The patio chez Boud, miniature wildlife center!

There's no end of activity out there, every afternoon. Today several chickadees, then a mourning dove taking a bath, chased off by a Carolina wren who wanted a drink, then a goldfinch watching the action. Cardinals playing around the planters on the fence. 

And this morning I had tied up the sedum that was knocked flat in the recent huge rains and in less than an hour it's become tufted titmouse central, half a dozen birds doing tricks on the stakes, fighting and arguing and shoving.  My camera is not up to the action, so my words have to do.

Ceramic bird on one side of bath, real bird on the other!

On the deck, undeterred, a baby rabbit demonstrates why I haven't had any results from the seeds I planted on the edge of the deck, just handy for his mouth.

About now is when the  hummingbirds might be seen on the lantana.  I notice that between the hummers and the wrens, there's a wonderful shortage of squirrels.  Probably no match for the birds, and know better than to challenge them. An irritated wren can see off a squirrel before he knows what's up.  Astonishing how active all the wildlife is despite the heat and humidity, higher this year than ever, we are told.

And bang on the nose, at four o clock, even as I typed that, the hummer showed up and is working over the lantanas with great energy. And now she's resting in my cherry tree, but I have no hope of a picture.  Three seconds is a long nap for her.

Indoors, lovely late summer lunch of mostly local food, except that the dates are from California, this not being date country.  Mesclun dressed with homemade vinegar, with olive oil.

And, totally disregarding the madness outside, Marigold opened her beauty parlor and gave Duncan a great grooming and massage.  He's twice her size, so this is quite a job, which he's happy to let her do.

A couple of short stints outside in the garden demonstrated to me that today is just too humid and hot for me to work with, so I reluctantly am staying home.  Tomorrow is supposed to be less torrid.  But there's no shortage of entertainment anyway.

August mailbag, new venture

I was given one of those boxes of art postcards, very good ones, by a friend who is downsizing, and I realized this was a nudge from the universe to get on and write a line to various people I've been meaning to write a line to. Not to get mail back, just to give them a little something in the mail that's not a bill, for once.  Or an advertising flyer.  This collection has some of my favorite artists, and some I was unfamiliar with, and all of it is great quality art. Frameable stuff, I'd say.

So I set to work and wrote my August mailbag, some of which you see here, had such a good time choosing the right image for each person, one that either reflected her, or that she would really get, or I just liked the image for her to enjoy. I notice that all my recipients in August are female, but it's not by design.  Maybe some men will get in there at some point. But they didn't come to mind right off, as all the women friends did.

I've been blessed with regular wonderful postcard messages complete with art images and other interesting stuff from my honorary granddaughter, for years now.  I can't rival her in faithful correspondence, though she's very busy in her own life, nor in her always legible handwriting, but I can do my possible as they say. And now that I have the tools to hand, no excuses.

And I hope that the people who eventually hear from me -- there will be more, this is just the August bag -- will be happy too.  I'm thinking of doing a batch each month.

Food on Friday with Dollivers

Today was about a lot of food and catchup, sorry, couldn't resist, and first in the catchup, the vinegar.  

I tasted it this morning. No mother had appeared, but it was definitely vinegar, lovely and fruity, and I bottled it back in the original wine bottle, and it's awaiting the next salad around here.  So I can safely recommend this low end method of making wine vinegar.

And Handsome Son managed to fit in a visit for lunch, to which he did total justice. He's a good cook, but right now is also a very busy one, and it's nice to come over for a large meal with seconds!

Today it was chicken rolls, which I kind of invented:  smoked deli chicken slices, stuffed with farm chicken sausage, the apple flavor, and Kennet Square mushrooms (translation for those out of area: the best), with grated parmigiano, also the real thing.  Rolled in farm egg then panko, baked for about 15 minutes at 350, and it went over a treat. In fact there's nothing left.  Good thing I got crafty and make another couple of dishes of these rolls for the freezer, because I got a request to do these again some time.

Potato salad, including my own patio grown spuds, yay, and farm ones.  Just tossed in oil and vinegar, with mustard seeds, bit of sea salt and black pepper.

Dessert was a peach crumble.  Peaches were fresh from the farm, macerated in spices including that really good cinnamon, not the supermarket sort, the real stuff, then frozen to await a crumble. The crust was almond meal, which I made in the coffee grinder from whole almonds, with oat flour and oat flakes, butter, bit of salt, bit of white sugar. I baked this last night, and let it sit overnight in the fridge, which I think I will do from now one, because the fruit set up just lovely, and the flavor was really good, actually better than fresh baked.

