Gravity

When my camera fell out of my jacket pocket onto the beach this summer, I was afraid  it would never work again. I gave a sigh of relief when  I picked it up and snapped a shot, but now two months later, it can't focus.  Sand is mucking up the works.  I found a list of things to try to do to get it to work again, no luck yet.


Here's a shot of the beach.

Yes, I was in New England. 

 I was playing with images of seaweed and stones and studying the ways the water left marks in the sand and looking at the shadows the seaweed cast.

I also spent some time studying the tracks of the shorebirds.  There was plover nest site nearby.

Shortly after I took these shots, I placed the camera in my windbreaker's pocket, and sat on the blanket for a bit.  When I stood the camera skidded out of the slippery nylon and onto the sand.  I took more pictures that day and many days after, but the camera chose to jam today--as I was trying to photograph the crabapple pickles I made (which look like eyeballs sealed in a Mason jar).  They were going to be the starting point of this blog, but it didn't happen.

The Hunger Games Killed Our Cherry Tree

Weeping cherry, April 2013

If you have been reading my posts, you've seen our shed with the weeping cherry tree in front of it.  The year we moved in it was gorgeous, but it has declined, to the point where the last few leaves on it are withering right now. Now all my regular readers are mumbling, "It's the deer, isn't it?"  It is not the deer. Young Adult fiction killed our weeping cherry tree.

I can hear the."Huh's?" already, but let me explain.  I think it is cool that kids coming of age now have stories that they can relate to, with interesting themes and even strong female characters, but I think a couple of these books need a guidebook to go along with them, specifically, The Hunger Games.  My daughter and her friends role play Hunger Games in the yard, at first I was horrified.  They were playing a game that involved killing all the other players, but then I started listening and watching. They climb trees, form alliances, make tools and weapons from what they find lying around.  I love the fact that most of it is about forming alliances and working together, but the one part that bothers me is one that interests me the most.  The ethnobotany side of things, how people use plants in their lives.  I've found little boxes of plant material tucked into nooks in the yard, a few berries, various leaves and bark, which leads me to my weeping cherry issue.

 Last year I noticed that it wasn't looking quite as nice and wondered if the very hot dry summer damaged it, but upon closer inspection I realized it certainly wasn't the weather. In three places along the trunk of the tree the bark has been peeled back 95% of the way around.

Weeping cherry July 17, 2014

What is left of the leaves.

Three bare strips

Little handles to facilitate girdling.

Gaping wound

  The tree has been girdled. The only part of the trunk that is truly living is the outer layers, which convey the water and minerals/nutrients up to the branches and leaves. It is a sad thing.  It was a beautiful tree, it is no longer.  We'll cut it down and plant some new tree, it is disappointing.

When I showed my daughter, she was horrified, of course she swore that she had nothing to do with it, and maybe she didn't.  We've had so many kids over playing the game that it could have been anyone and what could we do about it now or even fifteen minutes after the damage was done?  Now it is time to figure out what beautiful tree can take it's place and to figure out the logistics of getting the tree down while not damaging the shed, chicken run or anything else nearby.

A Week of Reading

The heat, the "A" named hurricane of the year, thunderstorms, yep, it's July!

I went on a reading blitz for a few days, and flew threw several very different works of fiction, some serious, some less so.  It all started with a book I received for my birthday, Ship Fever.  A collection of inter-related stories  with biological sciences as a link.  Mendel, Darwin, Linnaeus, among others, make appearances.  It was strange that one of Linneaus' Apostles (as his followers were called) mentioned in this book, Pehr Osbeck, also appeared in another book I read during this blitz.  Chasing the Rose by Andrea Di Robilant mentions this man as the person who brought Chinese roses to Europe, possibly including the one that Di Robilant is chasing.  Now, I have to find out more about this person, it seems whenever some item or name suddenly starts appearing everywhere it is time for some research.  I guess I know the topic of the next couple of non-fiction books that I will check out of the library.  It is this sort of meandering reading that allows me to collect all sorts of obscure knowledge. I hope he is an interesting person.

Speaking of roses, the pretty little Julia Child roses are still the favorites of Bambi and friends, as well as the Japanese beetles.  The single blossomed rose that sits right next to them has nary a nibble.  The new Joseph's Coat roses planted to hide the "oh-so 70's" metal posts in front of the house are likewise nibble free.  There needs to be a new category of roses, ones that deer and bugs will not ravage, I'll order those.

