Leek Forest

Shopping for veggies today, I came across the leeks. They were skinny and they were marked $2.99. That reminded me that it is probably time to harvest my leeks.

If I put my camera lens right down by the leek patch, the thick sturdy stalks look like some kind of jungle forest. At one time there were 18 leek plants. If they are all still there, that would be $53.82 worth of gentle, onion-y goodness.

Me thinks it is time to look up a potato and leek soup recipe!

Best Greens This Summer

What a delight it has been to walk out into the garden and pick greens this summer. My absolute favorite is this Little Gem Cos romaine that I grew from seed purchased from Jung's in Wisconsin. The heads are small, about enough for a main meal salad for one person or a side salad for two.

Dressing clings to the ruflles of the leaves. The stalks are tender and tasty. The color ranges from deep green to almost white. The plant forms a fairly tight head. I find that if I pick this lettuce carefully, I can rinse and spin it and it is ready for eating.

The seeds are tiny so I sow them carefully. Little Gem Cos grows best when it is thinned out so there is room for the small heads to develop. I have transplanted this lettuce successfully and will be planting another bed of it for fall right after Labor Day.

I wash and spin greens when I bring them in from the garden. Then I store the fresh greens in a zip top bag with a half sheet of paper towel. The towel absorbs water droplets, but keeps the humidity in the bag. Greens stored this way will often last up to a week.

I'm really going to miss this lettuce when the killing frost comes. Little Cos Gem has been the best greens of this summer.

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Maple Mustard Vinagrette, a good dressing for fresh greens.

First 2014 Pickles

Mmmm. The first pickles emerged from their water bath today with nary a problem. That sweet pinging sound of jar lids sealing sang a late summer melody as the hot jars cool on a folded checked tablecloth on the kitchen counter.

This batch is bread and butter pickles, made with a sweet white vinegar brine that is seasoned with mustard seeds, whole cloves, and a touch of turmeric. The cucumbers, raised from seed in my garden, were picked late this morning, soaked in salted ice water all afternoon, and pickled by 6 pm. The plants, a variety called Marketmore, have been bearing fruit for almost two weeks and there are still more cukes to pick. 

There is something so eminently satisfying with growing and preserving one's own food. While I don't do the volume of canning that I once did, these jars of bread and butter pickles have made my day and will be a reminder of summer in the dead of winter. 

Wonderful Daylilies

Surely I have bored most of you to tears, dear readers, with my loving praise of the daylily. Here is yet another blog post that extols my admiration for these summer flowers as pictured in this vase of blooms that are illuminated by the morning sun.

Some years ago, six or eight, I'm not sure, Ed and I drove over to Stone Cottage Gardens near Gladwin, Michigan to see their daylily fields. We made the trip in mid August, toward the time of our wedding anniversary, and gifted ourselves with a trunkful of daylily clumps.

That trunk of flowers has turned into loads of lilies which start blooming at the end of June and bloom almost until Labor Day, thanks to the descriptive plant lists that Stone Cottage Gardens keeps on their daylily offerings.

We were able to identify early, mid, and late bloomers, as well as plants that die back completely, versus plants that stay semi evergreen. Some of our lilies are spider types with slender, reaching petals. Some are tough and tall tetraploid lilies. There are two clumps that are a pale cream tint. And then there are the big Ruby Throat lilies that tower over the children who visit our gardens.

I probably should blame all of this daylily nonsense on Matt Esch of Esch Landscaping. During the fall of 2005 when we were choosing plants for the beds around our Cedar Bluff lake house, I asked for traditional plants. "None of this new fancy-schmancy stuff," I told Matt as I passed over hydrangeas and butterfly bushes in favor of roses and daylilies.

So Matt's crews planted the big clumps of orange lilies on the south side of the garage that fall and the rest is history.

Truly wonderful, the daylilies are something I enjoy day after day, all summer long.

Porch Pot

My favorite porch pot this summer is a trio of a new pink geranium, some ivy, and a strawberry. The strawberry, plucked from the wild ones that grow in the woods, sends out interesting runners. 

The ivy is from last year. I brought it in for the winter and it just keeps growing. My mom loved pink, so pink geraniums make me think of her. And the green pot, well it was a Mother's Day gift from my daughter and her family. 

Tomato Stages

While pruning the completely overgrown cherry tomatoes, this vine came to my attention. In one fell swoop it illustrates stages of fruit set on this particular tomato varietal.

From the seven pointed blossom, to the withered petals, to the fruit appearing, this vine shows all the stages except for the ripened fruit, which, by the way, I am still waiting for.

Every year I experiment a little differently with tomatoes. This year's big guys are getting pruned so that the sun can reach some of these blossoms. So far, no tomatoes, but it is the first week of August, and I did set these plants during the first week of June.

