Giving the Squash Some Light

Yesterday I finally got in to clean up some of the corn stalks on one side of the bed. Once we take off the ear, we hardly need the corn stalk to stay up. So I take it down and give the squash more light. I've been complaining about the Upper Ground Sweet Potato Squash, but I was wrong.

The nasty invasive aggressive squash is the Thai Rai Kaw Tok. I messed it up before even though it is written down in my journal which plant went where. But since a squash finally set it made me look it up again as I knew I was wrong. I may never grow it again. As you can see it is heading out of its bed and going behind the upside down garbage can and beyond. That isn't all that unusual, but I have about four vines going there and I've been trying to keep them back. I've had to go into my neighbor's yard and cut it back. At least it has set a squash though so I can taste it. I do tend to like the oriental squashes. And a squash that I don't have to peel is always a bonus. Maybe it will set lots and make me contemplate growing it again.

The stalks were taken over to the compost pile.

And they got a bit chopped up to compost better. I know a lot of people would shred them before putting them in, but I don't have any power tools for the garden. Well except the electric lawn mower. Even our trimmer is a hand trimmer.

And having absolutely nothing to do with my corn, I give you a gratuitous peach photo. Yum. They are starting to take over my kitchen. Not that I'm complaining. Lots of peaches is a great thing.

Kale, Lettuce, and Weird Corn

Usually I plant Winterbor and Blue Curly Kale to overwinter. This year I was going to plant Red Russian to eat in the fall and curly kale to overwinter and eat in the spring. Well the new packet of curly kale seed wasn't any good. The few that came up were weak. So all I have is Red Russian.

In addition I'm growing a red onion I hadn't before and it was very slow to fall down. In the end I knocked them down when I saw a few had gone down. They should be out of the bed by now so I can plant the whole bed up in kale, but they aren't. It isn't a huge issue as the replacement kale seedlings are still a bit small. I wonder this year if I'll get enough kale to make this planting worth it. Hopefully it will and they will grow well and come October I'll be in kale.

Another issue was my bean plants. Some disease is in them and large spots are appearing on the beans themselves. So I decided to pull them up to make way for lettuce.

In addition I pulled the rest of the onions out of the lettuce bed. They got way too big for the spot. Most of the lettuce bolted in the last hot spell we had, even some of the smaller ones. So any bolting lettuce got pulled too.

But I had sown a nursery row of lettuce not long ago. I transplanted them to the now more empty bed.

I hope they grow fast enough to produce before winter. I'm guessing they won't because of the fall shade, but there is a chance.

I'm picking a lot of corn now. I did find one that was pretty strange. I tied the ouside stalks to a bamboo pole so the wind won't lodge them. One of the strings ended up being wrapped around the ear. I tied them before the ears formed and I had no clue where they would come out. Most of the time the ears grew away from the string so there was no issue. But this one grew under it. You can even see the indentation of the pole in the corn. Though it looks weird, it still tasted wonderful.

And the last news for the week is good. I started picking peaches. They aren't big, but they sure are tasty.

This and That

View from the kitchen window. Lavender!

I was a bit disappointed when I found my broccoli all needed to be picked yesterday. I really need to have two different varieties to keep me in broccoli longer. It does make it easy to freeze though.

My currant bushes are so easy to overlook. They ripen, but hide behind all that foliage.

Up close you can see them. So I picked the berries on this bush today.

I stripped them off the stems and froze them. I don't have time today to make jam, but I will sometime this summer I'm sure.

And my pink variety is almost ready to pick. It really likes to set a LOT of berries on just a few stems. It will make it much easier to pick.

Also today I sheared off half the chives. They were getting a bit ratty. I picked through them and kept about a quarter of what I cut.

I'm dehydrating them. I've never done that before. I couldn't cut them up into small bits or they would fall through even my herb screens. So I left them large and will cut them later. I hope it works.

