Summer in my yard

Today I want to keep it light. This world seems to be going to hell in a handbasket, so let's take a break and talk about wonderful food, gardens and sweet animals instead, yes?

I am going to tell y'all that even my mad love for gardening has been tested the past two weeks. It "feels like" 107 degrees in DC right now, and really, that is just not right. Yesterday I ventured out to trim, went nuts with my lopping shears until the sweat ran rivers into my eyes. Burning eyeballs urged me inside; I left a huge mound of yard waste strewn in my wake.

This morning, I soldiered out to clean everything up and then had to come in and shower in freezing water to restore my sanity. I like to be hot, but this is too much. No deodorant is any match for this. I'm wearing as little as possible, and I haven't a clue about the next time my hair won't be tied back in a ponytail.

That said, I love my yard. Love that loving it yields flowers and food and so much promise. The birds and squirrels have realized that I refill their feeders at the regular, and the wide variety of feathered and furry beings that come visit on a daily basis makes me very happy.

One little squirrel appears to have a cataract. We have come to a truce, that pip squeak and I. I don't shoo him away anymore, and he doesn't run when I walk outside. He's cute, and the squirrels really are incredibly creative, successful problem solvers. They're pigs but they work for the food they get.

A gorgeous pattypan squash!

The birds range from the tiniest finch to the reddest cardinal, from the cocky blue jays to the dopey-looking doves. They are all beautiful, and each has a different personality. The finches share nicely, some of the larger birds flap their wings dramatically to scare others into fleeing. I always marvel at the color of the female cardinal's beak. If she has to be brown, at least she gets that fiery orange bill.

somewhat blurry because i had to be stealth, but you can a squirrel, cardinal and a finch. That bowl is full of water- do you think anything will jump in or drink from it?

Never before have we had enough sun to really grow tomatoes. Tom has long half-joked that my efforts to grow them in pots our deck made the few I got worth roughly $12 each. Not so, now! We're rolling in i pomodori, and I feel gleeful.

Whole bunch o' toms; cold tomato soup (bottom left); caprese salad (bottom right)

Despite the heat, it is prime canning season, so I'm forging ahead a few days each week to turn summer fruit stars into jars of brightly-hued jam. Strawberries, meet cardamom. Shiro plums, meet basil. Rhubarb, meet bing cherries and hibiscus flowers. Peaches, meet lots of things.

Shiro plums, basil and sugar

The finished product.

No matter how sweaty I get, I'm never sorry I put up jars upon jars of summer's best. Before I know it, Jack will have started 5th grade and Oliver 2nd, the weather will become chilly, and fresh plums and tomatoes will be distant memories. Except on my pantry shelves where the ones I snatched fresh are frozen in time.

Death by fruit

"Honey, what the...? How much fruit is this?"

"Uh, about 60 pounds," I replied, sheepishly happy.

****

In no real way have I "taken it easy" this week. That was my personal dictate, and I have failed. That said, I've had a ball. 

Said ball culminated with a spontaneous pilgrimage to Larriland Farm yesterday. It's a fantastic, sprawling, organic/IPM (integrated pest management) farm in Woodbine, MD, which is about an hour from NW DC. 

Each day, Larriland posts what you can pick that day, and yesterday's options just got me too excited to stay home: Shiro plums, peaches, blackberries...

Unlike my maiden voyage last year (which resulted in A Case for Thorns, a post that was so popular I felt like a real blogger!) for which I planned not at all and thus ended up out at Larriland with dirty teeth, a desperate need for the bathroom and gas, and no food, I this year took the time to ready myself: water, snacks, full gas tank, walked and fed pets.

First to the peach fields for a quick-and-easy 22 pounds. The birds chirped, the bugs buzzed, and I had visions of peach jam, peach pie and brandied peaches floating through my head. Cute kids wove through and around the grove, blissed out as I was. Except for that crying baby. Grr, crying baby. I jest. A bit.

People- seriously(!) on the iPhone camera. Impressive. #nofilter

"Girl, you are rocking this trip!" I told myself as I paid for the peaches and headed to the plum orchard.

Peaches! #nofilter

Once amidst the plum trees, I felt a sting of disappointment: where are they? But then I remembered that not looking up and under is a rookie mistake, and so I did. Shiros everywhere! 