Yellow roses play a part in The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise, another one of the books that I read...can't get away from thinking about roses, I guess.  This book was much less serious than the others, it was light and enjoyable, and a quick read.

The last two are ones that I have somehow missed, probably because I pretty much boycotted science fiction for the past two decades, after reading many really bad books in a row.  Life is too short for bad books.  I actually chose the first one from a Goodreads list for my husband, it showed up on nearly every must read list for science fiction, Ender's Game.  ( I'll let you know now, there are no roses in these books, that I can remember.)  He was reading it during out recent extended-family camping trip, when my nephew made a few comments on it.  My husband read it right through during  the trip and then I picked it up, reading it by flashlight after everyone else had gone to sleep.  I'm glad we brought extra batteries. 
We both loved the book, and now my daughter is in the process of blasting through it.  One check out from the library and three people read it, pretty efficient.  The next book was Ender's Shadow, the same story as Ender's Game, but from the perspective of a different character. Now having gone to the Amazon webpage several times to write this blog, I know there are five books in the series and book three will have to be on my list very soon.  The series can't be too long, I've a garden to tend.

The Bounty!!

It's cool inside, but it sure isn't outside. It was ninety degrees in the shade with 63% humidity, I can't imagine how women survived a hundred or more years ago all bound up tight in multiple layers of clothing.

Baby beach plum (and weeds) in protective custody.

I've been busy trying to reduce the impact the deer have on our trees.  Almost every baby tree has 4' high barrier to keep the deer from browsing.  Some day someone will look at our oddly shaped fruit trees and wonder why we ever pruned them that way and the answer would be, "We didn't, the deer did."

As I was out there cutting fence sections early this morning, the deer were hanging along the edges of the property.  I walked toward them and they did not behave as wild deer should.  They just stood there looking at me.  Some serious deer feeding is going on around here, they are not afraid.  There are two does that we see regularly, the larger buff colored doe and the reddish doe.  We see other deer sometimes, but these two are the regulars. 

One nice flower bud on top, tonight they feast!

They find my Julia Child roses very tasty, which is both amusing and annoying.  Each time the rose gets close to blooming, the buds get nibbled off in the night.  I ran out of fencing. I need to get more.

The critter count for this week is pretty high: bunnies, bunnies and more bunnies, one woodchuck (ground hog), two deer (seen repeatedly), crows (trying to steal eggs, but the girls are laying where they are supposed to and the crows are missing out), blue birds, bluejays, cowbirds, a pileated woodpecker, a snake (in the potato patch), cabbage loopers, harlequin beetles, tomato horn worms, skinks, stink bugs, dog ticks, slugs, deer flies and more.

I haven't seen the box turtle yet, he must be hiding from me.

We have had sugar snap peas for dinner almost every night this week, after having some sort of greens every night for the previous two weeks.  I spent a couple of mornings blanching and freezing greens, now we have ten meals worth of greens ready to go. Now a few days have elapsed, I should get out there to pick some more (when it cools a bit). I'll probably blanch and freeze some of the peas tonight, so we can have more variety later. 

Alpine strawberries

Blueberries, not ready!

The mulberries (no work, and they are one of my favorites!) and strawberries are ripe, the blackberries will be ready shortly.  The raspberries will be ready on about the same time as last year, late next week!

Sorry girls, no cabbage loopers this time.

The girls are laying 3-4 eggs a day.  I have been in a bit of a baking frenzy, so we have been keeping up with them.

The bounty!!

Turtles, Crows and Deer, but not an Aesop's Fable

I've been rather busy, but it's the kind of busy that I have trouble defining what is actually taking all of my time.  Much of it is the garden, I head out there and whoop, two hours--gone!  Not so today.  It is starting to warm up significantly (just checked 86 degrees F, in the shade) and I'm not quite used to it yet.

I'm in the process of mulching the garden with straw, so that the weeding doesn't run my life any longer.  It also cuts down on the watering, which can also be a bit of a time suck.

Baby tomato and watermelon plants, with greens and sunflowers in background.

Three bales down, probably 2-3 to go.  Time to drive the XB over to the nursery to get three more bales.

