Aerobic weeding and other pursuits

The good news is, I'm not in traction.

There isn't really any bad news. It's just that, with this beautiful weather, I got out into the garden two days this week to do some weeding, and I'm happy to report that I'm not suffering for it.

What's so tough about weeding? Well, when I do it, it's with a shovel and a spading fork, digging up clumps of lawn that have sneaked over and established themselves in my gardens, pulling up the tap roots of dandelions and wild lettuce, shaking the dirt off foot-square pieces of sod, levering out dead rosebushes, hauling up roots of the catalpa I cut down this summer, moving rocks ...

After all the stretching and bending and lifting, I thought I'd be out flat. This time of year is probably when I'm least in shape, and I apparently inherited my father's bad back. But a couple of Ecotrin and I'm good to go. Yay!

I had three dwarf penstemon, a Scotch broom and a huge Queen's Tiara iris still in pots. They've withstood several freezing nights, including at least two at 20 degrees, and still look good. I got them into the ground, while digging up a few lemon balm to give away.

The lemon balm is not only still green, but has rosettes of new growth at ground level. Hardy stuff!

Unfortunately, my sage didn't make it to Thanksgiving:



Guess I'll have to use store-bought.

I still have to plant a Wine and Roses wiegela, some Japanese iris and a bag of tulips, so I hope my back stays just as happy as it is now.

While the days have been nice, some of the nights were downright frosty. So I've been cooking warm dinners (including another round of Walking Onion Chicken) and baking treats.

I've also been hoarding food. There was a 99-cents-a-pound deal on pears lately, and I bought half a dozen each of three varieties. They were so pretty and ... well, fruity. I made up a recipe for pear-caramel pie, but still had 6 pears left.

I wanted something a little different -- a crisp or a cobbler would be easy, but too much like pie. I thought about making chunky pear sauce for ice cream, but then decided on cake. So I looked up an old recipe for coffee cake and improvised from there.

When I chopped the pears, though, I had more than I expected, so I had to basically double the cake recipe. That's why it makes so much!

You know how sometimes you're asked to make something for a potluck, and it looks so good, you wish you'd made one for yourself? This makes two coffee cakes -- large and small.

Pear-Almond Coffee Cake
(keep-one-and-give-one recipe)

Cake:
4-1/2 cups flour
1 Tbsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup flaxseed meal*
1 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup shortening
3/4 cup sliced almonds
1/3 cup dried cranberries
1 cup milk
2 eggs, beaten well
1 tsp vanilla extract
6 ripe pears

Topping:
3/4 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup flaxseed meal*
1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup sliced almonds
1 tsp cinnamon
1 stick butter or margarine, melted

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour two cake pans -- one 9"x12" and one 8" or 9" square (or use just 9"x12" for one thick cake).

Peel and core pears; chop into 1/2" or smaller pieces; set aside.

Mix first six ingredients for cake. Cut in shortening with pastry blender until crumbly. Add almonds and cranberries. Stir in milk, eggs and vanilla. Fold in pears.

Spread into pans, smoothing flat.

Mix all topping ingredients except butter. Sprinkle topping evenly over batter. Carefully drizzle melted butter evenly over topping.

Bake 50 minutes to an hour, or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. If making two cakes, rotate pans after cake firms up. (Smaller cake will bake faster.)

*The flaxseed meal acts like shortening in the cake (and keeps it nice and moist in storage) and as filler in the topping. If you leave it out, increase topping ingredients (except butter) by a little bit. No adjustment is needed for the cake, although you could add 1/3 cup flour to make up the bulk if your batter is too thin.

Eating the walking onion

I told you I'd let you know when I harvested some of the walking onion and tried it in a recipe. So here it is.

But first, a look at the new babies that have rooted and sprouted:




I haven't dug or moved any of them yet, and haven't decided where they'll go anyway. It's a little shady where they decided to land, but maybe they like it that way.

So I pulled up half a dozen onions from the original clump last Monday and was surprised at how small they were -- almost like green onions, just a little bulbous. After I removed the skins and leaves, I didn't have much left to work with:




I cut the onions and the small leaves crosswise into thin rings and noticed they didn't have much of a smell.

I set them aside while I basted some boneless chicken breasts with mango-saffron-ginger sauce.

Then I started to notice a REALLY strong onion smell in the kitchen. Apparently, the fact that it was about 45 degrees outside when I picked them meant the odor was "frozen," and as they warmed up, it released. Boy, did it release! I had to cover them with a paper towel until I was ready for them.

