Summer Rain

We waited so long for summer this year that this morning's light rain sent me into an utter panic.

Nothing to worry about, of course. The sun returned soon enough but not before I happened upon these beautifully jeweled sage leaves.

Photo Break

I went back to work this week after an all-too-brief break. For reasons that have yet to be explained to my satisfaction (but most likely come down to money) I am now responsible for simultaneously planning and teaching two separate classes. In the same room. With 40 students. It is, quite simply, insane. The only reason I figure they can get away with it is that I don't get paid for prep time anyway, so who cares if the work is doubled?

Each night this week I swore I was going to come home, make myself a nice margarita, and lose myself in some Bollywood. The reality? I collapsed in a quivering heap in my bed. This term is going to be intense. And that's all I want to say about that right now.

So...how about a nice photo break? Because I didn't absolutely have to do anything this morning, I took the camera and spent some time poking around in my shamefully overgrown yard. Despite my shocking neglect, things are going quite well, especially with the herbs, greens, young tomatoes, and ruby-sweet strawberries.

Our first baby zucchini are already ripe. Isn't it early? I can't tell, but I am happy to have them.

The best part? I wasn't alone. I had some company only too happy to pose for me.

Miss Chutki:

and the recently named Romeo who seems to have adopted us for good:
He looks just a bit mean and shifty here, but he's actually a total sweetheart.

I'm planning on a couple of relaxing days of sewing, some knitting, a little yard work, and hopefully pulling my husband over to my side in The Great Freezer Debate. I think we need an extra to hold all our summer bounty but he's not yet convinced.

I hope you have a relaxing weekend full of good things!

Goodness from the Garden

One of the ongoing horrors of raising picky children is getting stuck in their ruts. At various times some or all of my children have been perfectly happy eating nothing but pasta and bottled marinara sauce topped with a blend of Parmesan and Romano cheeses. Apart from the burrito, mediocre pasta with red sauce has probably been served more often than any other dish in our house. It drives me crazy because I can make a fine tomato sauce. I even stocked my freezer with pints and pints of the good stuff at the end of last summer. But my kids turned up their nose at my summery goodness, making it clear that they much preferred the stuff in the jar.

I think may have reached a point where I can't look at another one of those jars again. But I still love pasta as much as ever. I came up with this recipe after being inspired by one published in this month's Bon Appetit magazine, but I made enough changes that I think it's safe to call it my own.

I was instantly drawn when I saw ricotta used. I had my first attempt at homemade ricotta in the 'fridge and this looked like a worthy showcase for my meager but tasty cheese. You don't have to make your own ricotta though if you are interested it could hardly be easier. Mine was a not-terribly-successful attempt at making ricotta using the whey leftover from cheesemaking. A lot of hoo ha for not much cheese, though it was tasty. There's a good, simple recipe at 101 Cookbooks that has nice clear directions and should have a much higher yield than the whey ricotta. It's on my list of things to try soon.

Back to the pasta--it's creamy and light, with lemon brightening the flavor of the sauteed veggies. I used what I had on hand in my back garden which meant only a few sugar snap peas, but my first zucchini of the year and a handful of tender young chard leaves. The combination was delicious and I'm sure you'll find your own combos which work just as well. My purple beans are coming along and will likely star when I make this dish next.

The added benefit of making this dish from what was in my garden (apart from not having to make a trip to the store) was that while I was poking around to see what was available, I got to nibble on delicious, perfectly ripe strawberries--and dessert before dinner isn't a bad thing at all!


Link to downloadable recipe

Processing

I promised myself I'd lay off the glum posts, so I won't go into detail about my very hard morning. Kaddish and tears--that's about it. That and a wise rabbi who told me to go and do something good in my brother's memory.

