Summer is winding down

Despite the cool weather this summer, it's been a pretty great year for the garden--loads of tomatoes, beans, cukes, nasturtiums, chard, swiftly growing basil, zucchini, squash, and plenty of fresh herbs.  And beyond the weather, it was nice to have the time to really tend to the garden.  I stuff an awful lot of food growth in to a teeny tiny space and so weeding and trimming and staking regularly makes a huge difference in yield and overall garden prettiness.

Spending time gardening is curative and restive--both things that, frankly, I needed quite a bit of.  It makes a small sustainable peace within me. The joy of stewarding the land (even such a small plot). The connection to my family and my family's history of gardening and farming. The pleasure of--for a few short months--eating food that tastes deeply like food and that I know is chemical free and sustainably grown. The pride that comes from feeding that food to my friends and family. Gardening can truly fix what ails you.

There was a moment while picking beans in July and throwing them into my rubber trug, that they made this sound--a little hollow thump and roll--that I suddenly remembered so clearly hearing as a child when helping out on the farm. It was a moment that made me nostalgic and glad. It's a pleasing sound and I felt lucky in that moment to have heard it and remembered for a moment weeding and picking in the garden in the bottomlands with Mom and Dad and Rich and Grandma and Grandpa Stewart.

And so, a wonderful summer, and somehow it's already coming to a close. This may be the best summer I have ever had. I suspect that Dan might say the same. But the hyacinth beans are blooming and the cicada are grinding long and loud during our front porch Scrabble games and butternut squash are beginning to show up at the farmer's market--all sure signs that things are winding down.

 

In honor of the close of summer coming, I thought I would borrow from Pip from Meet Me at Mike's, a fun way to take stock of what is happening right at this very moment. . .
Making : Animal head pillows, hoping they turn out.
Cooking : Just found a recipe for California Roll Nachos.  Yes, please.
Drinking : Iced Tea, by day.  Gin and Tonics by night.
Reading: I don't think I want to admit to what I am currently reading, but David Mitchell's new book is on its way to the house.
Wanting: More core strength.  My new thing is not worry about thinner, only stronger.
Looking: at all my favorite blogs as I do every weekend.  a great mix of design and farming/cooking sites. One of my faves is Whole Larder Love--farming, hunting, gathering in the Down Under.
Playing: Scrabble with Dan, but also trying to learn ukulele
Deciding: What to do with my life.  How at 40 can I not know what I want to be when I grow up?
Wishing: I could have all the dogs
Enjoying: Dan's and LP's company.
Waiting: For a match with a birth mother.  I am ever so ready to mother somebody.
Liking: Lots of cool kid's stuff on pinterest. While we wait, I am planning.
Wondering: where I will be this time next year
Loving: Dan, LP, everyone, life, being creative, reading, being settled and centered
Pondering: How to make a cloth totem pole and beautiful tailored wool clothes for dolls
Considering: inviting people over while Dan is out of town--pretty late notice, though.
Watching: whatever I want. Dan goes to Hopscotch later this week.
Hoping: that I will continue to be happy and well
Marvelling: At what a difference a year makes.
Needing: Cool weather again so that I can start cooking fall food.
Smelling: So sad. . . I don't really have a sense of smell
Wearing: A new Boden tunic--far too often
Following: Steve Mulcahy on facebook. He cracks me up.
Noticing: the signs of the impending end of summer.
Knowing: that soon turning forty-one-derful will be lovely
Thinking: about what big project to knit next.  Need a trip project.
Admiring: This Naterade cartoon. being good too each other is sooooo important.
Sorting: through critters for posting on etsy.
Buying: A small boost to my fall wardrobe from Boden.
Getting: ready for our fall vacation to the Outer Banks.
Bookmarking: Library books.  having a library card and using it has been amazing.
Disliking: Ebola. . . there should be a much harsher word for this, but is this freaking anyone else out?
Opening: An Amazon box soon filled with books for our late September vacation
Giggling: at old Frank Sidebottom videos.  So joyful and weird.
Feeling: Lucky
Snacking: On cherry tomatoes. They're coming out our eyeballs.
Coveting: Moleskin Livescribe Notebooks, check it.
Wishing: That I get to go to MFK for my birthday dinner.
Helping: Hopefully, my friend Piper with her new teeny boy when her man returns to work
Hearing: Dan practicing in the basement.

You should try this.  It's fun.  Thanks, Pip!

LP in late day sun

I was playing with sir fluffy pants late in the day, sun slanting low over the garage. I was being blinded as I was throwing him the toy, and while usually not great light to photograph directly into, I snapped blind shots of LP running around anyway.

I got a lot of bit of nose and toy, washed out back paws leaping out the frame, black and white blur against larger blurs.  But then I got this picture:

 LP and I have become close friends this summer, maybe closer than we have been for the eleven years we've known each other.  He's with me pretty much all the time and it's hard not to drop everything and cuddle, scratch, or wrestle with him. Dogs are pretty much the best thing in the world--along with husbands and gardens and family and friends and good food--and LP is easily in the top 2%.