I heated olive oil and a little butter in a skillet and threw the white parts of the onions in, cooking them until they were browned. I added the chicken breasts, sauce side up, and turned them when they were cooked halfway through. The onions stuck nicely to the chicken, and the sauce and chicken juice bubbled up around it. I then added the green bits for the last few minutes of cooking:



I served a side of Israeli couscous with baby garbanzos, orzo and red quinoa that I picked up at Trader Joe's in Massachusetts over the weekend, cooked with a can of chicken broth.

Conclusion: Walking onions are a lot of work for a little taste, but that taste is nice.

Before they learn to fly, they have to crawl

If you're freaked out by creepy-crawly critters, consider this a Halloween trick. If you like them, though, it'll be a treat.

I think of caterpillars as spring or summer insects, but a lot of them actually live late into the year and overwinter as pupae. I've seen some new (to me) in the garden in the past couple of months.

This one was on a hawthorn tree I cut down at the end of August. At first I thought it was eating (or being eaten by) a ladybug, then realized the "ladybug" was the caterpillar's head:



I took the photo to the county fair and asked around the agricultural building, with no luck. A friend identified it as a hawk moth larva, but that turned out to be wrong. I finally found it online. It's a beautiful wood nymph -- not to be confused with the pearly wood nymph, though the mistake would be understandable. (Check out the tagline at the top of that site, by the way.)

I don't think I've ever seen one of the adults. I believe I would remember a moth that looks like a stretched-out piece of bird poop.

The second crawler I found was a BIG caterpillar, almost the size of my thumb, covered in scary black spines:



I did a Web search on this one and found it right away. It's a giant leopard moth, a beautiful wedge-shaped black and white moth which I have seen on my front porch. Until I find my photo, however, here's a link. I wasn't brave enough to pick it up with my bare hands, though, like he did (after determining it was harmless).

While pulling up my dead zucchini plants the other day, I disturbed a fuzzy white caterpillar with tan and black markings:



I've since identified it as a hickory tussock moth. It was downright cute -- reminded me of a little fluffy baby animal, like maybe a bunny, all soft and cuddly. I watched it for a while until it uncurled itself and resumed its epic journey across the garden.



Turns out it's a good thing I only looked and didn't try to cuddle this little guy. Those hairs are poisonous and cause a nasty rash!

Before the frost

Okay, I'm still in mourning, but I'm pretty much over the denial phase. I've moved into the acceptance phase. I'm ready to look back at what I lost.

On October 11, before the killing frost, I took a few photos of some late bloomers, including these white dahlias:



They're now black and ready to be dug up and stored for the winter, along with some pink ones and a couple of cannas that I had in pots.

The pole beans not only had lots of beans ready to pick, but were still loaded with blossoms and promise:



At least I picked those that were ready, so we enjoyed a couple more dinners with them. I even had enough to put two meals' worth into the freezer.

The strawberries put out lots of runners. I still have to decide where they're going to go next year (and convince them of it).



Some wildflowers were experiencing a second season, like this chicory:



I even found a big mustard plant that kept blossoming right through the killing frost and is still going strong (this photo is from October 19 -- the dark green behind it is the dead pole beans):



And last but not least, an update on the walking onion. The tops reached the ground, rooted and sprouted, so I now have about a dozen new clumps. One more thing to reposition before the snow flies. And one more thing to taste, too -- I plan to use the parent onions in a dish yet to be determined ...

The REALLY dark tea-time of the soul

That's what my garden is in now. And, consequently, where I am, too. The dark season of destruction, endings and death. Most people know it as autumn.

I haven't blogged because it was just too depressing -- first the rain, then the tomato blight, then the frost.

Oh, woe is me; self-pity, sadness and sorrow. I didn't even want to go outside after the first frost, and we've had a few this month.

We had plenty of beans and cucumbers through the summer, and I even got a few strawberries off the first-year plants. My rosemary did beautifully and is now in pots on the front porch, along with some scraggly basil and a wilting Stevia.

The thyme never recovered from its early-summer haircut, though, and the sage died in situ. I managed a few tomatoes before the blight, but never got to do my salsa or the tomatoes, basil and mozzarella that I look forward to every year.

My pole beans, yellow squash and beautiful Lungo Bianco di Sicilia zucchini vine made it through the first light frost, but I didn't know about the second (harder) frost until midnight. I tried to cover the vine, but it was too late.

