a bit of earth

I have a whole new respect for this phrase.  Check it out: 100% from my back yard.

Okay, so the blog took a bit of a hiatus.  I’d like to make some bold statement about its return, but I know that school starts next week and, well….I can’t make any promises.

What I can promise, though, is pictures of our awesome grapes.  They turned out very very well.  Delicious.  Also, I pioneered a new way to eat them that lets me get more flavor out of them.  Any of you who are familiar with concord grapes know that you don’t just chew them like the grapes in the grocer’s produce section.  I’ll spare the juicy (pun intended) details of my method, but it makes these babies even more enjoyable.

Check these babies out:

A beautiful summery squash.

And the longest asparagus bean I’ve ever seen.

The picture is a little blurry, but this is our best-looking cucumber yet.  So we chopped it up and ate it.  It was deeeeelicious.  I don’t know why it took us until now to eat them.  They are smaller, pickling cucumbers so I think that made me believe they would be bitter.  Not at all.  In fact, I was so surprised by their flavor because I think I’ve grown accustomed to the industrialized cucumbers I get when I order salads at restaurants.  My little home-grown cuke was a mouthful of fresh air.

So we have several tomato plants.  I was undert he impression that they would yield big ol’ by-george tomatoes.  They bloomed.  The blooms turned into green fruit and then…the tomatoes never got very big.  Meredith assured me that once they started to change colors that meant they could (and often should) be picked.  Well, I went along with it but was suspicious.  Finally I decided to let the next round grow longer and see what happened.  I had visions/hopes of them turning into much bigger tomatoes, though the little ones have been very delicious.

The result: I was wrong.  They are just small pear-shaped tomatoes with an awesome flavor.  I left them on the vine longer than necessary and many of them started to split right down the middle.  Now I know.

In keeping with their aggressive growth this whole season, the beans were ripe for the picking yesterday.  Meredith harvested a bunch of them and we decided to see what they tasted like.  She picked some asparagus beans and pole beans.

Step 1: wash.

Step 2: put in pot:

Step 3: cook (notice how they turn green?  That’s wild!)

Step 4: enjoy.  And I’ll tell you this much, they had an awesome flavor.  It reminded both Meredith and I of our grandmothers.  I am looking forward to seeing what the asparagus beans taste like.  We shall see.

Things are still moving right along in the family garden on Barton Street.  The lettuce has actually not wilted, but has taught me a lesson.  I assumed it would wilt in the warm weather and then die off (or we’d cut it back).  Instead, it is still growing but tasting exceedingly bitter.  Now I know how this works.  Heat makes it turn bitter–got it.

The big news, however, is the beans.  To review, we planted 3 types: asparagus beans, pole beans, and Barnett beans (an heirloom bean belonging to the family of a close friend).  The asparagus beans and pole beans went in early and the barnetts later, but they’re all working hard.

First, the asparagus beans.  I came out to check on the garden the other day and noticed this long part of the plant.  I know they need to climb so I moved it toward the string we had sent down for it to climb.  This extension, however, didn’t have the sticky feeling or the little hooky-things on the end.  I was puzzled.  Then I realized: it’s the actual bean itself.  Not fully mature, but that’s it.  These things are HUGE.  Super long and narrow–like asparagus.  Again, I get it.

long bean

purple bean

I haven’t been able to write as much lately because I’ve been too busy watering, harvesting, cooking, and eating.

That might be a slight exaggeration, but we have begun to gather goodness from our garden with more frequency.  Check it out:

There was some confusion as to whether this was a squash or someone’s nose.  I think we figured it out.