“April showers bring May flowers”…

Or so they sing in the East, but not here in the Sacramento Valley. April here is the month that all the rains of the winter and early Spring work to create.

Not that it’s all downhill from here on (just wait for May!)

But in shiny April the roses bloom and the crazy irises explode and–just look above and below–the wisteria and ceonothus ( AKA Western lilac) take over the side garden to  bring us a canopy of golden bees and black bumble bees.

Oh yes, did I say the roses bloom..

…and did I say something about irises?

This is their month.

We bought three plants (see above) four years ago from an iris farm in our region, to plant beside one another in the southwest corner of the garden. As is their nature, the plants expand their territory each year, and growers can, if they wish, transplant the new growth to a different spot. I’ve chosen not to, so the three have gradually taken a bit more land each year and have produced more and more magnificent blooms–in April. The show lasts a few weeks and then is over for the year.

The rest of the time, into summer, the leaves gradually fade and brown out, to be cut away and composted, or mulched up.  I like to keep watering them a bit through the dry season, so some green remains and the soil stays moist. But once the rains come in the fall, I know that the new growth is happening on the rhizome underground. The new shoots start popping up in February, and around the first of April the buds appear on the new flower stalks.

As you can see on the photo above, the three plants mature at different times of the month. In our garden, the middle plant always is the precocious one, and the showiest. But the other two have their own chances for the limelight.

The Fruit Trees: Orange, Lemon, Apricot, Peach, Cherry Plum

Apricot. This will be the first to harvest, in May. This year’s will be less than last year’s, maybe only a third as many for drying, jam, and cakes. The tree was trimmed extensively in June 2018.

Cherry Plum. In contrast, the cherry plum, which will harvest in June, is set for an amazing bumper crop. I can’t recall when there were so many plums so early. This tree, too, was trimmed in June 2018, just before last year’s harvest.

Peach. Also extensively trimmed in June, 2018, this spindly, crooked tree always looks in February like it won’t come back. But then the blossoms appear in March, and the first tiny, tiny fruit appear not long therafter, and so by April the baby green peaches are growing–looking forward to harvest in late June and early July.

Orange. The final navel orange of 2018-19 was plucked by April 1, even as the new buds were appearing. By mid April the tree was covered in buds and the blooms appeared last week–with the bees everywhere immediately, attracted by the heavenly fragrance, as we were.

We count at least four buzzy busy friends in this shot.

Meyer Lemon. The lemon bush is only about a week behind the orange in blooming.  Right now in the last week of April the bush is rich in blooms and bees. Like the orange, it is heading for harvest in December after a long, slow, hot growing season.

(Hmm, did I show you more roses?)

Herbs: Old Faithfuls and New Plants

Many of our herbs are perennials.

• Some, like rosemary and chives, are green year-round.
• Others, like Greek oregano, lemon verbena, and both culinary and Russian sage, lose their leaves in winter, but come back in spring.
• Still others, like parsley, marjoram, and thyme, can last through the winter, but may dry out in summer (if they get too much sun in our hot climate) and need to be replaced.

Others, such as sweet and Italian basil, are annuals. They need to be replaced each spring.

All of the herbs grow great in pots or in the ground. Most of ours are in pots–which I like so that I can move them around so they don’t get too much summer sun. NOTE: even though virtually every planting guide says herbs like “full sun,” that doesn’t mean the up-to-12 hours of sun a day in 90+ degree temps that our climate gives them in summer. Only a few of our herbs–the basils and the Russian sage–can take that kind of onslaught.

Instead, by keeping them in pots, I can shift the pots to sunnier or less sunny spots, mostly in the less sunny. Indeed, the parsley, marjoram, thyme, and chives thrive in the quite shady areas around our fountain on the back veranda.

Because they are in pots, without much soil to hold water, I water in the dry season every other day, about a quart each time for each plant, especially in summer.

Now, in late April, all are thriving, and it is so easy to pluck a sprig or two or three for salads, stews, and soups.

From left, in pots: Russian sage, leaf lettuce, watercress, Greek oregano, fennel, sweet basil, with mint in ground next to the lettuce pot.

English thyme

parsley

marjoram

culinary sage

lemon verbena

New Veggies and Two Fruits, One of Them New

April is planting month for the spring and summer veggies. This year it’s

• tomatoes, as always–Husky Red cherry, Golden grape, Ace, and T67 (a UC Davis mid-size variety)–7 plants total
• Black Beauty eggplants (3)–which did so well last year
• Burpless cucumbers (2)–which also thrived last year and made great pickles
• mild peppers (3)–green, red, and cajun red (slightly spicy)
• arugula–multiple plants from spread seed–which I actually planted in December and which are coming into their own now
• leaf lettuce–six plants, into the ground in March and being slowly harvested, meal by meal, now.

New veggies planted in April: green and red mild peppers, cucumbers, four varieties of tomatoes, leaf lettuce, eggplants (hidden behind yellow coreopsis)

One of the two fruits is strawberries–6 new plants to accompany the five other perennials–I planted them the first week in April and they are already producing!

The other fruit–a first for our garden–is blueberries. As of this week, two of these acid-loving plants are now in the area between the peach tree and the meyer lemon. Let’s see how they do over the summer to come.

One More Rose for April…and a Few More Flowers

I’ll close this April tour with yet another rose. One not like the others, but a rose in its own right, which graces the very front of our garden in April of each year and has spread over four years to command the space: the California rock rose.

I can’t resist showing three more April blooms:

Alstroemeria in the side garden wine barrel

Chinese orchid in the shade of the meyer lemon

The steady perennial potted geranium

Now, on to May!

New leaves on the photinia, and the cherry plum in full bloom, mid March

Even as the cold rains kept falling from February into early March, and as the snows kept piling up in the Sierra, and as temps in our Valley rarely got above 48, spring was beginning east and west of the Sacramento River. I mean, what better harbingers of that than the Eurasian collared doves on a branch of the cherry plum tree on March 7?

Now, as the end of the month approaches and the temps have risen into the 60s (with a few in the low 70s in mid month), spring is almost fully upon us–even though the cold rains keep coming a few days a week (24 inches total for the rainy season, about 6 inches above normal for this time of year). Really, the combination of moisture and some sunny days has been ideal for new growth. So overall, March 2019 has been your pretty typical first spring month in NorCal.