I did pick a few beans just before the hard frost, and one yellow squash, which awaits shredding and freezing.

Overall, especially with the tomato blight, I'd say this year's garden was a bust. The high point, however, was this white zucchini (actually light green), my only fruit from the many yards of vine:




I let it grow on the tomato cage until it touched the ground, then picked it so it wouldn't rot. I don't know how big it would have gotten if I'd had a taller tomato cage; it was over 3 feet long at harvest. I used half of it to make this confetti casserole, and the other half went into the freezer (shredded):



Confetti Casserole

2 small to medium zucchini*
1 medium summer squash
4 or 5 carrots
1 good-sized shallot
3 or 4 Roma tomatoes
1/2 lb. shredded cheese (mozzarella or mixed)
1 cup chicken or vegetable broth
1 cup couscous
1 tsp. herbes de Provence (or Italian seasoning)
olive oil

Grease 11"x13" casserole pan with olive oil.
Finely shred zucchini, summer squash and carrots in food processor or by hand.
Finely chop shallot and tomatoes.
Mix vegetables, cheese, couscous, broth and seasoning in large bowl. Spoon into casserole and smooth surface flat.
Bake at 375 F for about an hour. Serve hot.

This can be made vegetarian with vegetable broth, or even vegan with soy cheese. Or it can go the other way with the addition of cooked chicken or other meat for a main dish.

*or half of a 3-foot Lungo Bianco di Sicilia!

It's not a weed; it's a wildflower

I walked around the corner of my shed the other day and came face to face with these earth-fallen bits of blue sky:



Chicory (Cichorium intybus), sometimes called cornflower, is one tough wildflower, growing in dry, inhospitable places like road shoulders and the gravel base of my shed.

Endive and chicory root come from cultivated varieties of Cichorium, although you can also use the wild plant. It's been used as a coffee substitute or additive for generations, and as a vegetable for thousands of years. Horace (b. 65 BCE) mentioned it, along with olives and mallow, as part of his diet.

And while the sky-blue flowers are the ones that catch my eye, I've occasionally seen it with white flowers.

On a completely different note, but still garden-related:

While our growing season is limited here in the Northeast (read: New England), we enjoy beans, peas, carrots, sweet corn, zucchini and other squash, peppers hot and mild, melons, tomatoes, tomatillos, leafy greens, brussels sprouts and probably a score or more of other fresh vegetables. And a lot of us put up some of the harvest in jars or in the freezer.

Even if we don't have gardens, we have supermarkets where we can buy fresh produce year-round. But it's a pretty good bet you have a few cans of peas, corn and/or beans in your pantry.

In England, refrigerators tend to be under-the-counter appliances, and people make more frequent trips to the market for smaller quantities of fresh foods.

But is Old England really this devoted to fresh veg? From an article on independent.co.uk:

"No rational person would buy [canned vegetables] to eat, but sales soar around harvest festival time when millions of churchgoers and schoolchildren have to give a basket of non-perishable foodstuffs for distribution to the elderly. What the elderly do with them is a mystery."

I don't know about you, but I grew up on canned green beans, and for years I wouldn't touch those suspiciously crisp sticks Dad brought in from the garden. Now I like both fresh and canned, for their own particular attributes.

Like the way canned green beans squeak when you bite into them.

I LOVE that little squeak.

Green cheese

When I was a little girl, my mother showed my sister and me the edible "cheeses" of cheese mallow, a rangy, low-growing wildflower.



She and her sister ate them when they were little girls. Their mother and grandmother probably did the same in their own childhoods.



My family wasn't big on foraging for wild foods, but we did pick wild strawberries, and went looking for raspberries and blackberries in season, sometimes going to an old farm and braving a whole field of the prickers to get the fruit. But mostly, snacking on wild stuff was left to the kids (well-trained not to eat anything we didn't know).

I tried wild carrots -- they were kind of tough, but they smelled so good! And we chewed on lavender clover blossoms and red columbine flowers for the nectar. We called the latter honeysuckle, as my mother did; it seemed like an obvious name, since you sucked the honey out of the blossom. I was probably a teenager before I knew the real name.

My mother also showed me "sourgrass" (yellow wood sorrel, Oxalis europaea). That's the delicate shamrock-like plant with little yellow flowers you find growing as a weed in gardens and lawns. I've never been a big fan of sour tastes, so I was never in any danger of overloading on the oxalic acid it contains. Not that I knew about that as a kid.