I also got this picture, which I had to share.  It's just his butt, but the way the sun is lighting it up. . . it hardly looks real.  Am I wrong?

Seriously. It's lit like an aerial shot of the Swiss Alps.

Thanks, July

The summer seems to be rushing past and I wish that would stop.  But July has nevertheless been great.

Dan's been singing at Open Mic Nights at Fitzgerald's every Tuesday night.

We had our traditional July 4th backyard barbecue with Jess and Jett and a lovely addition of Tim and Lexi. The fireworks in our neighborhood are always crazy.  No reason to go anywhere to see fireworks, because our neighbors have all bought professional grade rockets.

We're officially online at the agency for birth moms to read our profile and consider us as possible parents for their babies AND we're officially certified by the State of Illinois to be a foster care family.

We've hung out with friends and each other and played Scrabble on the front porch and eaten good food and went to a Chirp Radio First Time and celebrated a few birthdays.

I saw this crazy enormous cicada on our fence post.  Before I used a flash on it, I thought it was a frog.

Dan and I saw Ted Leo and Aimee Mann perform at Millennium Park--which also means riding the train holding hands and lazing in the grass together and watching the sun set behind the Michigan Avenue skyline.

And the garden is doing really well.  I've canned 13 jars of dilly beans (beans and dill heads both from the back yard).  Tomatoes are beginning to ripen and we've been eating them with lunch and dinner. The squash plants haven't gotten quite as big I was hoping by this point, but I have been working hard on them--fertilizing and now spraying them with an anti-powdery mildew organic concoction--which feels good and satisfying.

I'm most excited about this teeny tiny watermelon.  When it's a bit bigger it will get a tiny sling to sit in and support it while it grows.

Life is slow and lovely. I'm working, but also living and taking big, deep, long, satisfying breaths and I feel lucky lucky lucky.

August

It's getting to be that time of the summer, when I start wishing summer could stretch on forever and ever and ever.  By the end of August, I'm usually dreaming of wool sweaters and crisp cool walks with Dan and the pooch.  But right now, cicadas revving up at sunset every night, lightning bugs winking off and on across the lawn, the distant hoot of children playing the last round of tag before their moms call them in. . . it can feel like the most perfect time of the year.

Apple Sauce

For the first time ever, the farmer's market had sour apples. Not sour apples like they have on the farm at home. . . But pretty sour.

Which means I had to buy them and make homemade apple sauce.

Apple sauce is crazy easy to make, and there are few things finer than thawing out frozen freshmade apple sauce mid-winter to eat with pork or as a side for a winter sandwich and salad.  (Please Note:  However, I think you have no business making it unless you have a food mill.  Food mills create the perfect silky apple sauce and nothing else will do).


Ingredients:
Apples (at least 4 lbs.)
Water
Lemon peel
Lemon juice
Brown sugar
Cinnamon

Core and cut apples into fourths.

Put in pot with enough water to cover half of the pile of apples. Boil/steam with the lid on the pot for 20 minutes.

 

Place food mill over second empty pot. Once apples are soft, using a slotted spoon, transfer small batches of cooked apples into food mill.

 

Once all apples have been run through food mill, mix in juice of one lemon, 1 heaping tsp cinnamon, and 1/4 cup brown sugar per 4 lbs apples. Taste and then add lemon juice or sugar to suit your personal taste.

Eat right away or freeze. Frozen, it will last throughout the winter.

How my Garden Grows

So, remember this back in early May?

 

My totally ugly backyard garden that Dan converted into the lovely ready-for-planting wonderland pictured below?

Well, now it looks like this--beans up, zucchini and squash growing like gangbusters, tomatoes all either flowering or already sporting green tomatoes.  Totally amazing.

Gardening and then getting to eat what you've grown during the summer?  It's one of the best things in the whole world.

And look. . .

Baby baby baby squash.  I can't wait until he grows just a little bit more. .  . so I can EAT HIM!

The Summer Just Evaporated

The year flew by, and most of it was terrible. I like trying to find the silver lining, but it was really hard this year.

But I just found these photos on a camera that I had for forgotten I had taken. . . and it makes things look pretty good. . .

. . .

All new houses built within the last decade on the Outer Banks look like this:


And because hurricanes tend to blow in every few years and destroy older homes, more and more houses on the Outer Banks look like this--though often built in spearmint green, pink, pineapple, as if the OBX is a slightly more northerly outpost of Miami beach.

Most houses on the OBX when I was a kid looked really differently than this. The grand homes had high sloped dark green roof lines and were covered in dark grey weathered shingles with white trim around windows and doors. Usually they had wrap-around deeply shaded porches and every window was covered by a green shutter--propped open on a green stick when weather was fair. The lesser homes, were lowslung modern concrete block houses with profiles so short that the dunes protected them from the worst winds of incoming storms. All houses built to be cool before air conditioning took off. Houses built to blend into a island of sand and sea oats. Houses built by people who knew, unless the weather was bad, you wouldn't be spending much time in them anyway, and so, built sturdy modest getaways for families to nestle into for a stolen week or two each summer.

A few still exist, but they're a dying breed. . .

There was sun. I swear.