There were a lot of weeds growing up through the ends of my beds so I've been slowly putting on some mulch. I collect leaves in the fall from the neighbors who put them in paper bags. I keep the bags and cut them up to mulch in these strange spots. It helps keep the weeds from my neighbor's side from getting out of control on my side. I can tie it to the fence and block them. He probably saw me doing this and now his side is dying. I'm sure he sprayed it. So now I'm half done and no more weeds to contend with. Should I finish anyway?

My melons last week got chomped down by slugs. Sigh. I resowed and they have come up again and seem to be doing fine. But I pulled the lettuce in the bed that I was letting go to seed. They don't need the competition when their season has been shortened so much.

My krautchi did bubble over. So it wasn't just the sugar that was an issue, it was the ginger probably. Plain kraut doesn't do that for me. So I took it down by half an inch. That seemed to be enough. I had the not very well fermented krautchi that I took out for lunch. Yum. Though it could have used some vinegar as it wasn't at all sour yet.

Lots of other little things have been done, most of which I don't remember except weeding. But I have noticed my peach tree is dropping fruit. Sad. But not unexpected. I went out the other day and collected and composted them. I'll probably go out and do it every couple of days until it stops.

Bearing Fruit Trees

Can you find all eight fruit trees in this photo?

We have eleven fruit tress on our shared property. But only two of them are really bearing right now. I do have another that is trying, but not enough to protect it from the squirrels and groundhogs, so the fruit probably won't last long. In the above photo you can see the two peach trees. The one on the left is only two years old. But the one on the right is five. It has given us fruit for two years and has a lot of baby fruit on the tree.

Crowded peaches

About this time I thin out the peaches. Usually I do it a bit earlier, but I've been busy. So some of the little peaches have dropped off the tree. I try to get all the little fruit up and into the compost. And any fruit that drops later. I've found it helps to keep the brown rot down. The first year I had lots of trouble with it, but if I keep it all clean I'll only lose a few peaches. Nothing worth worrying about. I don't spray the tree, so cleanliness is everything.

I thin to about 8" along a branch. But I'm not very even about it. Some times the peaches are right next to one another. Some times far apart. I like to pick the biggest and most flawless peaches to keep. Last year I had to thin out hundreds and hundreds of peaches. This year the chore was easier. The winter was harder and there were a lot of gaps on the branches. I'd be shocked if I didn't take off a couple hundred though. This Redhaven peach loves to produce fruit. I however like fruit that is bigger than a golf ball, so I thin.

My apple tree is not nearly so lovely. And it doesn't produce quite as much. But it did set a lot of apples this year. I thinned it out earlier on. The squirrels however were really enjoying my apples. Last year they waited until the apples were much larger. I thought I wouldn't have to net until July. The peach tree I can net myself since it is shorter than I am. The apple tree however is about 8' tall. I got my husband and two of my townhouse mates out to help. We put up step ladders on either side. So two people were up on top trying to lift it over while two people were down at the bottom unsnagging it and pulling it down. It was quite a production. Netting gets stuck on everything. And note to self - don't wear buttons again while netting the trees.

Energy bars, sandwich buns, and breakfast muffins

And having nothing at all to do with my fruit trees, I decided I'd better get the baking done as the weather was really warming up. Instead of my strategy of baking here and there as I need it, I looked at what I needed for the next several days and baked it all at once so I wouldn't have to heat the house up so much. I did it early in the morning too as it was still cool.

It Started Off Bad

Peach Rum Sauce

It all started with yesterday, which I might point out was a good day. On Monday I picked the rest of the peaches on the tree and had about 15 pounds of them on my dining room table. Yesterday I decided I'd can one thing a day to reduce the pile somewhat, but not feel like I was spending all my time canning. So I made the above Peach Rum Sauce. Oh it tastes good. I used the Ball recipe, except I left out one cup of sugar. Really it didn't need it.

Before I went to bed I sliced up another batch of peaches for a slow cooker vanilla peach butter. When I got up in the morning it didn't smell right. It had burned. I've made slow cooker butters before and I'd never had that trouble. On closer inspection I saw my trouble. I make the butter by turning it to high for an hour or so to get it going. Then before going to bed I'm supposed to turn it to low. Well that never happened. So instead of wonderful goodness, I had a mess to clean up.