Here are some of the headliners in our garden:

Broccoli. I’ve been telling and showing the story of the stir-fry broccoli for months now. The tender broccolini florets have been a bumper crop from five plants, and still in early March the harvest kept coming (see photo, right):

Just picked broccolini, March 1

But as the month wore on, the inevitable happened: those cute, fuzzy little budlets on the florets did what flowers are supposed to do. They bloomed–bright little yellow suns by the hundreds. See below:

Yet, even in the photo of the yellow flowers, you can see broccolini spears still appearing, and the florets are as tasty as ever. The broccoli Marches on!

Cherry Plum. The dominant stars of March are the two cherry plum trees (one ours, one our neighbor’s) that shadow the garden and that explode in white-pink-red blooms in the middle of the month. (See the photo at the top of the entry and the panorama below.)

The collared doves that billed and cooed on those branches early in the month made their nest within that cloud of blossoms. Now, at month’s end, the blossoms have fallen to earth and the trees are covered in their rich maroon leaves. On the ground, the petals created a blanket of pink that for two weeks gave a snowy look to the entire garden:

aeonium and snowy ground

cherry plum petals dust the alum root

Indeed, they still give a candy sprinkles touch to the calla lilies that glow in the back garden:

Oranges and Lemons. The harvest of meyer lemons is now done, with the final picking about March 20. We had almost 200 for the season, roughly the same as in the past three years, as the mature bush has grown little in that time. Most of the lemons went for lemonade or the orange juice/lemonade combo, but Jean has frozen two jars of the juice for lemon pies and her delicious lemon blueberry bread.

Jean’s lemon blueberry bread from our meyer lemons

There are still oranges on our tree, perhaps 20, with the total for the season a splendid 340. As with the lemons, most of the fruit has been squeezed for juice, with some of the oranges given to the local food bank.  Though I’ve picked many from the tree, most of the fruit has been gleaned from the ground the day it has fallen. Because this has been an unusually rainy few months, as noted above, the oranges come down more often, and gleaning must be done promptly before the fruit turns to mush.

Here’s the latest gleaning and picking:

…and here’s (below) the densest cluster of remaining fruit. As always this time of year, the ripe oranges share space on the tree with the first buds of what will be next year’s crop:

Preview of What’s to Come in April

Apricots. This first fruit harvest of the year will come in May, but now the leafed-out tree is studded with tiny green fruit:

The tiny green apricots appear in early March, headed for ripeness in May.

Peaches

Once the peach leaves fall in October and November and make a yellow carpet across the garden, the mature tree looks naked and spindly through the winter, and one wonders if another crop will come. But in later March, the first blossoms appear and by the end of the month, the tree is covered in blossoms and fresh new leaves. The harvest will not be until late June and early July:

The first peach blossoms of the year, mid March.

Roses and Lemons. Just after the last meyer lemon was picked, the first buds of the new blossoms, which will become the new fruit, appeared. The bush will be in full bloom in April:

First buds on the meyer lemon, late March

Meanwhile, even though the occasional rose appears throughout the winter on many of our seventeen bushes, the real explosion will occur in April, as the many buds on this red rose promise:

This will be a glorious display in April.

A Few More March Garden Pix

Breath of Heaven

Geranium, Pomegranate, Chard

Lenten Rose

The first petunia of the year–in its second year–an annual now a perennial?

Jean’s treats for Valentine’s Day: Cherry cheese puff pastry and flourless chocolate cake (See descriptions for the cherry puff and other February treats later in this entry.)

February in Northern California is what we’ve come to regard as the beginning of spring. But sometimes–like this year–we have to look more closely to see spring beginning. It’s been cold, even frosty, and more rainy than normal–almost nine inches this month, with more on the way! Meanwhile, snowfall on the nearby Sierras is at 150% of normal.

Frost-covered broccoli in our garden, Feb. 2019

Still, don’t be fooled.

Even as the chill wind howls today, February spring is upon us. Roses are budding and putting out new leaves, and the apricot has burst into bloom:

Bouncing back from the frost, the broccoli plants are more fruitful and robust than they’ve ever been in our garden. The five plants keep putting our new shoots and florets after some have been trimmed off for cooking…

The five broccoli plants keep putting out new shoots and florets after some have been trimmed off for cokking.

The Swiss chard (one of the six this year) is moving steadily toward its summer splendor…

The Swiss chard stems glow bright red to orange as the plants mature. The leaves are great in salads and stews.

Birds and Bees: The more mobile citizens of the garden have either never left (like the friendly, assertive jay and the lordly crow)…

or are returning after part of the year away (like the little green flycatcher and the white-capped sparrow below

and the fruit-loving finches). Note that the finches in the photo below are perched in the cherry-plum tree, which is budding and will bloom early in March.

Oh, yes–we can’t forget the honeybees, who come out as soon as the sun shines, despite the chilly winds. Here, a bee enjoys the brightly flowering Euryops that lights up our back garden:

New Planting in February

Our newest addition to this year’s garden is arugula (Astro variety), which Chris is planting much later than usual. He’s formerly planted it in late fall, and it thrives through the winter and into spring, producing abundant leaves that are uniquely spicy in salads. He usually has rotated the arugula with tomatoes, which he plants in April.

The Kitchen: Where the Real February Action Is

Our February look at good things from our kitchen picks up where we left off from last month’s celebration of soups and stews: with a few tummy-warming main dishes ideal on cold days–plus some traditional pastries that are always a hit in our home and that smell great as they bake in the oven.

The main dishes use a variety of meats and veggies. For both of us, the dishes we like best will use some ingredients that we grow here, but the main goal is to stay imaginative, always ready to try something a little different. Like the birds in our garden, we don’t mind going out on a limb–or winging it.

To Jean, that imagination means delving into cuisines from many cultures, as well as fusing traditions if the flavor profiles seem compatible. And Chris is always eager to mash-up the leftovers that sit next to one another in the fridge, even if they’d never appear on the same restaurant menu.

Panco-crusted Meatloaf Stroganoff, with Medley of Barley, Mushrooms, Broccoli, and Chard

Now the photo above might not make the meal look appetizing, but not every delicious food is meant to be eaten with the eyes, despite what some chefs say. What makes this meatloaf particularly tasty is the panco breading, which gives the meat a satisfying crunch and keeps it crisp over several days, as we snack on it.

