A Summer tradition: North Carolina Peaches

"...the walls were wet and sticky, and peach juice was dripping from the ceiling. James opened his mouth and caught some of it on his tongue. It tasted delicious."

Roald Dahl, James and the Giant Peach

Add fuzzy and fragrant to the description. 

 I've been waiting all summer for the perfect peach. Everyone knows that going to the orchard is the best way to buy them. Lucky for me, we live less than half an hour from several orchards. A friend alerts me when picking begins.  Then for weeks, right through the middle of September, different varieties come available. 

Reports say this year's crop is good, but not terrific. Too much rain. Willing to take my chances we headed up Saturday and got a box full of Majestic peaches at Leonard' Orchard, in Cana, Va.  Only paid $6.00 because they had some soft spots. When we stopped at the busy fruit market a couple of miles away, they were four times that price.

Once home I sorted them on cookie sheets and covered them with a clean towel. Over the next few days I hovered, sniffing for the tell-tale luscious aroma. Then I squeezed gently, checking for just the right amount of give.By Monday morning several passed the test. And the reports were wrong--they were perfect. 

scones with peaches and pecans

We've devoured them with every meal. For breakfast, Peach Streusel Muffins or, like this morning, in scones. With lunch, I'll eat one washed free of fuzz. At dinner time, I'll make the tomato, peach, corn salad I found in the Wall Street Journal , and for dessert, Fresh Peach Sorbet. (I added zest of one lime and it's juice to the recipe.)

When I can't eat them fast enough it's time to make peach butter in the crock pot and freeze it.  

If you have favorite recipes, share them now! The window of opportunity is short. 

Scones

Mix together:
1 1/2 c flour plus 2 Tbsp flour                   
4 Tbsp sugar                                            
2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt

Cut in 2 Tbsp butter 

Add 2 peeled and diced peaches.

Mix together 1/2 cup milk and one egg. Pour into dry ingredient until just mixed.
Dump into a pie plate lightly greased (or sprayed). Sprinkle with pecans and cinnamon-sugar.

Bake at 400 degrees for 12-15 minutes.                                  

Sprigs: Vinca

   Vivacious

   Indefatigable

   Naturally 

   Celebrates

mArch

How Gardeners Cope with Winter

We're turning the seasonal corner. 

It’s 5:10 p.m. and the orangey pink sun is at the horizon. We had daylight today for 9 hours and 45 minutes. That’s only four minutes longer than the shortest day of the year, but to me, it’s noticeable.  At the end of this month, the day will be 37 minutes longer, and at the end of February, it will be 1 hour and 41 minutes longer. Hooray! 

Still, winter lasts too long. I find it too unpleasant to be out in the garden even though the weeds seem to be spreading just fine.

HOWEVER, I have coldframes. They are situated to catch the sun as it moves low in the sky. Inside the frames it can get around 70, and my lettuce loves it!  So even when we have night time temperatures into the high 20’s, my lettuce thrives. 

I grow several varieties. I tried a romaine type this year, which grows fast and thick, but has a slightly bitter taste. I threw in some lettuces mixes, which are less prolific, but tastier.

 Of course I enjoy picking fresh lettuce. The real value for me, though, is knowing I am growing it in spite of winter. It’s like tricking nature. And it gives me a sliver-wide outlet for my gardening passion.

Dreaming also keeps me hanging on through these bleak months. This is the time of year I get a new seed catalog everyday.

I pick out my favorite varieties, and then look for something new to try. Last year’s newbie was a lemon cucumber. It grows round and yellow and had a delicious mild flavor. We ate them fresh and used the abundance for refrigerator pickles. 

Here’s a link to UpBeet Living, a blog with a couple of recipes for using the lemon cucumbers.

You can buy the seeds from  Burpee , Territorial Seed and Johnny's Seeds . I mention these because I buy from all three companies. I have found them reliable and moderately priced. 

How else do you cope with winter when you're longing for spring?

What new vegetable are you going to put in your garden this year? What did you try last year? 

Share! Share! We want new ideas. 

chestnuts

     We haven't had a hard frost yet;  there are more leaves on the trees than on the ground.  The chestnut tree, which shades my hammock chair in the summer and gives me a wonderful place to relax, is now off limits.

     The plentiful nuts are dropping to the ground, and I won't even walk under the tree for fear of being struck by one of the barbed hulls. The brown spiked missiles are sharp enough to puncture leather . The falling bombs skitter off of the leaves below them in unpredictable trajectories so that the hulls cover the ground under the canopy and five feet beyond. 

 I wish every fruiting tree in my yard produced like these worthless bothers. Last year my husband raked and gathered 30 wheelbarrows full.  

   

       The nuts themselves are as alluring as the hulls are repulsive. They are glossy, deeply red-brown. The skin is smooth and the nuts fit in my palm and invite me to caress them. Surely something so alluring would be good. Or so I thought.  But whether I put them in chocolate nut pudding, or baked  them, they were  unappetizing. Then I glued them onto a wreath to display their beauty. No value there either, the color faded and worms wiggled through. Yech! 

    I gave up on the nuts, and the next year concentrated on the hulls. Instant fire starters? No,they burned too slowly. 

     Finally we found a use for a small fraction of the spiny shells.  My husband dumped a load down the hole the ground hog had dug from his home to our garden. There was no way any critter would risk the pain of burrowing through the hulls. The ground hog found another way out. 

    Always looking for a profit (metaphorically, not financially), chestnuts teach a twofold lesson. Number one, what we find alluring may be corrupted.  The exterior  is only as valuable as the  soundness of the interior.

     And number two, if you try hard enough, can find something worthwhile in the prickliest of situations. 

   

Autumn's Treasures

Autumn has been taking me on a treasure hunt. I’m lured by jewel-like colors and fleeting scents to find the moment’s gem. Brief, and timed just for this season, the little gifts invite me to slow down to savor them. 

In my yard, heads of rosy sedum have changed from the green of August to the pale pink of early September, and now to rich rose. Tall clusters of them draw me, and the butterflies, out to the flower beds. 

Like purple BBs, the fruit of the beauty berry bush lies in clusters along the arching stems. 

Red berries grow now in the wild dogwood trees, and a swarm of thirty or so little chattering birds whoosh into the tree to eat, and then down to the ground. They lift in a tight group, swirl and return.  Their gathering reminds me that soon I will hear huge flocks of them filling a group of trees with their babble, and then they'll lift off-- sometimes creating a sky path that covers a quarter of a mile. 

Out my front door the holly I have trained into a tree showers me with a floral fragrance from its small white blossoms. The first fall it happened I stopped on the porch and had to follow the scent to the source. I never knew holly could smell like a tropical flower. Now I look forward to its annual arrival.

My neighbors celebrate with lawn decorations. My favorites aren’t the spooks and haints (Appalachian for ghost). I like the scarecrows who are welcoming in their go-to-meetin’ clothes, with straw bales, mums and pumpkins as symbols of the changing season. 

In commemoration of love ones passed, the flowers on the headstones change from pastels to oranges and yellows and reds.  And while out walking though the cemetery I smell the first wood smoke of the season promising comfort and coziness.

May autumn's pleasures capture you today.