And a big carafe of homemade lemonade, which was very welcome to greet him as he came in on this 100 F day.

So this was very happy stuff, I love to use good ingredients and see the food enjoyed.  There's still crumble for other friends when I see them.

Then it was afternoon, too hot to have the oven going and it's restless weather when I can't get out to walk.  So I harvested herbs for pesto, right in the blazing sun, flavor at peak because of the heat and sun.

This was pretty labor intensive, good thing I don't do it more than once a year.  I have my version of pesto, which is all about a big handful of herbs, torn down fine, all the stems gone, a good shake of diced walnuts, pinch of kosher salt, good parmigiano fresh grated, good olive oil, and ziploc bags for freezing them. 

I keep the cheese in the freezer, in parchment paper inside plastic, and it doesn't seem to hurt the flavor at all.  Today I ended up after using most of one block, with a rind, which I'll use for soup, so it's back in the freezer, with the rest of the other block. 

Then, when the pesto's whirled into a paste in the blender and bagged and labeled, the blender has lovely remnants in the bottom, impossible to get out. So I put a cup of water in, blend that up, and freeze the resulting pesto water for soup later.  This pleases my frugal heart no end.

And of course, after all the work, and the cleanup, was over, two Dollivers, Dreads and Blondie Firstborn, reading left to right, showed up in their whites ready to pose and claiming they'd been there all along, but didn't want to get in the way, bad enough with Duncan tripping me at every step.  Or some such malarkey.  


So here they are with the flattened bags, and the containers of water from each flavor, sage, oregano, basil, and a combo of rosemary and thyme.  There was a lot of thyme which I wrapped and froze, so I have twigs of it later for recipes that need that rather than pesto.  I find that freezing fresh herbs, wrapped in plastic and rolled up with a rubber band holding it tight, works just fine, no loss of flavor that I've noticed.

And while this labor was going on, indoors and out, here's a visitor on the lantana, showing that it's really true about they toil not neither do they spin.  

Get a look at that wonderful tiger swallowtail.  Of course the Dollivers toil not, and neither do they spin, and they too seem to be supplied with nice gear.  I hear them shouting from the next room that they do too work, how would I get any ideas at all if not for them, and don't forget they can hear me.

Quite soon the sun will be over the yardarm, and when I pour my one lovely glass of red per day, they will no doubt show up clamoring for a share, since the sun's over the yarnarm..

When wine goes south, make vinegar

Next door neighbor opened a bottle of chardonnay which had been around for a while, didn't like it much, asked me to try it, if I liked it, to have it.  Otherwise he would toss it.  Whereupon I said, no, don't toss, let me taste and see.

Which I did, and it was halfway to vinegar already, so I asked if he'd like me to make vinegar with it instead.  He'd never heard of the idea, and doesn't cook, but his visiting friends do, and one was there and perked up quite a bit at the thought of a nice chardonnay vinegar next time she visits.  She cooks, and despairs of his eating well in her absence.

So if it works out, I'll share.  He did come over later to ask if the same applied to spirits!!  but I said I didn't think scotch really goes bad..and I doubted if the same chemistry applies.  Wines though are usually meant for fairly quick consumption, not for storing indefinitely. The ones people put down for generations are usually fortified wines designed for that purpose -- old port, sherry, that kind of thing.  Not a simple table white from California.

Here's the setup.  Wine poured into an open dish, for maximum exposure to oxygen and to the  fermentation ingredients always in the air, a splosh of chardonnay vinegar I had in the house already, not my own make, as a starter, whisk it up together to give it a jumpstart.  

Then cover with cheesecloth and a rubber band, to keep dust and insects out, let air in.  And wait a few days to see if this works as hoped.  I kept the bottle, to reuse for the vinegar.

I have to check now and then to see if a mother forms on the surface.  That shows you it's working.  And I'll keep you informed as to progress.

 

Food as celebration

Here comes the birthday cake for Handsome Son, cherry sauce over a chocolate cake (the usual crazy chocolate cake we all have a recipe for, simple, failsafe).  

