Good News, Bad News

I always like to start with the bad news, because until it's out of the way, you can't enjoy the good news anyway. 

Bad news: I found a half-eaten peach in the back yard. This means that either the squirrels are now attacking the only tree that has fruit and dropping the pieces wherever they are when they get bored of them, or chipmunks are picking the June drop peaches off of the ground and carrying them through the drainage tunnel to the back. 

Man, I hope it's the second one. Just to be sure, though, I guess we'll try to cover the peaches we do have. Somehow. That tree is really big, and this is going to be a giant pain.

Good news:

Our first garlic bulb! This variety is Spanish Rosa — the same ones that put up scapes a week or two ago. I was out picking the rest of the scapes to add to our creamed spinach for supper and noticed that one garlic plant had leaves that were totally brown. From what I understand, garlic is best harvested when just half the leaves are dead, so I pulled this one right out.

Well, I pulled until the leaves broke from the bulb, and then of course I remembered that it's better to dig them up carefully, so you can let the leaves dry as a handle or to braid the garlic together. So once I dug it up, we had this nice bulb. 

I gave it a rinse and trimmed the roots, and now it's in the kitchen. It's a pretty nice looking bulb — just a bit smaller than you'd see in the grocery store. I’m not sure if that's due to variety, its early harvest, or what. Usually you cure garlic by letting it air dry before you store it, but I rinsed this one right away because I figured we'd use it pretty soon. The rest of the garlic doesn't seem at all ready to harvest yet, although some of the leaves are finally starting to brown.

Taste test results to follow!