Old soldiers and old cleomes

 Old soldiers just fade away

Mick Jagger - "Old Habits Die Hard"

This line from Jagger's song was running through my head today as I walked toward the garden and looked at the cleomes. You may think I am obsessed by them, and I suppose I am a bit.  Even on this first day of October, they have a grandeur as they "fade away".  Amazing flowers.

Last stewing of the season

 

Sorry to go on and on, but I like to keep track of the gardens here on the blog. You may just skip over!

Today I just got around to stewing the tomatoes in the last post. Instead of freezing, I'm going to add a jar of crushed tomatoes, strain both the fresh and the canned, and make sauce for supper. Sad to see the season end, but happy to have some for the winter.

Pretty much the end of the tomato harvest

 

If you have stopped by recently, you will have seen the chopped tomatoes as my blog header. I've stewed and strained quite a few tomatoes in the past weeks, added a little tomato paste, and frozen them. I look forward to that taste of summer on my pasta this winter. We tried many new varieties this year - some heirlooms. They are so individual both in look and taste. Here is a pic I took a while back.

The ones on the front left are called Purple Cherokee, from seeds found on a Cherokee reservation. They just may be the best tasting tomatoes I've ever eaten. On the front right are Rose de Berne.They are a Swiss heirloom. We didn't get too many, but they were very delicious. On the yellow plate is a super producer with a terrific taste, Moskvich. Not an heirloom yet, but a great tomato from Russia. Not sure what the time table is for declaring a tomato is an heirloom. I think the Moskvich was developed in the 1970s. 

The yellowy orange one is Marmalade, not an heirloom. Great producer and such a beauty. It is really stunning in the garden.

The green and yellow ones are ripe. That is their color. The variety is Green Zebra. I always pronounce the name with the British "Zeb", not the American "Zee" because I first heard of it on Pie in the Sky, one of my most favorite television series. There is an episode where Henry Crabbe makes this delicious looking dish, stuffing a Green Zebra with bread crumbs, parsley, garlic, olive oil, and something else I think I'm forgetting. I was so looking forward to making it, but my Green Zebras just didn't get big enough this year.  Will try again next year (the gardener's motto). The first picture was taken today - maybe the last tomatoes of the season. The little one on the bottom with those grooves is called Costoluto Genovese, an Italian heirloom. What flavor, and I love the grooves - I just cut one section out and eat it! 

We've grown Peacevine cherry tomatoes for years. Next year we may try a few heirloom cherries, too. I bought quite a few from a local farm this summer, and the taste was out of this world. Here is a whimsical picture of them with my colorful bowls.

We did a few different things with our tomatoes this year - one was cutting all the shoots off except the main flowering ones. That was okay, except we didn't get nearly as many tomatoes as other years. Will go back to letting the side shoots flower, until later in the season. I'm always up for trying new ideas, but this one just didn't work out that well. Plus I missed the huge, tall plants we got before.

When I was a kid, I never ate tomatoes - not even tomato sauce. And these summer months, they are all I wanted to eat!

Quote du jour - Henry David Thoreau; and summer pictures

I began this post in July, and am just getting back to it on this first day of September.

 

Live in each season as it passes: breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit.

Henry David Thoreau (July 12, 1817-May 6, 1862) Such a short life.

I am living fully in this summer season, and want to share some pictures of the beauty at Windy Poplars Farm. This summer has been spectacular. Everyone I talk to comments on the flowers everywhere. 

The brown-eyed Susans are all over the place. They just pop up and don't care what the soil is like.

Beautiful daylilies

Hollyhocks  - my friend said this color has such an old-fashioned look. It is really achingly beautiful. This is a perennial one that I bought from White Flower Farm years ago. 

And this is one that comes back year after year - just a regular hollyhock. I recently read that if you leave the seedheads on, they will fall off and root the next year. Since I never cut mine down in a timely manner, that must be what happens here.

 

Now that I am here, and late, I thought I'd post some August pictures, too. This is the side yard on a beautiful morning around 8 am. Not the clearest but that's part of what I like - that misty/sunny look.

                                                                      Zinnias

                                                                Goldenglow  

                                                                Monarda -

 I finally found one that grows in zone 3. I bought one plant. It grew well last year, though the leaves had mildew. I looked it up and one result was from Martha Stewart who said to never mind it - that it wouldn't hurt the flowers at all. Well, this year, that one plant spread and overtook the entire terrace garden. Some other kinds of plants disappeared, and others were greatly diminished, but that's alright. It is in the mint family after all. Every single minute of the day, these plants have been full of bees and butterflies. 