The veggie medley blends the earthy flavors of the barley, mushrooms, and chard–which pair nicely with the savory, salty umami-ness of the meatloaf–but these veggies, plus the home-grown broccoli florets, keep the mixture supple and its flavors bright for multiple meals.

Turkey, Chard, Mushroom, Tomato Cassoulet

Talk about a fusion of cuisines! The French heart of this traditional cassoulet (shown above) is the cannelini beans that are its main ingredient, while Italian influence and color come from the tomatoes that can be added in any amount and style (fresh, canned, paste, etc.) that the cook finds pleasing. Jean chose ground turkey for this recipe, but any ground or chunked meat can be used, or spicy sausage can be added if desired.

Or this dish is great with no meat. The chard and mushrooms intensify the earthy flavors of the beans, and the chard and tomatoes together give the dish its Italian look.

What makes dishes like this so much fun is that the cassoulet will hold up over several days–and, as you heat up the leftovers, you can add pretty much any compatible ingredient you’d like, so that you keep the flavors fresh and interesting. Don’t be afraid to experiment! For example, the French and Italian dish we describe here could take on a Mexican or Thai character with the addition of red or green chili peppers spicy enough to suit your taste.

Traditional Lemon Meringue Pie

For dessert with the savory, umami-rich dishes described above, why not a good old down home lemon meringue pie? Especially if you are lucky, as we are, to have a bush full of ripe meyer lemons in your garden throughout the winter. The fruit gives the pie a citrus tang that pairs perfectly with the main dishes.

There is one tricky part to the success of this dessert. When the month is as rainy as this February has been, the moisture in the air tends to make the meringue “weep”–drops of sugary water form on the top and can degrade the fluffiness of the beaten egg whites. As the photo above shows, Jean’s meringue this time turned out perfectly because she baked the pie on one of the few sunny days in mid-month.

Still, as a lover of lemon meringue pie, Chris would say not to worry about a bit of “weeping.” In fact, he finds those golden sugary drops a nice counterpart to the sour bite of the lemon curd.

Last but Not Least–the Cherry Cheese Puff Pastry for Valentine’s Day

The dessert pictured at the top of this blog entry is a simple but elegant treat to celebrate the mid-month holiday for lovers. Since red is the color of the occasion, Jean wanted to use cherries for her dessert. But with fresh cherries not available in February, she used frozen sour cherries she had on hand. She filled puff pastry with cream cheese, and she mixed sugar with the sour cherries. Baking the pastry in heart-shaped ramekins was the crowning touch for this special day.  It was a perfect dessert for a cold, wet February holding the promise of spring.

Loro petulam in bloom, front garden, February 2019

Jean’s Chicken Chard Chili

Jean:

January in the Kitchen

January in the kitchen is time for warm (both in temperature and spices) comfort foods.  I love making big pots of soups, stews, and chilis that sit in the refrigerator getting more tasty every day and can be heated up in a few minutes to take the chill off the day.  My birthday is at the end of January, and I have always liked that.  It’s just far enough from Christmas that people can get up the energy to celebrate with me, and the winter weather tends to warm up a bit at the end of January (they call it the “January thaw” in Boston) before plunging back into whatever challenges may lie ahead in the uncertain early spring.

Chicken Chard Chili

That looks awful, doesn’t it?  [photo above]  I don’t know how it came out so tasty.  Chris named it, and also called it the best thing he ever ate.  Now there’s hyperbole.  It’s more of a stew, but we like the alliteration of this three-“ch” name.  I think, basically, that green-chili-chicken anything is delicious.  It shouldn’t have rice in it.  It shouldn’t have black beans or chard. But it does and it worked!

I hesitate to talk about my cooking methods because they are often happenstance.  I happened to have cooked a package of rice and black beans, and I didn’t like the taste.  I had to do something with it because I don’t waste food.  I had been wanting to make chicken with green chili sauce, so I chopped some skinless, boneless chicken thighs and browned them with some chopped onions, cumin, and cayenne.  Then I added some chicken broth and a whole jar of Herdez salsa verde.  Chris brought in some young chard leaves from the garden, and I chopped those into the sauce and let it simmer until the leaves softened and all the flavors merged, about 20 minutes.

I think I intended to serve this over the rice, but we ended up combining them.  It didn’t dilute the flavors to add the rice, like I feared.  It looks like we threw in some canned corn and grape tomatoes that we had on hand  (I didn’t even remember doing that.)  Of course, you could and probably should use white beans instead of black, but remember where I started this.

The most important flavor here, besides the green chili sauce, was the chard.  It made the mixture taste fresh and healthy.  Just a little different and delicious.

Three-Bean Black Mole Beef Chili

I have subscribed to the New York Times recipe service.  Their ideas come from a variety of chefs who have worked for the paper over the years, and I usually find them insightful and delightful, although I still add my own twists.  This one looked interesting because it uses a somewhat different list of spices and other ingredients than I usually use in chili.  If you like the idea of using up those spices you have sitting around, this one’s for you.

Saute some chopped onions and ground beef as you usually do, seasoned with salt and pepper.  Remove any unwanted fat and then add one 6-oz can of tomato paste.  Cook that for a minute or two and add 2-3 teaspoons each of the following spices:  sweet and smoked paprika, chipotle (and/or chili) powder or paste, ground cumin, onion powder, garlic powder, and mustard powder.  Also add 1/2 teaspoon each of cayenne powder and cinnamon, plus 1/4 teaspoon cloves.  Cook all the spices until you can smell the fragrances, about a minute or two.  Now add a 12-oz bottle of pilsner beer and stir it in, which will deglaze the pan of all those dark flavors on the bottom.

From here on, you can continue cooking on top of the stove or move to a slow-cooker, as you prefer.  Add a 14-oz can of diced or crushed tomatoes, 1/4 c. cider vinegar, 2 T. maple syrup or dark brown sugar, 2 tsp. unsweetened cocoa powder, 2 tsp. beef bouillon paste (two cubes), and 1 T. Worcestershire sauce.  Exhausted yet?  Keep going; it’s worth it.