I found some sourgrass in a friend's garden the other day and had her taste it. Passing on old-timey country lore, I guess.

I'm sure there's a story behind it ...

I try to notice something funny or interesting every day. Sometimes I have a camera or my cell phone with me, and I get a photo. Here's Wednesday's:




It's posted at the entrance to the road leading to the town salt piles (for you warm-climate folks, that's what the road crews spread on the pavement in the winter to melt ice). There has to be a back story. If anyone hears it, let me know.

Just so they don't go to waste, here are a few more recent finds:

You were expecting maybe sour cookies? Or savory? Or salty? Sorry ...




(Notice they're Original Classic ... and also New.)
Or you could just have a nice cookie.





Gee, I thought maybe they'd have a PRO-vandalism policy. (This sign was posted in the public rest room of a supermarket.)





And this one seemed a little sad: found in a Target rest room.

See what I sawed

I did some serious weeding today:



I had the truck all packed up with recycling and trash before I realized it was Thursday. The recycling center is closed on Thursdays. Change of plans.

So I put the truck in the garage and got out the chain saw. Rawrrrrr!

OK, it's just a little electric Remington with a 10" bar and a pole-saw option. But it does what I need -- it takes down trash trees that grow up along the brook and shade my vegetable garden.

Sharp eyes will note that the above "weed" is not a trash tree, but a catalpa. It's one of many babies our old catalpa generated before we had to have it taken down (professionally -- it was a double-trunk giant with power lines running through it). You can see another one growing up against the barn.

This baby was supposed to have been dug up and moved a few years ago, but somehow we never got to it. By this year, it had gotten too big to move and was growing up through the branches of an apple tree, shading one of my perennial gardens.



I was sorry to cut it down, but it had to go. Sigh ...

I had more fun tackling the overgrown honeysuckle bush with a combination of the saw and long-handled pruners, then hitting the stream bank and taking down what I think are ash trees.



I felled a couple of trees parallel to the brook and let them lie where they fell, but I cut most of them up into 15' to 20' sections and dragged them down back to the brush pile.

It's a job I've been putting off for weeks, but I'm glad I tackled it. (And I'm also glad I had extra-strength aspirin and a thermal wrap for my tendinitis -- one of the reasons I had procrastinated!)

They eat celery, don't they?

I am not really a fan of rhubarb. The very idea of cutting up leaf stalks and baking them in a pie is just ... so ... wrong.

Especially SOUR leaf stalks.

Who thinks this stuff up?

But I do have a small rhubarb patch (look behind the walking onion in the photo below), and I was raised with a New England penchant for thrift. I can't just grow the stuff and let it go to waste!

So I finally found a couple of rhubarb recipes that I like. Basically, surround the stuff with enough sweet dough, let me tell myself it's really Granny Smith apples, and I'm in.

Here's the first rhubarb recipe I ever made:

Blubarb Cookies

1 cup shortening
1-1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1/2" to 1/4" chunks
1 cup blueberries

Cream shortening and sugar. Beat in eggs.
Combine flour, soda, salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.
Fold in rhubarb and blueberries.
Drop by large tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart on greased or parchment-covered baking sheets.
Bake at 350 F for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from sheets; cool completely.

Makes 28 to 30 cookies. They will be puffy, soft and cake-like.

I'm baaaaaack

What's the record for longest time between blog posts by someone who isn't actually dead?

I think I broke it.

Yet another gardening season has rolled around and I am in the thick of it. Thick, as in you can't see my garden because of the weeds.

I had a rototiller once, but it conked out, then got stuck in a spring flood. Twice. Anybody want a third-hand, early 1990s, flooded Troy-Bilt for parts? You haul it away, it's yours.

So I dig. And fork. And spade. And trowel. And power up big rocks with a shovel or a pike. It's called aerobic gardening. :)

One fine crop of dandelions has already flowered and gone to seed. I got about a third of them out of the veg bulb garden before that happened, so my leeks and walking onions got to see the sun.

The walking onions are kind of fun. If you like nice, neat rows of well-behaved plants, you would not like these at all. But if you like something a little quirky, they may be for you.











Instead of flowers, they have lumpy and twisted clusters of new onions growing at the top of a fat, hollow stalk. The bulblets fall to the ground (or the stalk softens and falls over), starting new plants where they hit the dirt. Thus they slowly "walk" around your garden!

And yes, you can eat them. I only planted mine last year, so I let them grow, but I may harvest some this summer. I'll let you know. Really. The same year.