Late Summer Garden

 Beans

 zucchini

 summer squash

 jungle out there

 pumpkins (LOVE)

 cucumbers

 seriously....a jungle

 lettuce

harvest

So many cucumbers! Lots of green tomatoes, but it's been a bad year for tomatoes. Not one tomato has been harvested! I wonder if it's the same all over? I have been too busy to know what is happening in the tomato world.

August is a bit of a blur for me at the moment...two birthday boys ate many cupcakes and I worked for two weeks and the boys went to day camp (LOVE) and I worked hard...so hard...setting up my classroom and STILL wasn't quite ready for the first day of school two days ago. 

It's foggy these mornings....I'm feeling quiet and open to possibilities. I started taking a writing class on Monday evenings (worst. timing. ever.) and as you can see from this stellar blog post...that shit works! ;)

Zucchini Bread*

 Before

After

My mom and I both planted zucchini and that was, I assure you, a tragic mistake. I may have planted two. Nobody needs more than one. And one to share? Probably about right. Already, I have a dozen of the squash ripening on ONE of my plants. At my mom's house the other day, I was rooting around in her garden (as you do) and pulled out a zucchini that was roughly the size of a three month old baby. You don't want to lose track of a squash for a week. They will balloon to Jurassic proportions overnight.

So I brought it home, because she was already dealing with more zucchini than she cared to, and really, squash doesn't taste as good when it gets that big. So I cut it up and made zucchini chocolate chip loaves. I've made 6. I'm about halfway through this one zucchini. Really, now.

I've immediately removed the loaves from my home, via friends and neighbors, and so far, I haven't eaten any. Of course, that could change, since six more loaves are in my future, though I'm currently out of chocolate chips so it will wait a little bit. I think I'll do four loaves and then make a couple dozen muffins.

Anyway, this bread smells so good, and looks so amazing, I'll share the recipe. It's an old recipe, not unlike other zucchini bread recipes, I have to guess. But it's the one my mom taught me, and it's a keeper. Same recipe for loaves or muffins, and the recipe makes two loaves.

This is a quick bread, and nothing could be easier. Mix dry ingredients together, mix wet ingredients together in a separate bowl, then combine wet and dry, add the walnuts and chocolate chips, then bake at 350 for 50 minutes (two loaf pans) or 25 minutes (muffins).

Dry ingredients: 3 c flour, 1/2 c sugar, 1 c brown sugar, 1 tsp each baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, 1/2 tsp salt

Wet ingredients: 3 eggs, 2 cups shredded zucchini (leave the skins on yum), 2 tsp vanilla, 3/4 c vegetable oil

1/2 - 1 c chopped walnuts
1.5 c chocolate chips

I use pam spray on two 9x5 loaf pans. Each is filled halfway, pre-baking, by this recipe. Yum yum!

(This freezes really well. I slice it first, so I can pull out a few slices at a time, and then wrap it in wax paper then aluminum wrap. Muffins can be frozen in freezer bags.)

* I had to look up how to spell zucchini. It is not, as it turns out zuchhini, zuchinni, or zuccinni. Just saying.

Garden at the Farm

My parents have almost three acres of space at their farm, but this is by far my favorite garden on their property. It's a beautiful, meandering garden that is just exactly who they are. The rocks and wood have all been poached from different places they go motorcycle riding and camping...from Wilseyville to Pi-Pi Valley to the Apple Ranch near Yosemite. Here is where they sit quietly drinking wine and listening to the small fountain in the pond, where they battle snails and deer and wild turkeys, where they lovingly transplant and shape and tinker. They experiment with light and foliage and structure and it is a beautiful treat for all my senses. I often step out of my car and walk the paths of this garden, to the side of the kitchen (including the veggie patch and fruit "orchard" of a half dozen trees), opening and shutting each gate behind me, before I even venture into the house. They often find me here, and because my mother is crazy, she greets me with, "What the hell are you doing?" And it feels like home. So I tell her, "I'm visiting." I love that garden.

While I Was Gone....

 My boy's room took a tween twist with the addition of this awesome electronic drum set. Please do not ask how much it cost. It embarrasses me. But, both of them play, and I hope will for many years, so someday I hope to share that it was a great bargain at pennies a day. ahem

 Erik did an awesome job taking care of and watering my gardens! It looked like this when I left for my Chicago trip. Really now!

Ohhhhhhhh pumpkins! I love them so. I didn't grow any last year, how I wept, but I've got 4 big plants from seed going this year, and I could just die. Look how sweet they are, I love them so!

SOMEBODY is digging in my cucumber patch. Probably the dog. I will cut her.

Squash! The zuchini and yellow squash are both thriving, but these summer squash are actually bearing fruit already. Yummy on the grill, just in time for July!

The greens confuse me. I need to figure out how these work. I checked the packages, and it says "harvest in 45 to 60 days" and I believe these were planted 40 days or so ago. I'm going to let it ride. Come on, no snake eyes!

The tomatoes have had the slowest starts, but I believe I can see real progress, finally.

I love coming home :)

Garden :: Grows!