Now add 2 or even three cans of your favorite beans—pinto, kidney, and/or black beans.  For mine, I used them all. They should be drained unless you happen to have beans with chili spices and sauce.  (I threw in one can of saucy black beans and I think it made the chili darker and thicker, which we liked.)  Simmer this as long as you like.

Get some sour cream to serve on top to cut the rich dense flavors and texture, and some tortilla chips to crumble on top, maybe with a cilantro or parsley garnish.  You’re ready for the Super Bowl or any other big evening!

Gingery Winter Stew

This recipe caught my eye because of the unusual mix of vegetables and because I sometimes like to make a monochromatic dish.  You can make it with chicken breasts or thighs, whole or chopped, cooked by your preferred method, or leave them out and make it vegetarian.  Roast some hearty yellow/orange vegetables, cut in chunks–sweet potatoes, winter squash, and golden beets–until each type of vegetable is sufficiently soft.  It may take about half an hour to 45 minutes, but it varies, so check them all.

Here’s the odd ingredient–Japanese daikon.  I didn’t see any in the market that day, so I roasted a large French breakfast radish that Chris had just pulled from the garden.  You still get some of the same crunch and spicy bite from a roasted radish as from a raw one, but you could also save the radish to slice or shave raw on top of the finished dish.

For a sweet and tangy touch, I also added some chopped peaches that we’d frozen from last summer’s harvest. If it’s on hand and I think it will fit, I’ll use it. We’ve found that slicing and freezing the peaches we can’t eat or give away in the summer keeps their flavor the rest of the year.

The real secret of this dish is in the sauce.  Chop and saute some onions and garlic with salt and pepper and a tablespoon of yellow curry powder or turmeric.  Stir in a quarter cup of fresh minced ginger or purchased ginger paste and cook for a couple of minutes as well.  Then add 2 cups of vegetable or chicken broth, one quarter cup soy sauce, the juice of one lime, and 3 star anise.   Cook the sauce down for about 15 minutes and remove the star anise.  (You could leave these in longer, but you would have to remember to fish them out at the end, and they might be hard to find once everything else is in.)

Add the chicken and cooked vegetables and simmer everything in the sauce for another 15-20 minutes.  Serve over yellow rice if you want to keep with the color scheme.  Serve a green vegetable alongside to brighten it up.

Calvados Apple Bread Pudding

Bread puddings are fun because they do double duty.  They make great desserts and also great breakfast items.  This pudding was inspired by a large loaf of apple bread I had purchased on impulse as I walked through the bakery section of the grocery store.  It was good, with big chunks of cinnamony cooked apple, but we weren’t eating it as fast as we needed to.  Before it got too stale or went bad, I decided to make a bread pudding with it because I also had a lot of eggs.

I looked online for the proportions of milk and eggs to bread and whipped up a custard, flavoring it with some Calvados we had.   I also had a big chunk of cinnamon sugar butter that had come with the cut squash I bought for the winter stew (above).  Chris dislikes much sweetness in savory dishes, so I had set that flavored butter aside in the refrigerator, and now brought it out to melt and pour over the bread before soaking it in the custard.  This is just another example of how often I am inspired by what I have, even if it was not purchased for a specific purpose, but just needs to be used up.

This bread pudding baked at 350 degrees for about 45 minutes until it smelled like heaven.  I pulled it out, cooled it a bit, and poured a touch more Calvados over it, I must confess.  I served it with ice cream for dessert at dinner–and then with yogurt for breakfast.

January in the Garden

Chris:

January is one of our rainier months, and our coolest, with nighttime temps in the low to mid thirties and occasional frosts. Rainfall to begin this new year is higher than normal: almost six inches this month, about two above average.  Of course, we have a long way to go–and many stormy days–if we would want to reach our record rainfall of 2016-17, almost 45 inches for the season, more than twice the average of 20 inches.

But who would want that? Surely not the folks up along the Feather River, who had to leave their homes when the Oroville Dam gave way. Our January 2017 entry in the blog details the effects of that month’s rainfall on our little garden.

The ten inches of rain we’ve now had this season is 2-3 inches more than usual, but close enough to the average that this January seems to be pretty much what we expect in this region.  So when I peered through our rain-blurred window at part of the back garden last week, I saw what I expected for late January:

Nopales, ripe navel oranges, ripe meyer lemons, rosemary (in the background), green hibiscus in a pot, puddles in the mulch, and an almost full rain barrel (in the foreground)

What’s growing?

Radishes

The radishes (“French breakfast”) I planted in late November are ready to harvest now: their bright red tops are prominent above the soil. Since this is my first crop of this variety, I was excited to learn how much they have grown below ground. When I picked the first of them last week–Voilà!!

Just look at the size of that beauty! And when we sliced it, it was crispy and spicy all the way through, perfect for Jean’s Gingery Winter Stew (see above). When I pick the rest, will they be just as flavorful?

Stir Fry Broccoli

The five plants have thrived in the raised bed since their planting in late November. In early January, I followed the advice of the online experts for this variety and trimmed off the main trunk of each plant when the head had grown to at least an inch to an inch and a half in diameter. The heads and trunks became part of one of my omelets and one of Jean’s stews. (Delicious!)

As the instructions predicted, and as you’ll see below, multiple heads have now sprung up all around the center of each plant. These, too, I will soon harvest, and make them the basis of one or more veggie stir-fries.

Note the trimmed trunk in the middle of the broccoli and all the new heads around it.

Swiss Chard

At the start of this entry, Jean wrote about her “Chicken Chard Chili,” with a few leaves from this year’s chard as a main ingredient–a real flavor popper with a basil/anise tang! All six plants continue to thrive, with three in pots and three in a row in the ground. The plants have been growing for two months, and are now beginning to show the variegated colors for which they are famous. As they continue to expand and mature, the stems will continue to thicken and their colors will become bright orange and deep red. The new leaves will start bright green, but some will become dark green and even a very deep dark purple. In an entry from two years ago, I called chard the “Queen of the Edible Garden,” and I’m hoping this year’s plants will also merit that title.

Note the colors of the most mature stems and leaves of the chard. Jan. 2019, two months old.

