Harvest moon

These are from one plant and only half of what it produced. If you are a heat wimp like me, you will never need more than one plant.

First bell pepper ever, and grown from a saved seed from a store-bought pepper!

I've probably already eaten my share, but it's still kind of sad to have to give away those in the bottom box. I get to keep the super green ones, since they may be ripe when I get back and tomorrow night those red ones will be sauce. Not a bad haul for just three plants this year. Take that, flea beetles and grasshoppers!

The Summer of Just Desserts

Beginning around May or so, desserts were needed on a fairly regular basis.

Some were for bon voyages.


One was for a wedding (almost entirely Smoyle's doing)

Others were just because the fruit was there and it was on sale.


Sadly, summer is fading away and the get-togethers that call for dessert are doing the same. I guess everything has a season. And there's always apples...

Jam!

A couple of years ago, unbeknownst to the other gardeners, Mahmoud and his wife planted a peach tree in the corner of their garden plot. They moved away two seasons ago, leaving a willow-like stick behind.

I watched this mysterious, shrubby bunch of twigs flower for the first time this spring. Way too nice for a weed, I wondered how it got here.

As the summer progressed, I saw little, fuzzy nubs develop. Not wanting to get my hopes up, I waited. I think there were about fifty peaches this year.

Sadly, the grasshoppers and other pushy bugs got a large portion, but I took even ones with a few holes. The couple currently tending the plot said they weren't that interested in them. I think there's something wrong with those two - these are peaches! Growing in your plot!!


Skinned, food processed, and sugared and pectined up, they became freezer jam in 45 minutes. A bit runny, but delicious on hot, buttered toast nonetheless. I ran into Mahmoud and his family on the mall last month and confirmed that he was responsible for this magic tree, the one that's been little more than watered and should hardly be thriving in our less-than-fruit-tree-friendly climate. I was happy that night to have solved the mystery, but now I just want to say thanks. I'll think of him and his wife (who always made sure I went home with turnips) and little boy when I'm enjoying my toast this winter and dreaming of a warm sunny day...

Passengers

Late summer closing hour at the market today - all the corn you can stuff into the bag for $6. I have nearly twenty ears to shuck, scrape and get into the freezer this weekend. Corn chowder, corn bread, tortilla soup, and all those other hot foods don't sound so appealing on this hot, sunny day, but they'll get their turn soon enough.

We'll take all the help we can get

The digital sign on the high school read "Hope for rain" this morning. There must have been a fair amount of that going on, because I got soaked on the way home. It wasn't enough to put it out and was too late for the 100+ houses already gone, but I still took it as a sign that the worst is over.

Watching the flames from afar, redux

I had a bad feeling about this weekend when I saw the forecast for two days of 90+ with high winds. It hasn't rained in a really long time. Something was going to burn. By Monday morning, however, I thought we'd managed to escape the inevitable, till I stood out on the porch and noticed that familiar, almost comforting, campfire smell. Nobody has campfires in our neighborhood, or at least not at 10 am. And there was that arching cloud just to the west.

By mid-afternoon, the neighborhood was a bit of a hell scape: ash flakes floated gently down from a sooty, crimson sky, and an angry sun glowered over everyone. There was ash on the floor, ash on the cats, ash in my hair when I went to the garden. Strangely, it reminded me of summer sunsets in New England; did I really grow up with that much air pollution?

I rode southeast in search of fresh air. The sky was blue out that way and the sun was its usual neutral self. I went apple picking with Walt and Pele and viewed the disaster area from a bit further back.

Now it's night and the winds have died down. I can only see a faint orange glow up at the top of Lee Hill. Houses have been lost, but everyone is accounted for. Thank you to the men and women up there who are working through the night to keep the flames under control.

Nobody escapes the soapy bucket of death

I have a hard time squishing big insects. In general, I consider bugs my friends, with the exception of ticks, bean beetles, cucumber beetles, squash bugs, flea beetles and grasshoppers. Even tomato horn worms get a second chance in my garden (by being moved away from my garden). The grasshoppers this year are out of control. And they're big. Big enough to swivel their heads at you when you approach, and big enough to stare right at you with their big, creepy eyes. Too big to squish. But they've been right bastards this summer, mowing down onion, spinach, carrot, parsley and whatever else looks tasty. And now they're taking bites out of my green tomatoes.

I tried the collect and remove approach by shoving as many as possible into a jar, but they kept trying to escape and getting their legs stuck in the lid. They sounded like jiffy pop in the jar whenever I reached for it. It almost seemed mean and was definitely messy. I don't like messy.

Enter the soap...just a splash of dish soap in a two-gallon bucket, filled at least six inches with water = instant soapy bucket of death! Your hands are free to pick them off your plants and then just toss forcefully in the bucket, making sure they disappear beneath the happy soap bubbles. If they can jump out, add more water and if they figure out how to scale the buckets sides just push them back under. Wait about ten minutes after your last deposit, then dump out contents under some bush away from the garden. Nice, clean, sleeping grasshoppers. Yeah, I'm pretty sure there's going to be some karmic retribution heading my way.

Given the thousands in the gardens, my evening's harvest is just a, well, drop in the bucket, but it's pretty satisfying and it's nice to see the plants free of their devourers for a just few minutes. Plus, if you need to get your frustrations out after a long week at work, it's cheap therapy. Inept coworker? Thunk, another hopper in the bucket. Irritated that you have to run the minivan gauntlet to get to work now that school's in session? Plunk, splash, another hopper-shaped outline in the suds.

Some of my garden neighbors have heard me laughing maniacally and come over to see what I was up to. A few have showed interest in bringing out their own soapy buckets of death. I have visions of a line of us next summer, buckets in hand, moving through the garden from one end to the other, filling up our buckets and driving the rest to the pavement where a vehicle waits to run them down. Hmm. Maybe the heat is getting to me.