I figured I had enough to make one more batch of something from the peaches, but if I added something I might get two. I had seen a blackberry patch on one of my morning walks with lots of blackberries in it and I thought blackberry peach preserves sounded really good. So I took my morning walk with the dog. We jumped off the boardwalk to the tall weeds below. I let the dog off the leash so he could have fun. I went into the patch. What I found was a mass of moldy berries.

After braving all those nasty thorns - and boy do blackberries have vicious thorns - I found just one that was ripe and not moldy. What a waste of a bunch of blackberries. Not even the wild life got to eat them. If I lived close I think I'd go in and prune the brambles in early summer so I could harvest regularly. However it is about a mile from my house, so I'll just regret the waste of good berries. At least the dog had a blast running around the area and rolling in the wet weeds.

Back home I decided I'd just make some plain chunky peach butter/preserves. It really is half way between them. A preserve like this won't hold together like a jam does. Jams need sugar, acid, and pectin to set and I was lacking the sugar. So the results are very soft, almost like a butter except for the chunks. I don't really use a recipe for something like this. I wanted just peaches at this point. No vanilla, no blackberries - well OK maybe I wanted the blackberries but I was going to make it plain. Not even some lemon juice. And very very little sugar. Each cup it made has less than a tablespoon of added sugar. I wanted something I could eat that I didn't have to think about how bad it was for me (like a jam which is pretty much flavored sugar). I really am trying to cut my sugar down and I've done a pretty good job.

There are several ways to make preserves. 1. You can just chop up the fruit and boil it down. 2. You can do the really slow way, which is to heat it up for 5-15 minutes and then let it sit and cool down. Repeat until it is thick enough for you liking. 3. And the last way, the one that I used, is to macerate the fruit and the strain it out. Boil down the liquid fast to 220F. Add the fruit back in and cook for a short time until it is ready.

The last method keeps more of the nutrients of the fruit as it isn't hot as long. It also preserves the shape of the fruit more. But I wasn't after the last one. After adding the fruit I used a stick blender for just a couple of whizzes. I didn't want big chunks as I wanted to be able to eat it with almond butter (I miss peanut butter but sadly it is a legume) on a sandwich. I also had to modify the first step of macerating the fruit. Usually you just pour sugar over the fruit and the liquid comes out. I only used a 1/4 cup of sugar for the whole thing. That wouldn't work. So I poured the sugar over it and heated it up to boiling. That got the juices to start flowing. Then I scooped out the fruit. As more liquid came out of the fruit I continued to add it to the boiling pot. I think it worked pretty well. And it tastes delicious. Much more tart than a typical preserve, but full of peach flavor. Yum.

At least the end of the morning was better than the start. Each of the four jars pinged as soon as they got out of the hot water. I don't think anyone who cans can keep from smiling when she hears that sound. Oh and that last jar with the black lid is for the fridge. I'm going to have that sandwich for lunch tomorrow. As for the peaches. I have sixteen left on the counter. I want to eat the last of them fresh. I'm hoping they last for 4 days as I've been eating about 4 a day. One in the morning in my smoothie. And three in the afternoon for a snack. No matter how good peach preserves are, they don't beat a fresh ripe dripping peach.

Single Serving Peach Cobbler

I've been eating peaches every day. Usually I have a snack in the afternoon and peaches are the star. Yesterday it was three peaches. Yum. But I figured I could eat more. I certainly have them. So I made a peach cobbler. Not a huge big thing. I created a fruit cobbler recipe that makes just one ramekin of cobbler. I can use up small bits of fruit. And since it is just me eating it, I don't have to deal with a large cobbler that is too much to eat. And each time I make it is is fresh. I wish I had taken a photo of it last night. But it was gobbled up too fast. Oh my was it good. That decided me. I was going to preserve some peaches so I could eat this in the winter, when I really need the fresh taste of peaches and there aren't a ton of them on my counter.