Cherry sauce from frozen pitted cherries, cornstarch, touch of salt, sugar.  Served with french vanilla ice cream. Went over a treat.  As did the meatballs and spaghetti, garlic bread, etc., all home done.  As usual fewer leftovers than I'd hoped for, but that's probably a good thing anyway.  Son went home bearing quite a bit of cake for home consumption, too.

And here are the almond macaroons which are my part of the food for the Creative Collective art opening tomorrow afternoon at 2 p.m. at the Gourgaud Gallery, Cranbury, local readers warmly invited to come and join us and help eat the macaroons and other great items this group does for openings.  These are made with almond meal I made from sliced almonds, and are gluten free, if that's an issue.  

Also to see some good local art, while you're at it.  Two of my Planet Suite works are in this show. The Gallery is inside the Town Hall, in case you were never there before, very nice gallery indeed, good lighting, good shape for seeing art.

Humidity drops, and bread returns

So the humidity has dropped, you can breathe, the temps are still hot, but manageable, and bread baking has returned.  I will be making a birthday dinner for Handsome Son tomorrow, and needed homemade bread rolls as part of the deal.  I plan to make a couple of rolls into garlic bread, to go with homemade spaghetti sauce with meat balls made from farm sausage, good mozzarella shredded over, then home baked chocolate cake with cherry sauce in, sort of rustic Black Forest cake, and ice cream. Not too shabby, and not too hot to eat this way, either.

So I hauled out the breadmakings, and made one small batch of rolls for instant use.  

Today since something that was to happen isn't after all, illness, someone else's that is, caused cancellation, I have a slot of time to make another, bigger, batch of bread rolls for the freezer.  

The same old wholewhat bread recipe as always, from Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day, easy, makes good bread with a lovely crust, and you just shape the dough however you want it -- loaves, flat cakes, breadsticks, rolls, it's as adaptable as clay.  

I love a handy roll to stuff with cheese when I can't be bothered fixing anything more complicated, and I will have a nice supply in the freezer by this evening.  If you bake bread in or on a nonstick pan or tray, it makes a great crust, better, I find than the regular metal pans.

Officially the birthday is Monday, which also happens to be Handsome Partner's anniversary, so Handsome Son tactfully opted to have Friday night, as well as better fitting his schedule.  

It's an annual very mixed day, August 8, because of the major birthday coinciding with the major death, so we handle it each year one way or another.  We have sometimes celebrated HP on his birthday in late June, but what with weather and work schedules, that hasn't happened yet this year, is still to be decided. 

Monday will be a plein air art morning, and I think of going to the labyrinth after that to walk it in memory of Handsome Partner.

Bringing in the Sheaves, well, the Spuds

Potato Harvest 2016.  I can usually count on getting at least one meal of potatoes from a sprouting potato buried in a pot of potting soil and basically disregarded for several months.  

Here's this year's haul, smaller than usual, but surprised I got any, since they were flooded quite often, and potatoes hate that, usually rot under those circumstances.  But here's a nice little meal.  Labor sparing gardening.  I lifted them before the foliage was quite spent, because I thought if I waited any longer they might rot.

These, with a nice sauce of the peppermint growing near them, will be a good addition to a meal.

In the absence of doves

Yesterday's storm provided us with six inches of rain in two hours, causing massive flooding, abandoned cars, water rescues, state of emergency declared, all around.  Son needed an hour to get over a five minute trip home, caught in the midst.  My home and his are safe and dry, though.

However, massive dislocation of traffic, nearest six lane highway mostly closed for miles, canals over banks, little streams suddenly major waterways.  We forget we live in a floodplain until this kind of thing comes up out of nowhere.

So this morning, a little chipmunk showed up, looking down suspiciously at the ground, recently over his head in water, and being careful to make his way on top of fences and chairs rather than his usual paths through my groundcover.

In case anyone followed the weather reports from here, pretty dramatic ones, this post is to assure you that all is well for me and mine and most of our friends. Except for the friend away for the day who had left the car sunroof open.  They're still vacuuming out water from it.

I have to be on the road this pm to submit work to a gallery show, so I'm hoping those roads will be open.  We'll see.  And tomorrow is supposed to be a plein air artist day, alas, at a park next to the canal which broke its banks, so again, we'll see. I'm following police updates to see if roads are open again.  There will be more rain, and we'll have to see whether it's practical to try to get there.

