Author Archives: backyardnotes

STEPPING INTO THE PAINTING

20 Thursday Oct 2011

Posted by in National Parks, Sunset, Travel

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WE HAD A GRAND TIME IN GRAND TETON N.P. We could see the Tetons from our campsite and watched them light up mornings and evenings. The yellow leaves of the aspens and cottonwoods were absolutely luminous. The evening light just after sunset was ethereal; soft and gauzy with hints of lavender. I felt like I was sitting in a Thomas Moran painting. Just have to share a few photos.

The campground is alongside the Gros Ventre River (grow-vant) where we walked in the mornings looking for moose–along with dozens of photographers as it turned out. Our first morning out we got lucky–twice.

The first encounter was a young bull moose who looked to be bedding down for the morning.

Farther on, out at the river we spotted a full grown bull standing in the water.

As we slowly and quietly moved in a little closer we found a glut of photographers, some of whom had just witnessed a fight between this bull and another. This challenger was apparently soothing his wounds. We saw the dominant bull a couple of days later; he had broken part of his antlers in the scuffle.

One afternoon we took a hike up to Taggart Lake at the base of the Tetons. I don’t think that a hike gets much better than this.

Taggart Lake, payoff number two!

Back at the Gros Ventre campground with late afternoon shadows adding a little more drama to the scenery.

And the setting sun. It was so beautiful, made for painting.

When we were in Yellowstone we met some friends quite by accident and they joined up with us in Teton NP. On our last full day in the park we all did a hike around Two Ocean Lake. It seems that there is nowhere in the park where the Tetons are not visible. We even saw a group of three otters fishing in the lake! A wonderful way to end our trip.

TWO JEWELS OF THE NATIONAL PARKS

25 Sunday Sep 2011

Posted by in National Parks, Travel

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IT’S HARD TO DECIDE WHICH PART OF YELLOWSTONE IS THE MOST SPECTACULAR. Yellowstone Falls, the gem of the Yellowstone Grand Canyon has plenty of competition within the park.

To get the best view of the falls you need to walk down 300 steps (and back up!). But worth every step.

Where else can you see the vivid colors of thermal activity up close and be truly awed. This is the Prismatic pool.

Unworldly colors of bacterial mats that form in waters of 130° + in the Biscuit Geyser Basin. Most of the geysers are found in the central/west area of the park.

To the east in the Lamar Valley, we saw several large herds of bison, including this calf and his mother. A few days later on our way to Lewis Lake in the south end of the park, we had to stop while some bison crossed the road and a young calf stopped to nurse, holding up traffic. Sweet.

Yesterday morning we had our first glimpses of the Tetons. Majestic. Soaring. Awesome.

I could not resist this window display in a park store. Automatic giggles.

THE TOMATO STATUS REPORT

16 Friday Sep 2011

Posted by in Canning & Preserving, Harvest, Jellies & Preserves, Peppers, Tomatoes, Vegetable garden

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AS YOU SEE, THERE ARE PLENTY OF TOMATOES. Mostly green yet. I’m not convinced that the red plastic mulch is a big improvement to aid ripening. Seems normal to me, even taking our meager summer weather into consideration. I think Ill skip the red plastic next year. We have had our share or ripe ones to eat, so not a big complaint.

Yellow flame tomatotes

Always a few crazily shaped ones.

Pink Icicle. I may save seed from this one.

THE REST OF THE VEGETABLE GARDEN is humming along.

Delicata Squash

Anaheim peppers

Japanese eggplant

Banana peppers

I planted a section of mixed mustard greens to use up old seeds: Osaka Purple, Gold & Ruby Streaks, Mizuna, and Ho Mi Z. Makes for a zesty salad mix when young and it looks pretty too.

Brussels sprouts are forming nicely and should be ready for Thanksgiving dinner!

THIS WEEK’S CANNING REPORT

Gingered Pear Preserves with a splash of cognac made on Wednesday are the first of the pear larder. They are a mix of Bartletts and Rescue. A little over four pounds yielded seven half-pints.

Daughter #2 has an Italian Plum tree and we picked about 4.4 pounds on Tuesday.

I kept out one pound for eating, split and pitted the remaining plums, and slipped them into freezer bags for later use. Straight out of the freezer and onto cake batter for plum cake. An easy and tasty winter treat.

Today another two pounds of pears teamed up two large mangoes for Pear-Mango Preserves. This one is my own combination. A little sweet and a little tart from the lime juice.

Pear-Mango Preserves Yield about 6-7 half-pints

2 large mangoes cubed to make 3-4 cups

2 lbs. pears, cubed (about 4 cups)

1/2 cup fresh lime juice

3 c./ 1.5 lbs sugar

8 oz. apple or pear cider (regular, sparkling or hard)

One 4″ cinnamon stick

about 8 basil leaves bundled and tied.

Combine pears, mangoes, lime juice, cider and half the sugar in a large saucepan. Bring to boil, add cinnamon stick and basil. Reduce heat to medium and cook 15 minutes. Add remaining sugar and cook over med-low until thickened. Turn off heat and let stand one hour.

Sterilize jars and heat lids. Check thickness of preserves. If too thick add a bit more cider or water; remove cinnamon stick and basil and reheat. Fill jars and process 10 minutes full rolling boil. Remove canner lid and let jars stand 5 minutes before removing.