Peaches are acidic fruit so as long as it is just fruit, sugar, and lemon juice, I'm all set with doing a water bath can of these. It doesn't matter the proportions. My cobbler last night was a touch too sweet and I used 1 1/2 T of sugar to 3/4 c+ of peaches. This time I used 6 cups cut up and smooshed down peaches with 3/8 c sugar, and 2 T lemon juice. Just for the record that is still a bit too sweet. I'm wondering if these peaches need sugar at all. They are very sweet as is. I figured I'd needs some as I'm adding lemon juice. Maybe next time I'll try just 1/4 c sugar. I know I'm making a dessert, but a balance is good.

I cooked it down for about 4 minutes. The big question for me was how long to water bath can them. Peach jam has a processing time of 10 minutes. Canned peaches are 20 minutes. They aren't as cooked down as a jam, but certainly more than a peach half. So I split the difference at 15 minutes.

I made 5 1/2 half pints. I thought a cup was the perfect size for my mini cobbler so I used the cup sized jam jars. And that nice orange color to my peaches is made because I do not remove the skins on my peaches. They are home grown and not sprayed. Why waste the most nutritious part? Even if it is dessert. I wipe the fuzz off of them before I cut them up and they pretty much disappear into the peaches by the time they are cooked.

I always think of cobblers as a very American dessert if old fashioned. I don't know if it is true or not. For all I know it originally came from another country. But in our country cobbler is a very traditional dish and depending on where in the country you come from, you make it differently. In the south they tend to make a more cake like cobbler. Here in the north it is more of a biscuit type of cobbler. I'm from the north so that is the kind that I grew up with.

Last year I was into making fruit crisps which is a wholly different and also similar dessert. It is easier to make small batches of that as there is no buttermilk (or anything wet except butter) in the topping. I just had a batch of the topping made up and stored in the fridge. When I wanted some I tossed some fruit, sugar, and cornstarch into the ramekin and then sprinkled on the topping.

But a cobbler must be made fresh every time. And it is best hot out of the oven. So a single serving is the way to go if you have no one to share it with. I think the best cobbers are made with buttermilk (of the northern versions at least, there are some really good southern ones made with egg as the liquid, but you can't do those single serving) . Buttermilk is not something I have in my fridge on a regular basis. So I've made the recipe to use 2 tablespoons of buttermilk. I buy a container of buttermilk and freeze it in my ice cube trays which are exactly 2 tablespoons in size. Every time I want to make cobbler I defrost one. Since I figured out this trick I've dispensed with crisps as cobblers are so much yummier. At least I think so.

Oh and since my cobbler is a generic fruit cobbler some of the ingredients have ranges. If you use a very sweet fruit, use the lower amount of sugar. If it is rhubarb use the highest. If it is a wet fruit like peaches use the most cornstarch if it is drier like blueberries use the least. And the last one is lemon juice. If it is really tart like a gooseberry, leave it out. If it needs that tartness kick add it in. Basically use your good judgement.

Late posted photo of tonight's cobbler

Daphne's Single Serving Fruit Cobbler

• Filling:
• 3/4c tightly packed, slightly mashed fruit (or 1 c more loosely packed fruit that will cook down)
• 0 to 1 T lemon juice
• 1/2 to 1 T cornstarch
• 1/2 to 3 T sugar
• Topping:
• 1/4 c flour
• t sugar
• 1/2 t baking powder
• 1/8 t salt
• T butter
• 2 T buttermilk

Preheat oven to 400 F.

Mix up the filling ingredients and put in a large ramekin.

Combine all but the last ingredients for the topping and either cut the butter into it or use a small food processor so the butter is no bigger than a small pea. (I smoosh it with a fork until it is right.) Add buttermilk. Mix until combined. Put over the top of the fruit. Bake 25 minutes or until the topping is golden brown.

Enjoy!

Peaches

Can you say PEACHES? This is one over abundance that I will never complain about. I picked these off my tree yesterday morning. There are still a lot of peaches left on the tree. So I'm celebrating. Since the trees are part of the landscaping these are split between my townhouse mates and me. So they get half and I get half. They have four people that have to share them all, but here it is just me as my husband doesn't eat peaches (yes crazy I know). So I get a lot all to myself. And nope I'm not sharing.