Stormy weather and the armchair traveler 6WS

The weather, veering wildly between hot and humid and hot and downpours, is good for staying in and reading.  And here, thanks to various recommendations, is the current array, not counting what's going on in the Kindle (more Edinburgh books by Alexander whatsisname Smith).

Thanks to dogonart, and after a lengthy, months that is, wait, the library got hold of Four Seasons in Rome, a year on a fellowship there, enjoyed by Anthony Doerr, and I just embarked on it.  Very entertaining, and great fun to visit Rome by proxy without having to struggle with two babies, finding food for the family, admiring the scenery while lugging a stroller up steps, and writing a novel.  He seems to be surviving so far, though.

Then Kate H. turned me on to Diana Athill, whose most recent book is out this year, in her 98th year.  She still writes at a lively clip, though, if a bit disjointed, but she's lived an interesting life. She goes from wealth and great family houses, not hers, but related, to comparative poverty, until late middle age brought more money into her life, and she has continued on her unsentimental way, casting a penetrating but not unfriendly eye on her surroundings.  She's a lifelong single woman, with a colorful personal life and no regrets.

Pangur Ban is a retelling of that ninth century Irish poem about the monk and his white cat, presented here for kids really, but you can read it anyway. It's short, and you can spend either ten minutes or a lifetime unpacking what's in it.  

Anyone who has had an animal companion nearby while she works will appreciate the notion that the monk doesn't interfere with Pangur's work of hunting for mice and Pangur doesn't interfere with the monk's work of hunting for meaning. The illustrations are a perfect fit for the meaning, created by someone who knows his cats, as you'll see on the page where the cat gets back into the monk's cell.

This recommendation came to me via brainpickings, a wonderful, thoughtful blog which I in my turn recommend. I keep up with it on Twitter then get a weekly digest of the articles referred to through the weeks, some very good sources.

Then The Perfect Summer by Juliet Nicholson, yes, those Nicholsons, talk about well connected for sources.  She lives at Sissinghurst! that place of famous white garden fame.  She thanks half the royals for access to their papers and pix!  

The summer in question is 1911, when the tectonic plates of the political Western world were starting to shift, after the death of Victoria, but before all the treaties, all at cross purposes, were invoked by the death of the Archduke with the subsequent destruction of the world as it had been up to then, for practically everyone, mostly for the worse. 

Knowing all that, though, it's intriguing to get a glimpse into the privileged life still being enjoyed by a few, who little knew how soon it would vanish, during a summer of perfect, in fact very hot, weather.  Not unlike the weather recently in the UK, in fact, except people wore a lot more clothes then.

Just embarked on this one, and it's a bit more heavy going, what with all the historical detail and the name dropping, but still worth chugging on a bit with.

So that's the coffee table load for the day!  and I finally noticed that my title is in six words, so it fits with the Six Word Saturday theme.

Late July, Corn High

First corn from my local farm today, and since Handsome Son is expected for dinner, I thought it would be good to make a sort of corn thing with three ears of corn, off the cob, a job I hate doing, but anyway,  farm eggs, from another farm, cheese, sea salt and white pepper, and a bunch of thyme from my front yard.  

Added in a can of chickpeas for ballast.  I might have used tomatoes, but I don't get them till tomorrow, and well, I ate all of this week's..I might make a batch of hot biscuits to go with, though, come to think of it. And I'm serving steamed buttered green beans from yet another farm, courtesy of a friend.  Who also gave me another squash..yet another.

Nice glass of sangria, summer sort of wine, will accompany this Lucullan shebang.

Dessert will be build it yourself, fresh blueberries and peaches from the farm this morning, with vanilla yogurt.

Pot of English Breakfast tea, snarling as it comes out of the pot, will round off the proceedings. 

On one of these very hot and humid nights, it's very good to serve yourself a helping of frozen mango slices and frozen blueberries. They act like icecream and candy at the same time, perfect.My mangoes came from yet another friend, and I sliced and froze them right away.  The ones I didn't use to make mango preserve, that is.

Upcycled art, with an assist from nature and birds

Here's an upcycled orphan earring, now working as a pin on the dress I'm wearing today, thank you Meryl!  Do you ever do this with a sole earring after you lose its mate?  I have a number of pins like this one.  

You just push the stem through as if through a pierced ear, attach the finding on the back, and you have a pin. And if you don't blog about it, people don't see it's upcycled. There are more, which will probably find their homes in artworks, but this one just seemed very right for a denim dress.