I bought some blue potatoes at an international grocery a few weeks ago, they were amazing.  Some started to sprout pretty quickly, so I guessed that they hadn't been treated with any anti-sprouting agents that are often on potatoes in the supermarket.  I planted an 18 foot row in the back garden alongside the banana fingerlings and the Yukon golds.  The little blue guys have come up in the past 24 hours!!! 

Banana fingerling (left) and Yukon Gold potatoes

The greens are doing an amazing job in the front garden, we have been having kale and Swiss chard almost every evening, in many different forms.

Lacinato Kale

Swiss Chard

Tonight we start on the collards!  I'll do them up with a cider gastrique sauce that my husband found on the internet a few years back for one of the special meals he prepares for me.  It is brown sugar, half as much water made into a simple syrup (boil it for a couple of minutes) and then add the same amount of cider vinegar as the water, a pinch of hot pepper salt and some sort of allium (garlic, onions, chives, shallots, whatever).  The original recipe called for shallots, but I rarely have any and the markets here often don't carry that sort of stuff, so whatever I have goes in.   The original recipe also called for a bazillion steps, which I refuse to do, and have simplified it to the point where it takes about three minutes from when I pull the ingredients out of the pantry. Beyond this collard dish, I haven't a clue what else I am serving for dinner, last night we had whole wheat rotini pasta tossed with garlic, tuna, olive oil, red pepper, and red Russian kale, with beets on the side.

Red Russian Kale

The strawberries have been doing pretty well, but I've been finding a few with one bite out of them, which means my little friend the box turtle has walked his way back to my garden. I'm going to have to find him and walk him farther away into the woods this time, maybe to the other side of the stream.  Luckily, most of the strawberries are planted in another spot in the west side of the yard.

Tiny Alpine strawberries in the side yard.

The deer have pruned two of the trees that  did not have fences around them, time to get more fencing.  It (probably the doe we have seen a couple of times) ate four of the six medlars on the medlar tree, at least it had the courtesy to leave me a couple to try.

The wild raspberries are flowering, the mulberries should be ripe in about a week, one variety of blackberry (Apache) has developed a fair amount of berries that should be ripe in about a week and the other variety is just flowering. There are just a few blueberries this year, next year they should be mature enough to produce some more fruit.

My mother would be proud, I have been practicing my pie crust and have had two decent ones in a row.  I will have plenty of things to bake in pastry soon!

In another battle with wildlife, the crows have been stealing the chicken's eggs and eating them.  Luckily, the girls have finally started laying under a dome that has been out there for a while and the crows can't see into it.  We placed a plastic egg underneath to help encourage them to lay there.  It usually works.  We were able to retrieve three eggs yesterday, for the first time a in a couple of weeks.

So much to do still!

Kimchi and Grape Leaves

On Saturday I set aside some time for making kimchi.  It has been an astounding six years since I made my last batch, which was from my own over productive cabbage patch.   I've discovered that Chinese cabbage needs to be grown if the fall around here.  It loved the heavy rain and then went straight to seed and in doing so, nixed my ability to make kimchi from my own cabbage. This time I bought the cabbage.

On Thursday I had ventured onto the Beltway to get to the international grocery.  I bought enough cabbage for two batches, but decided upon making just one (I'm now reconsidering that).  A curious friend came by to participate in the process.  So we chopped cabbage, then massaged salt into it. 

Cabbage, salt and water, doesn't look very appetizing.

While we were waiting for the cabbage to soften, we perused the edge of the yard for wild grape leaves and collected four dozen, enough for a double batch of brined grape leaves.

  The grape leaves were a breeze, mix leaves salt and water, let stand.  Go back in an hour, roll 2 dozen leaves together place in a glass jar and pour the salt water over them.  Let them sit a few days. Done.

Next we chopped the mu (Korean radish) and the scallions for the kimchi. We realized that we had significantly more than we needed, so we made radish kimchi (one of my favorites) too!



Mu, Korean radish

Radish kimchi, before fermentation

My friend patiently grated the garlic and ginger on the microplane grater. 

We had several cups of coffee and chatted.
Then we tossed the cabbage with the mu, the ginger, garlic, chili powder, scallions, and fish sauce. 

Coarsely ground Korean Chili

We bottled everything up, now just to wait a few days for it to ferment.

 

Fresh bottled kimchi, the mild version.




 

Grape leaves.
Need to find out how to keep them rolled.



