Praying for Rain

And perhaps the prayers will be answered.  It is so parched and dry the weeds that make up our lawn are starting to die. Many plants around the yard are drooping, despite spending hours each day standing with the hose to give a hope of continued life to the many shrubs and trees we've planted over the past few years. 

The bonus to standing with the hose is a chance to take in a slow view of things. Watch birds flit about the yard.  Or clouds move across the sky casting shadows on the parched landscape. A moment to pluck and crush Japanese beetles munching away on the apple trees. Or pick blueberries while the hose rests at their feet, giving the roots a deep soak to yield plump berries. 

Happiness in Blue

I resorted to the rain bird today.  We rarely use a sprinkler, as they seem wasteful, but it's come to that, too many vast dry areas and too little time to spare.

It did rain today, but only briefly.  I went out and just stood, listening to that sound of water hitting leaves, ground, roof.  I thought "Come on, come on, keep going, PLEASE."  It has been nearly a month since we had any appreciable rain, so it's getting critical.  More is forecast for tomorrow.  Fingers crossed that we are under the 60% of sky that's predicted to give a decent shower. We'll need at least an inch to even begin to soak down into the baked and cracked soil.

Good news is that diligent watering does yield vegetables.  And the lack of rain has probably saved our tomatoes from the blight that was overtaking them earlier in the season after the one heavy rain we had back in May.

 

Happiness in Red and Yellow

 

We are also fortunate to have a well.  Here's hoping it keeps on pumping cool clear water from deep in the ground for many years to come. 

Nothing really says July quite like day lilies.  This one is a fave with its green throat in contrast against those velvety purple petals.

 

This two-toner is another beauty

I've noticed the plants with tuberous roots; day lilies, ginger lilies, peonies, are much better able to endure the lack of water.  But even they are beginning to show signs of distress.  

Come on.  Rain.

Where's Jack?

The rain just won't quit.

Another 7 tenths last night, after 7 tenths the night before, after.... I can't keep track anymore, it seems its rained almost everyday.  As a result things are growing very tall, I guess they are trying to reach for the sun?

Standing in front of the pole bean trellis

David added  3 feet to the top of this trellis and still the beans have grown another three feet beyond that, winding and wrapping around themselves in an attempt to grow higher.  They are finally setting flowers and beans, I may have to get a ladder to pick them though.  In addition to Jack in the Beanstalk references I keep hearing Aretha singing The House That Jack Built "But I ain't got Jack, and I want my Jack back".

The extension David made for the cucumber trellis was so heavy with vine and fruit that it snapped and folded over on itself.  So now picking cucumbers is more like an excavation.  But they keep putting on, with all the rain they are watery, crisp and sweet.  I am glad we will be leaving for a vacation in another 10 days and when we get back, hopefully all the cucurbits and tomatoes will be dead.

After making 4 gallons of tomato sauce, half in the freezer, half in jars and tucked safely away for winter, I am happy to see the tomatoes coming to an end.   But not quite, so last night we took advantage of the first 3 fat eggplants and the squash surplus and made a big pot of ratatouille.  So tasty.

 Vat of Rat + Today's Harvest

Back in my restaurant days we would make 5 gallon buckets of ratatouille and put it in everything from omelets to crepes or serve it as a side dish along side cold roasted lamb.  There, we actually flash fried each vegetable in oil and added it to the cooked tomato sauce.  At home, I sauté batches of each veggie in olive oil and then simmer it all together with tomatoes, onions, garlic and a healthy handful of fresh basil.  Yum.  Some of this is headed for the freezer too.

In fact, we are slated to go out and buy a new larger freezer today as our 25 year old 10 cubic foot freezer is stuffed and we need more space. It's making this groaning sound that gets me nervous, I would hate for the old thing to die right now as its filled to the brim with cherries, blueberries, tomato sauce and more.  I hate shopping but sometimes you just gotta do it.  25 years for an appliance is not bad, and I fear the new one won't last half that long.