 I'll end with the pride and joy of Windy Poplars Farm - Cleome, and Amaranth! Last year we grew cleome and it was a lovely, big addition to the vegetable garden. This year, we started seeds inside under the lights, and they again have been beautiful. A surprise for us is that last year's flowers self-seeded, and are actually double the length of the ones we transplanted! What a plant!! And the amaranth came in my CSA bouquets years ago. I asked the grower what it was, and she called it "love lies bleeding." Whatever it is known by it is the weirdest plant we've ever grown. Weird but very wonderful. We will grow both flowers again next year.

I plan to do another post on the vegetables this year. 

And the font changed as I wrote. I didn't do it on purpose. I started with the font of our computer, comic sans, but then it went to something I didn't like. I tried to get CS, but it wasn't offered so I used open sans. 

Weights and lengths

 If you grow zucchini, you know that even if you check often there will still be one that you miss until it is overgrown. After our big one was picked today, Hazel said that I should take a picture and put it on my blog! 

When we weighed and measured it, we were kind of bowled over by a couple facts. The zucchini weighed 2.2 pounds and was 13 inches long. 

When Hazel was born, she weighed 2.2 pounds and was 14 inches long. It makes me cry as I write this. She is a miracle, and not for a second do I ever forget it. And here she is today with that zucchini.

Second garlic harvest 2022

 Today we harvested the other two varieties of garlic that Tom planted back in November.

This is Music, a hardneck with big cloves. We got 31 bulbs.

What High Mowing Seeds has to say about it: 

A large, beautiful variety that is easy to grow! Slightly spicy flavor is hot raw and sweet roasted. Originally from Italy.

The third variety is called Chesnok Red.  88 bulbs.

From High Mowing:

From the Republic of Georgia. ("That Georgia's always on mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi-mi mind"). 

And here's what the porch looks like! I feel like a queen.

First garlic harvest - 2022

 Tom planted garlic on November 9th of last year, and we have just harvested the first of it called Inchelium Red. This is what the company we buy from, High Mowing Seeds, had to say about this variety:

This widely grown softneck was originally saved by a native population in Washington State and found by Larry Geno on the Colville Indian Reservation.

Softneck means it can be braided, and I am thinking of trying it. I am not naturally "crafty" at all, but I think I will still see if I can do it. I've already found sites that tell me how. 

Drying it just where we did many years ago. We got 29 bulbs.

We have two other varieties which aren't quite ready to pick yet - Music, and Chesnok Red. 

Whippoorwills

When we first moved to Windy Poplars Farm in 1981, we heard whippoorwills. This continued for a few years, and then we didn't hear them. I looked back in my emails, and found a few correspondences with the state Audubon Society. In 2002, I found an email I had sent, saying we hadn't heard them in maybe 15 years. The response was essentially that they didn't know. Some had thought change of habitat or decline in moths, but no one knew for sure. I also found an article from a state newspaper around the same time despairing the fact that they just weren't around.  A few years later, we drove north an hour or so, and participated in an Audubon study to see if we heard any whippoorwills. We drove around to several promising spots, but heard nothing. Flash ahead to 2013, and they were here. Again in 2018, they appeared. When I wrote to Audubon, they said there were several people who had also heard them! I have a note that I heard it in 2019. And then an Audubon publication from last year says they are doing well in certain areas of the state. I can certainly attest to that this year! Without fail, for weeks now the whippoorwill has appeared just outside the house. It has been on the roof, in the lilac, and on the terrace. It comes at dusk and dawn. It feels like such an honor. I do have a movie of it, but I haven't been able to put any of my videos on the blog for a long time. You may hear their sound here.

photograph from Cornell Labs.

There is a terrific new article in The Old Farmer's Almanac, here. They quoted Thoreau:

It could mean many things, according to the wealth of myth surrounding this night flyer. The note of the whippoorwill borne over the fields is the voice with which the woods and moonlight woo me.

Henry David Thoreau (1817-62)

Kitchen life

 I feel there is a kind of perfection in starting the vegetable and flower plants in the kitchen. After all, this is the room where most of them will end up - as flowers on the windowsill or vegetables being cooked and eaten.  

We put a drop cloth on the kitchen table when we are planting seeds, or transplanting when they have grown too large for their pots. The big lights are set up in front of a south-facing window with a heat register underneath, and the woodstove a few steps away. This heat has been just perfect for the growing plants. We also have smaller lights on two counters. The kitchen is pretty much "remodeled" for these weeks, but it makes me happy just walking in and seeing all the green. 

Here are some pictures. They aren't awfully good photographs with all that fluorescent light, but I took a few with the lights off as well.