Much Too Much

Much Too Much

The current state of the garden - peas to the right, wild daisies in front, California poppies - self-seeding - in orange, bee balm at the back!

It’s in the 90’s and it’s humid. There’s a blessed little breeze, but the sun is beating down on my garden – exactly what one wants it to do – except that the peas, which need picking, and the garden plants, which need watering, are smack in the middle of it. If I wait to pick and water ‘til the sun moves, because of the humidity the mosquitoes and deer flies will be out for blood. If I do those things now, the plants won’t enjoy the water – could sunburn their leaves – and I could expire of heat and humidity overdose.

When it’s hot like this, and especially when it’s hot and humid like this, I first get cranky, then irritable, then shaky, then angry, then furious, then sick to my stomach, then a headache blossoms, and by then, I’ve burst into flames – I turn into a dragon. It isn’t pretty. And every old injury in my body starts to ache, so the cranky/irritable/furious/etc starts again. With any luck, I won’t do any real damage.

Even indoors, with the A/C cranked up, is right on the edge of too crappy to live through.

I’ve tried shouting at the plants that they’re free-range, and should find their own water, but that doesn’t really work, especially with the perennials I just planted a few days ago because it was supposed to rain the next day – it didn’t. Nor does it work in the cement-block-sided raised beds, and the pots that are scattered here and there. And if I don’t get the peas picked today, I’ll be picking dried peas in a day or two.

Drumstick Allium

I picked peas a week after July 4^th and there were enough to have a couple of good meals, and to add the leftovers to last week’s soup (which you should all make: first make a broth by taking a big pot, fill it with  freshly emptied pea pods and cover them with water. Slap the top on and simmer them for about 45-60 minutes or so. Then remove and compost the pods, strain the juice to use for the soup broth. The soup is a fresh herb-green vegetable soup. Mine was : sautee onion, a few shiitake mushrooms, a couple of stalks of celery, a leek from the garden if one’s ready; add a chunked-up broccoli head and small its leaves, also fresh from the garden  - watch out for cabbage moth worms - and a big handful of sorrel if your garden has it, or lettuce from the garden if you don’t. To this you can add tough herbs, like thyme or rosemary, bay, fennel fronds, and such-like, and salt.  A large glog of white wine and the pea pod broth must then just cover the vegetables in your pot; simmer until just before the broccoli is soft enough, and add tender herbs like parsley, basil, dill weed, cilantro, basil, thai basil– whatever you like, and preferably several different herbs, just long enough to wilt them down. Then fish out the bay leaves or other tough herbs, then blend or food process it all smooth. Add a hunk of butter and a cup or more of heavy cream, adjust the seasonings, and you have an herby delicious soup that’s good for you and also wicked tasty served cold on a day like this.)

Three days ago I spent almost 2 hours picking peas, and it took the Husband and me two hours to shell them all. For the first time  in a very long time I have enough peas to freeze some! But there were still a lot of peas not yet ready to pick, and my French peas -  which get planted last, are more heat-tolerant, and generally get picked later - had suddenly shot up from 4 feet high to 8 feet high and bent over – I don’t have a tall enough pea fence for that kind of giant vine, and have never needed one so tall. And  they were covering up the okra! So I eased an opened tomato cage under them so they at least aren’t (mostly) hitting the ground, but the pods were almost full, so I need to have a close look at those today as well. This variety of French pea has lovely pink-and-violet-colored flowers and purple pods, though the peas themselves are green. And no, I can’t tell you what variety they are because in the spring when I’m ordering seeds, I just kind of go through the catalogs until I recognize the one I want. Who needs to memorize stuff that’s written down somewhere?

Row of sunflowers, smack in front of the tomatoes so I can't get at them. I'm an idiot!

The dill is flowering, one bean tower is loaded with vines and reaching to the sky, the drumstick allium are in bloom, as are the bee balm and marjoram and borage, which I put in one of this summer’s newest beds on the far side of the fence, behind the cherry tree. When I’ve picked the last peas I’ll tug out the vines which will give, in one bed, more space for the beans to move into, and in the opposite bed, more space for the giant zucchini plant to spread out; and in the third bed, let the okra be in the sun again. 

Now it’s after 4 pm and about as cool as it will get until the sun goes down. The thermometer on the back wart has retreated from 105 degrees at 10 am to 95 degrees – almost a cold wave. I’ll put on waterproof sandals and slap Ralph’s old hat on, which has a partially-netted section for cooling (yeah, right), and see whether if I keep my feet wet, maybe it won’t be as bad as I think it will be.

Parsley likes this heat.

But if you don’t hear from me again, you’ll know the dragon won and I flew away.

Horrible picture of a visitor we had last week, taken through screen and glass window, Spent an hour hanging out near a brush pile, chewing cud, clearly aware of us but not terribly concerned!

For the blog, 20 July 2019.

All photos Deb Marshall