Red Alert- Tomato Emergency!

I planted extra tomatoes this year with canning in mind.  I've always made sauce and frozen it, but last year I also canned pints and quarts and they turned out so well and didn't take up freezer space so I decided I wanted to do more canning this season.  When I made that decision I didn't know it would be the wettest summer on record.  In case you didn't know, tomatoes don't really like humidity and wet weather.  What was one of the best looking tomato patches we've had in a long time; healthy, lush plants loaded with green fruit, has been turned, in the course of three very wet weeks, into this.

This batch of Red Agate romas have lost almost all of their leaves. Not pictured are the Marianna hybrid which are doing a little better but the fruit is only beginning to ripen.  Granted, the fruit set is fantastic as you can see, but the tomatoes are starting to rot before they fully ripen due to too much moisture.  So today I picked everything that was remotely red and brought it into the kitchen. I dried off and left on the counter all that looked like they would make it a few days to get redder. Look close to see the little spots that in a few days turn into black rot.

The rest I washed and processed for sauce.  I have a method that is probably not the most efficient but I like the result so I labor away.  First I remove any spots and the cores from the tomatoes, cut in chunks and put them in a big pot with some salt and cook until soft, 20 or 30 minutes.  Then I put that mixture through the food mill to remove skins and most of the seeds.  In addition, because I like my sauce to be a bit chunky, I peel and seed some of the better looking ones and chop those up.  So the result is two batches, one of chopped and one of puree.

I heat some fruity olive oil in a large heavy bottom pot, cook chopped onions and garlic until starting to soften, then add both batches of tomatoes along with about a cup of chopped fresh basil, marjoram and oregano and a bay leaf and let the whole thing simmer for at least an hour to meld the flavors and cook away some of the water. This yields a rich, thick sauce that I can freeze in baggies for winter pizza's and pasta.

The final product, burbling away

I was at this for three hours this morning between the picking, sorting, peeling, chopping, not to mention washing the dishes that mount in a process like this, but it will be worthwhile in the end.  I hope the remaining tomatoes in the garden are going to ripen up before the plants go down completely so I can actually get some into jars as I had planned.  The weather is finally turning hot and dry this week, with 90+ degree days  forecast every day  I am not looking forward to that very much, but at least we are already half way through July.

Berries = Pie

 Bowl of blue deliciousness

The blueberries started ripening in earnest this week and then the blackberries began to follow suit. The blues have been the plumpest ever thanks to our record breaking rainfall over the past month.  Ten inches of rain fell in June and we've had another 1.5 inches just in the past 48 hours, it seems like it just won't stop.  But I'm trying not to complain given how much I've complained about drought over the past few years.

I do begin to feel like I'm living in a rainforest.

The berry patch

We have about 18 blueberry bushes of varying age and variety.  Most are rabbiteye and they begin bearing in July and continue into late August/early September.  The oldest were planted about 8 years ago, the newest last season.  The varieties include Premier, Columbus, Tifblue, Delite, Onslow, O'Neal and Powder Blue.  The older ones came from Finch Blueberry Nursery, a well known NC blueberry grower, the newer ones from Camellia Forest.

A few ripe blueberries with many more to come

And blackberries too

I'm not as happy with our blackberries, they are a thorn less variety, can't remember the name though they are all named for native tribes, I think Arapaho or maybe Navajo?  Not sure why they are named this way.

I would like to try a different variety and see if we have better luck, while these do make nice large berries, they are not as sweet as one would hope, nor as plump as other varieties I've seen.  They'll do for now.  If you have a favorite blackberry variety, please comment and tell me what it is and where you found it.

So with some berries mounting up I knew it was pie time.  I like to use my friend Karen Barkers recipe from her Sweet Stuff book. She includes orange zest and juice and a hint of cinnamon, that together with the 2 kinds of berries yields a really fragrant flavor, not too cloying, not too sweet.  I used 3 cups of blues and 1 cup of blacks (Her recipe calls for 4 cups of blues and 2 of blacks, I didn't have that many and it turned out fine, I just reduced the sugar and flower a smidgen.)

