My poor little Panache fig tree... It's now survived a whole year with me, during which time it has dried out too much and lost all its leaves twice, dropped them for the winter once - causing me to think I had killed it dead, and put out new shoots several times.
Frankly, at this point I am thrilled that I haven't killed it. The fact that there is one, lonely, adorable figlet on it is just icing on the cake. As my niece Sophia says, it can be friends with the six blueberries I got this year.
Oh dear, fallen behind in my posting again! I started this next series of posts two weeks ago, and between the construction and Grandma Kitty's 100th birthday, I did not get back to them. Looking at our slate of projects for the next six months, I expect this will be par for the course.
I took this weekend (mostly) off from work around the house, and actually just spent a couple of hours on a quilting project. That's been quite a rarity this year!
Anyhow, here are the belated garden posts, just in time for me to need to do a new round of them!
Don gave me some garlic last Christmas, which I planted in the early spring and have been harvesting. We've already used most of what's already out of the ground, but there are a few more to pull and I've also reserved some for planting in the fall.
They're beauties; Don tells me the variety is "German Hardneck."
And here are the flowers on my Kabocha squash. At least one of them is now well on its way to mature squashood.
And last, my first Marconi Red roasting pepper. It was a gorgeous deep red this week, and we just ate it last night. There are more coming, but much smaller. I'm not sure why this one matured so early.
This is my total haul of jam from June & July's canning frenzy. Nearly nine dozen jars in all!
That was an intense couple of weeks, while the apricot crop came in. I got a lot of plums and peaches from a friend's tree at about the same time. I had about a week straight where all I was doing, besides working and sleeping, was washing, and sorting fruit, cooking down puree (so it would hold a little longer) and then making batch after batch of jam.
The main goal was to lay in a large store of apricot butter: Dan's favorite, and our house specialty. I put up a LOT of this, mostly in full pint jars. We know we'll go through it quickly enough, so the big jars are OK.
This - the apricot/blackberry - seems to be the favorite among the people who have sampled the jams. I love that, since it seems so particular to our neighborhood: the apricots from our yard, the blackberries from our neighbor across the sheet.
After a few batches of the butter and the apricot/blackberry, I was feeling confident enough to improvise some new flavors: Ginger Peach, Plum/Cardamom, and Plum/Cardamom/Ginger Some new flavors I tried out this year. They were all pretty successful, but the ginger peach is my favorite.
I also made a large batch of the Brandied Apricot Preserves I made last year. It would be good on almost anything, but it's a pretty much perfect crepe filling right out of the jar. Dan's been having fun making crepes as dessert for our family and friends lately. We have a good division of labor in our kitchen. :)
We first had these cherries from the market last year, and were despondent when we went back for more the next week and they were gone. We vowed to buy all we could get our hands on this year, and can them so we could savor them over time.
Dan saw the farmer last week, and implored him to bring his cherries to market even though his harvest was very small this year. He offered to buy his whole crop, and even to go to Visalia and pick them off his trees.
Well, the farmer came through this past Saturday, and Dan came home with 15 pounds of these beauties.
After a warm afternoon of canning, I have 10 pints of these little lovelies, plus one and a half that we didn't seal. Shucks, we'll have to eat those in the next week or so.
The canned ones account for about 10 pounds. We've got another 3 pounds soaking in brandy a la Alice Waters, and the rest we ate with ice cream!
Oooh boy. I started this post two weeks ago and forgot to finish it. Now I need to get out and take some more photos since the side garden has been coming along.
Some perennials: salvia chiapensis and a couple of lavenders.
California poppies just starting to come out:
Garlic, Brussels sprouts, and lacinato kale are getting started:
And the side yard from the other side. I've got alyssum along the foot of the raised bed, to keep down the weeds and also for the lovely fragrance:
And finally, the blueberries. Two bushes were planted last year, and two more back in March. I think I will actually get a handful or two of blueberries this year, and the plants are starting to put on some good growth.
Dan's Mom had our front yard redone before we moved in. This is the third year it's been in, and it's really coming into it's own. It was designed to use mainly perennial, native or drought-tolerant plants. There are some plants and aspects of the design that don't quite work, but overall it's a nice, low-water, low-maintenance alternative to a traditional lawn.
And at this time of year, it's really pretty spectacular with everything in bloom.
