Must Be Late Summer

It must be late summer and almost fall.

We are eating from the garden.

(Picture peek-a-boo p.s.: If you haven't read The Penderwicks, it's a must. So, so good. We just read it together and absolutely _loved_ it.)

The black-eyed-Susans are blooming in the backyard.

Monsoon-like weather is coming to a close with its deep indigo clouds that roll in just about every afternoon.

I went to the first football game last Saturday, and made a peach pie with fresh peaches from the orchard the night before.

School has started again, with big changes in our house. (#hardbutgood)

And...the canning has begun.

Jamming and canning, to be precise.

Two weeks ago found the girls and I in the kitchen one night.

I was washing fresh raspberries and dumping them into a container where the girls were crushing them.

Mia was busy mixing the pectin mix with the berries, filling jars, and labeling them.

Benj came up in the middle of it and exclaimed, 

"I love when there's cooking going on in the kitchen at night!"

(My sentiments exactly, actually. There's something about the quiet of night time, an open back door with fresh air (or not), background tunes or just listening to crickets, and spending time together. It takes me to some fond places in my childhood and many, many conversations in the kitchen, late at night, with my dad. It's kind of strange, really, to be the parent now, and not the child.

What happened? How did it all go so fast?)

Benj pulled out a bowl, filled it with salsa, grabbed some chips, and ate while reading Calvin & Hobbes while the girls and I worked. 

Oh, and photo bombed.

And this week? 

When Claire and I dropped off the kids at school on Monday morning, we came home and watered the pots outside and cleaned up the kitchen.

But afterward, we went out to the garden because I knew we had tons of tomatoes in that happy mess of green.

We didn't even pick the vines clean, and this is what we came away with.

Had to get those done, too.

 So yeah...the kitchen has been a hot, steamy, sticky place this week as we've bottled quarts that we'll pull out for spaghetti sauce and soups during the rest of the year. 

They're getting older, and it's fun to be side by side, doing whatever.

Like last night. 

The kitchen was warm, more quarts of tomatoes were processing, 

made dinner, made cookie dough, 

had friends stop by unexpectedly and we ended up out on the deck as it got windy and started to rain.

It. was. lovely.

We ended up piling them in our car to drive them home, listening to the Indigo Girls. 

And when we got home? Those two girls and I went for a run.

It was raining, thundering, and lightning was occasionally torching the sky.

But we ran, even Claire, with her (comparatively) shorter legs.
She kept right up.

We talked and laughed and ran as it got dark.

The best.

Tomorrow is September 1st. 

I'm going to put fall on my mantle this weekend:

owls, nuts, a little glass pumpkin from Cape Cod that was a gift from my dad, golden yellow and orange ginkgo leaves, coppers and golds and browns, a sparkly black spider and small little witch hat to offer a Halloween tease.

And?

I'm gonna make a wreath for my front door out of dried putka pods, and then I think? I'll hang it with burlap ribbon.

Welcome to my favorite time of year.

(I've already been burning a cider candle, melting apple jack wax squares to fill my kitchen with that apple cinnamon smell, and I can tell the heat is on the brink of retreat.
All good things.)

Morning Work

Yesterday morning I went outside and unwound the hose in the front to water the hydrangea, geraniums, the hanging basket and pots by the door, my daisies (remember You've Got Mail: "Don't you think daisies are the friendliest flower?"), and our bed of happy petunias. 

Then to the backyard, watering pots of geraniums, a hanging basket with purple flowers, and the herb planter with basil, rosemary, and lemon thyme. 

I went to put the sprinkler in the garden, and pretty soon all four kids were out there with me. We were talking about this and that as we pulled some weeds.

  

There were bell peppers, 

baby jalapeños (we talked about making salsa!),

spaghetti squash, 

happy onions, 

zucchini (we picked a big one!), 

rhubarb,

cucumbers (this is one that was picked last week), 

tomatoes (turn red!), 

beans and beets and carrots,

corn as tall as me, 

and bees in the squash flowers. 

Those minutes made my whole morning.

I love time with my people,

and this green space is going to give us lots of yummy food. 

Sharing a Joke

See this son of mine?

He and I shared a moment recently that I just love.

Rewind to a week and a half ago when I went to my friend's farm to shovel chicken manure into buckets. 

The flies were plentiful. 

The smell was pungent.