This is what I am talking about!

With ice cream for dessert last night, with cappuccino for breakfast this morning, and more to come. Not exactly slimming for my waistline but I'm getting to where I think that slimming my waistline may be a lost cause.

For a little more pie fun, check out the movie Sweet Land, a wonderful film about a mail order German bride coming to the Midwest in 1920, there is a fantastic pie scene about 45 minutes in and the whole movie is a very sweet love story worth watching.

July sullies on

The tall and diminutive day lily, last to bloom, emerging from behind some painters pallet.

Out in the garden early this morning, feet wet from the deluge of rain that came at dusk last night.  It brought 4/10ths of an inch to add to the inch that came on Tuesday night. Blessed rain. I feel so lucky when it lands at our house, it could be dry just a quarter mile away.

Baby hummers were trying to drink nectar from the red tips of new growth on a Japanese maple, they’ve got the color right, just not quite differentiating between leaves and flowers yet. Red-shouldered hawks continue to scree above the house, hunting and claiming turf, I’m sure there is some territorial and familial stuff going on between them these days, how long do the babies stay in the parents territory? Do they chase them away? How far do they go? I have no idea, but that young one has still been around our yard on a regular basis.

Only one bunny left, is it Flopsy or Mopsy? In the yard a week or so ago I came across the pom pom that was a rabbits tail, white on one side, brown on the other, nothing else, all that was left of that bunny was it’s little cotton tail….

A  view of one end of the garden, here the squash to the left, hanging in there- I haven’t spied any squash bugs or signs of borers but they seem a little anemic, this end of the garden suffers from poor soil and tree roots robbing the nutrients from the veggies I think. Sweet potato vines march towards the camera.

The beans and cukes on the trellis to the left are slowly dying from the ground up, some kind of funk -viral or soil born that’s causing the leaves to brown and fall off, but they still continue to produce. Fresh beans on the trellis to the right, just beginning to bear.  Carrots, beets and chard in between the beans need to be harvested.

The okra are finally getting their heads up above the purple hull peas in my experiment of a shared row, the peas are setting tons of pods and the okra are beginning to bear too. An infestation of aphids settled into the middle section but diligent application of soap spray seems to be slowing them down and keeping them from spreading.

July sullies on, hot and humid, at least we’ve had a spot of rain, but the prospect of 6 more weeks of days in the 90’s is a little bit depressing. Maybe we’ll get a reprieve as we did around July 4th, or perhaps a few days to escape once again to the cool of the mountains.

Ask and you shall receive?!

Yesterday I said I hoped the dry spell of writing and weather were coming to an end and at the last check of the rain gauge we had received 4 inches since yesterday afternoon and its still coming down with verve out there.  This is more rain than we've had in the past two or three months combined!  The creeks will be out of their banks for sure.  I'm very relieved, we had reached a critical point of dry in our garden here at home and all three of the community gardens were almost out of water with no source other than rainwater to rely on.  This deluge will definitely be filling up the cisterns and rainbarrels and hopefully carry all the gardens forward for a while now.

In respect to my reference yesterday to creating more time for myself, I gave my notice today at Camellia Forest.  After over 3 years of off an on work there, mainly during the busy shipping seasons of spring and fall, I made the decision it was time for me to move on and focus on other priorities, like writing and taking care of my own garden.  It's been an interesting chapter in my life, being able to walk to work through the woods, doing physical work outdoors, and learning more than I ever imagined about camellias.  I also added lots of exceptional new plants to my garden including some very special trees and shrubs.  I made some good new friends with my co-workers there and will miss seeing them on a regular basis.  I appreciated the flexibility I was given to take extended leaves to travel, but I won't miss working outside when its 95 and humid or 45 and raining!  Another work life chapter draws to a close.

