MIDSUMMER’S BLESSINGS WITH HEAT!

15 Sunday Aug 2010

Posted by in Summer flowers, Summer!, Vegetable garden

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Lillium ‘Nippon’

AS OF TODAY, SUMMER’S PROMISE IS HERE with scorching temperatures, a good north breeze to make the heat bearable, loads of blooming lilies, ripening tomatoes and squash aplenty. The down side is the high probability of forest fires; we can see voluble smoke from the Mt. Hopper fire in the Olympic mountains.

I snapped some pretty nice photos over the last few days to share before we take off to Glacier NP in Montana.

This is ‘Rio Samba’. We first saw it in a beautiful rose garden at the foot of some steps leading to/from Coit Tower in San Francisco about twelve years ago. It has such an incredible range of color as it blooms and fades.

Pink sedum

The ‘flowers’ of eryngium yuccafolium with he dark red sedum telephium atropurpureum in the background.

About another six weeks before these Akane apples will be ready to pick–if they are spared the apple maggots!

Frilly leaves of a to-be- harvested-in-winter savoy cabbage.

A sunny and summer long blooming Sella d’Oro daylily.

Abuitilon ‘Red Tiger’ that I purchased at Chocolate Flower Farm in June. Isn’t it striking?

This turned out to be a nice color combination of begonia and echeverias.

Echinacea ‘Magnus’ just beginning to bloom. I bought seeds from Johnny’s about three years ago; they are easy to start and last for years.

Also from seed, a black colored hollyhock.

And, lastly, what could be sweeter than honeybees doing their job in your garden?

EASTSIDE, WESTSIDE

12 Thursday Aug 2010

Posted by in Canning & Preserving, Jams, Jellies & Preserves, Summer!, The beach, Washington travels

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The view east, after crossing Washington Pass.

WE LEFT THE COOL, CLOUDY WEST SIDE OF THE CASCADES BEHIND at the end of July and were greeted with warmth and mostly clear skies as we drove across the North Cascades Highway. We spent our first night below Washington Pass at Lone Fir (USFS) campground along Early Winters Creek.

A very unusual pink sunset made for striking silhouttes overhead.

Next morning we took two hikes, a three mile from the campground and another three mile one farther east off of Hwy 20 to Cedar Creek Falls. The second hike was too close to noon and hot, hot, hot. The saving grace was the ability to refresh ourselves in a pool above the falls.

After our hike to Cedar Falls we headed toward Bridgeport State Park on the Columbia River; nice park but full up in the middle of summer. Same story at Alta Lake so we headed for our friend’s place on Lake Chelan a day early. HOT! 98° at 5:00 p.m. Automatic dive-in-the-lake temperature!

We saw fantastic cloud formations that evening and over the next few days, along with plenty of smoke blowing down lake from the Rainbow Bridge fire just above Stehekin at the north end of the lake. Very colorful sunsets, blood-red moon and sunrises, too.

This cloud was a precursor to a wild three hour lightning and thunderstorm on Saturday afternoon that dumped plenty of rain and cleared the air of smoke for the rest of the day and into Sunday. The rain also helped to slow down the fire, thankfully. (Here is a useful fire tracking site for western states: inciweb.org)

Before leaving Chelan for home on Monday morning, we stopped and bought some beautiful local Lodi apples (10# box), melons, tomatoes, and bing cherries (4#).

The apples became Apple-Maple Preserves (from the Jamlady Cookbook); quite delicious spooned over plain yogurt.

Cherries in Wine (from Well Preserved).

After a few days at home we headed west to Ocean Park at the edge of the Pacific Ocean to visit Renée and friends; cool, cloudy, and drizzly weather. Talk about contrasts in temperature! Sunday turned out to be lovely and warm.


Always carry the camera—you never know what you will find. Pristine gull  feathers, a  necklace of orange seaweed or a pair of Bald Eagles perched above the beach.

THE BEAUTY IN SERENDIPITY & LILIES

27 Tuesday Jul 2010

Posted by in Jellies & Preserves, Lilies, Serendipity

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SERENDIPITY: the faculty for making desirable discoveries by accident.