Two Other Old Favorites and an Infrequent Visitor

What is our typical January without the occasional rose? Every January produces at least a few salmon roses from our back garden thicket…

…like this gem just outside our window.

And what is our January without the now ripe navel oranges and meyer lemons, from which I make an ever-ready supply of juice? I like to mix the flavors, as shown below..

Finally, what is any garden, in January or otherwise, without at least one unexpected visitor flying in? Yesterday morning, Jean and I were chatting in the kitchen when I spied this fellow and his friends darting among the branches and along the ground in the back garden. Luckily, the camera was nearby, and this one guest stayed still long enough for me to grab this snap:

…of a male Oregon junco, probably on his way north. I hope he and his friends found something to make their stop worthwhile.

Chris:

Bitter ironies sometimes take time to appear.

In late October, I wrote this about our garden: “Along with the bees are the birds in our bit of paradise.”

Paradise.

We once visited the town of Paradise, California, up north amid the dark green forested hills of Butte County, miles from even the small city of Chico and in a different world, it seemed, from Sacramento. We spent a nice afternoon in Paradise. What I remember from that visit was that feeling of getting away into the cool, dark forest.

Our late October post this year celebrated the beauty and bounty of a still sunny and rainless fall–but in the writing I feared a repeat of the devastating fires of October 2017, if rain did not come soon. Then, on November 8, the inevitable erupted in the wooded foothills–not far from Paradise–and within a few hours the wind-carried flames had engulfed the town and trapped hundreds of residents.

For three weeks, the fires on the remote hillsides and through the canyons remained virulent and elusive. The Camp Fire (named for its origin near Camp Creek) eventually destroyed over 150,000 acres and became the worst fire in California history in lives lost (86) and in the thousands of buildings devoured. Even hundreds of miles south and east, California cities and towns felt the effects of the inferno, as a seemingly endless cloud of smoke and ash darkened the sky and damaged lungs. A hundred miles south in Sacramento, schools and universities were closed for more than a week because of the treacherous air.

When finally rains came toward the end of November, the thousands who had been evacuated from Paradise and nearby towns still could not return to what was left of their homesteads, as crews from throughout California worked day and night to clear hazards and debris, search for the hundreds of the missing, and make the firetorn hills safe once again.

A neighborhood in Paradise, early December (Photo: Sacramento Bee)

Paradise no more.

Still…in the photo above see how many of the trees, particularly the most mature, were not destroyed by the inferno. As we saw last year in Sonoma and Napa, nature will lead the comeback and provide humans the inspiration to use their knowledge, humility, and compassion, so that the forested hills can once again grow toward the beauty and peace that the inhabitants once enjoyed.

December in the Garden

Nopales and navel oranges, bed of yellow leaves, in the late December garden

Blessed we are to have this small garden, still a paradise to us, all the more precious now. The gentle rains have soaked the soil and kept our many plants green–and the animals who rely on them housed and fed.

Our neighborly Anna’s hummingbird stands vigil atop our peach tree, December 2018.

With low temps flirting with freezing, but still above the magic line, the late December garden retains a few vestiges of summer–vincas still flower in their pots and petunias glow bright in their back garden bed. Calla lilies act as if it’s spring, even as the flame trees proclaim NorCal December.

To the left, calla lilies, petunias, and flowering rosemary sing summer, even as the ripe meyer lemons in the foreground and the sweetgum (liquidambar)trees in the background say December.

Fruits and Veggies

With all our years in the East, I doubt we’ll ever take for granted the sunshine brilliance, even in the rain, of the oranges and lemons that highlight December in the Northern California garden. The photo that graces the top of this entry may be technically a “still life,” but the oranges and meyer lemons, plus the golden coreopsis and pink tea roses that also dress our December garden, pulsate with warmth.

Meanwhile, the three veggies I planted between late October and late November have thrived in the cool temps and occasional rains. Chard, stir-fry broccoli, and “French breakfast” radishes steadily mature toward harvest in late winter and early spring. This variety of radish is a first for me; the chard is a returning favorite after a few years; and the five broccoli plants renew my appreciation for this hearty, flavorful, symmetrical veggie.

• The chard plant shown in the photo below is one of three I have for the first time in pots, while three others are in the ground (not shown). All are coming along well.
• The six radish plants (background) have been in the ground only three weeks as I write, so they have a good month or more to go before harvest.

Paradise at Christmas

Most of the former residents of Paradise and nearby towns have no homes to return to. They are spending this Christmas season and many coming months as refugees. Their homes for the foreseeable future are those of relatives, friends, or genuine good Samaritans, as well as the refugees’ own RVs or trailers provided by FEMA and other social service agencies.  Some of them will never return to their pre-cataclysm homes, as predictable by what happens to refugees of other similar disasters.

Whether they return or not, their future prospects–like ours and everyone else’s–will depend on the largesse and good will of government agencies and on the donations and support of the entire society. Would that all refugees, regardless of the cataclysm they are escaping and where it occurs–were so lovingly regarded by our governments and by us. Is such a thing imaginable in the U.S. of 2018?

If so, then that would be as close as we can all get to Paradise at Christmas. A bit like a petunia in the late December rain.

Chris:

The last few poblanos and red peppers still grow slowly as the days grow shorter. Oh, the thermometer still occasionally touches 90, but the nights go down to the 50s. The sun’s heart doesn’t seem to be into roasting the soil and the plants any more. The tomatoes told me almost a month ago that they wouldn’t be turning any more yellow flowers into green fruit, so I began pulling them out, reluctantly, one by one. The last one, my magnificent, spreading red grape tomato, came out struggling last week–its long green tendrils clung to the ground and around each steel fiber of the cage, which had tried unsuccessfully to contain the plant’s eager arms and legs. Over the eggplants, the marigold pot, several strawberry plants, and even the dormant irises, this prodigy had grown since mid-April, as it produced many hundreds of luscious ruby gems. As I hacked away, a big handful of red and some green tomatoes appeared fruit by tiny fruit, having been hidden among the still-green leaves.

The magnificent red grape tomato, still in yellow bloom and hiding red gems

Also reluctantly, I pulled out the two eggplants–the black beauty and the little fingers. They had been steady producers through the summer, the source of Jean’s succulent ratatouilles and eggplant parmesans. Both plants were still in full green leaf, and one or two lavender flowers still clung to the little fingers variety. But, peering under the canopies of leaves, I saw no more robust black beauties, so out that stalwart came.

