Category Archives: Food

Stained skin.

My skin is still tight from the soil dried upon it. Laptops could use a little more earth about them. It’s a magical season, this summer. It feels stolen. People speak in hushed tones. No one wants to break the spell. No one wants to jinx it. People don’t dare voice their appreciation too boisterously for fear the stifling leaden blanket of heat be pulled over their days as punishment. I finished listening to Brene Brown’s series of talks called The Power of Vulnerability. She speaks to catastrophizing as a coping mechanism (that ultimately robs us of the ability to appreciation joy). People are catastrophizing the weather. They’re neglecting to enjoy it. Afraid to enjoy it. Relish in it. Open their pores to it.

I am working on not being one of those people. Not defaulting to staying indoors. Rushing from air conditioned car to air conditioned house to air conditioned work to air conditioned store. Yes. It is July. Yes, this is Central Texas. But no, it is not so hot as to induce the annual cabin fever creating behavior. It’s glorious. and I’m out in it every chance I get.

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I often struggle with the “leave the pests, the predator will come” philosophy as I watch the aphids grow in number day after day on the fennel’s flower stalks. And today, the philosopher was right.

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The fennel and the caterpillar in the fading sun light.

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The succulent’s sunscreen has grown thicker.

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Sweet potatoes pushing beyond bounds.

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Such a lovely shade of rouge.

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Rougey’s neighbor.

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Yet another avocado making a go of a second life.

Final harvest

Signing over the lease last night, I checked on the garden. The lettuce had long since bolted and gone to seed. The tomatoes and peppers were on round three, and everything was looking quite unkempt. As it should. It had not been keep in months aside from random rain and occasional soaking.

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The strawberries, long since done for the year, were still alive at least…and joined by a new friend: ANOTHER volunteer avocado tree. This guy wasn’t there three months ago.

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We picked our last pickings from the old garden yesterday. Leaving quite the number of Porter and San Marzano ripe on the vine for the new caretakers’ instant gratification, we brought home the ripe Black Prince, Cal Wonder Goldens, a handful of Porters, some jalapenos and Serranos.

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Thankfully we’ve been making it to the market most Saturdays (previous two excluded) and enjoying the bounty of others as well.

It will be some time before we have home grown food again around here from our own home. Until then, thank goodness for farmers near and far keeping us in fruit and veggies (and meat and eggs!)

A royal surprise…

I’ve been waiting, less than patiently, for months. Any progress? Any change? ANYTHING?

Then, three days ago, DH calls to me from outside, “Honey, you need to come here!” (I can’t tell from his tone if he’s found something really cool in an on-purpose way, or something really cool in a strangely-unexpected way.) I go outside.

He’s not by the main garden bed. He’s not by the compost or pomegranate or mulberry. He’s back by the grills (yes, two) standing in a large puddle of water.

“Did something burst?” I ask.
“No no, I was just watering. Look over there,” he soothes with a nod to the back corner bed.

Before I’m even there I can see what it’s going to be… Broccoli peek

Singing with color, prancing in illuminated drops of water, the broccoli has made broccoli. Purple broccoli

Even the little runt of the bed is basking in the sunlight. Little broccoli

I hope they’ve survived the freezing rain we had yesterday under their blanket! Tomorrow will warm up enough to uncover them and survey the damage.

Seasons are as seasons do.

On my trip this week to Houston I couldn’t help but notice the corn was higher than my head, with the tassels starting. Where I grew up there were corn farmers (and grass seed farmers, Christmas Tree farmers, cherry and peach and berry farmers…) and those farmers are just sowing their corn for the season now. 

Some years I have tomatoes by now, and this year I don’t. Some years the strawberries don’t have a chance to fruit well for the early onslaught of heat, this year they did (and continue to do so.)
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Seasons in Texas are measured two ways – in the classic four seasons (which are measured by what the calendar says it should be) and in the Texas weather way (Not Hot, Beautiful, Hot, Thunderstorm Season, Beautiful, repeat.) 

Depending on whether the storms come, or the heat is early or late, the plants do as their coding dictates. This keeps us gardeners on our toes! Not for late frosts or lack of sunlight, but for baked seedlings or flooded fruit. 

