We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.
Litchfield County is the quaintest, best-preserved antique corner of Connecticut. The area was well-settled in the early 1700s and, judging by the size and style of all of the old farmhouses, these were prosperous farmers.
In this area, most of the old farms have been converted to weekend estates for the 1%. The antique places are perfectly-maintained. Old barns everywhere, still looking good. Thanks for all that charm and beauty, 1%ers.
We went over there and took a drive through Southbury, Woodbury, Washington, and Washington Depot. Nice. We were en route to see the Hollister House Gardens in Washington (good pics on their site). Mrs. BD wanted to check it out and to maybe get some garden inspiration.
The garden "rooms" are strongly architectural with walls and hedges, lots of stone, while the plantings are a jumble - or maybe not - probably a well-planned jumble. Engish-style gardens, the sorts of gardens my Mom aspired to. It's the owner's life work.
We had an early supper at the GW Tavern. Good fish. Too much food. I'd put the place in the "Stuff-and-Waddle" category of restaurant, what my sister calls "Sticky Bun restaurants."
My pics of the garden below the fold might or might not inspire your gardening -
It's too bad that all of the peaches on a tree begin to ripen at once. I pick before ripe. Up here, it's September for peaches and pears, October for apples.
I have a pal coming over today to help me with the harvest, and we'll split the harvest. He cooks stuff too, another old farm boy. It's been an excellent year for fruit trees in general in the Northeast: frigid long winter, wet spring, hot summer.
Maybe Mrs. BD will make a few Peach Pies and tarts for friends and kids, and I'll can up some preserves and Peach Chutney. She is a crust-making expert And I will keep a bunch to ripen fully on the tree to eat. I am fond of fresh peach slices on vanilla ice cream. Aren't you?
In 2 weeks it will be time to harvest my peach crop. I have a neighbor pal who likes to get into the tree with me, and shares the harvest. Mrs. BD will make us a couple of peach pies (my favorite pie), and I will can 10-12 jars of peach chutney.
I had a little spare time the other morning, so I did one last harvest from my rhubarb patch to make another batch of Rhubarb-Hot Pepper Jam. Golly, it is delicious and tangy. For the pepper component, I used chopped sorenos, jalapenos, and some sweet red peppers too just for their flavor. A little lemon juice and a dash of salt. Rhubarb is not to everybody's taste, but I love it.
I use one cup of chopped peppers per 3 cups of chopped rhubarb. I'll use up the rest of my chopped peppers to make ordinary hot pepper jelly. Sometimes I make it like a sauce, sometimes like a firmer jelly. Regardless, it is a bit too hot for some people.
My peppery special jams and jellies go well with cheese, cream cheese, pork, chicken, scrambled eggs, or anything else. Available at your specialty food store never. Photo is hot pepper jelly with cream cheese, but goat cheese is better. Any cheese, really.
July is Hydrangea bloom around here. A wonderful thing.
Gardeners want their shrub and/or perennial borders to have fun blooms to look at for as long as possible, and that takes thought and planning. (May is Azaleas, June is roses, etc). Hydrangeas want more sun than is often claimed, but too much will give them daytime wilt which weakens them. As their name indicates, they like some water (but the Oakleafs don't need it). It's complicated.
Even the pros get confused about how to grow the hundreds of cultivars of the beloved Hydrangea family of flowering shrubs. Each Spring, I renew my confusion - especially when it comes to the topic of pruning the different categories. Not to mention the newer ever-blooming types.
Most nursery plants are Asian in origin (obviously with plenty of genetic engineering applied to them for blooming purposes), but the old-fashioned Arborescens group derives from the North American wild plant. My favorites are the lacecap types, but I admire them all.
Here are a few things I have learned, none of which applies to all Hydrangeas:
- Hydrangeas like water, and generally do not prefer full-day sun. At least half-day is fine, preferably in the morning. Full shade does not work.
- The pink and/or blue hydrangeas are indeed acidity-sensitive in flower color
- Planting them where they are free to attain their full size without normal pruning (other than that all deciduous shrubs, once they are established and healthy, benefit from removal of 1/4 to 1/3 of the plant down to the ground, or at least the leggy or woody stems, each year) eliminates a lot of complexity.
- Save the dang plant label in a file (best to do with any new plant)
- Hydrangeas do not like much nitrogen fertilizing: it makes them grow leaves, not blooms.