But when I ventured a timid hand beneath the prickly stems of the little fingers, I was surprised to find one, no, two, no, three–no, four– ripe slender eggplants. And I thought it had stopped producing in early July! But out that genius also came–after all, it was September–and I figured that even if I had missed a few, no more new ones would be coming. Well, maybe so, but as I brought the uprooted plant up to eye level, I felt and saw among the green leaves no less than four more small perfect fruit. These eight had done their silent, patient, hidden growing over July and August.

Can you see the eight purple eggplants growing beneath the leaves of the plant in front? Not me.

To my ravaging hands, out also came the spent cucumbers, one of the pepper plants, and some of the summer annual flowers (impatiens, chamomile, some of the marigolds). But some will hang on a while more before I pluck them for the compost bin. Living in a land where it rarely gets cold enough for a string of hard freezes, annual plants hang on for a long time (sometimes for two years or more), so gardeners always hold out hope that their favorites will live on and on.

Once I’ve picked the last peppers and taken out the last of the marigolds (and maybe even the vinca and the petunias), it will be the official end of summer in the garden.

But it just means that fall-winter planting is coming. What will it be this year? Definitely the hearty, spicy arugula and the sweet, buttery bibb lettuce. Jean wants the bold, richly-colored chard again, and she’ll have it. Onions? Of course. Beets? I love the look of the leaves and the mystery of what lurks beneath the soil. Ah, yes: broccoli–the promise of those plump, delicious heads and crunchy stems.

All of this bounty depends on the rains. What will happen this year? Always the mystery. Always the hope.

But for now, we are between seasons. The soil rests, getting ready.

Chris:

July 2018

Most of our entries have focused on specific plants, and I’ve tried to give a sense of their life cycles over a year or, in the case of perennials, over several years. In only one of our entries, “J Is for January,” did we look at one particular month, January 2017, which was noteworthy because of the prodigious amount of rain that fell, and its consequences for our garden.

Here I want to feature the month just completed, July 2018. This has not been a record month, but has been typically hot–usually our hottest and among the several totally dry months of summer and early fall. I want to describe it because of its typicality for this time of year. I want to describe a range of plants during this typically hottest month, in order to give the reader a sense of what goes on around the garden, how I care for its citizens, what the garden produces in this highly stimulating environment, and how Jean and I use that produce.

Peaches

Peaches, July 2018

July is peach harvest month. In “Lazy Fair Peach Tree,” I described the changes in our peach tree over the years. When I wrote that entry, July 2016, the photo showed a heavy branch laden with many peaches, too many for the branch to bear. In total, there were more than 200 on the tree, plenty for a range of goodies from Jean’s kitchen. But six months later, the rains of early 2017 came, and I awaited what was sure to be a bumper crop of peaches that summer.

But the rain poured and the winds howled into April and May. The sodden peach tree put forth few blossoms, and those that did appear blew away in the storms. So even though the branches grew, no peaches appeared. None. Well, I did discover one peach hidden away among the branches in July. But I figured the birds needed it more than we did, so it stayed on the tree until devoured.

After a winter of just-below-normal rainfall in 2017-18, plus a cool spring, I was not sure what to expect of this year’s crop.  Would the peaches return? Blossoms did appear in March, though not in the profusion of most prior years. In April and May, some tiny fruit appeared. By June 1, I counted about 30 small green fruit hidden among the green leaves. But I’ve learned that counting green fruit is usually inaccurate because of the camouflage. Sure enough, as the fruit began changing color in late June, more and more peaches appeared.

By early July, some of the peaches were almost ready for harvest. Temperatures consistently in the 90s and sometimes touching 100 made the entire crop ready by mid month. All told, the crop was just over 60–and they were of robust size, larger than baseballs and some approaching softball size:

Three peaches and Shady Lady tomato. July 2018

Even better, they were as meaty, juicy, and sweet as we had come to expect our peaches to be. All in all, the 2018 crop exceeded my admittedly low expectations, and it gives us hope for next year.

A note on pruning: in the past, I have pruned branches of the peach tree after the harvest. This year, because the peach tree had grown so that the highest branches were over-topping the adjacent orange tree, we pruned extensively on June 1. Yes, the pruning eliminated some of the green fruit that would have ripened in July, but it did not affect the rest of the tree. Indeed, the pruning may have helped increase the size of the remaining 60 or so peaches. It surely made harvesting easy. The height of the pruned tree was about eleven feet, so that a step ladder could be used to reach the highest fruit.

Cukes, Peppers, and Eggplant

I had not grown cucumbers before 2017. In that year, I replaced the annual onslaught of zucchini (see “Z Is for Zucchini”) with small cucumbers (4-5 inches) good for pickling. Their 2017 success led to my trying larger cukes this year, specifically 8″-9″ Burpless , which I planted in two hills about 5 feet apart for cross pollination. They started slowly in April, and by early June they were close to having their first fruits ready to pick. They are great sliced in salads (with our tomatoes) and sliced for pickling in a spicy, vinegary mix (as shown below).

Here is one of the cuke plants in late July, with another fruit about a week away from harvest.

And three big cukes harvested in late August! Definitely in my plans again for 2019.

The peppers are always a fun challenge, and this year had its own new wrinkles. In mid April I planted three peppers: a poblano (first time), a yellow mild, and a red mild. No hot chilis this year, because we have hundreds in the freezer ready to burst with heat when we thaw them.

Two of the plants were in the largest raised bed, and the third was in a large pot. All of them started out vigorously, and by mid May all had produced growing green fruit. Then the new wrinkle happened. Over two days in late May, all the growing fruit disappeared from the poblano and the red pepper, nipped off cleanly at the top of the fruit. Probably rabbits were responsible, though I’ve never had this problem before and I’d never seen them in the garden.

So I purchased chicken wire and surrounded each plant with a cylinder, as shown below. The plants have thrived since.

