Progeny

Remember this pumpkin we adopted from the Louisburg Cider Mill last fall?




Well, it lived with us inside the house until well after Christmas.  At last it began softening, and we had to escort it to our open-air compost pile in which the pumpkin dissolved like all biodegradable matter should.

Months passed.

Later this spring, a bush of some sort appeared in the compost heap, and I took a picture of it with my camera phone.  I asked my gardener friends what the heck this could be.

"Pumpkin vines, maybe," one of them suggested.  And, behold, a duh moment thundered over yours truly.  I had completely forgotten about the pumpkin we'd left there.

Now, I've never grown pumpkins before because, honestly, I'm not a pumpkin fan.  Not to eat, not to carve.  The pumpkin these vines descended from was just the second one I've taken home during my adulthood.  I didn't do anything with it or to it but set it in my living room as fall decoration, au naturale.

Even so, I was ever so excited when the volunteer vines began blooming.







Since I took these photos, about three weeks ago, we've had a hail storm.  The leaves on the pumpkin vines survived intact, more or less, but the vines themselves have spread out more.  I don't know if this is just the nature of pumpkin vines or if the storm forced the sprawl.  In either case, we're keeping our eyes on them.  No tiny pumpkins have appeared yet, but I'll post the news here if they do.

It's all in the smartitude

Almost three weeks ago, my Smart Car wouldn't start while sitting in the grocery store parking lot.  Packed with groceries.  At night.

After a cab ride home for me--groceries in the trunk--and a tow home for the car,  we discovered an unheavenly truth.  The local Mercedes dealership doesn't work on Smarts. (Mercedes makes Smart Cars.)  Never mind that someone at that dealership told me otherwise when we were thinking about buying the car (from an unrelated car lot, so the misinformation is totally not their fault) way back in January.  

I'm telling you, there was much sighing and rolling of eyes around here.  And phone calls.

Two days later, Triple-A towed the car 200 miles from home to an official Smart Center repair shop.  Thank God for them and for our inherent nervousness which had prompted us to buy the extended warranty for the car.  Both resources paid the majority of the bills.  

The repair itself took less than a day, but we had to wait another week and a half before we could fetch the car.  By that time, I was in the mood for an old fashioned road trip.  I was determined to redeem all our frustration into something fun.

So, on our way home from the repair shop, we visited the Louisburg Cider Mill during their Ciderfest.

I didn't take lots of pictures, but here is how the cider apples are given a bath...

before they take a little ride up a conveyer…

into the cider press house.

As you can see, quite a crowd attended the Ciderfest.  Here in Kansas, we had a long, miserable, record-breaking summer, so folks are ready for fall.  

On the other side of a long walk across a field of parked cars, however, the pumpkin patch lay wide open.

Off in the distance the maples are turning red…finally!  

We passed up several handsome pumpkins…

To adopt this pretty boy.

He's sporting a new shawl I whipped up for my local yarn shop.  I love the shawl's name: Arachnophilia. It's a name apropos for the first cooler-weather holiday, no?

The shawl, a pattern by Jennifer Dassau, is based on the same stitch I used for edging my Occasus square shawl.  Details about my version of Arachnophilia are on its Ravelry project page, but the short of it is it's an easy, fun shawl.

Finally, the best treat we ate at the Ciderfest was a batch of little cider donuts.  The mill's donuts are fried, but I baked a batch of my own using a mini donut tray and this recipe.  They turned out well, I think, though they don't melt in one's mouth like a fried donut.  

If I wanted to add calories, I'd soak them in melted butter and sprinkle sugar over them.  I'm naughty for eating donuts, but I'm not that naughty.  So instead, I soak them in milk.  For the discovery of cider donuts, I'm not so cranky anymore about my car wigging out three weeks ago.  I forgive it.

Watermelon gazpacho and a staggering harvest

The prospect of eating watermelon was enough to make me squeal when I was a wee young thing. I chewed my way through slices like a silk worm with mulberry leaves. At some point, though, and I don't remember when, I grew out of eating the sticky, awkward fruit. I guess my vanity has taken a few weird turns into my adulthood: I don't like to show my neck; I won't wear hats; and I don't eat watermelon.

Until now.

That is, the watermelon part.  I still don't do the other two.



I've tried a few cold soups lately. Strawberry: a yummy, sweet soup. Peach: more sweetness. Yesterday I tasted a zucchini lemon blend which was not sweet though quite buttery. Hands down, however, this Watermelon Gazpacho is the best savory cold soup evah.

Our version is based on the recipe out of Taste of Home's Simple & Delicious magazine, the July/August 2009 issue. We omitted the jalapeno pepper; the ginger adds enough heat for me.  Also, we substituted parsley for the cilantro because I'm not on Team Cilantro.


Watermelon Gazpacho

4 cups cubed watermelon, seeded, divided
2 tablespoons lime juice
1 tablespoon grated lime peel
1 teaspoon minced fresh ginger root
1 teaspoon salt
2 medium tomatoes, chopped
1 small cucumber, chopped
1 small green pepper, chopped
1/4 cup minced fresh parsley
1 green onion, chopped

Puree 3 cups watermelon in a blender or food processor. Cut remaining watermelon in 1/2-inch pieces; set aside.

In a large bowl, combine the watermelon puree, lime juice, lime peel, ginger and salt. Stir in the tomato, cucumber, green pepper, parsley, onions, and cubed watermelon. Chill until serving. Yield: 4 servings


And now to reveal our staggering tomato harvest so far this season.