And then a simple setup in the bathroom, with a daisy, picked from divisions given last year by a neighbor, thank you Karen, and flourishing on the patio, along with a wildflower sort of sunflower, I think, which showed up in one of the containers after the lettuce had gone to seed. 

And you see in there Italian parsley flowers, looking just like their wild relative, Queen Anne's Lace, and a feather I found on the street, donated by my local flicker.  He's around here a lot, and is welcome except when he sits on the chimney and hammers at it in search of insects, causing a racket like a motor suddenly starting up two floors down, in my fireplace.  

People with cats will know that there are very few places in the house where I can safely put cut flowers.  One is here in the bathroom, and the other is on top of a bookcase.  Any other place and the flowers are scattered, the water drunk, and general chaos, including broken containers, can result. But the bathroom has the additional advantage of mirrors, which give you more for the price of admission.  The container here was a little birthday gift from Girija, thank you, and is really a candle holder, but I'm using it for flowers since it works perfectly that way, too.

We made history today 7.26,2016

Just this:

And about time!  Elton joyfully accompanies the rendering of Good old Summertime by Dollivers dizzy with delight.

Then we all got busy with brushes and shovels sweeping up millions of pieces of glass.

Tech is good. Journeys and madeleines of sound

Just musing today, hot summer afternoon, home reading Alexander McCall Smith, easy reading for summer, and noticed how much better it is to read when you can easily look up the references in ways not possible years ago.

Usually in my case it's to music I'm not familiar with and the characters are, meaning the writer is too, so I like to get the sound surround effect of knowing what they're hearing.  I do this all the time with Donna Leon, the opera and particularly Handel aficionada, found myself listening to many a Handel aria,  because her characters refer to it, and now it's happening with Smith.

What happens is that as soon as a character refers to a piece, or an artwork, I instantly seize my tablet, and find the music or the painting on YouTube, and it's surprising how often it's there and easy to find. 

Today it's Isabel Dalhousie and Jamie, the musician, remembering a concert of early music they attended.  They mentioned a song I don't know, though I know a lot of Elizabethan music, so I went in search.  

And found glorious Alfred Deller, a voice I hadn't heard in decades, right there on YouTube, with his consort, singing all the medieval and Renaissance pops. I have sung a lot of these, in various choirs as a kid and at the Uni, and play them on recorder as often as not nowadays.

But there was Il Est Bel Et Bon, large as life, lovely funny song about a young wife admiring her husband's kindness and his feeding the hens, making silly noises at them.  She's reporting this to her mother in law, as it happens.  This may be strictly fantasy, knowing the early period, but it zoomed me right back to uni, where I sang this song, in the first sopranos of our Madrigal Chorale.  We even made a record, very proud of ourselves, long since lost in the many moves I've done, but still imprinted in memory.

And the Wraggle Taggle Gipsies O, even further back, to school. And more songs,  and more recently, Three Ravens and others from the early music period, back to early days of learning recorder, as an adult, and now I've outlived most of my co learners. Remembering Arda and Dominique and Jenny and more.

Anyway, these are the sudden precipitous journeys your mind goes off on when you read, at least mine does. Like Proust's madeleine, but with sound.  Do you do similar things with music or references to paintings?  

I think a lot of us might do it for literary references.  Isabel, in the Smith books,  is batty about Auden, please, why, and she lards a lot of her dialog with quotations, which she then goes on to explain, Lord, save me from people like Isabel in real life.  It's okay to quote, but the explaining is, well, not so. Good she's safely shut inside books..in fact she's an irritating person, which may mean I've read enough of her for now.  But all the same, I did look up the Auden references.

Clafouti aka Trip Down Memory Lane 6WS

So last night I was in the mood for some sort of pancake thing for supper, made one of the oatmeal ones, added in golden raisins and blueberries, tasted very good, but didn't turn over well on the pan, so it came out a bit freeform.

Today, bored because after I made a quick trip to the farmers' market, it was already hot at 9 a.m., air not breathable out there, not really up to going out again in heat at high nineties and humid, I thought hm.  How to rescue the rest of the pancake batter?  all good ingredients, but could it do well in the oven instead?  This is how I end up putting the oven on in ridiculous weather, sheer need to do something interesting. I had already played with tshirts and dye, and will duly bang on about that in my art blog.