Eggplant has been a hero of the garden in the three years I have been growing them, as I explained in “E Is for Eggplant.” For the first time this year, I planted two plants, each a different variety. One is the narrow Japanese variety (Little Fingers) that I had first planted in 2016. The other is the more familiar large, rotund variety (Black Beauty). Neither fruits early, though the Little Fingers this year produced flowers in May, then fruit in June. The Black Beauty was a late producer, with the first fruits appearing in mid July and only now ready for harvesting. It was a star of the July garden, and its fruit will be marvelous in eggplant parmesan and in Asian-inspired dishes.

Black Beauty eggplant ready for harvesting, end of July 2018

Tomatoes! (Of course)

Last year, in “T Is for Tomatoes,” I reported on my record-breaking harvest from one grape tomato variety, which persisted into September producing fruit. This year I have no plant that will match that one’s 2017 longevity. But I do have one, a Red Grape, that surpasses it by far in its daily production through July–some days more than three dozen bright red beauties, and an average of twenty (20).  The photo at the head of this essay shows a July week’s worth of cherry and grape tomatoes from five plants:

• the Red Grape just described
• two Sun Gold Grapes
• and two Husky Cherry Reds

Now, in early August, the two Sun Golds have ceased bearing and I’ve removed them for compost, and one of the Husky Reds has been removed, but the other Husky Red goes on, and the magnificent Red Grape keeps producing, even as it still sends out new shoots across the garden and blooms yellow flowers.

Here are two views of this plant. One shows it among surrounding plants–the broad-leafed eggplant in front of it and the red-fruited Shady Lady behind it and to the left:

The second photo is a closeup from mid July of its typical clusters of ripe and ripening fruit:

The Shady Lady. Only one of my tomato plants this year was a large-fruit variety: a Shady Lady that I got as a tiny seedling from the Plant Sciences display at UC Davis Picnic Day in late April. Among its thousands of visitors, this annual festival brings out hundreds of gardeners and agriculture enthusiasts from across the Sacramento Valley region for events, exhibits, and expert demonstrations.

I planted a Shady Lady last year and it did well, producing moderate sized-fruit into later August. This year’s version has been even better. It seems to like the spot where I planted it–full sun for no more than 5 hours per day and plenty of moderate shade in morning and after mid afternoon. It grew slowly, as did last year’s, not beginning to fruit until late June and no fruit ready for harvest until mid July. But the fruit are perfect, and now, in early August, there are more than fifteen well on their way from green to red. Here are two photos: one of the plant in mid to late July, and a second of the first tomato we harvested this year.

Cooking with July Produce

Jean and I have made a range of dishes with the fruits of our garden this July. From the pickles and salads described above, to sliced peaches with all sorts of uses, to tomatoes and herbs in sauces and main dishes, every day offers July produce simmered, fried, or baked–or just eaten raw out of the produce bowl that is always on our kitchen table.

I’ve particularly enjoyed making the tomato sauce  that combines our several varieties along with a bunch of our herbs:

• sweet basil
• Italian basil
• purple basil
• Greek oregano
• lemon verbena
• marjoram
• thyme
• culinary sage

with, of course, a clove of garlic, sauteed onions, salt and pepper, and just one of our tiny super hot Thai chilis that lurk in a big bag in our freezer. One thing that makes this so much fun is that, as the mixture cooks down on low heat over 2-3 hours, I get to taste every 15 minutes or so, and can add a bit of this and a bit of that as the flavors intensify with time and heat. Oh, yes, and how the fragrance fills the house! Here are two pics of the process, early and later, as the mixture thickens:

Jean, of course, turns my sauce into a masterpiece in her eggplant parmesan, which she makes by frying the Black Beauty slices after coating them in a breadcrumbs-and-egg mixture. As you can see here, she stacks the fried slices two deep, with a generous coating of the sauce, and she tops the slices with grated parmesan and with small slices of prosciutto. She bakes the entire arrangement in a baking dish at 350 degrees F. until the cheese has melted and the eggplant is the desired tenderness.

For more of Jean’s ideas for eggplant, see her descriptions and recipes in “E Is for Eggplant.”

And what about the peaches? Well, what could be a better dessert than her peaches and blueberries upside down cake?–just one of many uses of those beautiful peaches from the garden

And what else is growing in the garden in July?

While this essay features the fruits and veggies of our small garden, many other plants are growing in this hottest month of the year. Here follows a small collage of other flowers and trees that give life and color and variety to our small Sacramento Valley garden, and that thrive through the 95 to 100-plus degree heat with light watering 2-4 times a week.

What terrors lurk within this placid scene?

Chris:

In science, X is the unknown. It’s what the explorer tries to find. X is mysterious, maybe dangerous. The X factor–its mystery draws us to it–perhaps to our doom.

Sometimes we are warned away from X.  Think X-rated. Sometimes X is meant to be secret. Think X-files. Those prohibitions draw our curiosity even more.

The X is everywhere in the garden. If people only look at gardens in bloom, they will not know this. The pretty perfection seems so safe, so colorfully picturesque. So easy. As if its beauty is effortless, meant-to-be in a comfortable universe. People become gardeners because they want to create their own comfortable universes, at least in one little slice of life.

A rude awakening awaits. Some would-be gardeners give up when their first seeds fail to sprout, or when they can’t face the eternal question:

“Am I watering too much or too little?”

The crazy truth is that people who love to garden love the X. Well, they come to love the X, usually after their dreams of the perfect easy garden inevitably fall through. Something about the challenge of nurturing plants to realize their potential intrigues gardeners enough to keep going, and intrigues them more and more as they see the surprising results. When they see the scrawny meyer lemon bush that suddenly explodes in growth and fruit in its fourth year, or the sage and lemon verbena and Greek oregano that just keep coming back in spring year upon year in the same pots and soil, or the Thai pepper that keeps putting out little red hots even when the temp falls into the 40s.

But there is another tantalizing X factor as well. Gardeners who keep going learn that no two plants behave in exactly the same way. Especially in a small garden like mine, where

• trees and house architecture overhang parts of the garden, and
• where soil composition and water amounts can vary from plant to plant, and
• where multiple species become neighbors in a highly diverse village.

These gardeners love the X so much that whenever they get comfortable with a certain plant in a certain spot at a certain time of the year, they try a different plant or a different spot, or try to, let’s say, grow tomatoes outdoors in Canada, in December. Or they take silly risks, such as

Just grab on with your bare hands… well, at least inadvertently.