- If you trim or prune your plant wrong, or at the wrong time, you won't get any bloom. Some bloom on new growth, some on last year's growth, and some seem just to do their own thing.
Mountains are gorgeous! Not used to Spring greenery out here in the Sierras. Some rain, which is blessing - the Pacific currents re now favoring us!
The photo is the largest clump we have seen in many decades of the rare Snow Plant (Sarcodes sanguinea) which grows in the thick humus of coniferous forests between 4,000-8,000 feet after the snow melts. We saw these at 7,100 feet on the road to our cabin. It is a root parasite, fleshy and nonphotosynthetic!
“Few plants attract the attention of visitors as much as the fabled snow plant does. Can anyone with a camera resist taking a photo? This root parasite has specialized roots that invade other species through associated mycorrhizal fungi and obtains its nutrients from them.” - Wildflowers of California
It's a little early, but I put in tomato plants today and seeds for yellow beans, yellow squash, pumpkin and sugar baby watermelon. While we were working, a neighbor brought over a plate of ribs he had been cooking since morning. Nice. We have good neighbors.
You just have to do the planting when you have the time, and hope for the best. Thanks to a daughter and her beau for helping me turn over the entire veg garden today. Many hands make light work. Their payment? I'll cook some fat Costco ribeye steaks with watermelon/mint/feta cheese salad, and, for dessert, vanilla ice cream with rhubarb (compote) from the garden. Then they can all (both daughters, and 2 beaus) spend the weekend reading on the porch and kayaking while we adults have our social schedules.
I will need some meat tonight. Holiday or no, my trainer demon will be there 4:45 tomorrow morning and I have never missed. He wants me holding 150 lbs. on the bench.
- Most other plants cannot tolerate daffodil or narcissus sap. They secrete something which prevents other stems from absorbing water. That's why you never see bouquets or vases with daff or narcissus cuttings shared with other flower or plant cuttings.
Saw these Hellebores in a springtime garden yesterday. Some varieties bloom in the snow, but most varieties bloom during the Lenten season. Unique plants.
Mountain Laurel grows to 10-12 feet, and tends to be naturally leggy in its natural Northeastern Oak woodland habitats (see photo above). If it's "overgrown" that way in your around-the-house landscaping in places where it is meant to look green and full, it's because it was planted in the wrong place. It wants to stretch out, unless in full sun. With plenty of sun and rich, slightly acidic soil, it grows like this:
Another alternative is, again, to cut it down to about 6-10" sticks in the Springtime, and let it re-start its growth from the bottom. Regrowth, though, will take far too long for most people to put up with.
The same principle applies to leggy Rhododendron maximum, ("maxies").Come to think of it, also applies to leggy Lilacs. Shrubs get leggy naturally.
You need to have spare money to run a hobby farm, whether it's vegetables, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, etc. Often, such things are set up as tax dodges (agricultural land), never expected to make any meaningful profit themselves.
At least in the northern climes, it's the last chance to aerate or plug, overseed, and fertilize if you want a half-decent "grass garden" which is suitable for walking and dog abuse. As I always say, lawn grass is a garden. It's not natural, and needs care just like any garden. Lawns benefit a great deal from fall fertilizing. If lawns are walked on at all, they require aerating. It's not a rug. If you have a small lawn, you can do that by hand with a hand aerator or a spade: stick it in, wiggle it, and pull it out.
A Spring or Fall aeration or plugging, a Fall overseeding, and three fertilizations per year ought to be good enough for any grass lawn, with or without irrigation but using a mulching mower. Readers know that I top-dress in Spring, but it might not be necessary for everybody. I like doing it.
(The only purpose of irrigation is to make a lawn green when it doesn't want to be green. It's fine for ahow, but spray paint might be cheaper.)
I advise doing those chores all at once. Do it now, and if you have a crabgrass problem, you can deal with it in the Spring with crabgrass-preventer. (You can't overseed and use crabgrass-preventer at the same time because the weed-preventer will prevent germination of your grass seed.)
Best, most logical plan? Minimize your lawn and grow lots of trees and shrubs, and mulch the heck out of them. It's a shame that the "gracious lawn" became the American Way, as if our little 1-2-acre plots were English estates. Heck, all anybody needs is room for Croquet and Badminton, some walking paths and maybe a cool little putting green, but the American lawn has become the expected standard.
