Tag Archive | zucchini

Ripening

Jul16
I’m grateful for snapdragons I started from seed flowering abundantly enough to clip some for a bud vase.
I’m grateful for jigsaw peppers started from seed now flowering in the foreground of violas…
…their tiny purple blossom turning to fruit

I’m grateful many of the peppers are starting to fruit, though many lag behind. Above, Blot peppers hide under dense, dark green leaves. Below, Leutschauer paprika peppers are also thriving. Out of three I planted this one in a mineral tub with feral horseradish is doing the best, several feet tall with dark green leaves. Another, in another mineral tub the same color but alone, is medium size, and a third in a raised bed, is less than a foot tall with two tiny peppers on it. So much variation in how the same seedlings are growing in different beds and pots this year. Wish I had kept notes on which soil amendments I used in each location, but I have pretty good recollection, and the Coco-Loco potting soil from Foxfarm seems to encourage really healthy growth, while the other amendment I used does not.

This year’s Sirenevyi pepper crop is already double last year’s. I learned to plant them with plenty of space around and lots of sun exposure: last summer’s got crowded out with squash and beans.
I’m grateful for the first zucchini, and hope for many more.
Those cagey cucumbers! I hadn’t even seen this giant growing amid the leaves until this evening, when I went to harvest three other smaller cukes I’d been watching. I’m grateful for ripening!
My little veggie loving dog chewed on a tiny cucumber that wasn’t going to ripen, but she left it half eaten.
The first harvest basket of the season: peas and broccolini for seeds, and four fat cucumbers for the first jar of refrigerator pickles. Yum!

The Last Peach

Aug21

A riot of color after recent rains.

A riot of color after recent rains.

IMG_3851

Dawn dropped by with a giant zucchini. Time to get out the grater!

Dawn dropped by with a giant zucchini. Time to get out the grater!

Not the best picture, I admit, but it was impossible not to try. Wrong imaginary lens or film.

Not the best picture, I admit, but it was impossible not to try. Wrong imaginary lens or film.

Last evening I stood under a rainbow and held in my hands the sum total of my peach harvest from a single tree: two perfect peaches.

One had caught my eye in the late undercloud light, gleaming peachly red among long lush green leaves. I had not known there were any peaches left on the tree after freezes, and later aphids. With one dusting of  diatomaceous earth the aphids vanished and the leaves began their growth in earnest. When did that occur? Spring, early summer? Did I write it down? I have been negligent in my record-keeping. Reluctant to take the quiet time to reflect upon my busy days, each as it fleetly unfolds. Not even so much as to notate aphids.

Perfect now, in roundness, color, size; two peaches perfect except for a few gnaws on top by some rodent or bird. Oh well. The first peach I ate standing under the rainbow dripping onto the patio, dropped the pit and the plundered top into a compost pail. The last peach, the biggest and fairest of them all, I saved until sunlight poured through the windows this morning. I ate it slowly, standing at the sunny kitchen sink, the whole sunlit house around me, a rainbow tapestry of texture and color.

I peeled the last peach one slice at a time with a small steel knife I’ve owned for half my life, half my time under the sun; in the sun I stood and ate the peach, slice by juicy slice from the tip of the ancient blade. It was quite simply the most delicious peach ever.