 Beans, yellow squash, zucchini, pumpkins, strawberries....

 cucumbers....

greens....

Not pictured: tomatoes, spinach, kale...all growing just out of the line of sight from these photos.

Gardening for me is at once a leap of faith, confirmation of the physical laws of the universe, irrefutable botanical science, and yet a completely magical and mysterious process.

The fact that each of these things was a seed, mere potential, not four weeks ago? Plus the fact that these have grown by no less than 35% in the few days since I took these pictures, standing barefoot in my backyard?  This plus that equal awe, every single time. It never gets old.

On Father's Day we had dinner at my mom's house. Standing in her garden, troubleshooting tomato death, marveling at her beans and the way the hummingbird sage starts I propogated from the native  beauty in my front yard are now so huge they need to be transplanted...AGAIN...I could very nearly feel the thread that connects me to her through the roots of those plants, and then through her, connecting both of us to my grandmother.

One thing I'm pretty sure Grandma Dot never asked my mother to do, however, is hop into a 50 gallon garbage bin and jump up and down on it (holding onto the eave of the garage for balance) to make room for a final bag of garbage. That crazy is so patently Mother that I couldn't help but remember the time she had dad's gray bomber truck loaded sky high with pruned branches from, among other things, a dozen rose bushes ambling around her property. When she ask me and my brother to hop in the back to "pack it in", my brother raised his eyebrows at me and shook his head ever so slightly. Thank you, no he seemed to be saying. 

He's been in every kind of pickle imaginable because of that woman, so I didn't question it....my turn, I thought to myself.  I climbed on the edge of the truck bed using the wheel hubs as a makeshift step ladder and scooted toward the cab. With one hand on the top of the truck, and my left foot planted on the edge of the bed, I toed my right foot around until I found my footing and I lept onto the top of the branches. It was no less than a 40 inch vertical leap, and I can't remember exactly what I was thinking when I fell through the tower of branches, cracking and snapping my way as I plunged hip deep into the thorny wood that scratched and gouged first my ankles, then my knees, and finally my thighs...but I'm pretty sure it was something like GODDIZZLE.

My brother shook his head and gave me a (not unkind) I told you so look before my mom started nagging at me that I need to do more I hadn't packed it in  enough and there's plenty of room just start jumping. So I did what I can only hope my own kids do one day...I started jumping.

Seedlings

This year in the garden, I planted seeds instead of starts. I got a late start, too, as most seeds went in over Memorial Day weekend. But whatever! I'm a Thug Gardener, so I am not afraid.

 Pole beans were the last to sprout. I thought maybe they never would. Not that they were outside the 10-14 day germination printed on the package....but tomatoes 

and beans definitely both took their time.

  

Unlike these warriors. They sprouted in neat rows not four days after I put the seeds in the boxes. This is the first year I've planted greens, and I'm super excited about it all. This is kale, spinach, lettuce, and a fancy mix too. I was telling a couple people this story, so now I guess I can tell you. These two boxes are in partial shade during the day. I was standing around trying to decide if I should dig out the dirt and move them into one of the walkways, away from the shade-giving butterfly bush, so I could plant pole beans in them. At the exact moment I was contemplating this labor-intensive move, I was also lamenting that these seeds I bought (for the kale, spinach, and lettuces) all preferred cooler climes. The box I was considering them in (below, and in full sun for the whole day) was going to be way too hot for them. I thought maybe I'd wait a cycle, and plant them in the shade of the  squashes that would also go in this box.

I guess it took me 25 minutes or so to figure out what you, undoubtedly, already have....and that's how it came to be that the shade-loving greens went into the shady boxes and the sun-loving beans went into the sunny box. 

Mensa called later that day.

 

  

Summer squash, zucchini, and lots of pumpkins, plus three rows of pole beans. Everything is happy and growing well. In fact I need to thin them all now, though that wasn't clear when this picture was taken.

 

A whole plot of cucumbers. Again, everything grew, so I'll need to thin these out. There are five or six growing on each mound, and it's supposed to be 2 or 3, I guess. There are two varieties of cucumbers here...pickling and I think Armenian. I planted a whole box of tomatoes too. I've never regretted having too many cucumbers and too many tomatoes. The neighbors all know they can come into the backyard and take their fill of any and all, so it has never been a problem.

And of course the strawberries are still growing and spreading.

Hopefully, between report cards, quilting, and the end of the school year chaos, I will have a chance to show the front yard herb garden that I've started. Also planted from seeds, also making my heart sing. Oh spring! I love you.

Black Thumbs

 Backyard

 Front yard

Side yard

Geraniums aren't fancy (neither am I)...they are a bloom-where-you're-planted kind of friend (so am I)....You can't kill them. And? If you do? If you do, they are a break-off-a-piece-and-start-over kind of cat (as am I).

There are dozens of geraniums, in various stages of transplant and growth, around my yard. I think 90% of them are offshoots from the pink and red trailing variety that have lived for 4 years in the giant pot next to a raised veggie bed in my backyard.