Sister Renée found these glass jar lids somewhere near Cathlamet.  Her husband spotted a sign for an estate sale and they went for a look. There she found a box full of the lids that I have been looking for. I had mentioned that I have a number of old wire bale type canning jars without lids when we were in an antique shop at Klipsan Beach. She paid five dollars (!) for the lot of them and they became a treasured and appreciated birthday gift. For the time being, I have laid them out in a display table in the living room to admire them for awhile before putting them to use. Aren’t they beautiful?

CROW UPDATE: So far, nine days after crafting and planting plant tags to thwart removal by crows, the new tag holders are successful! Only one pulled out of the ground. Hurray!

Last Wednesday was strawberry day. I had purchased a flat of Skagit Valley grown strawberries from Sakuma Brothers Farm on Tuesday Last year and this, West Seattle Thriftway has carried their beautiful fruit at a reasonable cost. I made Strawberry Preserves with balsamic vinegar. Last year the few half-pints that I put up went quickly. This year I canned ten half-pints. We’ll see how far they go.

I LOVE LILIES. And I have lots of them planted around the yard. They smell divine and look elegant swaying in a little breeze. This is Golden Eagle, about five feet tall.

Dainty Martagon lily.

Combined with hazy blue  eryngium alpinum. These lilies with recurved petals remind me of fluttering ballet skirts.

These beautiful lilies are Orienpet ‘Red Hot’.

Tomorrow we are off to Lake Chelan to visit a friend for a few days and maybe get in a couple of hikes in the Icicle Creek area near Leavenworth on our way.

RED PLUMS AND SUNSETS

21 Wednesday Jul 2010

Posted by in Canning & Preserving, Jellies & Preserves, Roses, Sunset

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DESPITE THE MORNING MARINE LAYER that has greeted us the last four or five days, the afternoons turned sunny and last night’s sunset was quite lovely. I especially love the way the blooms of Altissimo were lit up when viewed from behind. I could not resist trying to capture the glow.

TUESDAY AFTERNOON I went to my friend Don’s and took him up on his offer of red plums. In exchange, he’ll receive some plum preserves. Don has a very efficient method of harvest: shake the branches and the ripe ones fall to the ground. No ladder climbing. I brought home eleven pounds!

Yesterday I made preserves and jelly. Half of the plums went to juice for jelly and the others became plum preserves. From eleven pounds of plums I put up ten half-pints of jelly, eight half-pints of preserves and three half-pints of syrup from the leftover juice.

In 2005 we went to Chicago and then onto Milan, Illinois to visit Tom’s cousin and her husband. We went with them to visit the John Deere Museum in the Quad Cities and in the gift shop I found a great book about putting up jams and jellies. Even though the author weirdly refers to herself in the third person, The Jamlady Cookbook is well researched and written and has a great variety of recipes for just about every fruit and fruit combination you never considered. The book is full of the technical information that makes canning possible and I highly recommend this book if you have a serious interest in jams, jellies and preserves. The other go-to book is the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving. I finally replaced my thirty-five year old copy with a new and updated edition last summer. It is greatly expanded with a contemporary take on preserving and canning recipes.  Another must-have book.

GARLIC!

19 Monday Jul 2010

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WHEN WE RETURNED FROM OUR FOURTH OF JULY TRIP it was time to pull the garlic that I planted last fall. I planted six types. In 2008 I gave up the ‘seed’  garlic I had been using for fifteen years in favor of trying two new varieties. I did not have good success with either one. Last summer my friend Betty gave me a large head of hardneck garlic (variety unknown) to plant; a head each of soft and hardneck from our friend Terry (varieties unknown); a head each of Inchelium Red and Chesnok that I bought at Fall City Farms in October when we went for pumpkins; and Italian White that I planted originally in 2008 (harvested very small heads).

I pronounce this year’s harvest a success! My goal is to have enough garlic to last into late spring. The largest heads were from the Inchelium (a couple are baseball sized!) and the Betty variety. I shake the dirt off of the heads and lay them on the potting bench, where it is cool with good circulation and there is rain protection from the eaves of the house.

Inchelium Red

Betty’s hardneck

Chesnok

Terry’s hardneck

Italian White, the smallest of all garlic planted.

I let the garlic dry for a couple of weeks before completing the cleaning for storage. A great reference book is Growing Great Garlic by Ron Engeland.