I made a donation to the good folks at Growing Gardens and then put on my grubby clothes for a solo afternoon in the garden. Last weekend's glorious weather had sent me eagerly to more than one nursery in search of veggies, herbs, and flowers. Now that our unseasonal heat wave has passed, it seemed a good time to plant. We lost a lot of plants last winter so there are plenty of pots needing to be emptied of dead twigs and refilled with new life. There's so much cleaning and tidying to do. Our yard debris bin is stuffed full with a week to go before pickup so there are bags and piles of clippings and trimmings what need to be moved along.

I swept and shoveled and pulled and dug, and eventually got every little thing in some dirt: strawberries, rudbeckia, rue and motherwort, bok choi and cosmos, echinacea and geranium--all were liberated from their little nursery pots and tucked into soil, some in pots, others in the ground.

It felt good to work hard and I feel more or less back to normal, grateful for the gift of my garden.

For the next few months, I predict you'll be able to find me right about here:

My April

The sun finally came out around here and my thoughts turned to gardening. It's hard to get an early start here in Portland at least for the casual home gardener like myself who has no intention of mucking around with greenhouses and row covers. I just tend to wait out the rain until things look good and then I jump in with a few cool weather transplants and what I fondly refer to as sacrificial tomatoes. Planted in April, they're as likely to wither and sulk as they are to take off and grow beautifully, but some years we get lucky.

But here's the the thing. Inevitably my first serious foray into the garden happens in mid to late-April. And while I'm out there, pulling up bindweed, turning over garden beds, and whacking the hydrangeas back to something manageable, my mind inevitably wanders and I grow quite melancholy. This time of year, so ripe with possibility and optimism, is also terribly sad for me, as it's the very time of year when we lost my brother.

I've written here about my brother before but if you're a new reader the short story is that he took his own life 6 years ago at 33 years old. It's still hard for me to believe how long he's been gone and all that he missed. His son is a sweet, strapping young man with his father's wry sense of humor and love for animals.

When I first get out in the garden, I am always overcome with memories of him. Nothing reminds me of him like growing things. Somehow my brother got his hands on a copy of this book in his teens and from then on he was always growing something, always working proudly on his gardens. When we lived on a huge lot, he would come over and help us beat back the grass and weeds that seemed impenetrable. At that same house, he decided to build us some raised garden just because we hadn't gotten around to it yet. He was famous in his block for running out, post shower, in nothing but a towel, to remove an errant weed. And I'll never forget his excitement showing me the first blossom on his passionflower vine.

The day he died was one of those days when we finally accepted that it was spring and time to get moving in the garden. We headed off to the nursery that day and when we returned home with, among other things, a lovely Autumn Joy sedum, the creepy people from the sheriff's office were waiting for us to break the news.

[big long pause, lots of typing, deleting, re-typing, more deleting.....]


You know what? I don't know where I'm going with this, folks. I thought I had all these deep, weighty things to say about life and death and the changing of the seasons but the words aren't coming and I still can't make sense of what my brother went through, and what my family continues to struggle with. Another year and still no answers. You'd think we'd be used to it and stop asking why. Years pass, seasons change, and there's an ebb and a flow to the sadness as well. It's always worst just as things are bursting into bloom.

Welcome, Spring!

If you read my last blog post some two weeks ago, you'll know that between starting a new term at work and preparing for Passover, I've been running non-stop. That California vacation seems like months ago. No wonder things have been quiet here--though it's been hopping (relatively speaking) over at Magpie Eats!

Passover got off to a lovely start. We hosted my cranky relatives on the first night. They never stay past dessert to finish the seder, but I'm used to it now and it only drives me a little bit nuts. The Princess decided this was the year she'd learn The Four Questions to ask at the seder, which is kind of a big deal given that it involves singing in Hebrew. With MonkeyBoy's excellent assistance, she learned and snag beautifully and took the responsibility very seriously.

We spent the next two nights with friends, sharing another seder and a festive Shabbat meal complete with silly songs and much hilarity. It was a lovely few days of cooking and eating and talking and laughing and a great deal of wine so I spent the weekend mostly at home and mostly quiet which wasn't bad at all.