On the home front I'm featuring some peonies today, I'm sure this rain will put the few remaining flowers in the mud but they are my favorite and so I have to share some pics from a bit earlier in the season.  At the top is a lovely the name of which I cannot remember.  Just above is a new addition called Moonstone. This photo does not do justice to the tranluscent quality of the outer petals upon first opening, the palest of pinks and almost transparent, like vellum.  I see where they got the name.

And last up another new variety, Raspberry Sunday. A bit gaudy and well, thats one of the reasons to grow peonies, is it not?  This one has an ethereal fragrance; a cross between rose and lemon, scrumptious.  My only regret about peonies is the shortness of their bloom season.  For about 3 weeks we crowd the house with vases of their giant fragrant pompoms, piles of silky petals fall to the tables and countertops, and we are sad when the last one nods its head for the season.  It seems the most fragrant flowers come in springtime; roses, peonies, dianthes, lilies of the valley, bearded iris.  The hedgerows have been heavy lately with the scent of honeysuckle, so seductive but sadly, so invasive.  If you can recommend any flowers with fragrance that bloom in the heat of a Carolina summer, please send your ideas my way. 

Stormy Days

Its been rainy and seriously windy for days thanks to the passing by of Hurrican Ida along our coast.  Almost all the leaves are now down, only the most stubborn of the big oaks are still holding their reddish brown leaves and the beeches, having gone from gold to a warm brown over the past week, will keep their leaves, gradually getting paler and paler over the winter, dry and rustling in the wind until the new buds push them off in spring. 

Looking out my window I can see the hillside on the other side of the wash again, the ground dappled with the brown of leaves and the green of running cedar poaking through, reaching for the sunlight that now makes it all the way to the ground, clumps of christmas fern rise like deep green fountains.  Trunks of trees now visible, the grandads standing stately.

We saw the first golden-crowned kinglets of the season today, early- outside the bedroom in the cedar snag that is a bird magnet in the mornings.  Flocks of titmice, chickadees, cardinals and chipping sparrows were today joined by the kinglets, a hermit thrush, and pine warblers.  Then outside my office window as I was writing a bit later, the Golden-crowned with their black, white and yellow racing striped heads, were again flitting rapidly from branch to branch or hovering as they snapped up tiny bugs from between the leaves.

Tomorrow promises warm and sun, I'm ready.

Rain Glorious Rain

Bean Blossom

It rained all night last night, starting in the evening and just kept on. When I went to bed it lulled me into slumber and each time I woke or stirred in the night I smiled to hear it was still coming down, slow and gentle but steady.

I went out still in my jammies this morning first thing to check the rain gauge, nine tenths of an inch- a life saver, the most we've seen in a month. Hoping for a bit more before its all over.

Blessed Rain

We woke today to rain! I lay in the bed with a smile on my face, just listening to the wonderful sound of it. We are 8 inches behind and so any precip is desperately needed and appreciated.

It was dry during the day but it's been raining again this evening and looks like we are in for several days in a row. Perhaps the drought is breaking. Amen.

You probably have these spectacular writing spiders in your gardens too, they seem to get enormous at this time of year. If we've got one, we've got 30. There are other colorful arachnids about these days too but they are harder to get a photo of. Walking in the woods right now requires a good broad spider stick waved in front of me to keep my hair and face from filling with webs!

Hydration

I've been trying to go for a walk/run a few mornings a week. I run till I can't any more, then walk to catch my breath, then run some more. Despite the darkening sky I decided to head out this morning anyway. I like to get my exercise early in the day, less chance to procrastinate and completely blow it off. I can hear the jolly little old man that used to swim laps next to me in the early morning at the Y saying, when you get your exercise done "Your halo is tight."

We've had 3 weeks of dry and each spend at least an hour a day standing behind the hose to keep the veggies alive and producing, not to mention watering the recently planted shrubs and trees. I was feeling kind of parched myself. I've always been critical of people who ran in the rain- cold rain in particular, or in the blazing heat of the afternoon- just considered them crazy.