ONE LAST thing. I hate the canning rack that comes with the big enameled canners. They are awkward to handle with jars. There are many jars that don’t fit the racks. I have a 12″ diameter cooling rack that fits perfectly and any size or shape jar sits flat without tipping. Additionally, if I flip the rack upside down, I can squeak the quart jars into the canner. I saw this post on Northwest Edible Life and thought it a quite ingenious solution.

Today at Outdoor Emporium I saw a really sweet aluminum stock pot with a nice rack; it would easily accommodate quart jars and was $32.00. It was very  much like this one. It is tempting as my old enamel canner is starting to rust after 35+ years.

Enough canning and harvesting for a while, I hear Yellowstone and the Grand Tetons calling…

SLIPPING INTO SEPTEMBER

13 Tuesday Sep 2011

Posted by in Canning & Preserving, Fall

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TWO BODIES OF WATER AWAY TO THE WEST are the Olympic mountains and on the south side of Mt. Jupiter there is a week-and-a-half old fire, about 1,100 acres so far. Since the Labor Day weekend we have had smoky, red sunsets. As we move towards fall, the sun sets a little earlier every day; this week around 7:30 p.m. Summer is so short!


WE CAN, CAN, CAN, BECAUSE WE CAN!

Speaking of the Labor Day weekend, my neighbor and a friend of hers spent the weekend canning. They filled 210 jars with blackberry jam, tomato salsa, bruschetta topping, dilled green beans, pickled beets, and more. On Friday they offered me some of the 25 pound (!) bag of beets that they had bought, so I made pickled beets too (six pints).

My friend Betty makes dill pickles. Tom says they are the best he has ever tasted, so Betty gave me the recipe given to her by a friend around 1970. Nothing like sharing recipes and canning to cement friendships. We went to the Pike Place Market on Saturday of the Labor Day weekend and bought around eight pounds or so of pickling cukes. I am pretty sure that I had never made dill pickles.

These are the finished pickles, ten quarts worth. Betty says not to open them before Thanksgiving. Time will tell whether or not I succeeded in matching Betty’s pickles.

CHERRY PLUMS! One of our daughters has several old cherry plum trees growing on the property where she lives. Two years ago they were rather plentiful and none last year. Last week we managed to gather up a little over four pounds (we were a week too late for the best ones).

This quirky looking gadget was a birthday gift this summer from one of my sisters. I forgot all about it when I pitted pounds of cherries in July and August. But I remembered to try it out with the cherry plums. The pitter sits atop a narrow mouth jar and is fixed in place with a screwband; the pits drop into the jar. Worked pretty well.

Cherry plums make some of the best preserves when flavored with star anise, vanilla bean, and a couple of fresh bay leaves. The yield was seven half-pints. Since the pickings are slim these preserves are highly coveted.

This year the apple harvest from our tree was a paltry 6.5 pounds. Just enough to eke out eight half-pints of apple butter over the weekend.

Pears will be filling jars this week in some form and probably tomatoes too, since they are finally ripening.

AUGUST MASH-UP–PART TWO

12 Monday Sep 2011

Posted by in Canning & Preserving, Harvest, Ornamentals, Uncategorized, Vegetable garden

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BY THE THE BEGINNING OF AUGUST there is plenty of deadheading to do. As I started this tedious chore I felt inspired to create a bouquet using the more interesting deadheads (August 18th above) and have continued to add to it (as of September 8th below).

The same day that we dug the iris I enlisted the extra hands to help clean the garlic. With three pairs of hands we cleaned four varieties in no time. Yesterday I cleaned the remaining 25 heads. Total garlic harvested: 142 heads.

CANNING began in earnest with cherries, apricots and zucchini in late July.

Since spring-like weather persisted well into June the cherry and strawberry harvests were late. I put up five half pints each of strawberry and cherry preserves in the last week of July. These were modeled on a low sugar preserves recipe from Eugenia Bone’s blog post of July 18th.

PEACHES started showing up in the markets mid-August so I made peach preserves (seven half pints) and froze sliced peaches in half pound bags (5). At the end of the month on our way home from Palmer Lake, I bought more peaches (fifteeen pounds) and about four pounds of the last (!) bing cherries at Lone Pine fruit stand in Wenatchee. The cherries were wonderful and I put up 8 more half-pints of preserves. The lovely looking Glowstar peaches however had a difficult time fully ripening. They became 6 pints of what I am calling Ice Cream Peaches; kind of like a loose, syrupy preserve flavored with vanilla beans and Calvados brandy. They taste yummy!

The bulk of tomatoes remained firmly green even with the red plastic mulch until the last week of the month. And at that, only a handful or two had ripened.

We spent the week of the 22nd happily lazing about at Palmer Lake in northeast Washington. The DNR campground is small and was surprisingly short of visitors for a change. The water was warm, the weather was warm, we paddled around the lake, and I caught up on my travel journal. There is good birdwatching habitat around the lake; cherry and apple orchards to the east and some walnut orchards and open pastures to the north. Tom saw an Indigo Bunting! We have been ‘bunting hunting’ all summer on our trips to eastern Washington–too bad I missed seeing it. We saw a muskrat one morning in Palmer Creek and a beaver in the water at our campground on our last morning.

I LOVE FINDING something new and unknown to me. On one of our walks we spotted a hatching of Box Elder bugs, boisea trivittata. I snapped this photo so I could identify them when we got back home. Apparently they are a nuisance in most areas, but we had never seen them before. According to Wikipedia “They may form large aggregations while sunning themselves in areas near their host plant (e.g. on rocks, shrubs, trees, and man-made structures).” That is just how we saw them.

Time to move on to Septet