The horses and goats gathered round.

Alisa was kind enough to load those 4 buckets of manure into the farm truck and bring them back to my house.

So, there I was, and Isaiah came home right about this point.

He walked out to the garden with me where I grabbed a garden rake and shed my shoes.

Then I proceeded to dump the buckets across the garden. Most of it was either dry or like a dry mud consistency, but there was one wet bucket. Isaiah stood there watching me, and when I dumped that one, a big wet clump came out at the end. Splat.

It stunk.

So there we were, and I'm raking, trying to spread a few places out. I'm also noticing the flies that showed up immediately once the poop was on the dirt. 

And as I'm standing there with Isaiah watching me (and he was kind of grossed out at the smell), for some reason my dad came to mind. He was a farm boy and spent much of his childhood gathering eggs from the chickens (trying to avoid the bull snakes -- my dad hates! snakes), milking cows, tending gardens, hauling hay. All that stuff.

 (My boys planting tomatoes with my dad in his garden 8 years ago.)

Standing there, I could just imagine my dad walking in the back gate at that moment and coming over to see what was going on. I could see him standing there at the edge of the garden, taking in my bare feet, the manure, Isaiah's somewhat grossed out expression. And then I could see amusement on his face and I heard these words in my mind, in a voice that he used to use when he was being goofy:

"There's nothing quite like fresh chicken shit, Liz!"

I thought it so much that I looked over at Isaiah, referenced my dad, and then said it, exactly in that voice, commenting on how amused my dad would be.

And WE LAUGHED out loud.

I can still see Isaiah's face as it dropped in laughter.

He agreed that it was something Poppi would totally say.

(Isaiah and Poppi planting geraniums.)

Dad may as well have been standing there sharing the joke.
He is still with us, and that moment warmed my heart.

(P.S. I've gone by Elizabeth for years, and it's what I prefer. But my dad called me Liz, and this is EXACTLY how my dad would have said this and it's endearing. And makes me laugh.)

Planting

It's 4:37 on a gorgeous Thursday afternoon.

The sky is blue, and there's a soft breeze in the leaves above me. 

I'm sitting on the deck by some newly-potted geraniums listening to "Either Way," a song off Chris Stapleton's new album.

It's a doozy and I love it.

Slays me every time.

(Kind of really like "Broken Halos" too. Maybe like a lot.)

Suddenly my yard is looking full-blown summer.

My trees have leafed out and I'm running the sprinkler.

(Don't you love that familiar tick-tick-tick-tick sound as the water sprays across the yard? I do.)

Last night I was outside as it was beginning to get dark, watering my tomato and pepper plants 

and the mounds of corn I planted along the fence.

I stood on the periphery of the garden, 

soaking future rows of beets, carrots, and beans, hoping that the water will make those seeds burst underground and show their green faces up above soon.

Standing there, I remembered doing that same thing, 

years ago, at home. 

After trips to the greenhouse with my dad,

I sometimes stood on the periphery of that garden showering water--back and forth--over rows of seeds we'd put in the ground. And don't even get me started on the nostalgia I have when it comes to geraniums.

Over the last 9 days, we've been in the dirt a lot.

We've been to greenhouses picking out flowers and vegetables.

The girls and I worked to weed the garden plot and my neighbor tilled it for us.

We've filled pots with flowers and tucked plants into the soil, all the while looking forward to the color of summer and the ways she tastes when you pick and eat fresh.

These rituals bring peace to my life -- a rhythm, and quiet, and simplicity amid all the noise.

There's just something about a porch that has pots spilling with flowers and green, 

vines heavy with vegetables that become food on the table, 

and dirty fingers and a sweaty body from tending the earth.

Books and Gardening

Oh hey, blog.

I've missed you, but I've been out of steam too many nights when I've finally had time to post anything.

I'm coming back, though.

I'm marathon training right now, and when I got home on Friday night from my 17.5 mile run, my neighbor had tilled my garden for me.

Bless him.

When I woke up on Saturday morning, there was a wholelotta work waiting out there in the yard.

I went out and mowed lawns and then spent the remainder of the afternoon planting my garden.

Rain threatened some of the time, dark clouds and thunder in the distance, and I caught the occasional drop on my arm.  I ignored it and put cherry tomatoes and tomatillos in the ground anyway.

