Nice Night on the Farm

Friends, a few interesting bugs for the boys to look at, lots and lots of greens to harvest...and two mason jars of sangria.  Life was good last night.

Onions

My first experiment with onions.  I think I'll do it again - easy, inexpensive, and somehow very satisfying.  There must be some part of the human soul that gets deep pleasure and reassurance from these staple crops.  There is nothing else to explain my delight in a handful of onions and a few heads of garlic pulled from my garden this week.

They were tasty, the onions sauteed and then caramelized with balsamic vinegar, and the garlic thrown into a warm broccoli salad with feta.  Yes, maybe it was the balsamic vinegar and the feta that made those meals delicious - or maybe it was the taste of human satisfaction.

A Hot Harvest

It is hot.  Too hot for June.  Despite the heat, spent a couple of hours eating, drinking, harvesting, and washing produce with friends at the Cedar Ridge farm.  I hope some folks who don't usually get fresh greens eat well tonight.

 

Eating Currants

Maybe a wee bit tart?

Small Fruits

The berries are in.  Yesterday we picked the first blueberries, and the first currant.  Noah ate three of the four blueberries, and I had to restrain him from picking off the green ones and gobbling those, too.  I saved the currant for myself - it was sweet and tart and broke open under my teeth with a little pop. 

Strawberries are wonderful this year - about a quart a day, now.  Yesterday I made strawberry ice cream for a Memorial Day get together yesterday, and another guest brought serviceberries he had gleaned, and they were wonderful together.

Left Behind

Ancestoral Gardening

My greatgrandmother's primroses.  They grew in the garden in Little Compton, Rhode Island, where she lived with my grandparents for a while.  I called her Wrinkly Granny, and she taught me how to wiggle my ears.  She is still one of the most fabulous women I've ever known.  And here she is, bright yellow, growing in my garden.  They came to me via my dad and mom's garden, where they treasured them in the same way I do now.

The primroses are the only really antique plants I have - but I have plants from my parent's garden in Kingston - day lillies and peonies and perennial sweet peas.  There are other plants that are from the people I love in spirit only: hellebore, lillies of the valley, lilac.

I wondered recently why the hydrangeas out front seemed special to me, when they are really very common plants.  And I remembered a huge, wonderful hydrangea in my parent's back yard, and how when my grandmother lay dying I cut a huge bouquet of them for her room, and how glad I was to have those flowers so near to her at her passing.

I can't imagine a garden without memory.  It would be a sterile thing.