The Last Peach

I almost didn't want to eat it. It was the first year for peaches for me and I'm sad to see them go. But if I let it sit on the counter any longer it would have gone bad. It was a wonderful peach. Maybe not a Georgia peach, but for New England it was very good. Juicy and sweet. The peaches were a lot of work, but they were worth it.

In the spring I started an experiment with covering the peaches with a footie to prevent insects from attacking it. Well the covered ones all got brown rot. And the uncovered ones had no insects. They did have a few bird pecks. I ought to cover the tree with netting starting at the beginning of July. And I won't use footies. But all in all the New Red Haven tree preformed like a star. It was just its third year. Even with the massive losses due to the squirrels and brown rot, I picked 20 beautiful large peaches. The Reliance peach tree still hasn't produced. Well that is not really true. There is one peach on the tree right now. A very tiny little peach. It bloomed weeks later than the other tree. I got two varieties of peach trees to let them cross pollinate each other. Not that they need it but it supposedly makes them fruit better. The New Red Haven tree fruited so much I had to pull about 2/3s of the little fruit off during thinning. I don't think it needs any help.

The corn also had a transition of sorts. I sowed two beds with them. Last night the last corn from the first sowing was eaten. The next bed is just starting to get ripe. On Saturday I'll go out and check to see if we have any ready. But weirdly enough, I'm ready for a corn break. I've been eating about two ears of corn every night for a while now. But give me a couple of days and I'll want to eat them again.

And I finally had enough beans to make some three bean salad. I used the Ball Book recipe. Sort of. I left out the peppers of course. And I hate lima beans and don't grow them. I used Calypso beans instead. They are also called Yin Yang beans for their black and white markings. When they cook down they retain the markings, but they fade to brown. I wish my black beans had been ready in time, but they are still ripening. I don't have kidney beans or chickpeas, which are also traditional. I ended up with six jars, but one of them didn't seal so it didn't get its photo taken.

This afternoon I made another batch of zucchini bread. I used my traditional recipe but added two squares of baker's chocolate. I also left out the nutmeg, cloves, and allspice, but left in the ginger and cinnamon. It doesn't have all the chocolate chips of the other recipe so isn't as chocolatey. In fact it doesn't look like it has chocolate at all in it. It smells wonderful though. I can't wait to try it.