Sewing Machine Still Life and Something Horsey

The iron base for a Singer sewing machine, topped by weathered boards, makes an interesting centerpiece in this garden still life. Photographed in an outdoor courtyard at the DeGrazia Gallery in the Sun on Swan Road in Tucson, the old Singer ironwork brings a rusty brown accent to the charm of the gravel paths, cactus collections, and antique accents in this dappled by shade, yet sunny courtyard space.

The garden contained many found objects -- old band instruments, cooking pots, machine gears, kitchen tools -- that survive in the desert climate. Many of these items, especially those made of wood and metal, would deteriorate fast in the wet, cold climate of northern gardens.

Speaking of found objects, this decorative screen that hangs from the eave of a small building on the DeGrazia Gallery grounds is made from metal chain mesh and has horseshoes woven through the links.

Kind of a cross between a wind object and lattice, it is a very artsy object and might be an inspiration for some of my horse loving blog readers who are also gardeners.

Still Squashing

Even though the snow and winds have come to The Thumb of Michigan, and even though my garden supplied me with over 60 pounds of butternut squash this fall, and even though I have made squash soup and pumpkin pie and chocolate pumpkin cheesecake, I'm still squashing!

Jack's Fruit Market in Bay City had a wonderfully varied selection of winter squashes last week. I bought this very, very orange squash and roasted it this weekend. I scooped out the seeds, drained them in a colander, and am drying them for next summer's garden. I roasted the squash, inside facing down, on a sheet of parchment paper in a medium oven, 350 degrees.

The flesh of this squash, a deep red orange, was firm and evenly colored when baked. The texture, after fork mashing, was more like an Idaho baking potato. The squash was so sweet that I added a bit of butter and sprinkled maple sugar as a garnish. Half of the squash was more than Ed and I could eat as a side dish with salad and homemade pizza.

The seeds, once they are dry, will be transferred to a glass jar and stored out in the garage where it is dry and cool. I label each jar with the date of collection and take photos of the squash from whence cometh the seeds. We are only a week and a half away from Solstice Day and then it will be time to start planning next summer's garden. The photos will come in handy for remembering which seeds go with which squash.

Root veggies are amazing. Without refrigeration, with proper care, they provide a good meal months after harvest. That's pretty cool, botanically and nutritionally. This year, I'm still squashing.

Compost Color

 

Colorful pumpkins, their autumn orange starting to go dull, ended up on the compost pile this week. Nights of deep freeze caused their flesh to wrinkle and their sidewalls to collapse. 

The compost pile tells the story of good eating. Wrinkled peppers from the garden, grapefruit skins, orange rinds, onion peels -- all join the discards where time and rot and degradation, energized by bacteria and moisture and heat, will create a rich new start for next year's garden. 

Some days, when I walk out to discard the peels and parings from a meal, I will find things scattered and I will know that another creature is benefiting from pile. A deer might sniff and nibble on an orange rind. A raccoon carries an eggshell onto the pathway. 

Most days though, what I see is the subtle change as the color and form of what once was food slowly becomes soil. 

It's quite the miracle, this progression of organisms and molecules and cellular structure into nutrients. From the orange of autumn to the green of spring, the compost pile does its biological job. 

Drippy Halloween

The rain gauge was at eight tenths when I went for a short, wet walk on Halloween afternoon. Rain just kept coming, not hard and not a lot at once, but it rained all day.

I pulled the summer begonias and coleus plants out of the beds at the driveway turn earlier this week and planted some of the kale from the garden. This kale plant, nibbled down by the deer, just might stand a chance out in front of the house where the deer are less likely to graze.

Then again, maybe the deer will like the big pumpkins, once they begin to soften. It has been a beautiful autumn with warm weather and lovely colors. One cannot complain about the rain, right?

Lakeside Microclimate

My lakeside garden benefits from its location along the Lake Huron shoreline. Even though today is October 15th, this area has yet to have a killing frost. The lowest morning temperature that I've recorded this fall is 38 degreees. I've been pulling out squash vines and tomato plants as part of the fall cleanup in the garden.

In the lower left of this photo you can see how vibrant the basil is yet. It's finally mature enough to flower. Even though I planted it late, we've enjoyed fresh basil in salads and with marinaras for over a month. The lower, bluish green plants are kale. Cabbage worms got to the kale about a month ago. Now I'm noticing that the deer are nibbling on it. Nonetheless, I like it in a frittata or shredded as an addition to salad. I might transplant a chunk of this row to a spot right outside the kitchen. A little snow will not bother kale and it would be nice to have fresh greens in early winter.

