06-28-2013 First fig!!!!!

Yesterday, June 27th, I had the surprise and pleasure to find out my first fig was ripe and ready to eat.

It tasted just as good as I remembered.

While figs are harvested in August in our part of the world, some older trees in some varieties like my "Violette de Bordeaux" will produce an early, small flush of fruit, generally not more than about 20. They grow rather large and ripen six weeks ahead of the real crop: a tease, but a tasty one.

While D.H. Lawrence waxes poetic on the eating of a fig, my early ones hardly ever make it to the kitchen. They taste best right there  under the tree.

My bird loving friends will be happy to know that some feathered hoodlum beat me to the harvest this morning and already took its tally and that, by the way, it was the ripest one!

While generally referred to as a fruit is really an infructuescence or  an inversed flower. What you see there are all little flowers that have not opened yet and will not since we do not have the tiny wasp that is supposed to go in through the ostiole (small hole at the bottom) to pollinate it.

That white drop is sap that the fig sheds when you pick it. It is a variation on latex, very sticky. Some people are allergic to it. Good thing I am not!!!!

06-25-2013 More summer and more flowers!

Besides flowers that seem to change day by day, we are now slowly getting into summer's eating with more and more tomatoes and cucumbers.

Yesterday, we had our first "Israeli salad" so named because that's what we used to eat all the time on the kibbutz: chopped tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers, parsley with salt, pepper, oil and lemon juice. The one I made yesterday was out of this world with its fresh flavor spreading through the kitchen. There is something to be said for the concept of :"From garden to plate"!

To top it, we had home-grown corn for lunch. I prefer to grow a hybrid yellow/white. Yellow for body and white for sweetness; it does not get any better!

This also means that now, the little bit of coolness we had left has disappeared and I now have to work out there in the heat. It helps me relate to the poor Mexicans picking our fruit and vegetables out there in the NC fields every day.

Fresh carrots in June--very nice!

Cocosmia

This may look like a miniature sunflower but it is a broken side shoot that straightened itself up and bloomed.

Promises, promises!!!!!

Corn of a different stripe.

Nothing says summer like tomatoes and...sunflowers!

06-19-2013 Summer!

We're slowly moving into Summer with a few hot days including some pretty hot and dry winds but, all in all, we have been pretty lucky having enjoyed some nice cold fronts and, for gardeners, having had some regular rain.
We have been spared major damage by the couple of heavy storms ripping through our area in the last few days.

As far as eating from the garden, we get a few raspberries, very tasty but coming only a couple at a time. By next year the plants should be strong enough to give us a better production.

We've been eating the first tomatoes (about two weeks ahead of official schedule) and cucumbers and we're still awash in green beans. We tasted the first corn- very sweet! And, interestingly we still have carrots, due to those regular rains and cooler temps.

The way a healthy carrot should look with an almost trans lucid core.

Self-seeded dill and corn share the sunlight.

But the big show has been in flowers with lilies of all sorts in full bloom, some gladiolus and our first sunflower. Many should follow up soon!

For the longest time, I gave up on gladiolus that were mainly of the giant kind and unexciting colors but, in the last few years, new color combinations have been bred as well as smaller flowers which I prefer to "giants".

Nothing says summer like a sunflower. Bees of all sorts love loading themselves with that super abundant pollen.

late blooming iris.

Yarrow.

A variation on black-eyed Suzann.

pink lily

Cleome.

Cardoon

Sun play

Sunflower bud getting ready to explode

06-08-2013 Tropical depression Andrea

I figured I better start by talking about TD Andrea since it had such an impact on the garden the last few hours. Its high winds and heavy rains did bring down some of my corn, a number of lilies and impacted my raspberry production from a handful to nothing. The fruit is way too soft to stand heavy rains without major damage.

Yet, as a gardener, I am very happy with the 3 1/2 inches of rain I received in the last 48 hours. No hand held hose watering can even come close to this kind of impact.

Just before the rain I ate my first cherry tomato. It had the perfect summer taste I did remember. It's a little early since tomatoes ripen around the beginning of July but I did not complain. And it was a week after my son David's first tomato. Living downtown keeps things a few degrees warmer!

The potato plants look really good; they like for things to be a little cooler and love a good, regular supply of fresh water.

But the real big news this week have been my first full size harvest of home grown bush beans. Nothing tastes like a freshly picked, freshly steamed home grown bean. This is a moment I look forward to every year and, then, I look forward to as many repeat harvest as they will give me.

But the real surprise, this week, happened this afternoon when I went out front to take some pictures for this blog. I opened the front door and totally startled an adult gray fox. I had never seen one in this neighborhood and sure did not expect one in mid afternoon  when my neighbor's driveway was full of well wishers.
It disappeared so fast I had no time to see where it went. A few minutes later, as I was observing my honey bees doing a sun dance, I also noticed some movement in the corner of my eye: little gray fox cubs that, apparently were living rent-free under my tool shed, a slightly raised, perfectly dry and well protected birthing nest. After getting a better camera and hiding myself behind a hanging fern, I got to see 6 little cubs coming out a t turns, rough housing in the sun giving a new meaning to the old children given nickname for my garden:"The Jungle."