Hay is gold in the Alps. Gotta keep the cattle, horses, and sheep fed all winter. There are hay barns all over.
It was haying season when we were in the Italian alps and the Dolomites last September, so many of the meadows looked almost like golf courses. You can't get a baler on the steep slopes, so they store it loose. They don't let a scrap go to waste.
I finished off the peaches with something like this tonight - my own recipe:
I had only around 20 peaches from my tree left after my previous chutney cooking last weekend. Skinned and roughly chopped them. There were plenty of bad spots. 1 giant white onion chopped roughly and 12 cloves of roughly-chopped garlic, lightly sauteed in canola oil. 6 of those diabolical long skinny red peppers with the seeds, chopped (guess you could use those dried chinese ones) 2 cups of roughly chopped fresh ginger - that's a lot Simmered those things in a cup or two of cider vinegar for a while, maybe 20 mins, then added two cups or so of light brown sugar, a teaspoon of curry powder and a teaspoon of chili powder, a good sprinkle of Kosher salt, and stirred that up. Had to add more vinegar. I let that simmer and blend for around 20 minutes.
Then threw in the pile of chopped peaches to brew on a high simmer for around 40 or more minutes to simmer some of the juice off and to blend the flavors.
Wish I could tell you how this smells, and how that sauce tastes. Spicy indeed. I'll call this one Ginger-Pepper-Peach-Garlic Chutney. It will cure cancer and chase away the Devil - and Mrs. BD loves it on grilled or broiled salmon. The modern wife likes to be well-taken care of by a farmer spouse while she tends to the young'uns.
I'll freeze doses of this in freezer bags. Now I have a winter supply of mildly-peppery, and of highly-peppery, home-grown ("organic"!) peach chutney. Do you know how good this stuff is with cheese, meat, or even on crackers with cream cheese?
As I mentioned, we emptied the peach tree just in time to keep the possums from eating them all.
Some were ripe (the peaches, not the possums), some still hard, and some over-ripe with moldy or mealy spots. The ripe ones are for eating today. The semi-hard ones go on the table in the sun. The hard ones, and the marred or half-bad ones, are for chutney. Some had a worm but I cut them out along with the bad spots. Worms do not eat much, and I don't bother spraying.
This year, I am making some of it with light brown sugar, slivered red onions, cider vinegar, roughly-chopped jalapenos (lots - 5 of them in that pot), roughly-chopped fresh ginger so you can bite into a piece (lots), a big box of golden raisins, a little salt. I use recipes as rough suggestions. For hot peppers, I always triple whatever they say.
Best not to overcook a chutney (or it will taste homogeneous and gooey like Major Grey's), and best to use it fresh. I'll freeze the excess - no need to can it. Too much trouble, and comes out tasting less fresh. Go easy on the vinegar, and add more if needed because peaches produce a lot of liquid themselves especially if they are near-ripe or over-ripe.
Peach Chutney - good with fish, steak, chicken, pork, or on a ham or turkey sammich. Google it and find a wide variety of recipes.
Below is a pic of a slightly-cooked one with a light honey sauce and a splash of vinegar, and a little chopped cilantro - some restaurants will make it like that, fresh every couple of days, as a fancy condiment for sole or chicken:
"If you don't want my peaches, don't shake my tree." That's a line from one of the versions of Blind Lemon Jefferson's perfect song from 1927 - "Matchbox Blues." I don't think Albert King used those lines in this version with Stevie Ray, though. I could listen to Albert all day long.
Our peaches up here in Yankeeland begin to ripen right about now. I get a good crop from this tree every other year, but this is the second great year in a row. I see peach pies in my near future, and maybe a year's worth of canned peach chutney. Also, a good supply of fresh peach chutney, which is better than canned: takes about 15 minutes to make. Photo is from this afternoon:
In 2 weeks it will be time to harvest my peach crop. I have a neighbor pal who likes to get into the tree with me, and shares the harvest. Mrs. BD will make us a couple of peach pies (my favorite pie), and I will can 10-12 jars of peach chutney.
Live and learn. Nobody would eat a daffodil bulb on purpose, but if you do it's bad news.
Nobody told these people that they were creating a hobby farm, not a real business: 
The Awful Reign of the Red Delicious 
As I mentioned, we emptied the peach tree just in time to keep the possums from eating them all.