Now that things are slightly calmer, I'm gradually turning my thoughts towards the garden. I went out this morning during a sun break between the rain and the hail, and found that, while so much needs attention, thankfully there's a great deal happening despite my neglect.

We have bluebells all over:

The figs are just beginning to make leaf buds:

The peonies and rhubarb are up:

And the andromeda is covered in a froth of scented blossoms:

It was a long, hard winter and we lost quite a few things which we'd had for years, including the Meyer lemon trees that were a gift from my sweetie for our fifth wedding anniversary. Kind of bummed about that.

But the succulents seem to have mostly made it through and today's sun breaks were surely welcome:

It's supposed to start drying out soon and I'm hoping to spend lots of time on yardwork in the coming days. Welcome, Spring!

Harvest

I just brought in the fig harvest, folks.

That's right, the two little Negronne fig trees I planted in wine barrels three years ago have finally given me some ripe fruit. I don't think it would have happened had we not had crazy sunny weather through most of the month, but I won't complain. Last year I was so sure I was going to enjoy a bumper crop but the weather was not cooperative.

I'm crazy for figs and find myself unbecomingly envious of people who have huge trees that bear well. I'm sure that makes my Californian and Israeli readers laugh but just save it. While my harvest totaled exactly ten figs, it's enough reason to celebrate as far as I'm concerned.

Where I've been....

With 8 days to go before The Big Event I've been just a wee bit busy. I'll spare my readers the full list as it's just short of dizzying but I can say that this much busyness and productivity is quite contrary to my nature.We had 4 yards of garden mulch delivered the other day and it's mostly spread out and working its magic in the rain. My inherited rose garden no longer looks abandoned and overall the yard is looking almost summer ready. The only drawback? I was so sore from shoveling yesterday that I could barely walk and my students were making abuelita jokes about me.What else? Surely the celestial trumpets sounded again last weekend when I found and bought a perfectly respectable brand new ensemble to wear on the big day which, I'm told, allows me to still look like me only dressed up. This is no small thing as there are few things I hate more than shopping for new clothes. I buy nearly everything for under $5 per item at my local thrift store. Shelling out big bucks for brand new isn't easy but if not now, when? At least they're things I'll wear again.

I finished a hat for MonkeyBoy while watching possibly the saddest Bollywood movie ever. There was something very satisfying about brushing away movie tears while finishing the final stitches on the hat, which was a real kick to knit. The "kool" thing about The Koolhaas Hat is that it's based on the wonderful lines at the Seattle Public Library which we so enjoyed visiting in April. One last thing: There's a picture of MonkeyBoy in today's Oregonian along with an article written about local kids' bar/bat mitzvah projects. They didn't really get it right when they talked to him, but he's feeling like a rock star today with his picture in the paper.

This weekend is the final push: Torah readings, clean clothes, clean house, more list making, and so on. We will be going to a party celebrating an old friend's new love which is just so cool.

Finally....The Garden

Most years I am in a frenzy over the garden by this point. I'm not sure why, but the usual excitement hasn't yet struck this year. Maybe it's the ongoing turf battle with the cats. Our lovely raised beds look like giant litter boxes to them and we have to resort to all sorts of fortification to protect the plants:

I think this guy is the main culprit:

I wandered around the yard this morning looking at empty raised beds and forlorn pots just begging to be filled. Despite gray skies and the old Portland gardeners' adage to wait until Rose Festival to put tomatoes in, I packed up the kids and headed off to my favorite all purpose nursery. I had $10 off coupon from one of their mailings and used it toward the cart full of plants I picked out: 5 varieties of tomatoes, Ichiban eggplant, a lemon cucumber, Genovese Basil, Bright Lights chard and a whole bunch of cheery annuals for my pots as well as seeds for tiny carrots, lettuce, and arugula. Next I need to find starts for the crazy hot red mustard I love and one good zucchini start and I'll be set!