My morning glory tower was nibbled on by the deer. And they chomped on some beet greens too. they know enough to stay away from the eggplants which have a prickly thorn covering on the green cap. These two are almost ready to harvest. I'm finding that adding a half cup of diced eggplant to spaghetti or soup is a great way to introduce this vegetable into my cooking.

The deer really know better than to bother the marigolds which have a pungent odor and can make your eyes water if you accidentally brush your eye after touching marigolds. I love their punchy orange and yellows. Senator Everett Dirksen, Republican from Illinois, worked for many years to make the marigold our national flower. Dirkesen said, "I still find myself wedded to the marigold -- robust, rugged, bright, stately, single colored and multicolored, somehow able to resist the onslaught of insects. It takes in its stride extreme changes in temperature, and fights back the scorching sun in summer and the chill of early spring evenings."

The good senator from Illinois would approve of my patch of marigolds that brightens my garden along Lake Huron's shore this fall.

Ginkgo Grove

Ed and I have developed a fondness for ginkgo trees after seeing them on the site of the atomic bomb blast in Hiroshima in September 2008 while visiting Japan. With their fan shaped leaves and golden yellow fall color, the ginkgo trees have worked their way into our hearts.

So Ed had several trees planted at the farm and then at the lake. This image, taken last week, is of the ginkgo grove (well, three trees could constitute a grove) at the lake. Goldenrod in full bloom accents the lower right corner of the photo while dappled morning light highlights the green grass. And yes, that is a dead ash tree in the left background. Like many Michigan property owners, we will have lots of ash trees to remove as the emerald ash borer has taken a toll on the ash population.

We have been watering these trees all summer using the Treegator bags that our son-in-law recommended to us. "Just don't let your lawnmower and a Treegator meet," John told us as we realized that it would be easy to clip the vinyl bag of the Treegator with the blades of the mower. We've been careful haven't lost a gator to the mower (yet).

The Treegators hold about twenty gallons of water, have trickle drip holes around the bottom, and zip in place around each tree. It take about five minutes to fill one from the watering hose. We've given these trees water at least once a week this summer in the weeks when there has not been a heavy rain.

The second photo show three Treegators zipped together and standing around the lilac bush that the Wheelers gave us in memory of my Dad. I knew that the gators would press in on the lilac if I filled each bag to the top, so I only filled each one about a quarter of the way full.

The lilac and the ginkgoes occupy the Woodland Garden, a garden that is starting to take shape as a partly wild, partly cultivated spot on our lake property.

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Morning Glory Memories

Grandma Rose Luedtke raised morning glories. Trained up the east side of the chicken house on twine ladders, the morning glories were a mass of blue wonder. Their color and profusion of vines and blossoms are engraved on my brain from childhood summers of wandering about the farm with Grandpa Bill and Grandma Rose.

I planted two packages of morning glories this year, one of them a package of Heavenly Blue Morning Glories. Every seed must have germinated because the four bamboo hoops that the seeds were planted around have disappeared into a tumble of vines and blossoms.

The glory of the morning. That's what this flower is named for. With a five pointed star in every blossom and leaves shaped like hearts, this is a plant that stirs my memory.

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Artwork: Floating Squash

Long squash vines were creeping through the lawn, making it tough to mow close to the garden, and there were big blobs of butternut peeking out from the tall grass.

So Ed and I took our handy dandy pruners and chopped off the errant vines. First we picked up the squashes that were on the lawn and moved them, vines attached, back to the garden plot. Of course, some of the larger fruits were close to harvest and detached themselves from the vines which had developed roots and tendrils and really wanted to stay in place.

I brought a squash in and plopped it on the dining room table. It seemed like a good idea to sketch it. That worked out fairly well. But when I moved to the next step, a pen and ink watercolor sketch, well. . .

due to a lapse in my artistic composition (the leaf should probably touch the squash, or I could add a connecting stem) the squash looks like it is floating.

Moral of the story -- try again. Then eat the squash.

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Garden Girls

Big sis and little sis found the zinnias. "Grandma, can we pick flowers?"

"Yep, go ahead," was the reply.

The row of zinnias, late bloomers in my garden, will thrive more for having had their red, pink, and orange button tops snapped off by my two little garden girls.

Just for the record, that's basil and kale and zucchini on the left. The mound of foliage in the right background is a morning glory "pile" and in the right foreground are butternut squash leaves.

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Garden Starts to Produce

My hailed-upon-on-August-First garden is starting to produce good stuff. For almost a week I have had to collect rotten, pock-marked tomatoes and other produce and transfer it all to a compost pile.

Today, though, there is some real produce to pick. The larger tomatoes and the undamaged cherry tomatoes are ripening.

The green bean plants were beat into the ground by the hail, their stems smashed and leaves shredded. The plants survived and I picked a few beans today. The beets were set back since their tops were shredded, too. They have bounced back and tonight I cooked four luscious red beets.