That yellow-flesh varietal is one of my favorite for jam-making. So, as you probably suspect, I picked and picked and picked and then threw in some little purple ones too: Methleys (not my favorite) or Rosas? Not sure but lovely.

Plums! #nofilter

Back to the cashier. New box. On to blackberries and to beat my sixteen-pound pick of last year. Why beat 16 pounds? Well, because Jack's very favorite jam is blackberry and what I made from the non-eaten berries from 2014 didn't last us past this January. This year? 21 pounds.

Blackberries or caviar? #nofilter

I fully intended to go home after blackberries, but the cashier said that raspberry picking was actually pretty good and since I was all the way out in Woodbine, I decided to forge ahead because y'all, I am not lying, little is more magnificent than homemade raspberry jam.

Quick handful of almonds, bunch of water, burst of AC and to the raspberry patch. At this point, many hours in, I was really starting to tire. It was hot, not a cloud in the sky. Gorgeous day but now 1:45, I thought, "Girl, almonds aren't lunch but raspberry jam." Easy calculus and so I fetched another box.

Raspberry plants are thorny, dense and underwhelming from an aesthetic perspective. But the "up and under" mantra will repay you in spades, so I jumped right in. Bees and other beneficial bugs were everywhere but I just said, "Thanks, bugs" and we respected each other's personal space. 

That's the great thing about being in nature when no one has tried to kill anything. You see what a beautiful balance is struck when Earth is left to her own devices. You realize that we needn't fear buzzing, flying, leggy things. Spending time outside is one of the greatest educations, in my opinion; one of the greatest ways to inspire a deep wonder and appreciation for our world. Get out there, get dirty, pay close attention, sweat, give thanks.

Lucky me, both red and black raspberries were there for the taking, and take I did. Just about four pounds but enough for 6 pints of jam or so. (I know because I made some at 9pm last night out of wild-eyed fear that my beautiful, delicate bounty would go bad). 

****

Once home, I quickly moved everything inside, ran to pick the boys up from camp, told them they could be as lazy as they wanted to until bedtime, let them eat as many blackberries as they wanted and got to work making jam and a pie and dinner for everyone.

grilled peaches with mint, olive oil, grilled bread and either homemade ricotta (left) or mozzarella (right)

After dinner and the raspberry jam, I said, "T, put a fork in me. I'm done!" and went to bed.

Plum-Cherry jam, ick

Friends, I'm having a discomfiting sense of déjà vu. Perhaps you recall the two weeks I spent with pneumonia last summer? I did about 84 thousand-piece puzzles, lost several pounds as I could only tolerate chicken soup and smoothies and recovered just in time for BlogHer. I was told that my posts during that time bordered on hysterical (funny not insane), so if you want to revisit and laugh, click here for the onset plus the time Jack cut his hair by himself in the dark and looked like a serial killer, here when I joke about not really turning a corner, here when I talk about just how seriously I was nerding out with puzzles and here when peevishness tips me into no-nonsense'ness.  In any case, I don't feel so hot right now and being that it's around the same time, I'm having flashbacks and the odd urge to get out that card table and start one of those puzzles anew. At least I already went to BlogHer so I don't have to recover rapidly. Oh wait, I do. Cuz I have children.

I blame this on Oliver because last night I was up late rocking and snuggling him because his tummy hurt and it had two nights before that too, but I thought he was angling for a "Tum" then. Last night he really did seem a bit droopy, so we sang and I showered him with kisses and he attempted to cup my boobs and I had to slap his little paws away, and now I'm achy and my throat is just not right.

I have zero patience for being sick although the damn puzzle is sounding more and more appealing.

The whole plum photo session this morning made me want to make jam while those pups were perfectly pre- to just-right-ripe, so I did. Having just made a large batch of my plum-basil jam, I went in a different direction today and created a new recipe: Plum-Cherry with both brown and regular sugars. Now, lest you think I was just on a magical tear of creativity, no. I ran out of regular sugar after three cups so could either put on a bra and go out to the store OR find a work-around. There was absolutely no chance of the former, so the latter won in uncontested fashion.

I gotta say, you win some, and here I surely did. 8 cups chopped Shiro plums, 2 cups pitted and quartered bing cherries, 3 cups unrefined sugar, 1 packed cup brown sugar. That's it. Fab!