I like carrots. I wouldn’t say I love them or seek them out every day, but they can be a sweet, convenient, healthy snack. They add crunch to a salad. I’ve been known to drink carrot juice on occasion. If attending a pot luck and one of luckers brought a plate of cut vegetables with a ranch dipping sauce, I would likely take a carrot or two on my plate. Sure, I would rather take the raw broccoli, but it’s rarely cut to an appropriate bite size, and I have been told it’s not polite to dig through the stack of broccoli to find the pieces that are. Soups are often good with carrots. The carrot rarely encounters pests in the garden. I understand rabbits can be an issue, but not so much here. It’s a solid vegetable.

And so I was troubled this year with the carrot crop – not that they didn’t grow, because they grew just fine, wonderfully even. They just taste bad. Anne is holding out hope that with the frosty weather they will sweeten up a bit. I’m skeptical, but willing to keep trying them. And next year, a different variety will be ordered. Maybe a couple different varieties.

(click the movie poster for a larger view)

It’s a good time to plant garlic. I’m trying something new this year.

I think it’s good to try new approaches – break out of our flower pots, if you will. I know what you’re saying: “Alan, This will never work.” And you’re right. It won’t. But the journey is what’s important in the garden. Not what works or doesn’t work. “Yeh, but you won’t grow any garlic this way.” I totally see the point you are trying to make. You want me to be successful. Thanks, I appreciate it, but we all have different definitions of success. “And your definition of success is to fail miserably?” No! Of course not. I’m just saying we need not concern ourselves all the time with all the rules. Some of the time, sure, but garlic doesn’t like rules. Garlic likes to go dancing. Next year, I think I’ll take my garlic out clubbing before I plant it.

It’s nice to have too many tomatoes. This doesn’t always happen, so when it does I start looking for potentially delicious ways to consume them. I’ve had several absolutely perfect tomato sandwiches this year. I actually prefer the simple cheese + mayo+ tomato combination to the more classic BLT. But a sandwich really only uses one tomato, and I have many. Sauce is already made and frozen. We’ve given to friends and food banks (and to be honest, some of these season finale tomatoes are a little over-ripe).

Soup is an idea. Ketchup? Perhaps, but I don’t use that much ketchup unless I am eating fries. Fruit and veggie juices, on the other hand, if tasty, disappear rather quickly from the fridge.

The recipe is simple and not my own creation. As with all things, I learned this one on the Internet. These proportions are rough and can be adjusted to taste.

8 cups chopped tomatoes
1 cup chopped celery
1/3 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup chopped pepper
2 Tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon salt
(optional) 1 spicy pepper

Add all ingredients to a stainless steel pot and simmer from about 1/2 hour. Press through sieve or food mill. Chill in fridge. The site I found this recipe on mentions it lasting in the fridge for about a week to 10 days. It’s really quite refreshing.

The orange glow fills the cracks and voids of our lives with soothing stickiness. A missed opportunity? Fill it with golden goodness. A lost soul? Pour on a bit of that butter from the gods. Broken heart? This glowing elixir will affix itself to your severed chambers and have them rhythmically pounding for joy.

The sun is born anew inside a plastic container formed to a pleasant eight-ounce inverted cone with its sides mashed flat. The Sun’s power, captured by our bees and then crudely swiped from their fortress. What goes around comes around, right Mr. Sun?

“Hell, NO!” Shouts Mr. Sun. And with his power he zaps back nearly all of the stolen honey. Leaving us with a scant 4 ounces.

Jerk. All stolen miracles such as this one are in short supply. The swiped thimble of sickly sweetness leaves my bees slightly bitter for their loss and angry at my thievery. Was it worth it? Probably not, but maybe. It’s a process to be learned and enjoyed. Next year will be more impressive.

Behold! The awesome yellow power of the lemon pepper!

Okay, you have that beheld? Good. You can stop now. I know, it’s difficult to turn your gaze away from the starburst tint that gives this pepper its name. The color is certainly lemony, but the flavor is so hot I might be missing out on what others describe as citrus tones. The hot lemon pepper rates surprisingly high on the Scoville chart. Some rank it akin to Cayenne while others place it nearer the mighty Habanero. If enough ripen before the heavy frost, they will make for an attractive pepper jelly.

In addition to the fiery lemons, I also planted sweet bells, purple cayenne (they start purple and green and ripen red), and habanero. The bell peppers ought to have been red (big red), but they are ripening orange/yellow. Either I planted some old seeds and mixed up my planting (entirely possible) or the red pepper seeds I ordered were not very red. The peppers have been sluggish this year.

Part of the sluggishness was gardener error. I planted them out before it was really warm enough and before the seedlings were big enough. That likely shocked them a bit. The bells also had too much competition from poppies. As pretty as the poppies were, I should have ripped them out. Or maybe that wouldn’t have made any difference. The green habaneros in the photo were picked from a casualty limb. All the pepper plants are heavy with peppers and without caging or staking, limbs will snap. All the pepper jam might come out green this year – maybe with a hint of purple.

Once again, this doesn’t appear to be the year to make wine from our grapes. The birds beat us to the fruit.