I made myself a two egg omelet tonight. Sauteed an onion, added green beans, diced into half inch chunks. Pulled the veggies aside and poured in the eggs, already fragrant with slivered basil. I let that cook a few minutes, lifting the sides and letting the runny egg move to the bottom of the pan.

Then I dropped thinly sliced kale leaves over the top, added some cheese, two kinds, provolone and romano, and covered the pan for a few minutes. I folded the omelet in half as I slid it onto a plate, sprinkled sea salt ovr the top, and enjoyed a garden supper.

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The Dippe harvest basket in the photo is made in Germany and available here in the US from Landreth Seed in Pennsylvania. This wire basket is stunning with squashes in it, as a table centerpiece, and works well for picnics as well as gardening. 

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler

An August Prayer

Garden update: The hailstorm that took out my tomatoes on the first day of August was not so successful as it first seemed. The tomatoes are starting to ripen and it will soon be time to take a basket out to the garden because there will be so many orangey-red fruits to pick.

The red beets, shredded the night of the hail, now have leaves that are standing tall and the globes beneath the ground should be full of that earthy burgundy taste of roasted beets. There will be a few cucumbers, and the eggplants, poor eggplants, will blossom, but maybe not set fruit.

All in all, in spite of the hailstorm, it is time for an August prayer of thanks for the good food that comes in the last full month of summer.

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler

Collateral Damage, Vegetable Style

One very large hailstone found the only cucumber in my entire garden and hit it with the force of a meteorite. That hailstone, part of Thursday night's storm, had to know that the cuke was an only child and malevolently, like a drone hit, destroyed the essence of the veggie.

The dill took a good whack, too. And this tomato joined the ranks of damaged goods when all the water (2.7 inches since Wednesday) swelled its little acid cells until the skin burst.

My, my, such drama in the garden.

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler

August Hailstorm

A summer hailstorm struck at Cedar Bluff this evening. It started out as a sudden shower with those big drops that splat one by one. I had just finished mowing the lawn, poured a glass of wine, and was sitting on the lakeside of the house, watching the clouds form over Lake Huron.

The hail started soon after I moved into the house. First there was a little and the stones were small, maybe a quarter inch. I could hear them hit the windows and the roof. Then the hail started in earnest.

Big chunks of hail fell with heavy rain. The hail continued for 5-7 minutes. I scurried around the house, closing windows, wiping windowsills. It sounded like stones hitting the house. I stayed away from the windows, just in case one would break from the force of the hail and wind.

The storm had not been forecast on the Intellicast or Weather Channel apps that I watch. Here's a photo of the storm, out over Lake Huron, at 7:30 pm. My photos of the storm were taken around 6:51 pm. It's that dark red spot that carries the intensity of the storm and, believe me, I will respect these maps whenever I see them from now on.

The red beets in the garden really took a beating. They survived a battering by a windstorm about three weeks ago. I'm hoping that the plants will pop back from this bruising.

The butternut squash plants might not make it. The leaves are shredded and the blossoms appear to be broken. The plants had begun to set fruit, so there could be some baby squash that were protected that might make it.

This is a tougher image to see. These are dry beans in a field on Premier Road, about two miles in from the shoreline. The hail stripped leaves from the plants which should be just about ready to blossom by this time of the summer.

Hail is created when moisture rises and falls and rises again. That pattern, repeated over and over, is shown in this large hailstone with its fossil-like ice ring pattern.

My miniature roses got hit pretty bad. But plants are tough cookies, especially roses. Maybe the hail will have given them the pruning that I should have done as a gardener.

I have one last thought. I don't have to depend on my garden for food. I can go to the grocery store and farmer's markets. But just think what it was like during the Dust Bowl days or back when gardens were the main source of summer food. Or even now, for families that need the food that only a summer garden can produce.

A hailstorm like the one that just hit this side of The Thumb would be major disaster for many. In a few minutes, so many things can be destroyed. It's a humbling thought.

Copyright 2013
Wanda Hayes Eichler

If I Were A Daylily

If I were a daylily, I'd be this one. My blossoms would be the color of summer sunsets gone by, ridged by the genetics of my past, and ruffled a bit on the edges.

My life would be lifted to the blue water skies of my lakeside clump. I would tell the buds yet to come about a day's sunshine and fresh air. I'd brag about the yellow moonlight and the fawns and raccoons that nuzzled my fragrant blooms in their nighttime wanderings.

Kissed by the winds of the Great Lakes and nourished by the rich soil of midwestern farmlands, I would signal the botanical wonder of a creation that is as varied as the heavenly stars and as sturdy as the geology that formed the lakes.

If I were a daylily, I'd be this one.

Copyright 2013

Wanda Hayes Eichler