I ate two yesterday and three today. I'm trying to eat the ripest ones first. Some will need a few days to ripen on the counter. But I'm really hoping that there will be more than I can eat. I want to be able to preserve them for the first time ever. Should I just can plain peaches to eat at lunch? Should I can a mix for peach cobbler? Should I make a peach rum sauce? Peach jam? Peach butter? Peach syrup? Peach leather? Peach cordial? Or just freeze them plain for my smoothies? Argggghh so many choices. What would you make?

In Hope of Peaches

Gratuitous Flower Photo

Summer has hit and summer means peaches. Right now I've been buying them at the store. The New Jersey peaches have been really good. I suspect the farmers market will have them this week too and I'll start buying them there. But of course I want my own peaches. I lost one of my two peach trees last winter. I haven't a clue what killed it. I replaced it with an Elberta Queen. It will be years before I see peaches from that one.

But my other peach tree is just loaded down with peaches. And I thinned about 3/4 of them off of the tree. I've noticed that the squirrels were thinning more of them out. Many a day. So I had to protect it. On Friday I put the netting over. I had a choice of 14'x14' or 28'x28'. The 14' one is too small, but the 28' one is way too big. So there is a lot of extra fabric around the base of the tree.

As soon as I left the area I noticed a squirrel immediately come back for another peach. He first touched the bird netting. Then he decided he could jump over it. So he leapt for the trunk and didn't make it because the netting is in front of it. He fell into a pile of netting. He extracted himself. Then he looked at the peaches again. And did another leap. Once again he got caught in the netting. At this point I was scared he was going to get caught in there and not be able to get out. But again he extracted himself.

I thought for sure after the last struggle to get free, he would give up. But this time he leapt and got really caught in the fabric. After five minutes he was still in there. Now I'm not a fan of squirrels by any means. To me they are rats with fluffy tails, but the last thing I want is for the squirrel to die a slow death in my netting. So I went out and had to help him out. He was not pleased by this. Nor was I for that matter. But at least it scared the heck out of him and he left the area for good. I haven't seen any squirrels going for the peaches anymore. I hope it stays that way.

Last year this was the day that I picked my first peach. I won't be doing that this year. They need a little longer. Also I've noticed that the peaches are much, much smaller this year than last year. I wish I knew why. I'm a real neophyte with fruit trees. It can't be water. We have had about 5" of rain in the last month. That ought to be enough. Surely peaches don't mind the heat we have been getting as Georgia comes to mind when you think of peaches and they are certainly hotter than me. Maybe I just need to thin them better. I did leave them a bit closer this year than last.

I also got around to protecting the apples on the trees in the back yard. There are two apples on one tree and seven on the other. So not many. I didn't think they were worth netting the whole tree. So I'm trying to net the individual apples. I'm thinking it probably won't work, but it doesn't hurt to try.

My Front Yard

I've recently been doing some work in the front yard. The gooseberry plant was cut way back. I have to do this every year or it would take over. The other two gooseberries that you can't see are slowly coming along. I've heard they can be grown as standards so I'm trying. I'll see if it works or not.

The pot at the corner this year is doing better than normal. I usually forget to water it on occasion and it droops pitifully until I notice it. But this year it hasn't. The middle spire plant hasn't grown one inch since I bought it. I thought it was supposed to double in height. Not so much. My favorite plant in this is the Garnet sweet potato. It is my experiment. People use ornamental sweet potatoes all the time, but they aren't edible. This one is. I picked the variety that I grow that has the prettiest leaves. They may just be green, but they have a nice shape.

Weeds taller than the hostas

Sadly those were the best things going on in the front yard. My townhouse mates have been out of town on and off a lot and have let the weeds get out of hand. Weeding is their job. But I took it up this week and got at least some of it done.

