter Office, a compilation of b-sides and outtakes (including an extremely drunken version of "King of the Road" which cracks me up).

**Sharon, I meant to say earlier, the retreat is in Silver Falls State Park, which is south and a little east of Portland. I'm so excited I could spit! (what a stupid expression...)

Today Brought to You By the Color Yellow

Oh the Weather Outside is Frightful

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

What Would You Do?

My boss (actually, my boss' boss) lent me a book a few weeks ago. She thought I would enjoy it because it's central theme is knitting. She's asked me about it a few times, and the book finally floated to the top of my pile. I'm not going to say what the book is (suffice it to say it is a novel) because it is complete dreck. Stupid story, badly drawn characters, clichéd, and very poorly written. I hate it. And I'm only about 20 pages in.

The issue I am having doesn't have to do with office politics, she's leaving in a few months. I find it kind of sweet that she thought of me when she read the book. I don't mind lying a little, something along the lines of, "not for me, but the knitting was sweet" (the knitting is dumb). My question is, do I have to finish the book? What if she asks me a question? What would you do?

In the meantime, I'm drowning in hot peppers. The cayenne plants gave up completely, so the peppers didn't have enough energy to turn red. I picked them all on Sunday, they will all be strung up and dried. I've probably picked three pounds of habeñeros, I have put them in salsa, dried them, frozen them and will put some into habeñero jelly, but I am running out of ideas. My sister, Krista, will be getting most of them, but I don't think even she will be able to use all of this bounty. I could sell them to the pepper spray industry, I suppose.

Early Frost

We had our first frost on Saturday night. For those of you keeping track, and well, I am, that's a few days short of 4 months. We had some damage in the garden, but it was limited to the tops of plants.

The green beans got hit the hardest. I've put up so many pounds of these by now, that if these plants don't produce another bean I won't be too sad.

The cayenne pepper plants got hit hard, too. The peppers seem ok for the most part; I'm hoping they can hold on for awhile because I'd like them to turn red before picking.

The tomatoes are fine, there was a little damage to the plants, but at this point those are pretty superfluous to the fruit's development.

The habeneros went crazy this year, the plants are massive and, thus, protected the fruit. Then again, can anything freeze a habenero?

There was some discussion on a gardening listserv I'm on about what kind of plant/weed this is. It turns out, it is a Pokeweed. Doesn't that name make you kind of happy? Further research reveals that both the berries and roots can be used for dye. The only problem I have with this particular plant is that it is in an inconvenient location, right next to the garden, where it is encroaching on some tomato plant, so it will have to go. If it comes up somewhere else next year, I'll be happy to let it live. If not, I can always make a necklace to remember it by!

I was Wrong

I don't have five gallons of salsa, I've made only the slightly-more-reasonable-sounding four. Still. That's a lot.

I took these pictures on my way out the door this morning. In the top picture are jars and jars of salsa, and a few of plain tomatoes. On the bottom are tomato sauce and jalapenos.

I've been picking tomatoes before they are fully ripe and stashing them on the windows in our sun room. Tomatoes are better when they are fully vine ripened, but we're having some trouble with poorly supported plants as well as tomato hornworms (click on that only if you are prepared to be grossed out). I figure less than fabulous flavor is better than no tomato at all. Plus, they are pretty.

I've had some people landing on the blog using some interesting keyword combinations. If you've landed here looking for a "Queen Anne's Lace Shawl", sorry about that. If you find one, let me know, it sounds like it could be pretty (actually it sort of makes me think about designing one). My personal favorite was someone looking for "Extreme Sadistic Knitting". I don't know what to think about that -- a knitted whip? Or a deadly corset? I'm sure a needle could be used for something. It's a mystery.

It Burns!

This is how I spent my weekend:

Honey Pickled Jalapenos. Or Pickled Honeyed Jalapenos. Or something. I did a few tiny jars of these last years and they are heavenly, especially in grilled cheese sandwiches. These jars represent 3 or 4 pounds of peppers, hours of slicing and every single empty half pint and quarter pint jar I had.