 

The backyard this year is the usual mixture of expectations met and seasonal surprises. Like finding more strawberries this morning. Or finding that this fern, so lush and happy in March…
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…is now gone without a trace.

Or that these plums just setting fruit in March…
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…have started to turn.
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Then there’s the Monster Chard that has been keeping you in gigantic leaves of green since October was discovered by the hungry hundred caterpillars.
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And the Forgotten Beet that made the most delicious “french fries” (thanks to DH’s talents.)
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Which reminds me, I need to not forget about the Onion Rope. The instructions on the internet conflicted with those in a book, which weren’t terribly clear. We’ll see how it goes, but it may just be that DH eats them all before they reach a questionable storage age anyway. (Onions being yet another food I enjoy growing but do not enjoy eating.)
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Crawly critters

I am grateful for my lack of furry critters making use of my garden as their market. We have rabbits and deer in our neighborhood, but they haven’t found my garden to be worth the fence-hop. As for the community gardens, I can only assume they don’t like the busy roads on two sides.

I do get quite the surprise sometimes when it comes to the crawly critters. Awhile back, it was the caterpillar bigger than my middle finger. This time, it’s a few things.

Like this thing. A cicada shell. They’re currently peppering tree branches and leaf piles throughout the neighborhood.

Each board is two inches wide. It’s head is to the left, bent under. That horizonal line moving from left to right was the middle of its back, before it split the shell to escape in it’s new, bigger, shell. (Cue flashbacks to the movie Alien if you’ve seen it, I have not.)

I found this shell when chasing down a tree roach that leapt from the earth I was digging, just fast enough to make me jump before I saw what it was, and race off.

(Backstory: I grew up a tomboy. I liked lizards and spiders. Grasshoppers were fun. I claimed a daddy-long-legs in my bedroom corner as my pet when I was five. I went searching for earthworms and snakes to discover under boards in the pasture. I woke up once with a mouse on my shoulder, staring me down from four inches away, and was fine with it. And then I moved to Texas. The grasshoppers here make me jump. (They’re HUGE!) The lizards are more colorful (and plentiful) and I finally encountered a bug that just *got* to me. I finally understood the visceral reaction so many have in response to spiders, or snakes, or any other oft-feared creatures. I had encountered my first tree roach.)

I’m not sure of their actual name, but imagine a cockroach, that gets about three inches long, and FLIES. Then imagine it hosts a demeanor of an attack missile. Sometimes when you come upon one and startle it, it will actually run away. Other times, it will come AT you. It’ll get stuck in your hair, hang onto your shirt, and otherwise make you dance around hitting yourself like a maniac only to leave you with the creepy-crawlies for the rest of the day.

I mean…

Not familiar with a tree roach? This was the best photo I could snag of the fellow.

Or, for easier viewing, I found a funny post by another Texas-transplant here – with much better visual aids.

And then there’s the Case of the Creepy Sweet Potato. Fiber issues? Drought issues? Bug issues? What’s your guess?

We’ll finish this Creature Feature with a wonderfully ancient-looking caterpillar. It reminds me of both The Neverending Story, Chinese dragons, and Alice in Wonderland. Have you guessed yet?

It’s the happy-looking Giant Swallowtail Caterpillar.

See that charming smile?

I put him back on the potted orange tree where I’d found him. DH says he’ll be evicted if he takes more than his fair share. I went to check on him a few days later to discover that he had a new little friend of the same kind, and he himself had more than doubled in size.

In my brief reading to research this caterpillar, it became obvious that they like citrus trees. Why he and his brother selected the orange over the lime, I couldn’t say. Mimosas over margaritas, perhaps?

Summer hasn’t quit yet.

The peppers have slowed down, but aren’t done yet. Just the other day a purple bell pepper joined some carrots and other veggies for a lunch saute.

In making room for new fall veggies, it was time to pull some old timers.

Of course, once I sowed the next round of carrots, it started raining. Forget rain dances, if you need it to rain at your house just have me over to sow some carrot seeds! (The last four times I’ve sown carrots now, it’s rained long and hard within days.)

I didn’t pull all of the carrots though. Some are still small enough to make a late appearance on my plate, and others I’ve let go wild to both see what happens and collect seed. Like these two: