Still More Weird Hot Weather (Sigh); Volunteer Sunflowers and Mystery Plant Invade The Garlic Patch

Fall keeps teasing us -- or is it Summer? -- as we move from temperatures in the 40's overnight and daytime highs in the mid-60's only, to the 90's this week. Again. We even had .12 inches of cool rain two weeks ago; not much, but it seemed like a start on the winter season around here. Today we are looking at humidity right around 15%.

Fires everywhere today, but not right here in Pasadena, at least not right now. This morning the Sylmar area was hit by fires, and we watched the wind gusting as the Mayor of Los Angeles spoke on TV.

When we went to the http://www.wunderground.com/ weather map, you could see sustained winds at 25 MPH with temps in the mid-60s at the top of Kagel canyon, with lower wind speed but temps around 80-85 three or four miles out into the valley. We hear on the news about the dry desert air bunching up then expanding as it comes over the mountains, and the expansion resulting in warmer air (as in Santa Ana winds) but have never seen it so graphically on the weather map.

Tomorrow the Inaugural Pasadena Marathon is being run, and we will

pretty much have front row seats -- three times. The course loops around the city, first passing

one block to the west, going three or four miles up hill, coming by the same spot, then passing one block to our south. We will probably go down for at least a little bit and have a look-see. Since most of the roads will be closed encircling our house, we are trying to get our basic errands done today.

Can't wait to see how that goes, too, with 90F weather and two fires. [Update: 6:30 PM Mild smoke here, coming at as from three directions, but mostly moving away from Pasadena. ]

This morning we biked en famille (less one child, who is off at his mother's) to a backyard craft sale being held at the home of a colleague. Saw at least one other teacher from our school there, and one of our staff members with some excellent pottery on offer. Found some lovely local-made items for small Christmas items. Usually these sorts of things are pretty dreary, but the quality of the homemade items was high, and the company convivial. Even in the 90 degree heat it was a pleasant ride along tree-lined streets.

Garden Goings-On

Garlic is sprouting but not yet above ground. Quite a few volunteer sunflowers have come up in the eastern planter box; the watering and warm weather have them all confused. We will probably transplant them out, might even grow them in planters in my classroom. Soon as we get the first serious chill they would be done, but I want them out before they have a chance to damage the garlic crop.

Similarly, over in the south-40 [inches] that we planted in garlic some small volunteer has come up in profusion. Can't tell just yet what they are going to be. The seed-leaves could be anything from a failed salad green planting last spring to latent volunteer broccoli. Or maybe just weeds. We will watch them for a while, and if they look like something edible, will transplant them. If not, they will be simple enough (albeit annoying) to pluck out of the way of the nascent garlic.

Sometimes, like the original accidental cider, the volunteers make the best crops.

More Weird Weather; Garlic In the Ground, Waiting for Early Spring Garlic Greens (Yum!)

The weather under the Moontree has been crazy for a month: High 40's overnight one week, high 90's all day the next; 12% humidity many days.

Today, high temp 63.9 F, rain and drizzle overnight, with 80% humidity at the moment. Still, we are late enough into our traditional fall heatwave that the worst should be about over.

Garlic in the Mail, and in the Ground

In years past we have had great good luck and terrible luck with garlic. Our first crop was planted from store garlic gone sprouty, apparently planted at just the right time of year. The greens were great chopped in salad and for cooking (a very mild garlic flavored green, mmmm mmm). And the fresh, undried garlic bulbs were extraordinarily mild and flavorful too.

Spring planted garlic was a failure, bolting before producing any useful bulbs.

This year, I ordered up a pound of seed garlic from Filaree Farms, an organic seed garlic producer in central Washington. Since they have dozens of varieties I asked for a starter pack suitable for our area consisting of one hardneck variety and one softneck.

Hardneck varieties have stiffer, woody stems and cannot be braided into those beautiful garlic braids. Softnecks have floppy green stems, and dry into something like rafia -- ideal for braiding.

The starter pack came with about 40 "seeds" (garlic cloves) for a creole softneck variety called Cuban Purple and a silverskin hardneck variety called "Silver White."

Half of each crop went into rows in the south forty (forty inch wide raised bed near the south facing wall of our house, that is) and half into the similar sized planter box with a little bench built in over by the fig.

(That seat-planter was so rich and full of too-hot compost it killed most things we planted for the first six months, although the mini-pumpkins did well. Currently, the box is so rich with earthworms, it is almost as dense as our purpose built worm-bin! Since this suggests to me that the dirt is less hot now, we will give it a try. )

Eating Garlic, Saving Seeds; Trying Not to Eat the Seeds!

A few of the smallest cloves went into the horse-trough planter, near the basil. They were planted tighter than they should have been, as I plan to eat the greens and the early garlic before the bulbs have a chance to grow over-large. (I wonder if hardneck greens are edible? Hmmm. Well only one way to find out!) And this way, maybe we will have enough left in the two main plantings to eat and save seed for next year's crop.

And I can always order more from Filaree next year.

Speaking of eating the seed, I couldn't resist tasting both varieties of the seed stock. I took one or two of the smallest cloves (smaller cloves = smaller plants, so I felt less bad about the whole thing) and warmed them up in a little butter. Delicious, and each really different. Can't hardly wait for spring. (Grin.)

For now, the weather is supposed to stay cool for a while. Here's hoping that winter is here to stay. Cool weather is better for the garlic. Now I wonder where I put my broccoli seeds . . .

Accidental Hard Cider, On Purpose

Last weekend we pressed cider, put 10 gallons down for fermentation, and have been drinking or have given away another six gallons of sweet mill cider.

Two years ago when we pressed we had a happy accident; three gallons got left in a carboy on the back porch on Sunday night, by Monday night the heat of the day had started the natural yeast fermenting and blown the stopper off, further exposing it to our local wild yeast.

Not knowing what else to do we let it work.

It sat on the back porch for a week, blowing its cork daily for awhile until I jammed a fermentation lock into it. Still we didn’t have time to get it into the house and settled, and since it had sat for several days in 90 F weather, with at least an hour or two of late afternoon direct sun, we figured it was pretty much ruined.

So we let it work.

By the next Saturday, we had a three-gallon carboy full of pretty clear cider with an inch of sediment working vigorously. Although we considered dumping it, it seemed to be doing fine, so we brought into the house, topped up the lock, and let it work.

We fussed and fiddled with the remaining 10 gallons we put down, adding honey and other exotic ingredients. Five gallons were undrinkable for nearly a year; the remaining five proved explosive (popping pint beer bottles from time to time in the basement) and not very good.

The little jug of forgotten cider, however, sat on its lees for several weeks (or was it months?), as we just let it work.

When it finally slowed up, and we racked it and bottled it, it had the best unmatured flavor of the bunch. And in fact as it matured it developed into a delicious, clear, sparkling, strongly apple-tasting cider with no hint of the usual yeast overtones that take months to die in the bottle.

That year, the day we pressed had been an unusually cool weekend. We had a fire in the fire pit, and the wood smoke wafted over us as the family washed and sorted apples and watched as the cider poured from the bottom of the press. Then, on the Monday after pressing, with our little lost three-gallon carboy sitting outside, unseasonable 90F + weather struck.

We had already resolved to try to recreate our happy accident, so it was lovely and fitting when, the Sunday of our big pressing. we had an overnight low of 45 F (!) and the Monday after it dawned 90F plus!

I left the cider in the heat again, although I did pop an air lock on sooner this time to avoid getting vinegar and general contamination (hoping that our wild yeast either came on the apples or lived on the press or settled during pressing).

Yesterday, I brought both bottles into the house after a week of sunshine-semi-pasturization. This morning, they are both working well, and clearing, indoors. Cross your fingers!

If all goes well we will be bottling 10 gallons on our semi-traditional Christmas Eve (or at least Winter Break) with good drinkable cider by February and great cider by March.

Or not. The brewing gods are like that; stay tuned!

The Mild Summer is Ending, Let the Preserving Begin!

Found an old horseshoe in the garage while cleaning some things out. Don't know where it came from, no one here has horses. And although the house is 104 years old this year, the garage dates from the 1940s.

For no good reason I put it up over the side door to the garage. Kinda jaunty if I do say so myself.

Fruit Fest, Part I

Things are coming ripe around here, and this year I vowed not to let the overabundance of fruit go to waste. So we have been doing lots of preserving, of various sorts.

Apples

We get three distinct crops of apples around here, depending on the variety.

Grannysmith's come ripe first, and get eaten out of hand first, as we have been watching the darn apples ripen all year. The Grannysmiths are done by the end of August.

They are great dried, and using our little core-it-slice-it-peel-it machine (hand cranked, of course) the apples come out in perfect little disks. (They actually come out in a spiral, but through the miracle of geometry the spiral becomes a stack of rings with a single downward stroke of a knife.)

We also eat and dry slightly under-ripe Winesaps and golden delicious. The goldens are more tart when under-ripe, and dry better when less ripe, and are not even bad out of hand. Once they are ripe they go mealy quickly, and tend to go browner when dried, so the goldens are mostly done too. (In point of fact, I have a few on the tree and many in the eating bin, right at this moment. )

The Winesaps go from green to mixed red and green, the redder they get the sweeter they get too. Since we have been eating and drying solidly since the first week of August, they actually have stayed on tree long enough to get good and red. They are a very white-fleshed, crisp, juicy apple, close to my favorites. They usually finish in the first week of September, but since that week will be pretty busy, I think they will come in to be dried then too.

Grapes

The Seedless purple Grapes have come on in great profusion this year; the neighbor harvested those on his side (at my invitation) several weeks before ours. We have been cutting and eating or giving to friends all summer, and the grapes have gone from tangy-tart to super-sweet. As the last 20 pounds or so were starting to drop, we cleaned the vine last week. But what do you do with all those grapes?
Well, for starters, the other half made grape jam. Yes, jam, not jelly. Came out so good we bought more jars and made a second batch. If you are lucky we will share.

Then, more as an afterthought and experiment than a serious effort, I laid some grapes out to dry in the sun. After about three weeks, we have a small batch of delicious home grown raisins!

If I had put out 20 pounds of grapes to dry, it would have been a failure; but like all our best experiments, we only made one tray, and will have about two cups of raisins. Still, watch out next year.

Indeed, the neighbor likes the grapes well, and we may have to plant more vines along the same fence in the spring. Alas, they do take two or three or more seasons to start producing well, but I think it will be worth it.

Stay tuned for Part II !

Grape Jam, Homemade Raisins, Both From Backyard Grapes

(The mini pumpkins are decorative, also grown here. Anyone have a recipe for mini-pumpkin? )

Grapefruit-ade, Ver. 2.0

After a little trial and error, the Grapefruit-ade recipe needs a little revision. Instead of the 1-2-3 proportions noted, the following works better:

Roger's Grapefruit-ade (Ver. 2.0)

2 cups fresh white grapefruit juice

2/3 cup sugar (up to 3/4 cup, to taste)

4 cups water

Be sure to mix the sugar into the juice and water BEFORE adding ice to help the sugar dissolve completely.

Much better at these proportions. . . by the by, my generous colleague and not-to-near neighbor Jeremy (who provides the grapefruit) swears by the old recipe, only he replaces the last 1/2 cup of liquid with orange or lemon juice. . . haven't tried it myself yet, but sounds pretty good too.

Moontree Glows on a Soft Summer Night

Summer School ended yesterday, and only a few weeks remain of the summer; one of those weeks is given over to teacher training, but still and all this is the best part of the year.

On this, *my* first day of summer, the tall ladder is up to trim up the "moontree" -- a drooping acacia with bright yellow flowers this time of year and two-foot long rock-hard been pods that drop onto the wooden deck with a suprising "BANG,clatter clatter" later.

We call it the moontree because it holds the odd shopping-mall-sized spherical light fixture my grandfather retrieved when cleaning up after tenants renting my Great-Grandmother's house years ago.

For a couple of decades at least it hung in the ornamental pear tree outside my grandparents' kitchen and office windows in Pasadena, just at eye level. Lit inside by a single, naked 60 Watt lightbulb, it looked for all the world like a pale full-moon dragged to earth and wedged under the tree canopy. The warm, diffuse light it shed on the iron bench and damp green space below it gave the yard an aura of magic that always suprised me.

My startlement stemmed in part from the fact that my Grandfather was the sort of utilitarian and practical fellow who would (and did) take a saw to an old tiger-maple rolltop desk to remove the roll top and replace it with a sheet of painted plywood, the better to read building plans and blueprints in his trade as a building contactor.

I was at first puzzled and then amused by his frequent derisive comments about the tenants who had been crazy enough to mount it on the 10 foot cieling of their living room. He frequently called it "a piece of old junk" and his regular, nonchalant explaination for its continued presence in the tree decades after he found it was that he put it there to get it out of the way one day and forgot about it.

When Grandfather passed away (Grandmother had gone a little before) and the house was sold, dire rumblings about how to get rid of the moon fixture were heard; aghast I rescued it from oblivion, and when my wife and I moved into our house (also in Pasadena) it quickly took pride of place in our own tree.

(Turns out, by the way, the thing was hardly just "hung there," but carefuly mounted on a 3/8th inch bolt so as to withstand the strongest winds yet leave room for the tree to grow. Wonder how that happened?)

Now, our backyard -- and our tree -- abut a street with relatively heavy foot traffic (and not a few cars). And we often hear comments by people walking by, or are asked about the tree by our students at school, marveling at the "moon." We like it, and its diffuse light sets our yard aglow in the evenings without the harshness of other lights. And we have sort of adopted it as a logo for our homemade and homegrown products.

Although Grandfather Blumer had a decided utilitarian bent, and appeared not to have much in the way of poetry in his soul on first acquiantance, I often like to think of the first Moontree as "Jack's Folly" and proof that everyone can appreciate a little magic now and then.

Winter Went; Summer '08 Half-Gone: Time for a (First) Second Planting & The Yard In Review

Life gets busy.

None of the winter crops did much; the front yard vegetable strip was removed, due to its proximity to the oak tree and lack of production as a result; there was some rain this winter, but not overmuch, some cold, but not overmuch, and the summer so far has been alternatively a little hot or just nicely warm.

Except for the day or two in early summer when we had hail and tornandos.

Spring saw Spencer and I build a pic-nic bench and a new planter box. The box is about 4' x 12', and about two feet deep, in the back yard. Along one edge we placed a 2 x 12 board as a long seat, to increase the number of places for folks to rest a rump when out back. The box was laid down on grass, covered over with weed barrier cloth, then filled with topsoil and compost. The combination was too "hot" and even though we let the soil mature for two or three months, the first plantings in it did not thrive.

After a couple of months, and some more plantings, the seat-box is full. Miniature pumpkins are emerging on the vine twining up the chain link fence. They started out slow, being part of the original planting, but have gone great guns lately.

Similarly, the yellow crook-neck squash and green squash were the lone survivors of their stunted plantings, but have begun to produce reliable food in the past couple of weeks.

The three bell peppers -- one each of green, orange and red -- were part of the second effort at planting. They started out slow, and set lots of peppers that did not mature, but have a lot of fruit coming on now and I have great hopes.

