Sunday, 6 September 2009
Soon after I took yesterday’s picture, the pumpkin vine* transported to the compost pile next door. Today’s picture, incidentally, is from a year ago exactly—’tis the season?—and is not of the fruit of that vine, which seems to have been sterile.
NB: The squash/pumpkin genus is Cucurbita, and Cucurbitas are native to the New World.
Sunday, 30 August 2009
Sorry for the lousy picture, but this is all the proof there is that today we made a test batch of applesauce from the early trees SW of The Grove. They have good color and very few worms, so were pretty easy to process. And, yes, that brilliant pink is the real color!
Friday, 28 August 2009
Attentive readers may remember that I mentioned the fires north of Newberry in 2007. Fires in this area mean the blueberry plants will be extremely productive upon recovery. We picked and picked the bounty produced by those fires two years ago….
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
Don’t ask me how to pronounce it, but back in Old English days that’s the word that referred to the color orange, and it meant yellow-red.
Then came the fruit from distant lands to the east, and with it the name that was then, for obvious reasons, also applied to the color.
This specimen’s known as a naked orange around here, since it’s lost its zest….
Saturday, 1 August 2009
Yesterday, the Pepper Couple arrived and today we transformed many peppers into hot sauce and other delicacies. Wonderful!
FYI: botanically, peppers are berries….
Monday, 27 July 2009
Hands down, this is the oddest tomato we’ve seen this year. It’s from a healthy plant that produces yellow pear-shaped tomatoes, about the size of a cherry or grape tomato.
Friday, 24 July 2009
I basked in warm fuzziness toward wild critters all day—until I saw this!
Thursday, 23 July 2009
The half-dozen Rutgers tomatoes I planted are on the edge of kicking into production (the ones we’ve picked so far are down to about $2 each, haha), and I think we’ll have plenty if the Baddies don’t get into them. So far so good. The little pear-shaped yellow tomatoes are like tomato candies—just a great treat. The patio tomato looks nice, but is only beginning to set; it must not have liked the replanting process or something.
I’ve been watching for late blight, but so far I think we’re clear (perhaps it’s just a bit too dry for it to flourish). Funny that this is the same “fungus-like oomycete pathogen” as caused the Irish potato famine.
* AKA water mold; they are “a group of filamentous, unicellular heterokonts, physically resembling fungi” and related to diatoms. AND, heterokonts, or stramenopiles, are “chromists with chloroplasts…”—heck, read it yourself.
Monday, 13 July 2009
They call him “Big Boy;” I call him “Bun Boy.”
How had I missed until now that the Big Boy statues have a slingshot in the back pocket?
Note: for those into details, this is really a Frisch’s Big Boy….
Saturday, 11 July 2009
Okay, I admit that this picture was from last night’s near-excess, in downtown EL. Actually, we were fairly sedate, although this shot may suggest otherwise.
I thought I was ordering a simple salad, but when it arrived it was perhaps the tallest Tall Food I’ve ever seen, or at least had placed before me. BTW, that’s salmon crusted with panko and almond slivers on the skewers, tripoded atop a mixed green salad with goat cheese bits and other goodies. And, I can’t forget the lemon slice tying the architecture together….
Otherwise, we mostly sipped Guinness, easing our way through the evening, and there was a luxurious spinach–artichoke appetizer, too—how could I forget that!
The wrapping for all this dietary fun, of course, were lots of laughs and some speculation about the current economics of Michigan’s automotive industry….