Odds and Ends

Summer weather overview: 1 warm week in the 90s, but the rest has been cool and rainy. Very weird. We had some crazy sky days as smoke from wild fires in Canada rode a polar vortex down to the Midwest US, blocking out some light of the sun and creating an eerie green haze for days. 

The cool and wet weather has resulted in lots of blight; fungal or bacterial- I'm not sure which, killing many gardener's tomato plants. No loss for me, thus far.

The tomatoes and beans are just coming in. First harvest: 

Black Plum, Sun Sugar and German Lunchbox with Burgundy Beans

Made this salad with an avocado vinaigrette or sauce that we ate on grilled tortillas with cheese. 

 

With the second day of tomato harvest I made this Turkish Shephard Salad and omg, is this good. I really liked the dill in it. Plus, the colors! Wow.

 I then mixed it with Freekah (roasted baby wheat)

and served it with arepas (Colombian corn cakes). Happy summer meal!

Projects:

Made this self-feeder for the outside cats. First night the raccoons ate 3/4 of it and that was the end of that. Three young ones have been coming into the house via the cat door recently. They've discovered the inside cat food bowl is JUST inside this door! 3am feedings. AHHH! 

Repainted the bathroom as one of my spontaneous summer projects.

Got some new planters and replanted some old.

 Had 2 of these glass ornaments that came with air plants

in them. One of the air plants died so I replaced them with these orchids

that I found on the orphan rack at Lowe's. 

Got this cool retro planter (below) on the clearance rack at Target.

Not shown- planted today with 3 houseplant starts.

 I also found these hanging egg-shaped planters (below) on the

clearance rack and stuck in some starts left by 

my botany students. Pothos.

Critters

I make these every year when I chop down the Cupplant. If the stems aren't hollow, I poke a chopstick in it. My hope is to attract Mason bees. See the stem at the bottom with the grass hanging out? A small wasp has been visiting and doing this. Needless to say I am tickled pink that someone appreciates my efforts. 

In bloom

Plants at back porch.

I don't think I appreciated impatiens enough

until this year. This may just be the right spot for them.

Of course, the weather has been ideal.

Gray-headed coneflower

reseeded in the driveway.

Raspberry Wine Monarda

Particularly loved by the Carpenter Bees.

Wild food

A mushroom-hunting friend of mine came across a gold-mine of chanterelle mushrooms this weekend. We don't typically have them this late, but we've been in a perpetual spring (70/80s) this summer. She gave me an entire grocery bag of them! Talk about love. Tonight I made some bisque as it is cool enough for soup. 

 Oh, so good. Made in the crock pot.

Didn't think I'd be busting that out this summer.

I won't lie. I've been wearing long underwear to bed and we

don't have the AC on. It's that ridiculously nice.

The mosquitoes don't seem to mind. I guess they've loved the rain.

Happy Summer, folks. 

Taking in the End

Now is the time to take in the view as shortly it will all be gone. Flowers, colorful leaves, seed heads black with promises, greenery. In one fell swoop the killing frost will steal our color palette leaving us with browns and grays for the long winter. No more blue sky morning glories with sleeping bumbles.

No more lustful aroma of the come hither Snail Vine.

No more red. No more red tomatoes to be eaten in the yard. No more figs full of sweetness.

Time to collect the Amaranth. Time to make pesto. 

Enjoy. Enjoy. Enjoy and prepare. I've started some new beds of various plans. I have 2 beds in the orchard dedicated to Winter Rye. Between the shade of the orchard trees, the dogs and the chickens all of the grass is gone. I'm not necessarily sad. The Winter Rye will have many roles. 1. It is a green manure so I've planted an oval bed around 3 fruit trees so in spring the greens can be turned into the soil and nourish the fruit trees. 2. The greens will either be eaten as much needed greens by the chickens in the spring/late winter or if having gone to seed. Either way, it is a cheap and nourishing food for the chickens as well. 3. Something we don't tend to think about is that plants are part of the food web for underground life (beneficial bacteria, fungi, invertebrate soil life) and having greenery above ground means there is food or habitat below ground. This may be one of our major mistakes in agriculture- leaving a field fallow. What happens to the soil life when there is no green above? Where do we ever seen fallow land in nature? Perhaps after a flood or volcano, but this doesn't last long. Nature abhors a vacuum. I'm amending the soil and thereby the life below. Feed your soil. I'm also running an experiment as one rye bed will be covered with plastic and the other not. Here is the one that will not be covered:

Two other beds (one with burlap, the other with plastic) will be for winter crops- carrots and mixed greens. I made these super cheap and easy hoop houses out of plastic conduit. The purpose of the burlap is just to keep the chickens out for now.

Other things I need to do is establish a given spot for my new vegetable- the potato onion (also called multiplier onions). Since I eat onions on a daily basis and because once established I will never have to buy them again (talk about cheap food) I need to prepare the perfect bed for them. I ordered them from Territorial Seeds. You can't find these just everywhere. I'm not sure why they are such a secret, but I suspect the older generation is more than aware of their existence. They are defined as having a more gourmet flavor, much like shallots, which I love so I'm looking forward to the first harvest. This is what they look like:

Since it is my blog, I suppose I can deviate away from strictly gardening and talk about wild foraging too. My Aunt Kathy found these mushrooms and gave them to me. They are called Slippery Jack because of the slimy coating on the cap. They grow under evergreens and apparently my grandparents use to eat them. These shrooms are in the bolete family. Instead of gills they are polypored underneath. I'm thinking about a mushroom barley soup tonight. These guys are a little dry, but I have fresher ones and these will rehydrate easily.

A few more pictorial documents below of life in the garden in early October: 

Baby Kale coming up.

Cotton plant! Just for something fun.

One of my assistant soil preppers- Scarlet.

That is all for today. Must get out and enjoy this ridiculously gorgeous weather we've had for weeks on end now.