I planted Lemon Boys (don't you love the rich yellow of lemon boys?) and a Cherokee Purple (hello, purple tomato!), some Big Beef, Celebrity, and Super Fantastics.

(And let me just say...they better be Super Fantastic.)

I planted every color of bell pepper: red, gold, orange, and green.

Had to plant an Anaheim chile and a couple of hot pepper plants for salsa or burgers or quesadillas or pepper jelly or spicy ranch for salads and tacos.

I separated skinny strands of Walla Walla onions and red onions, folding the dirt over them, propping them up as best I could from both sides with my hands.

Planting a zucchini and straightneck yellow squash is tradition, and I had to add butternut squash cuz it's so yummy, a couple cantaloupes, and some jack o' lantern pumpkins.  I lined the back of the garden with sweet corn.

Somewhere around the middle of the plot, I hoed a couple rows and carefully spaced beets and beans, and let me just say this: there is something about the planting seeds bit that always seems to feel like I'm gambling.  It's as though I'm scattering them with some hope and a prayer.  It's kind of miraculous to me that they come up, every year---cuz every year I wonder if they will.

But in my mind's eye, I look forward to peeling and roasting those beets with some olive oil and sea salt and pepper, and seeing their deep purple red juice ooze beautifully onto my white dinner plate.  

(But who am I kidding...it's the taste I'm crazy about.)

And you know what, this gardening bit reminds me of this passage that the kids and I read a while back.  We recently finished reading The Lord of the Rings trilogy, something I never read as a child.  And this passage moved me enough that I wrote it down to keep for thinking about, because I love it so much.

"...it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till.  What weather they shall have is not ours to rule."

I love that, maybe because it resonates so much with the idea of living in the present of your simple life and doing what you can: for you, for those you love, and for those you're blessed to know.  The idea of focusing on tilling your own little plot of earth---and life.  

And then, as a final note, I planted some cucumbers, too.

And since we're talking about books, I have to quote another section from a new book I'm reading.  I honestly don't remember the last time I read something that made me laugh out loud as frequently as this book is.  

I'm that woman that's in a quiet house at night once the kids are asleep, tucked into the warmth of my bed, delightfully chewing pebble ice, and interrupting the silence by bursting-out-loud laughing.

It's this lovely memoir about a guy restoring his 1951 International Harvester, and he likes to garden.  Apparently there's also a love story coming, too, but I haven't gotten to that bit yet.

Anyway.

The other night I was reading about where he was ordering seeds from a seed catalog and has this dilemma about cucumbers.  

(Note: I always debate about cucumbers.)

And he started the whole cucumber commentary by saying this:

"Ain't no such thing as a cucumber.  You've got your Sweet Slice Hybrid.  Your Fanfare.  The Ashley.  The Marketmore, the Cool Breeze, the County Fair Hybrid, the Orient Express, and the Sweet Success.  The Diva. ...Over sixteen variations on a cucumber in the space of a single page."

Oh my gosh.  I totally get this.  I really do.  

(#totallyresonatedwithme)

But then, he had to throw in this humorous bit, and it cracked me right up.

"The seed catalogs promote several varieties of 'burpless' cucumbers.  I have yet to find one promoted as 'burp-ish.'  This is flatly a missed marketing opportunity.  Among my rural and roughneck acquaintances are no small number of folks who not only savor the art of eructation, they cultivate it.  There are guys on the fire department capable of melisma.  I have seen a woman throw her head back beneath the Jamboree Days beer tent and let loose a burp so resonant polka dancers were moved to applause.  I know men longing to belch a full-length version of 'Free Bird.'  Beer works, but it impairs your ability to play air guitar.  There are people out here who would go out of their way to plant row on row of Burp-Mor Hybrids, County Fair Honkers, and Belching Divas."

Wow.

What does one really say about that?

(the garden, and Claire's hair #forthewin)

Nothing.

You laugh, people, and that's all.

In any case, once I got those cucumbers in (Straight Eights, if you were wondering), I planted sweet basil and cilantro and rosemary in my herb planter on the deck.  Watered my lemon thyme that came back from last year.

And I'd be lying if told you that I haven't been admiring the hands-in-the-dirt work from the past week: 

the food that's started in the garden, along with zinnias in the flower bed, and several pots full of geraniums, spilling over with fuschia.

Ahhh summer, I can feel you coming on.