Port Potager

All of the sudden, we have cucumbers. And not just one or two. Today I picked 5 1/2 pounds of the most perfect pickling cukes we've ever managed to grow.  And it just so happens that five pounds is the perfect amount for our gallon crock. Time to brine some pickles! Brined pickles are fermented, and we made our first batch last summer . Up until then we had always done a fresh pack with vinegar and canned them. Those are good, too — I do love vinegar! — but the flavors of a fermented pickle are much more complex. Fermented foods are also good for you , which make our pickle and sauerkraut crocks suddenly more trendy than Dutchy .  We liked last summer's brined batch well enough, but the seasoning wasn't our favorite. The recipe we used called for pickling spice, and the generic one we found was pretty heavy on the cinnamon. So this year I am determined to get the best spicy, kosher flavor with our brined pickles. I'm hoping for a classic here. Althou...

Summer flowers are here: snapdragons, lilies, daisies, hydrangea. I'm especially interested in what color the lilies turn out to be, since I bought them in a mixed bag collection, something I never do. So far, so good. Snapdragons, echinacea, yarrow, and lilies. Hydrangea. Shasta daisies and hydrangea. Astilbe, snapdragons, echinacea, and Shasta daisy.  I would ordinarily have skipped the daisy in this arrangement, but it was a perfectly healthy hold-over from one of last week's bouquets, and it seemed a shame to throw it out. Also, I always think of daisies as our wedding flower, and it's no coincidence that they are flush at our anniversary every year — our fifteenth was yesterday!

I can tell it's finally summer when, for lunch, I can just go outside and pick a handful of this and a handful of that. Today I ate cherry tomatoes and snap peas off their vines, without bothering to get a bowl. Then, when I did reach for a bowl, I brought these inside:  Our raspberries are just starting to ripen, and it turns out we also have some wild (or at least neglected) blackberries growing on the brambly, weedy side of our driveway. The kids were suddenly upset/jealous when I informed them that the picker of fruit gets first dibs on the eating of said fruit. Also, our first planting of green beans are ready for picking. These I promptly blanched and turned into green bean and feta salad , which is of course the only thing worthy way to prepare the first beans of summer. ¡Viva el verano!

Something is eating our broccoli. Again . These plants are obviously too far gone to rescue, but I kept them around as a decoy to try to keep the culprit away from all of our other plants. That worked for a while, until it found our big brassica bed. We originally thought that a groundhog was to blame (as has been the case in the past ), but then we saw (and smelled) this guy: That's a baby skunk. In this photo, it is stumbling kind of blindly along the fence, looking for its way out of the sudden rainstorm that popped up. Some people would feel sorry for it, but where there's a baby, there's a family. And I don't think Fletch is going to touch this problem with a ten-foot pole. Turns out the skunk is rather a gourmand —  and a finicky one at that. He only eats broccoli. This is good news for everything else in the garden (although he looks to have tasted and then spit out peas, and nibbled the tops of some parsnips before moving on). Good news al...

Remember when I made rosewater ? That kind was distilled, so it is crystal clear, with just the essential oils mixed in. Since then I have made another three or four batches, and at the bottom of these larger batches is left a really beautiful rose tea: Well, it's not all that lovely until you drain off the faded, mushy rose petals. Then it's this really beautiful liquid. It has a stronger flavor than the distilled rosewater — ever-so-slightly bitter, with just a plant-like flavor. Like a tea. (Duh.) That flavor should be fine for cooking sweets though, since any bitterness will be masked with sugar. The color is also a bonus. First up, rose syrup. This is just a simple syrup — equal parts sugar and the rose tea, brought to a boil and cooled. I suppose with more sugar and more boiling, this could be made in a much thicker consistency for pancakes or ice cream, but I am planning to use it in its basic form to sweeten drinks. I'm thinking rose lemonade a...

Happy summer! This holiday has been filled with the beach, some touring, and a whole lotta heat. These were all cut back during the cool rains earlier this week.  Delphinium (blossoms pulled from their long spikes). Veronica lupine, white lavender, yarrow. Delphinium, echinacea (a puffy one and "Sunset"). Lavender and calendula heads. Lavender and Shasta daisies.

... A little rain must fall. Or a lot. Yesterday we had some crazy storms sweep through Essex County. We were a few miles north of being told to huddle in the basement in case if tornados, but we couldn't escape the rain. It fell hard and fast for a couple hours.  As you can see in the photo above, all that water just couldn't drain away in such a short period of time, and our patio turned into a shallow pond that started flowing over the edging, spilling back into the beds.  The gravel paths between the raised beds also filled up. It looked like Venice out there for the rest of the afternoon: All told, we had 4 1/2 inches of rain during the afternoon, and I can prove it: It's definitely nice not to have to water the garden, but the amount of rain we've had this June is getting to be ridiculous. We need some sun to dry out our pumpkins and squash so powdery mildew doesn't get out of control too early in the season. We also need s...