Anyway, in the midst of this food thinking, I suddenly realized I was talking about clafouti, an old favorite of mine from years ago, from earliest perusing of Julia Child, whose original book I still have with a funny inscription from Handsome Partner.  

He gave it to me in early marriage, even though he only really wanted to eat my curries, mostly from the Bill Veach book.

Anyway, I thought, ah, I have plums galore in the freezer, and this will work lovely. Clafouti is a kind of fruit flan thing with a pancake batter poured over raw fruit, baked in a moderate oven.  Works for breakfast, or teatime.  Or anytime, really, it's very good. Also much simpler than Julia would have you think. True of many of her recipes, in fact.

So I went online and saw Julia's recipe, and thought, no, self, self, this is where you get the original book out and really revisit it.  And found there, in the original book, unhandled for decades, was a little slip of scotch tape marking the clafouti page.

So I accidentally took a nice stroll down memory lane, and ended up with a very good clafouti instead of a moderate oatmeal pancake.  

Right after it came out of the oven, my friend who feeds me her Indian recipes all the time came over with some offerings, and I explained I couldn't give her clafouti until the whole thing had cooled down. 

She's off on a temple visit, will be back Sunday or Monday.  So she booked some clafouti for then, and went off very happy with the exchange, having left me special squash (yes, I know) and chickpeas, all cooked her own way.  Tonight's supper.

You just missed her!

You know those annoying birders who insist on telling you about the birds that were here last week that you missed?  I have become one of them.  But I do have a good excuse.

Several times this week, I happen to have been home, and to have looked out at the patio about four o'clock.  And to have seen a female hummingbird working over the red lantana plant on the fence.  She stays about ten seconds, tops, so seeing her is a feat, and taking her picture an impossible goal.

So I just wanted to show you this is where she was a minute ago!  she's so beautiful.  Works over every single flower on the red lantana, before swooping away high into the pine tree out back, perhaps to rest or clean her beak.  I'm particularly glad about this, since I'd observed that on the few occasions when I've seen hummingbirds on this street, they have been about five feet from the ground, and in search of red flowers. They used to come to my cardinal flower out front, a wild volunteer not there this year.

So I figured that the planters on top of the fence would also be at the right height, and I got a couple of lantana this year, for the red color. I don't like red in a garden, too hot, but I figured this was a different situation.  She seems to approve, showing up several times already.  I know it's female, because there's no red bib.

And what I see is what seems to be a disturbance in the air, then I focus and realize it's Mrs. H hard at work on the lantana.  

She inspects the whole array usually.  Spiderwort? no, and alyssum, no, then wild phlox, nah, wrong color, but ahhhh lantana, just the ticket.  She reminds me of a picky customer at a buffet.

Speaking of picky customers, I know I swore never to eat squash again, after the glut last year, but oh well, a friend stopped by with fresh summer squash from a farmer's market south of here, and well, steamed, buttered, peppered, salted, it's supper in summer. Just look at the colors, that golden and ivory and touch of green.

Last night was a lively meeting of the Socrates Cafe group, with many interesting thoughts about judgment, whether it's good, and if so when, and what kinds there are, and so on. So today, I simply rested and enjoyed a day of practically nothing, except being so glad about where I am, and how things are, and how luxurious it is to have summer days when you can choose to do nothing.

Not strictly accurate, since I did help a neighbor cut down a huge tree branch that was lying on my roof, and spent  a while lopping off all the small branches once it was on the ground. 

Then I arranged for the friend who brought the squash to take the trunk part home for next winter's fires, cherry being a lovely firewood. And got an incredible number of bites in the process of all this.  I guess the mosquitoes consider me a special delicacy, worth going out of their way to sample. There's probably a mosquito gourmet guide book about this.  And I did go to the library in the next town to get a reserved book before it went back to the main libe.  Other than that, though, quite otiose!

I'm reading one of the Isabel Dalhousie books, by A McCall Smith,  hence the sudden use of an unusual word. She, the professional philosopher,  does this, then agonizes over whether it's fair or proper.  And whether anyone can judge anything, and if so, when. She really should come to our Socrates group, would fit right in.

Field Trip! to the past, a historic farmstead

I took a field trip today, to a meeting of the Delaware Valley Unit of the Herb Society of America folks, courtesy of Helen H, who drove us there, to the historic Holcombe Jimison Farmstead, right by the Delaware, in Lambertville NJ.