Take a big bite, I dare ya…(yes, well, at least little bites)

For dabblers like me, the Xs way outnumber the sure things. That’s the fun of gardening for me.

Oh, sure, I also love the predictable beauties of our garden: the year upon year explosions of yellow roses and purple-gold irises in April, the bounty of the apricots in May, the gifts of cherry plums, strawberries, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, cukes, basil, oregano, lettuce, onions, arugula, and on and on at their appointed times of the year.

Ah, the irises!

The songs and dances of the birds, butterflies, and bees.

Something is always blooming, leafing, fruiting, singing, or darting past–and all it takes from the gardener is a bit of steady attention from week to week.

And have I mentioned the aromas? The orange blossoms throughout April.  Then, three weeks ago, when I planted the spring and summer veggies, the orange blossom perfume was mixed with the pungency of compost and upturned soil, organic plant foods, redwood mulch. Every season has its smells, which attract me as they do the birds and bees. I just can’t get enough

A honeybee dances in orange blossoms, April 2018

But the X is always there

The glories I have grown to expect in our garden are only made exquisite by the knowledge that none of them is inevitable. For every plant that outperforms my expectations, there are others that don’t thrive. Last summer I had my best-producing tomato ever. Another gave no fruit at all. The unpredictability is both the risk and the charm of gardening.

But some threats are greater and way more devastating than others. Just three years ago, the five-year drought (See “W Is for Water”) threatened every garden and farm in California. Without statewide voluntary rationing, many more acres would have been lost.  Just last fall, wildfires devastated parts of Napa and Sonoma counties; winter wildfires devastated parts of Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. Wildfires happen every year, and though the state does all it can to prepare, we never really can predict where the devastation will be greatest.

Some threats we can see coming, but the X is how soon. As agricultural water use grows in all parts of the world, farmers everywhere draw down aquifers–and one of our most profound Xs, the depth of aquifers, remains a mystery. We just don’t know how much–or how little–water is down there. All we know is that the wells keep getting deeper.

Housing destroyed by wildfire, Santa Rosa, Oct. 2017

Shopping mall destroyed by wildfires, Santa Rosa, Oct. 2017

The Disappearing Pollinators

In “B Is for Bees, Birds, and Butterflies,” I noted one of our most fearsome Xs: the steady decline of pollinators. What is known is that the decline is happening. It is not a mystery. For honeybees, the dramatic fall-off has been called Colony Collapse Disorder. Science keeps looking for “the cause,” as if finding one cause would suggest a cure. But what science knows is that the causes are multiple:

• neonicotinoid pesticides and herbicides,
• the Verroa mite,
• habitat loss for native bees.

Butterflies and bird species are in even steeper decline. Non-organic farming, the constant depletion of wildspaces for urban/suburban development, the steadily-rising temps caused by greenhouse gases–all have their part to play. These causes we know–they are not Xs.

What is an X is when and even whether we humans will do the obvious things to turn the pattern around. Will we have the courage to halt business as usual? Can we ween ourselves off chemical pesticides and herbicides? Can we grow up to reject fossil fuels and the industries that pull them from deep below ground and then turn them into poison gases?

Those who persistently benefit from the status quo try to convince us that climate change is an X: “Well, the science is inconclusive,” they say. But the science is fully conclusive–and the rest of the world agrees that it is. Only the U.S., with by far the largest and richest vested interests in polluting the planet, will not admit these truths. By withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accords in 2017, the current President confirmed to the rest of the planet that the U.S. will be the problem, not the solution.

So the X question is this: Will these vested interests continue to intimidate (and pay off) our elected officials and so doom the world, and will we voters continue to let them? Can the U.S., which used to be the world leader in championing new ideas, strive again to lead the world in supporting the technologies–such as solar power–and attitudes that can defeat the polluters? We know what needs to be done. The only unknown is if we will have the will and the courage to join the rest of the world in doing it.

In 2017, the monarch butterfly below was the only one of its kind to visit our garden. It fed on the native lupine tree. Monarchs, which used to spend the winter in the millions in California, have declined by 90% as their habitats and food sources have disappeared. Will the monarch return to our garden?

The only monarch to visit our garden in 2017

Chris:

Why yellow? Well. if you are looking for a word to go with Y for your garden blog, why not choose the brightest color in the garden? Yellow, the color of pollen, is a magnet for pollinators, so yellow merits the honor of “Y.” Why, even flowers of other colors have yellow in the center.

I was thinking of choosing “Y is for Yucca,” but my yucca is a kind of spindly plant–though now eight years old–sort of hidden away in the side garden between a big photinia bush and the fence. It’s also overshadowed by the massive cherry plum tree and its glorious fruit and by the equally prolific apricot tree, that even now is teeming with red-green fruit that in a few weeks will become over a hundred orange beauties that will become pies, cakes, and dried morsels to satisfy us and our friends for the rest of the spring.

Apricots moving toward ripeness, April 2018

So, dear yucca, although you are not the focus of this entry, I will not ignore you, and I look forward to your stunning stalk of red-pink flowers that will appear in mid-summer.

The stunning red-pink stalk of the yucca in mid summer

But back to yellow! Right now, in early May, the garden is singing “Yellow, yellow, yellow!” The newly-planted marigolds and celosia, the sturdy perennial coreopsis and lantana, and more…

Marigold

Coreopsis

Celosia

Lantana

The new tomato plants, just ten days in the ground, announce to the bees that they are open for business with their yellow flowers in clusters.  As the spring and summer go on, the tomatoes will keep putting forth more yellow flowers, in the many hundreds, hopeful that they will become fruit. Even as the fruit turn from green to red, more flowers will come…

Meanwhile, the yellow rose bushes in front bloom from late March to late fall, cycle after cycle of buds and many-petalled flowers…

Oh yes, and the meyer lemons, who grow green in summer and switch on the yellow lights in December…

Meyer lemon bush January 2018

bowl of lemons and oranges January 2017

ripe Meyer lemons December

…and the nopales’ fruit, the tuna, that appear with yellow flowers in September…

…And forget not the day lilies, the peaches, the gerbera daisies, the zucchini blossoms, and even the tarragon, all yellow bloomers in spring or summer.

zucchini flowers

tarragon

Oh my, yellow, how magnificent you are!