Red Cedar
More apocalypse, less angst
More of this, less of that.
I have lots of cucumbers right now – long english, pickling, and round lemon cukes – but very few tomatoes ripening in time for the perfect late-summer salad! This really hasn’t been the best tomato year, nor am I really an expert at them in the first place (I’m starting to agree with my neighbour that they are more trouble than they are worth to grow).
This time of year in the garden is really one of reckoning, though isn’t it? As I walk through every couple of days pulling up old plants, harvesting food, keeping an eye out for the fall aphids – I’m mentally noting failures and successes – making a catalog of what I won’t do next year, and what I’ll do more of.
For the record, here’s some of what I won’t do again:
- Edamame. According to at least one person, this needs a special kind of bacteria to grow well. Apparently we don’t have it in our yard and these are the saddest bean plants I’ve ever seen.
- Peppers without cold frames. I put some in the cold frame, and some in the regular beds thinking that my raised beds would be warm enough for them. No way! My cold frame peppers are putting out fruit, but nothing at all has happened in my garden beds. We just don’t get enough heat for long enough most years.
- Strawberry spinach. I really didn’t like the taste of this, it’s too bitter.
- Upside down tomatoes. While it’s true that this was the the first plant to produce fruit and then ripen, the limited space in the upside down tomato bag means that the plant doesn’t put very much fruit out at all. Plus, it looked to me like the plant was being tortured, and the damn thing dries out no matter how much you water it so the leaves look pretty punky by July.
- Too much kale. I’m not sure why I planted three kale plants when I know only one is necessary. But there you go. Next year I’m planting less kale.
- Zuchinni. I only planted one plant (a space saver which I love), but it hasn’t done particularly well because I’ve got it in a large planter bucket and I think it wants more nutrients. I’ve gotten a few fruits from the vine, but otherwise been beset with blossom end-rot. My patty-pan squashes have more than made up for that though!
- Melon. Even in a cold frame, my melon did nothing in my north-facing yard. To be expected I suppose.
So as not to be too negative, here’s what I would do more of (or some of).
- Corn. It’s space intensive but really rewarding and I’m sorry I didn’t plant any this year. I’ve decided to clear a portion of one of my beds for a small corn patch last year. I’m also going to plant some winter squashes in there since I’m not sure about the location I planted them this year in terms of hours of sunlight.
- Beans. More green, yellow and purple beans! And I’m going to plant some pole beans in front of my house out of the porch box to see if I can get a nice effect on the front porch.
- Fava Beans. More space for favas!
- Garlic. Tons more space for garlic!
As usual, I’ve got more plans to move things about – to create a single raspberry zone, and a blueberry zone back where the top-bar hive is going to go – and I’d like some kind of greenhouse against the side of the studio where my herb garden currently sits. This would help with overwintering the herbs and also give me a place for the pepper pots. I’m experiencing the gardener’s frustration of getting to the end of August with all sorts of thoughts about what next, only to have to wait another eight months to start experimenting grandly again – though I’ve still got to see how the winter veggies are going. I’m putting a few more turnips and radishes in this week, some more greens and scallions. It’ll just have to hold me over until I can start the front yard project, which I’m hoping will happen in October. More on that possibility later!
August ennui.
I’m feeling a bit transitional these days – like I need to leave behind some old things in order to move onto the new, except I don’t know what the new is. It might just be that I have to leave the old behind, declutter both physically and mentally, in order to give myself room for what’s left. That is a distinct possibility in all this. Because I’m feeling crowded – not by anyone in particular, but by the past. By things that don’t matter that much to me anymore but I hold onto, by possessions that I keep tucked away “just in case”. I’m feeling a bit weighed down by it, and ready for new challenges to boot. But we’ll just have to see about that.
September always brings new events and connections and I’m looking forward to that – not to mention our wedding at the end of the month, so this malaise will pass. To help things along, I’m planning to paint our front entrance hall bright yellow sometime in the next few weeks and build some proper shelving! And of course, more canning, more good dinners, more autumn hikes to raise my energy levels as winter comes along.
In other news, we’ve got all of B’s family in town this week for his brother’s wedding which happens on Saturday. Friday night is a party at our place for 45 people, and in between now and then lots of visiting, cleaning and getting food ready – exactly what I need to keep my mind off the end-of-August ennui I tend to suffer from.
And then lots of friends visiting on Labour Day weekend! And a block party too! Really, I look forward to September and getting back into gear again. This time of the year is really hard on me for some reason.
I *heart* Cathedral Lakes.
Back in the city for a couple of days now, I’ve finally had time to post our Cathedral Lakes photos to Flickr and gather my thoughts a little about the trip. In short? What a beautiful place, and we sure picked the right time to go there since it’s wildflower season in the sub-alpine and Cathedral Lakes Provincial Park has the most awesome meadows I have ever hiked in.
CLPP is a bit of an oddity in terms of the provincial parks, as the core area of the park is only accessible via a steep hike in, or via transportation up a private road operated by the Cathedral Lakes Lodge (grandfathered into the park, but owned privately). We elected to take the transportation in, as we had such a short time to spend up top, and so paid the $120 apiece to ride in the back of the Unimog which takes an hour to do nine miles of pretty-much vertical road. A little terrifying, but worth every penny to be able to carry in a cooler with beer and fresh food (the campsite is only a few minutes walk from the drop-off point), not to mention getting straight to the good stuff of alpine hiking.