Narrowly saved from extinction by the building of a major highway, the historic society managed to keep a few acres intact and dedicated to the farm around them, and to add all kinds of historical artifacts and interesting preservation of our farming past.

It was a boiling hot July day, a good time to remember that the farmers back in the early 19th century, when some of the barns were built, the farmhouse itself dating back to the 17th century, had no relief from the heat.  

I was there for a tour and a talk on edible weeds, very interesting presentation by a member of the Herb society, but I was most struck by the existence of this treasure of a museum and grounds that I hardly knew existed before.  

So this is my turn to pass on the good news and invite local readers to make a point of going there and enjoying the barns, the museum of farm implements and historic NJ items, plus meet the blacksmith, see the Kean Barn with old carriages and more recent engines, plus the herb gardens.  The herbs were the main reason for my visit, and it was interesting to explore how they'd decided to cultivate herbs to reflect the changing demographics of our population.

Within one small enclosure, are plots for herbs from India, Indonesia, Eastern Europe, Mexico, China, and other cultures. Amazing really to see what has been achieved, totally by volunteer labor.  Most of the people are very knowledgeable, with background at Brooklyn Botanical Garden, research into entomology and other specialties.  

 tour guide with modern water bottle, showing me the wooden water pipe excavated from nearby town when roads were being rebuilt recently.  There are still pipes like this in the infrastructure of New York and Philadelphia
 

 

Some of the pictures hark back to my own childhood in the country, without utilities or running water, and I recognized the washday items all too clearly. My mom turning that huge mangle to wring the clothes. And the later, smaller one, that latest best thing she got years later, still hand driven. A poss stick in the background there, too, for possing clothes, all laundry hand done.

Canning and processing of food mainly done by women

 

Spot the fruit varieties here, in the collection of stencils used to mark fruit crates

Funeral hearse, restored to 19th century condition, needing only black horses.

My tour guide was a retired teacher who enthusiastically showed me practically everything, untiringly, on the farmstead, then delivered me to the building where they gave me refreshments, and the talk on edible weeds.  A very full afternoon, and I definitely have to go back there.

Such a labor intensive life.  I noted that in the wool processing area, the hand carders are exactly like my own, same design still being made, because it works!  And the office for the doctor/dentist which was also his dispensary, since he did it all, and he installed the first telephone system for the area while he was at it.  Also led the local brass band.  Just too many items for pictures in this post, you have to go there!

And rural electrification is said to have got its start in this region. Hats off to the energy and real bravery of early farmers.  This is why I like to buy food from my local farmers, since many of them are the latest generation on the family farm, and hard work is their way of life. 

While I was there, a young couple came in searching for someone to donate the family parlor organ too. Turned out they were descendants of the original Jimison family and this was the organ that came originally from this farm, so it will probably come back again.

Saturday at the Farmer's Market

Now that I've switched from the weekday farmshare to the Saturday morning farmers' market, where I shop at a dozen different farmstands, Saturday has become my day of frenzied prep, cooking, freezing, noshing and generally fooling about with great food.

Finally the stone fruit are in, and peaches and apricots -- well, the apricots are nearly out again, but I never saw any before this week -- were part of my shop.  The peach farm lady gave me a free peach over what I'd bought for bringing in my own bag, nice bonus. 

And another keen shopper at the apricot place was buying large amounts, to make jam.  Evidently planning on a major jamboree, you might say.  Nowadays I don't make huge quantities, and the big enamel pot I used to use has long since been coopted for natural dyeing purposes.  But you can make modest amounts very easily, medium saucepan, fruit, sugar, lemon juice, pinch of salt, no pectin needed. 

So I made two jars of apricot preserves this afternoon, using most of a box of apricots.  I do keep a couple of fresh fruit out for just eating, in these frenzies.  Preserves are where there are whole pieces of fruit in the mix, different from jam where the fruit is all reduced.

And the peaches are now sliced, diced, macerated, spiced, sauce reduced and added,  and frozen ready to make into a crumble when the spirit moves me.

Tomatoes are coming in now, still expensive but wonderful, so worth it.  Just diced, bit of sea salt, olive oil, sherry vinegar, perfect. Every lunch is tomato salad plus mixed green salad, easy, no planning needed.