At the far end of the box, the Russian finger potatoes and single russet plant seem to be fairing well. The fingerlings in particular go well with roasted meats in the fall late fall. Potatoes are one of those surprising, fun backyard vegetables. Relatively hardy, and easy to grow, with free seed in your kitchen vegetable bin in the form of potatoes-to-far-sprouted-to-eat, there is something very satisfying about grubbing in the dirt and coming up with a chunk of something edible!

Lettuce grew but with great resistence, and some very few salads emerged before they gave up the ghost. (Some volunteer oak leaf lettuces on the South Forty (Inches) provided most of the salad greens.)

The hot soil also took its toll on the basil (Trader Joe's basil plants are amazing) which jumped right back into health when removed from the too hot soil. An earlier basil, from Wholefoods, has smaller leaves and an almost lemony smell. It too has boomed, along with a few rows of yellow onions in the old horse trough. (For once I planted the onions in neat rows, and pulled every other one for green onions early, and the rest are doing nicely, thanks.)

The TJ basil makes excellent pesto; I was just struck that the lemony basil would be very good on steamed red potatoes with some garlic and onion greens sauteed in butter. Yum!

The usual south-wall box did not get planted in the spring. A few cucumber plants there were neglected and died, and the grass has taken over. This weekend is dedicated to clearing out the box and putting a second-season crop in . . . not sure what to plant yet. I might take a risk and plant the fall broccoli and garlic crop, even though it is still a little early. Suggestions appreciated .
Meanwhile, the front yard lime tree too suffers from chronic neglect; this spring it set lots of fruit which never matured. If I can just get rid of the Oleander between the back and front yard, install a gate and work out a drip water line to the tree, we might have lots of limes next summer for G&Ts. (Grin).

The loquats this spring went crazy and while we ate a lot of them, many went to the critters and on the ground. Most mornings Hannah insisted on loquats off the tree for a snack, unless she was demanding a Mandarin orange.

The orange crop was fair sized, not as large as some years, but better than many recent years. Good fruit, and only a half dozen were not eaten by us right off the tree for lunch and snacks. The tree has already set next year's fruit -- it is shooter-marble sized, and will mature next January and February. We will have edible fruit from February to May (and even June, if you don't mind the dryness that comes with older fruit.)

The apples set a moderate crop too. Granny Smiths and some Winesaps are coming ripe. Our apples tend to finish in August with first fruit late July, and completely picked by September. The four columnar apples bloom, and set their odd-tasting fruit, later in the year and should be edible in September. Still not impressed with the fruit, and am giving serious thought to replacing the four columnars with one standard sized apple, or even two more of the Orchard Supply four-on-one dwarf grafts.

Boysenberries did quite well this spring. We also snacked on those as we passed in and out of the yard, and had a couple of big berry picking days. The non-fruit canes finally started doing my bidding and have moved down the fence line, dropping roots into the soil in a thick, prickly and poky addition to our back fence. Volunteers from near the original, temporary placement in a planter have come back, under the orange tree, and instead of fighting it I have stopped mowing them down and begun training them in a dense prickly circle under the tree. We should have even more second year canes for fruit next year. Yum!

Lemons have set their third crop of the year and have a fourth in flower. For awhile we could not keep ahead of the windfalls; lately we have caught up as the kids love making lemonade, and we fill a two-gallon glass jug that we keep on the counter in the summer.

A Pasadena neighbor and work colleague borrowed our chain saw to take down a dead plum tree, and returned the saw with a bag of big yellow grapefruit. Not too sour, but definitely not the super-sweet modern varieties. Unfortunately, I am the only one that likes grapefruit in our house; fortunately I discovered that they make great "grapefruit-ade" which I get all to myself!

My recipe is easy as 1,2,3:

ROGER'S MOONTREE GRAPEFRUIT-ADE

1 cup sugar, completely dissolved in warm water.

2 cups fresh squeezed grapefruit juice.

3 cups of water.

Mix Well; serve chilled or with plenty of ice. NOTE: Adjust the water and sugar from here 1/4 cup at a time-- more of each if a little too acid, less sugar and/or more water if too sweet, etc.