We decided to stay at the first campsite at Quniscoe Lake, which I wouldn’t do on a weekend as it does tend to be the busiest (and the lodge across the way can be noisy) – but we were there mid-week and it was pretty quiet. Our campsite at Quiniscoe was right on the water so B. managed to get some good fishing time in on the rocks out front. Additionally, Quniscoe is the only campsite that allows fires (when they are allowed at all), and the only sites with picnic tables.
As for the hiking, CLPP is beautiful and ass-kicking terrain, with pretty much every trail involving some scrambling up and down. Ladyslipper Lake is one of the easiest hikes at only 7 km, but still involves 200 metres of elevation gain, the main trail of the park – the Rim – is only accessible by scrambling up steep, loose trail whereby one is rewarded with views for miles in every direction. If you’re thinking of doing any of these hikes, good footwear and hiking poles are pretty much a requirement. I wore through the rubber tips on both my poles last week!
When not hiking straight up and around and down, B. and I spent time beside the many lakes (Ladyslipper Lake is by far one of the most beautiful places I have every seen), and checking out the riot of alpine meadows in full bloom. Honestly, if you’re planning a trip up there in August, the Diamond Trail is not to be missed for its endless floral carpet – not to mention that it offers lots of opportunities for frolicking amongst said meadows if you are so inclined. The lodge is also open to campers for beer and meals – we went over one night for dinner which was pretty good (but pricey at $40 for the amount we eat – it’s buffet style), and had beers there on another occasion. This makes it a little less “backcountry” for sure, but it also provided a place to go one night when the wind was howling so fiercly down the lake that all we could otherwise do was hunker down in our tent. Beer by an indoor fireplace is a very welcome comfort in such circumstances.
Because of the effort required to get into the park, there were really only about 30 other people in this huge area with us at any given point during our week up there. We found that made CLPP one of the friendlier parks we’ve hiked in, as people tend to feel a bit bonded by the experience of being so remote and with so few others. Everyone has a recommendation – a favourite hike, a great spot to lunch, their particular harrowing experience coming down the wrong side of a mountain – and sharing those seems to be a big part of the CLPP trip for folks. Which was pretty neat, really, as we met all sorts of interesting folks in our footbound travels. On our last couple of nights there, our neighbours were a couple of young kids (20ish) from Kelowna who had never camped before, and who had no idea how to cook a fish that they had caught (nor any idea what to do with the bit of squash I offered them to saute with the fish – I think they had been solely raised on packaged food). It definitely made for some extra interest, and also gave me the impression that folks up there look out for each other since parks staff in the backcountry is next-to-nonexistent these days.
Because of its remoteness another feature that makes CLPP so precious is the incredible diversity and proximity of wildlife. We saw mountain goats, deer, grouse, picas, marmots, squirrels, chipmunks and whiskey jacks pretty much every day, in our camp! And because of the elevation, bears are pretty-much non-existent in the core area of the park.
Go check out the photos to see more of what we did and saw! On our way back Friday we picked up a load of fruit and spent the last two days canning it. You can check that out over on Among the Weeds where I have enumerated our great haul from Keremeos.
Oh, the excitement of food!
“The pleasure of serving the fruits of home canned food is comparable only to a clear conscience or a very becoming hat!” Joy of Cooking
I love this quote, and even though I used it in a canning post last year, I can’t help myself, there is something so satisfying about racking up a large amount of food to put by and serving it all winter long. A clear conscience? I’m not sure, but it does bring great peace of mind.
The above photo does not really do our canning weekend justice, but I was on my way out this morning when I took it with my cel phone – a testament to two full days of work between B. and myself as we laboured through the boxes we picked up on our way through Keremeos on Friday.
This weekend we managed to put up a total of : 120 pounds of tomatoes, 10 pounds of cherries, 20 pounds of peaches, 15 pounds of cucumbers, 20 pounds of beets and assorted onions and peppers in the mix. From that we made:
- canned tomatoes
- tomato sauce
- bbq sauce
- tomato salsa
- peach salsa
- canned peaches
- cherry marmalade
- cherry-walnut jam
- cherry vinegar
- dill pickles
- bread-and-butter pickles, and
- pickled beets
This, in addition to the rhubarb and raspberries and the strawberry-frangelico syrup I put up earlier this summer. I’ve also got lots of squashin I’m considering turning into relish or pickles.
We are anticipating a couple more canning days this fall with the intention of doing apple sauce, apple chutney, and mincemeat (I’m also thinking canned pears) – but so far we’re feeling pretty good about this output! When we were picking stuff up to bring homeward on Friday, I wasn’t anticipating we’d get it all done before the weekend was over. But here we are! Ready for writing the date on each jar and putting on our new shelves in the basement for just this purpose.
More on canning in the upcoming days, but just wanted to share that we are back and with goodies too!
Loving summer food.
As I head out on a week of holidays, I leave you with this charming picture from Saturday morning yard gleaning. We ate the beans and squash tonight with beer-can chicken. The tomatoes went down in a cheese and pickle sandwich this afternoon. Loving the summer food and the fact so much of it is coming out of garden. Looking forward to more cukes, zucchini, beans, and greens upon our return.
Red Cedar 