They are also a perfect example of how I am a complete moron (the first such example from this summer involved a very nasty sunburn). Hot peppers = HOT. That heat is due to an insidious oil, which, if you don't wear the recommended protective gear, HURTS. A lot. For hours. Luckily, I wasn't stupid enough to rub my eyes -- I once had a boyfriend who, while canning Hungarian hot peppers rubbed his contact lensed eyes. He managed to get the lenses out, washed them, then put them back in a couple of days later. Idiot.

And I'm drowning in tomatoes. At last count, I'm at 11 or 12 pounds of Sweet 100s. Yikes!

I also have Amish Paste tomatoes making a big showing and the Beefsteak are starting to ripen.

When I start really melting down, remind me to re-read this quote from my grandmother's (unpublished) memoir of homesteading in Northern Idaho ("Dee" is her mother): "From the produce of the garden and the woods, Dee canned seven or eight hundred quarts of fruit and vegetables each year, besides jams, jellies, and pickles. Even venison and elk went into the Mason jars. She preferred the neck of an elk for her incomparable mincemeat." I could argue that I have a full time job and longish commute, but Grandma continues with everything else her mother has to do: cooking, baking, cleaning, educating her two eldest children, and substitute teaching in town. For a variety of reasons, her husband was rarely home, thus maintenance of the household fell to Dee. Times were certainly different, I think it is very useful to remind myself that everything I do, every jar I drop into boiling water, is a choice. Dee did it out of necessity.

Several people (Stef, Valerie, and my sister-in-law) have recommended the Barbara Kingsolver book. I will get to it, I promise, but the metaphorical stack on my night table is threatening to topple over and kill me in the night.

Harvest

Thanks, everyone, for your kind thoughts about Dave. Len is actually doing pretty well with this. Rather than beating himself up for any imagined lost opportunities, he's remembering the good, raucous times he had when Dave was around. That's unusual enough.

In the meantime, the garden has been ripening! We've been doing this garden thing for three years now, and it never fails to amaze me that from a few seeds and small plants we get pounds and pounds of tomatoes, beans, and peppers.

This is my first major harvest. The Supersweet 100s started ripening last week and the purple beans started coming in this weekend. I've turned this basket of tomatoes into dried tomatoes (and re-filled the basket):

Not Sun Dried -- it's much too humid for that -- we have a food drier which works perfect for this endeavor. I think this year I will cover these in olive oil.

And watermelon are coming, too. We went from this early this month, to this:

Bigger than before, but still quite small. It seems we planted "personal" watermelons. For comparison:

On the left is a normal sized small watermelon*, on the right, the one from our garden (I checked the tag, this really is the right size).

* Yes, Stef, this is the same melon your husband brought over several weeks ago. No, we haven't eaten it. We're planning a shoot-out. With pictures. Don't ask, it's Len's idea.

I'm keeping track of how much we pick and what we do with the produce. It sounds really nerdy, but I think it will help us not to over or under plant. For the record, so far we have four pounds of the Sweet 100 tomatoes and 1 pound of purple beans. I am going to be very busy this fall!

More Garden

Can you stand another garden update? There will be more knitting soon, I promise: I have only two more rounds on the white blob before the always exciting crochet cast-off (which alone could take years). I have beads to show you, but I've been too lazy to take pictures. I'm also looking for clasp ideas for the wire beaded weaving. My first trip to the House of Sin didn't go well (it didn't seem like there were very many options), so I am going to continue looking.

So, instead? Wee watermelon:

I hope everyone likes watermelon because we have 6 plants. I can't help but think we'll be sneaking the things onto our neighbors porches and running.

Little peppers:

Sorry for the crummy picture. This should turn red someday, the plants are already doing better than the ones from last year, so I have high hopes.

The tomatoes I raised from seeds are doing very well (the top photo is Amish Paste, the bottom is Beefsteak).

The green bean plants are recovering.

But the cucumber plants were attacked. I saw last night that this plant has flowers, but the last thing a plant needs in mid-July is to be concentrating on new growth when it should be putting its energy into vegetable production.

Oh look! There goes a culprit now. Little shit isn't even afraid of us!

Please send rain.