But this morning, it started to come down almost the minute I left out and I ran in it till my clothes were completely soaked, the water running down my face and legs, my hair dripping into my face, it felt fabulous, I was being moisturized, revitalized, just like the dry parched earth that the rain was soaking into, and puddling up on. I found myself splashing through rivulets that ran down the road. Not until the second big peel of thunder did I deem it time to head home, so I didn't go as far as usual, but it sure was great to get refreshed and rehydrated.

It's still coming down out there.

More Squirrel Antics

So I'm standing there making coffee yesterday morning, feeling a little bleary-eyed and see something orange go flying up the side of a tree and wonder if I'm imagining things when I realize, it's a squirrel.

This is not a great photo but if you look close you can see the little guy above the big orange towel on the side of the tree. Yes, this is a full size bath towel that was left out to dry, fortunately, one classified for outdoor use at this point, that the squirrel spotted and must have thought "Wow, all the chicks will be comin' over to my crib when I get it all pimped out with this plush orange lining."

It got hung up and he abandoned it in the branch. This morning I noticed he had managed to move it another 12 feet or so towards his nest, but now that it's raining and the towel is soaking wet I'm betting it won't move any more until it dries out a bit- I was surprised he was able to carry it as far as he did.

Oh the continuing saga/joy of living with squirrels. Last week it was the lawnmower, David filled it with gas only to discover the squirrels had chewed a hole in the gas line and gas was leaking all over the ground. He managed to make a repair but not after a few choice words directed towards our furry pests.

Today I am enjoying a lovely rainy day and looking forward to one more weekend to be inside before getting pulled outside to endless chores which I think should start about wednesday when the weather clears and warms again. I want to put in another planting of lettuce, a few greens, more beets and carrots, the ones I planted in February didn't come up- too cold I guess, so I'll try again. And of course its time to weed and mulch, always time to weed and mulch.

When it rains it pours

I’ve been busy and I haven’t had time to blog! I started working part-time with two different community gardening projects in town and its been really fun but has me running around a bit more than I had become accustomed to over the past 8 months. Along with trying to get the gardens going and my writing group starting back up I’ve been rippin’ and runnin’ as they say.

We got 5 inches of rain this week in two separate storms. Three and a half inches on March 4th, and another inch and a half on March 7th. Real gully washers as my Papa woulda said. Check out these before and after pictures of the creek in December and then this week. It’s amazing- we couldn’t remember how long it had been since we had rain like that- maybe more than a year.

Looking up stream from the same spot

Dec 20th and March 4th

Looking downstream

The pond filled up and its creek was raging.

Our little creek was out of its banks
And the dry wash was even running steady on Friday afternoon.
We need way more rain barrels than the two trash cans and 15 five gallon buckets that currently are brimming with rain water, another project for another week I guess.

I got the rest of my spring seeds in the ground last weekend, more lettuce, spinach, radishes and carrots, beets, broccoli raab, turnips, tatsoi, and cabbages- which I thought were broccoli when I bought them but realized as I was planting them they were not, oops, I guess I’ll have to go get some broccoli plants. I still haven’t gotten the potatoes planted but hope to this week- getting some new ground ready for them.

I started the tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in their flats yesterday and they are now sitting on the heating pad to encourage them to sprout. I did 9 kinds of tomatoes and 6 kinds of peppers! As usual- over the top, but I love variety.

We are going to paint the house- another one of those got to do one thing before you can finish another- we are planning a big cedar arbor for the West side of the house to grow roses and clematis on, but need to paint the house first and that rose is about to spring to life any day- so this week we’ll be behind the rollers and brushes- getting the West side done at least.

One more funny picture from the rain- our neighbors kids beach balls got caught by the high winds, blew into the creek and floated down into our yard. So colorful and surprising to see amidst all the brown and rushing water after taking some pictures we returned them home.