Yep. And here is what it looks like to the right of a supermarket tomato.



Thank you, month of 100+ - degree days of drought. The home-grown tomato, a Silvery Fir Tree heirloom variety, really is supposed to be that small. Just not so...singular. We can count on two hands how many cherry-sized Golden Nugget tomatoes we're waiting to ripen.

And waiting. And waiting. Like the world is doing for me to pull my hair into a ponytail.

An hour in early spring

A little over a week ago, THOMY and I took lunch al fresco and wandered a bit through the city garden. It was our anniversary.



I had to use the telephoto lens to snap this shot. The buds are huge, but I couldn't find the plaque under the tree to discover their proper name. Anyone have a guess?





They're growing feathers next to the peony bushes now, I gather. Who knew they were a companion crop?

And, close up…





The brook was an inviting feature that day. Proof:



And now we're just waiting for the roses to wake up.

Lastfruits 2010

Last weekend, just a few days before the temperatures fell to freezing overnight, we cleaned out our garden. As I'd mentioned in a previous post, we planted our tomatoes late this year. Coupled with the scorching heat that roared from April to September, our late vines didn't produce much until after August. That meant I gathered a LOT of green tomatoes before we tore out the plants.

I set the tomatoes in brown paper bags and included a small bunch of green bananas. All of the large tomatoes are now ripe as well as several of the small ones.  The photo above is a sampling of them.



The dark red ones with green tops are Black Seaman Tomatoes, a Russian heirloom variety. They grow well in containers but the vines do need some taming so they don't sprawl all over the ground.

The green tops never turn red but they're quite edible. They're yummy! Buy some seed. Plant them. They're dark and look almost rotten on the inside, but oh, no. Delicious.

Walters' Pumpkin Patch

We did our part for agritourism this fall. Instead of going on a vacation this year, THOMY and I threw ourselves into the mercy of a corn maze and wandered among the exotic varieties of pumpkins just north of El Dorado, KS.

Yeah, that's right, El Dorado. City of Gold. Black gold, in this case, and Friday we could smell the black gold from the refinery all during the drive through town. But I digress. Here are a few of the best photos from our foray.

It was a big deal

We got our tomato plants in the ground late this year. So while the blossoms have been plentiful, the weather got too hot for them to fruit out, for the most part. Our cream sausage tomato plant has produced one (1) tomato…



…with blossom end rot. (sigh)

I salvaged most of the good stuff. With a circumference no bigger than a quarter and length not beyond my stubby index finger, that tomato yielded tiny slices. But they were a big deal. And sooo good.

Not obsessed enough

To some, even to me, this truth about myself might be hard to believe. I can sit on my tuchus for hours in front of a computer screen, behind a pair of knitting needles or a book. Sleeping. (Sleeping takes dedication, ladies and gentlemen. I have to woo it with thunderstorms and sundry white noise recordings before it gives me the time of day. Early morning time of day, that is, when the sun is still high over Saudi Arabia and the edge of its light is barely farther away from Kansas than the width of South America.)

Another truth about me, however, makes my most recent failure plausible. I'm forgetful. I forgot, on some day early in March, to snap a photo for my Project 365 obsession. I forgot to do it the next day, too. Then, I think, I remembered. I forget what I took a picture of now, and I forgot to take another one the next day. I forgot again for, like, a week.

I was knitting this instead:



A drop-stitch scarf for a friend who now gets to use the "C" card, as she puts it, for when she wants to be ornery and a lady of leisure and not do something she can perfectly well get off her duff to do. (That's her plan, folks, so please don't write me letters.)

I've said all this to say I probably won't have any other blog posts dedicated to a week's worth of photos. Instead, they'll be solitary, random shots like this one of our Flowering Quince bush:



I had to use a tripod to get a steady shot of that sucker. And then I forgot I had on the super-saturation color mode. Or whatever that mode is called. I forget now.

My, how her garden grows

It's been awhile since I posted, and the garden has been busy.



The plants outgrew their milk jugs, thankfully. Stuffed into the planting box we have miniature bell peppers...



...some are turning yellow.



Yellow is the theme for the garden this year, I guess, because we chose to grow Golden Nugget cherry tomatoes and lemon basil. The lemon basil is trying to flower in the left of the photo below (and it's not yellow, it's just REAL lemony).



And this is what all the waiting is for:



More orange than golden, don't you think?

There's a larger tomato variety growing in the box, too...Stiletz is the name, I believe. They are still green, and there are a modest amount, of which I'll take snaps later (I know, I know, you're palpitating with anticipation!). A fungus of some sort attacked our larger tomato plants, and their production is much slimmer. Overall, though, it's not so bad for a first time garden.

First teenie tomatoes EVER

Not just this season, but the first I've grown in my whole adult life.



Juliet Hybrid cherry tomatoes. We didn't start this plant by seed; it was a freebie from a local nursery. It was a lot shorter then.

Do birds like cherry tomatoes? I'm praying not.

Garden Progress

What's that in the table planter?



A healthy crop of milk jugs.

Or



A tomato plant in each one. The milk jug trick may be common knowledge among gardeners, but I learned it from my mom...ages ago, long before I ever cared about sweating over plants in June humidity. She cut the bottoms out of gallon jugs and used them as mini greenhouses while the tomato plants were still small.

I transferred these plants just today, and there's the prediction of a storm tonight, so hopefully these will get a good drink without being battered.

I haven't lost any of my plants yet.

Yet.