Four days fermented, note bubbles in jar,
a very good sign, it'sbeginning to taste like kimchi.

The Radish is not quite as bubbly as the cabbage,
but still a few in there.

Garden Tour

A couple of folks have commented that I have not been blogging quite as often this spring, well, they're right.  I have been weeding this spring.  Three plus acres of lawn, fruit trees, vegetable gardens and flower gardens can be a bit of a time suck., then there are the chickens, cats, dog, parrot, family...oh yeah, my commitment to getting fit and...

Enough excuses, today I will give a tour of what I am up to.  I am sending my assistant for a nap, so that I can walk around to take pictures.

Aggie, my editorial assistant, critic, and lap warmer.

Out the front door and a bit to the left are the irises, divisions from the irises in my mom's yard in MA.  They really like the horse poop, I'm going to have to divide them this fall.

A little farther back in the bed are the peonies that are just now opening, they came with the house, a nice little surprise!

Heading south into the front yard veggie garden are the sunflowers that survived the chickens scratching.  They have really come along in the past two weeks.

The okra has just come up, near them and then there are the tomatoes...

They aren't very impressive, yet.  A little warm weather and there will be a jungle.  I'm using my mom's idea for using electrical conduit for tomato trellising, she has had hers for nearly thirty years, so I'd say the idea has been tested.

The stuff under the floating row cover is thriving.

Russian red kale, broccoli, head cabbage, flowering mustard spinach and bitty eggplants.

Swiss chard and Lacinato kale

Head cabbage that gets progressively smaller down the line.

The Asian cabbages loved the heavy rains that we have had, they doubled in size overnight and then went to seed immediately.  So, I've been pulling the plants and cooking them.  Blanching is necessary, they are bitter and do not pass the "kid" test.  I've start putting eggplant, basil and beans in their places.

Watermelon

The Sugar baby watermelon have just surfaced, August will come and they will be yummy. I planted just a couple last year and kicked myself for not planting more--they were fabulous.

Heading toward the back yard, I pass one of the Chicago Figs.  They do not seem pleased with the severity of the winter, the tops seem to have died back and it is coming back from the roots.

 

Chicago Fig

 

Near the back door I have the babies that  I just took out of the cold frame.  The tomatoes are waiting for me to drive a half hour to a store for the one piece of conduit connector that I haven't been able to get yet.

According to the book I just finished reading Eating on the Wild Side by Jo Robinson
the tomatoes I have there, currant tomatoes, are the richest source for antioxidants of all of the tomatoes analyzed by research, so far.    It's an interesting book, it goes through most of the varieties of apples on supermarket shelves and evaluates them nutritionally.  If you are a golden delicious apple eater, she has bad news for you.

Crossing the back yard, I pass the medlar tree that was planted last summer. It has several blossoms, I can't wait to try the fruit, so I hope a couple make it through.  It is supposed to taste like spiced applesauce.

The back veggie garden is doing well, despite the low light issues.

radishes

beets

leeks

potato

unripe strawberries

There are a few issues back there though.

 

 

 

The vole invasion

The voles are helping themselves to the parsley again this year, I bought a new plant at the farmer's market last night.  I'm going to sink a pot into the ground and hope the voles can't figure it out.

The fruit trees and plants are doing well.  When the new plants came in earlier in the spring, I looked at the bundle of tree seedlings and thought: We spent all our X-mas gift card on a small bundle of sticks, but those sticks are now putting out leaves and growing.  A few were slow starting and we feared the worst, but they were just waiting for a little warmth, like the figs.

Sea Berry

AU Roadside Cherry Plum

The cherry plum arrived this week and at first I was not pleased, it was substituted for a Meteor pie cherry, since the nursery had a complete failure of that variety.  Once we did some research, we found that much of its parentage is pie cherry and that it is resistant to all sorts of nasty diseases that are common in humid places, like this one.  In the end, it is probably better.

The fruit trees that were on the property when we bought it are coming along, we'll see what kind of harvest we have this year.

Pear, unknown variety

Plum, unknown variety, plagued by nasty diseases

Finally, a little success story, this rhododendron was completely covered with honeysuckle when we moved in, we didn't know it was hiding under the mass.  After three springs worth of yanking, this is how it is thanking us.

Time to get going, I have a friend coming over to make kimchi and brined grape leaves with me and I have just discovered that the garlic all has a funky blue mold growing on it.