We also lost a lot of plants in the bed in front of my door this year so it looks pitiful. The peach tree died and we replaced it. The branches are exactly 8" long. It will be a while before it fills in enough to look pretty. And we lost six blueberry plants. I don't know why so many plants died in that spot this year. I would think the blueberries by the road would die. I had a van run over them. Then Molly kept running over them all winter long. And the salt truck actually got down to the end of our road and salted in front of them. But no. Those are doing great. I'm guessing it is the lack of water. As the blueberries are on a higher spot near the bricks. But that wouldn't explain the peach that was next to it. But whatever the reason, it is bare. And it looks so ugly. And it is in front of my house.

In May I had asked the my townhouse mates if I could have a budget (as we have a shared yard) to put something in there, but never got a response. I didn't push it as I was so sick this spring. I wasn't really up to doing anything anyway. But now I'm much better. And I have energy to do things. So now they are in trouble.

I've made plans. I want to put the path in front of the gooseberries that we had planned to do ages ago. I want to line the edges in brick raised a couple of inches. Have stones in the middle. And have mazus be the ground cover. I've always loved stepping stones surrounded by ground covers. But I don't want the mazus to escape the area and it is a vigorous grower. I'm hoping the raised bricks will direct the plants to stay inside the zone. It might work. Might not.

And I want color in front of my house. I keep changing my mind on the plan. I have noticed that I gravitate toward the daisy like flowers - echinacea, daisies, helenium, rudbeckia, gaillardia. I have to make myself think of things that are different like daylilies and Russian sage. I'm also finding since the space is small that I have to search out the dwarf varieties of things. I don't want the plants higher than the lowest foliage on my dwarf peach trees. I want air to get under the branches. Basically I don't want anything taller than 2'. And the front plants should be shorter.

On my walks I've been looking at the plants. I've been noticing which ones grow well around here. Heleniums seem to do well in people's yards. The only ones I haven't seen growing well on my list are gaillardia. I've yet to see it around here. But its requirements seem to be really easy. It can handle moist or wet soils. It can handle clay or sandy soils. It is very hardy. It seems a bomb proof plant, but then why do I never see it anywhere? It makes me wonder. Either way I think Arizona Apricot is really pretty. Right now I have it next to Little Spires which is a dwarf Russian sage and Short and Sassy a dwarf helenium. The helenium seems so close to the color and flower shape of the gaillardia that I ought to change one of them up. I love that orange in the helenium. And maybe the yellow of the gaillardia is not as close as I think. I go back and forth.

I'm hoping to get the hardscaping part of it done this year and plant everything up next spring. Many of the plants I like can be grown from seed which I can do this winter. Or I can get small 4" pots. I could plant in the fall, but I've had less success with fall plantings than spring plantings in the past. And then I can't grow anything from seed.

Fruit

There has been a lot of activity on the fruit front in my yard. Below is my Honey Crisp apple tree. I've decided to let it fruit for the first time this year. It isn't huge, but I'm not sure it will ever get huge. Well you know, huge for a dwarf tree which is never large. My other dwarf apple tree is twice as tall. Sadly that one, a Ginger Gold, seems to be a biennial bearer. Last year it put on a lot of flowers, but the flowers were few this year. I'll only get a small handful from that tree.

I don't spray my trees, but there are numerous pests around here, so I cover each little apple with a nylon footie tied on with a twist tie. It works pretty well to keep the insects out. Sadly the Ginger Gold had some leaf rollers earlier and they did damage the fruit. Though there won't be any insects inside the apple, the apples are deformed. Oh well. If it happens this badly again I'll have to start spraying Bt at the appropriate time. But hopefully not.

My New Redhaven peach put on an enormous amount of peaches again this year. I'm really liking this tree. But it does mean a lot of work to thin them out. I like to have around 6" between peaches, but the reality is about 4"-8". Sometimes even closer or farther. Though on the bottom branches that don't see as much sun I thin them even farther apart. I always keep the peaches that are the biggest and thin out the smaller ones.

I tossed the baby peaches on the compost pile, hundreds of them. There were a lot of peaches to take off. It took me a while to get it done. As you can see I cut down my chive plants too. I wanted to get rid of the flowers before they set seed and the wind we had recently did a real job on the plant and it was more in the oregano and savory sections than in its own.