About two weeks ago, I saw some evidence of bird damage and rather naively thought there were plenty of grapes for everyone. I also thought that netting the rows would be a large expense and massive time-suck. Ordering netting would take a while to arrive and who knows what might happen in the between.

So, I did nothing. Actually, I hoped a little. But admittedly not with all my heart, since I honestly wasn’t looking forward to the de-stemming and washing and crushing.  We’ve been talking about scaling back the rows of vines so that they would be more manageable. “Know your limits” – that’s what grandma used to say. Not my grandma, but I’m sure someone’s grandma said that. I think we could better handle about five rows (currently have eleven). With five rows, I could potentially install a simple deer fence around the whole vineyard and bird netting could go up and over the top of the deer fence… at least then we’d only have frost, bugs and fungus to contend with.

The garden is bursting with fresh produce that would make most McDonald’s lovers weep. Every night, we toss freshly torn basil with a different assortment of beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Green tomato salsa has adorned cheese and bean filled quesadillas. Tonight we will slice melons – cantaloupe or watermelon, I can’t be sure yet.  There is an abundance of flavor and goodness. Eating well makes us feel good.

But the other day, I was thinking about how much I like French Fries. At first, I was searching for a recipe to make squash fries. So I really started out with good intentions. And I found some reviews of Butternut Squash fries that looked okay. I had a squash (not butternut) sitting on the counter that I wanted to use. It was an accidental pick about a week ago – sometimes fruit falls off when weeding or manipulating vines. So, I cut it open — It wasn’t ripe. Disappointment. The flesh was so thin it wasn’t going to work for fries. And by this time, I really wanted some fries.

Lucky for me, I had some potatoes sitting on the counter too. They were starting to green a bit from the morning sun. I read somewhere that green potatoes are poisonous, but then I thought that might be a myth and these weren’t that green yet anyway. So I peeled and sliced them, tossed them in a bag with olive oil and kosher salt, spread them on a cookie sheet and tossed them into a cold oven and then cranked the heat to 425. They took about 30-40 minutes and I did flip and stir them a bit every 10 minutes or so. They were the most amazing fries ever! And honestly, they aren’t so terrible nutritionally speaking, right? Especially if we don’t count the ketchup.

I’ve been worried about the bees. My brood pattern seemed spotty. And I couldn’t find the queen.

A first-time beekeeper has much to learn. A first-time anything-er has much to learn. And we like that. The learning. I try to vary my approaches to knowledge, asking questions of brother beekeeper, reading books and blogs, checking images on Google, renting a Netflix documentary, basically everything short of joining a club or checking ebsco-host, which is maybe where the whole process should have started. Too much of the wrong kinds of information can be bad thing.

I had myself convinced that the hive had a condition known as egg-laying worker bees.  This can happen in a hive that goes without a queen for too long. In the absence of royalty, the workers, or maybe just one or a couple of them, begin to lay eggs. But they can only lay drones, which are pretty much useless (I’m probably over-simplifying or maybe I’m making it up, but nonetheless, I was convinced my queen was gone and my workers changed jobs).

The remedy I found on the Internet for egg-laying workers involves moving the hive about 100 yards away, brushing the bees off the frames and then re-assembling the hive in the original location. The worker(s) laying eggs theoretically haven’t spent much time outside and would not find their way back too easily.  I struggled with the logistics of this… the hive is heavy – dolly, wagon, truck, front-end loader? Brushing the bees off the frames sounds easy enough, but then what? I imagined Anne and I relay racing them back to their former location. Anne and I are not so good at running, so it’s an amusing image.

I was ready to order a new queen. But first I took several photos of the brood and sent them around. The feedback was unanimous: the brood is fine. Much ado about nothing I guess. So, if you are a first-timer, I hope these images will help. (I also recommend the very helpful and active forum at www.beesource.com). More brood images in this Flickr brood set.

Last winter, our frozen pesto became a favorite. It surpassed beans and even frozen tomatoes as the go-to ziplock of choice. Like tomatoes, pesto makes for wonderful pasta and pizza or even as a spread for those co-op bread, oil, cheese dinner nights.

I knew the making and freezing of more pesto would be essential this year. So I planted more basil – and more varieties just in case one sucked. As it turned out, both Italian Large Leaf and Purple Ruffle varieties are delicious. I seem to detect hints of mint in the Purple Ruffle, but my palette isn’t necessarily very educated.

Our pesto recipe is fairly standard. I just add olive oil, basil (although we’ve also had wonderful spinach pesto in the past), garlic, salt and lemon juice. I do it all to taste adding a bit at a time so as not to overwhelm with oil or lemon. We rarely have pinenuts, but if I happen to have them, they would be included. The cheese is purposely excluded since these batches are bound for the freezer. Cheese (usually shredded Parmesan) can always be added later. One more note, if you have different colors of basil, the final color of the pesto will be muddied if you mix them. So, if you are one to color coordinate your meals to your napkins and place settings, keep this in mind.

A beautiful little smooth green snake this time. So green. So cool. Anne wasn’t home at the time, but she did agree that this one was cute – at least the pictures of it were cute.