And the redskin potatoes, which look all muddy when you buy them, then when they're washed suddenly turn into rubies, are waiting their turn at potato salad later in the week.

So, after all this excitement, afternoon tea was fresh-baked hot biscuits (about fifteen minutes from thinking of it to eating them!) with sunflower seeds, and a nice spoonful of the apricot preserves, there's simply nothing better.  Hercule Poirot would have liked a spot of this with his breakfast croissant, not being a lover of marmalade.

There's a lovely drama about fruit that was growing on the trees this morning, picked at dawn and brought into market, then home with me and cooked, all the flavor totally still there.  Selected friends might get a bit of this, too. 

Then this afternoon torrential, tropical rainstorms, and I looked out to see an undaunted hummingbird in the rain, working over my red lantana on the fencetop.  I wanted flowers at that level when I planned the container for the flower thing, because I'd observed hummingbirds like to be about there, and they obligingly are.  

The hummer did retreat to the shelter of the pine tree outside but he has clearly spotted the red flowers and I expect he'll be back.  Much better than sugar water, since there's actual nutrition in the real flower.  I'm providing him the hummer equivalent of the farmers' market.

Soup, bread, and botanical history

Any break in the hot weather, and I can make soup.  So this week it was asparagus, broccoli and red lentil soup, using spearmint pesto. I really recommend spearmint as a flavoring in this soup, light, springlike, and very good. But you have to use farm fresh asparagus and broccoli.  And if you have any spearmint growing, you probably have too much anyway, plenty for making pesto.

Then, to go with, hot biscuits with walnuts and golden raisins, using half and half ap and wholewheat flour. Which makes these halfwheat biscuits, I guess..sorry, couldn't resist.

Then out in the patio, history and botany continues. I noticed a lovely little three petaled flower, blue, growing happily uninvited among the ground cover, and added it in to a pot on the fence, then noticed that the uninvited plant in there was the same thing. And  it was growing out of the drainage holes of the pot as well as upward.  

Turns out it's spiderwort, tradescantia virginiana, which pleased me no end.  For one thing, it spurred me on to find that this is a relative of the other tradescantia, the stripy one I grow as a houseplant, equally vigorous grower.  And the wild one is native to here, must have come with my long ago seeding of wildflowers.

The name is in honor of John Tradescant and his son of the same name, English botanists and plantsmen of the sixteenth century, who went through all sorts of hair raising adventures in search of plants to bring back from all over the world to English gardens. Including trips to the then English colony in Virginia.  Nowadays we look a bit more sceptically on moving plants out of their native habitats, but the Tradescants are still worth reading up, if botanical history appeals to you.

I'm a purist on moving plants, having turned down offers of cuttings from other states so that we don't inadvertently bring in more trouble than they're worth.  Also I like growing the native plants where I can, much less tiring to go with nature than against her. 

I noticed in the farmer's market recently, gooseberries on sale, and wondered how come, since it's illegal to plant gooseberries in NJ.  I had gooseberry bushes in the old house, but they had been there for decades, probably grandfathered in before the legislation.

The reason is that the white pine, a very tall, straight, tree, useful for all kinds of things, is a major product of the state. Yes, I know people only think of oil cracking plants near the airport, but this is the Garden State.  Anyway, gooseberry is a carrier of the white pine blister rust, a deadly disease, so they have to protect the white pine by banning the gooseberry.

If you've ever picked gooseberries, you have experienced the dagger like thorns protecting the fruit, which run right up under your nail as you pick, ow.  Birds probably have even worse trouble, their eyes being in direct contact, so gooseberries are typically left alone, in my experience.

Back to the garden, I don't like shopping for plants, though I have to buy herb plants, but the ornamentals I'd rather go from local cuttings and divisions and my own seeds.  I do have neighbors who only want the fullgrown plants, in flower.  For them it's more like home decor, for me it's more like what I think of as gardening, I guess. Such as the neighbor who got pachysandra, groundcover, from me, and complained after a week that it hadn't spread to cover the area yet, I must have given her bad plants!!

At a meeting last night of the artists' collective, I was reminded again that in art, too, there are shoppers and makers. People who buy materials and frames all the time, and people who try to make their own tools and materials.  Different strokes.

Early Sunday Morning

After a night of heavy rain, this morning was all diamond studded, and full of rainbows as the sun came up.