But getting back to the peaches, I do have sad news. The Reliance peach seems to have died. It has always been late every year. Very late some years. But the buds seem to be drying out. I'm not sure what killed the tree. It had no trouble last year. It is a RELIANCE peach, which is known for its hardiness and resistance to things. I figured maybe the mice ate the bark off under the mulch, but nope. No signs of damage there at all. The roots are still alive as it keeps trying to put up suckers, but no green anywhere on the trunk above the graft. So what killed it? I'm clueless.

Then I finally planted my melons this year. I wanted to do this later than last year. I'm scheduled to go to London when the melons usually become ripe. Now I could just let my townhouse mates pick them and eat them, but I love my melons. They are such a treat. So I'm trying to time it right.

Pruning

I have six trees that are espaliered along my fence. Five of them didn't really need any pruning. I tend to keep these pruned as they grow so they don't get out of control. But the above Liberty apple tree was not cooperating. As you can see the bottom left branch never grew. So sad. So I had to chop it off a bit above where I want the branch to come out. Sadly there is no good bud down there facing the right direction, but I can make due. I'll turn one that is going a bit out or in to go sideways like I want.

It's neighbors the MacFree apple above and the Honeysweet pear grew in just like they should. The above right branch isn't very strong right now, but I'm sure it will get bigger. I've never done espaliers before I moved here, or any fruit tree for that matter. But I'm slowly learning.

I also went out and did a bit of pruning on my peach trees. Like the espaliers I tend to prune as they grow so they go in the right spot. Well as much of the right spots as I understand. The peach trees had a few crossed branches, so they got snipped off. I ought to check my dwarf apple trees in the back. But honestly I don't think there is much to do there either. One of them really doesn't like to grow at all. It hasn't grown more than a foot or so since I planted it four years ago. I might have to replace it at some point, but my townhouse mates don't want to give up on it. They love Honeycrisp apples as do I. But if it never fruits is it really worth it? I suppose I ought to have more patience. It just might take 10 years.

Two Surprises and Bean Time

Yesterday evening I had a surprise show up on my porch. It was my Bluestone order that I had forgotten about. It was three coreopsis. So today I did have something to do in the garden. I had to plant. Not that it took long. I ripped out the annuals that were holding their place and put them in. The biggest problem with planting is that the ground is bone dry. We ought to be getting into a wetter pattern. At least I hope we do. We really need rain.

I decided since I was outside and we did have wet weather predicted for Saturday thru Monday (though now they are saying Monday-Tuesday), I ought to get the pole dried beans picked. Constant wet weather is bad for them. They will mildew in their pods.

Most of the pinto beans weren't ready but a good handful of them were so I picked them. They dry to a nice beige and are green before they are ripe.

The Trail of Tears beans turn purple as they get older and when they are dry they sometimes turn a bit beige, but often retain their purple color. My Tarbais beans aren't even close to ripe yet. They do take a while. And sadly their production is pretty low this year due to the dry weather. I really needed to water them like the green beans to get them to set pods. At least the Trail of Tears seems to be very productive. Last year I didn't have enough of them, but this year I think I won't be able to eat them all. But we will see.

While I was at the farmers market yesterday I picked up some peaches. I'd been eating melons for dessert, but I broke into the last one today for breakfast. I'm going to make it last by eating just a third of it a day. But for dessert I decided on peach sorbet (1 lb 13 oz peaches and a syrup made from 1 c sugar and 3/4 c water). So I had to peel those peaches. They look neon orange don't they?

And I pureed them to make the sorbet. Yum. The funny thing is that I was going to make some plum sorbet from my friend's plums (they still have tons even after the canning party). But I didn't have a car to pick them up. One of my townhouse mates surprised me with two gallon bags full of plums this afternoon. She had been out for a walk with my plum owning friend, and he sent her back with them so I could make more things. I might just end up with some plum sorbet too. And maybe some plum chutney.