To The Surbiton Manor Born

  Every living thing is the amazing product of four billion years of slow growth and adaptation. Some would say that every living thing is precious.  I'd make an exception for invasive Asian beetle grubs. Vile, horrible, disgusting and slimy are just a few of the words I'd use to describe these hideous visitors to my yard. Almost as bad as Republicans. They love our apple trees, and have tormented them and stunted the last two seasons of growth. They skeletonized Kirstin's flowers.  They seem to thrive in another unwelcome and invasive thing that grows freely in our yard: creeping Charlie. Horrible stuff that makes the ground spongy and provides haven for the foul grubs.   Now, to clarify: We are not sticklers here at Steepmeadow. We are not striving for some "perfect lawn" full of weak non-native fescues. We won't artificially fertilize. We are loathe to water. We are going after a pollinator lawn, with healthy swaths of hearty clover, red creeping and sheep ...

 And made a very successful batch of ketchup.  Or catsup. The cats were up as I began the messiest of messy tasks, but they grew weary and abandoned me to my red nightmare. If you want to give up most of your morning while handling many containers of very threatening red stuff, make your own condiment!  I had planned to snap a photo of the process but where to even pause and do so? There was no respite once it began. So, all I have in what is left of the final result. Sorry. Terrible let down, really.  As for the artistry of the process, let my words be your eyes... Imagine- a colander heaping over with 5 pounds (about) of bright red tomatoes and three ripe plums. See the onion and garlic gently cooking in olive oil in the bottom of my bright red Dansk enameled pot? Gaze as the tomatoes get added once they have been coarsely chopped. They cook for 15 minutes until all the small cherry tomatoes have burst and the very full pot is bubbling -suddenly, in go the plums! T...

Pretty Much Every Day This Week Bumper crop this year. The rain has diminished, but still enough to avoid watering. So the plants are taking care of themselves.  The raspberry patch, even after I cut it back from the neighbor's fence, is going to be massive next year. And to think, a few short years ago it was four canes. So far, we have been able to share or consume all of the garden's output, but we are right at the edge...So many tomatoes. Though this may be short lived. The tomato plants have had a lot of rot, despite my attempts to cut them back and treat them. We've lost several of them already, and I'm not sure how long those that remain will last.  We have a massive glut of jalapeno peppers. I've been pickling the banana peppers, but the jalapenos are...well, typically recipes only call for one or two. When you take in 10 in a day, it is sort of overwhelming. We did make a delicious tomato, onion, lime & jalapeno salsa yesterday.  We've had some of t...

Harvest! Harvest time has begun in earnest. Tomatoes are finally ready. We have as many bananna peppers as we know what to do with. (There must be something besides pickling them...need to find some recipes.) We have lovely jalapeño peppers that are just the right amount of heat to eat. We have cherry tomatoes. We harvested the first zucchini. Early in the year, I worried that the winter squash I was planting were not taking off successfully. This is no longer the case. There are five of them already formed in this mass of foliage that has already brought down one of the sunflowers I'd planted with them.  The soaking that we took last month is now being replaced by some really strong heat. Today, for instance, we'll reach 90 & soupy with humidity. I do love this weather, and because it lasts such a short time I feel compelled to embrace it. This is not entirely easy to do when you have an October marathon to train for and you need to run 14 miles in it (as I did this mornin...

Just one day's haul of raspberries The garden is truly coming into its own. There's a certain point in the spring when you think, "Nah, we're never getting anything." Well, we're past that point now. Kiki made white chocolate raspberry scones with these. She also made beet-burgers (or, really, more beet sloppy Joe's): But the big news is that a major project - the stairway from the shed to the garage - is finally complete, and I can die happy.  

  We've acquired a kitten. Her name is Princess Poppyseed Watson, or Poppy for short. We finally got a break in the endless rain, and managed to put the cushions out on the deck for more than 24 hours. This allowed us to resume projects around the garden, of which there are many. As a side note, I ran across this lovely headline this morning:  17 Manure Pits In MN Overflow Due To Historic Flooding . If I may, this entire vile mess that is the result of pointless cruelty could be obviated if people would stop eating meat like barbarians. It is simply not necessary.  Now it's the taxpayers' problem, with the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency getting involved. Anyhoo. The weather has been fantastic for growing grass and clover. We've reached what looks like the end of our meager strawberry harvest. We have a whole bed devoted to them all season long, and we get three handfuls. It is starting to look like it isn't the best use of the space. Raspberries, on the other ha...

It's been a wet, cool spring, making it difficult to believe that we are already halfway through June. It is amazing how quickly things have grown. We certainly have not been burdened with the need to water. Even now, we have "heavy rain" and 67 degrees outside. We've had this a lot. Minnesota is out of draught, and still, it rains.  Tomorrow is supposed to be our first truly steamy day, with a high of 89 and FEMA telling us that there's a heat advisory. Hooray! A few strawberries have shown up. There are many, many raspberries preparing getting ready. The tomatoes, cheaters & non-cheaters, are blossoming. The Early Girls actually have little green tomatoes on them.  One thing that's not happened today is any work on the garden path up to the garage, or finishing the work on the garden paths down in the berry patch. The clock ticks the weekend away, and still no progress.  Tomorrow is another day. Work awaits!