I love them because they were Grandma Mary's favorite flower. She had a bit of a black thumb. "I kill them with kindness," is what she would tell us, as she watered everything in her yard....to death. But geraniums don't mind if you over water them. Or under water them. Or anything else. They will produce (and reproduce) their happy little blossoms until time out of mind.

Really now....I kind of love them.

Gardening :: Sage

 It's that time of the year, when I've started assessing the garden plan. Besides the monumental weed situation, two beautiful plants came up big losers. The top one is a flourishing rosemary and the bottom one is a stronger-than-ever sage. Both of these herbs started as $1.99 starts several years ago, but both have outlived their planting arrangements. I hated doing it, but the sage had to die (I'm sorry honey and bumble bees, I know this is your favorite friend!) and the rosemary had to move out of the tub and into the ground.

 After about an hour of hacking, pulling, and cursing, the sage BUSH had been reduced to a pile of branches and an enormous stump.

The raised bed that had been buried under the sprawl of the sage was now free and clear, and with compost and soil amendments, it has been planted as the cucumber patch.
 

The only thing that made this task bearable was the fact that this amazing plant had lovingly cast it's seeds into the surrounding areas and a half dozen small sages were growing nearby. I carefully dug them out and kept them immersed in a bucket of water until the next afternoon, when I finally had time to plant them in the front yard.

The front yard is going to be the kitchen garden, and I'm happy to report that three of the new sage plants and the enormous rosemary bush have survived the move and appear to be thriving. That's a decent mortality rate for my gardening record, if I'm being honest. Fingers crossed that I can, in the near future, amend appears to be thriving with just "thriving". Wish me luck....

Rip Van Winkle

I love fall. Even though it means the end of my summer garden, and that I need to do SOMETHING about all these tomatoes. I think today will be that day....

 Easily the best garden I've ever had! Cucumbers and all manner of tomatoes (those yellow ones? oh my!), plus two kinds of squash, honeydew melon (small but oh so sweet!), and more eggplants than probably any one person ought to eat.  But I'm doing my best!

The pole beans were a huge success! Many summer meals consisted of steamed beans and white corn on the cob, with just a little salt added to each. I wish I could grow corn here.....it just doesn't get hot enough with the lovely bay marine layer. Maybe I need a greenhouse....oh yes, I think I do!  Let me get right on that.

Oh! By the way? Are you surprised to see me? : ) I've been missing in action....not really checking facebook, or the blog, or anything else for that matter. But I miss it. And I miss you. Fall is the perfect time for new beginnings....don't you agree?

Keep All Sissy Soft Suckers Off My Corner*

*Run DMC ~ Is IT Live

Teaching is not for the weak.  Nor is parenting. Nor is death. All three have collided for me this week.

In perhaps the most surreal moment of my week so far, I pulled up to my mom's car at my grandma's funeral on this drizzly Monday afternoon. Her windows were up and she was mouthing something to me. I squinted at her through the glass, and it became apparent that she was trying to tell me something. 

I could juuuusssstttt make it out.  "They all think you're baked." Alright. That's.....weird.

I'm down to the next 12 hours. If I can get through the next 12 hours, I believe I will be able to say that the last 72 hours were not so bad in hindsight.

From my garden! I'm looking forward to a lot more of this. Starting soon!

That's A Lot of Sage

After this four day week is a three day week and then my summer begins.  I'm not going to lie to you: I am ready. Oh, I know, after the first couple of weeks, I'll miss my students, I'll miss the creative aspects of designing lessons and trying to figure out what each little squirrel needs just right now, but let me just state:  I'm looking forward to missing it.  That is all

I was thinking today, about all the people who have died in military service to the United States (as it is Memorial Day) so I decided to do an internet search. I found this sobering tally right off the top, and it really set the mood for my "three day weekend".  I mean....I sort of can't comprehend, on the one hand, how many precious lives have been lost (how many families have ached for their loved ones?) and on the other hand, I can't bring myself to accept, on face value, that this is a wholly inclusive total.

We took advantage of our three day weekend by doing some long-needed chores around the house.  Here, Erik "fixed" the dead bolt lock on our front door.  Ahem.

And I even managed to clean this front window, which the pup has taken to rubbing her nose on while pacing back and forth, awaiting our return any time we leave the house.  I mean. Gross.

It's better now : ). I can see out it now.  Oh, except for the two huge cracks that are spiderwebbing across the top of the window.  I mean, we're just keeping it classy around here, really.

I also went into a bit of maintenance mode in the garden, even this early in the season there is so much yummy work that needs to be done!

Complex tasks like caging the tomato plants. A chore made even better by adorable fuschia, yellow,  and orange cages. Yay! Oh, but that sage plant is out of control.  See it there, in the background?

A quick shearing and I had cleared enough space to stake my adorable bean plant experiment.  Oh, they're little arms, forever reaching to hug something....I love you, bean plants!

Which left me with some newly harvested sage.  Quite a bit of it, in fact! My immediate response was, of course, to do a quick internet search.  Now I have another (can't really call this a) chore I can't wait to try.

What did people do, before the internets?????