This shot is taken at the foot of the driveway, looking across the main part of the yard. The shrub all the way to the right, with the white flowers is a rockrose (cistus). We have a lot of these in the front yard. They did not bloom at all last spring, but this year they have been covered with lovely white flowers. In front of the rockrose is a lavender (Goodwin Creek, I think) that we put in to replace a failing penstemon. To the left of the rockrose is a mound of Santa Barbara daisies (erigeron).
The second shot is on the other side of the driveway, looking at the narrow strip under the magnolia tree. You can see more of the rockroses and the daisies.
And this last shot is from the other corner of the front yard, looking over the main part of. Eventually, we'll probably take out the two ceanothus (in the let corner) that are too big to be at the front of the yard, and the line of scraggly jade plants right up next to the house. I'd like to add another smallish tree on this side of the yard, maybe a Western redbud or a coffeeberry, to add some balance to the overall effect. But that's a plan for this fall, I think. We'll be focusing on a new deck and the back yard this summer.
We've now actually used our front patio several times. We had electricians out a couple of weeks ago for some minor things around the house, and while they were here we had them put a power outlet on the patio. This means we can work out there with our laptops - if this windy weather ever settles down. And yes, that's about the worst thing I can say about the weather here. It's breezy sometimes. Everyone cry for me, OK? :)
I've been working on getting some potted plants out there. We've got a strawberry jar with alpine strawberries growing in it, my birthday bonsai tree (it's still alive! six months later!), some calla lilies in pretty colors, and the nice large hydrangea.
We've been looking for some nice plant stands to put in the corners, but haven't found ones that strike us yet. I'm also keeping an eye out for reasonable priced large planters so I can make a couple of container gardens out here.
Here's a closer shot of the potted flowers. I'm quite relieved that the hydrangea came back as the weather warmed up. This was the first winter we've been here, so I was not at all sure which of my dead-looking plants were just being deciduous and which ones were suffering from my well meaning but poorly informed care. Score one for the hydrangea!
The little one in front is a nice trailing salvia, which I got on a whim at Island Seed & Feed a few weeks back. I may put it into a hanging basket when it gets a little bigger.
Beans are a great confidence booster for a novice gardener. They sprout and grow quickly, providing instant gratification. The scarlet runner beans I planted are also known for their profuse and lovely red and white flowers. They covered the trellis outside the window for the better part of the summer. I've been harvesting the dry pods for a while now, and have them in a little bowl in the kitchen. The beans themselves are also beautiful, either cream- or mocha-colored and speckled with dark brown.
All in all, they seem like magic to me. And now I can see why it was a beanstalk that grew up to the sky in the fairy tale. These guys screamed up the 8' trellis and sent long shoots off the top looking for purchase on something else.
As for being full of beans, that would be Penny the cat. Our ranch-style house has one long hallway that runs from the living room on one end, clear to the other end 0f the house, then takes a turn to the last bedroom. The door to my office and the linen closet share that corner. Since we moved in, Penny has greatly enjoyed launching herself from the living room and down the hall at top speed, claws scrabbling on the wood floor, until she collides with the linen closet with a thud. At this point, she usually regains her balance, shakes herself, then oh-so-casually saunters into my office.
Well, the other day she made a discovery: if she gets enough momentum up, when she hits the linen closet door she releases the earthquake-proof latch and it swings open. Then, she can climb in and snuggle with the folded quilts in there to her heart's delight.
Apparently, 'tis the season for the flowers to start exploding. These shots are from last weekend, and there are even more things coming out since then. I can't keep up!
The lobelias are still happy in the front border. This is the second batch I planted with the multicolored assortment.
The scarlet flax is coming along, but no buds yet.
And this makes me very proud. This is one of the fernleaf lavenders I planted from seeds. That's a bud! They're not even supposed to flower in the first year.
Lastly, these California poppies are thriving on this parched strip of clay right outside the garage door.
More pics soon!
The berries are ripening:
We had the family over for a barbecue on Memorial Day, and the nieces found the ripe blackberries.We added them to the strawberries my mother in law brought for dessert. Not all of them were really sweet yet, but they were delicious nonetheless!
And the raspberries are coming along:
These were planted as bare canes about six weeks ago. I'm not really expecting any berries from them this year, but it's just possible we might get some in the fall. But, there are plenty of blackberries to keep us going for a while yet.
