special delivery

I get a lot of deliveries. Without a vehicle, it's the only reliable way to Get Stuff Here. Some of the drivers will bring packages to the top of the driveway, which I very much appreciate. But I don't blame the drivers who choose to leave packages at the bottom of the driveway, and that's why there's a little plastic lawn chair visible from the road. In the Winter, I leave a sled down there.

Walking down the driveway to pick up a package, I spotted this:

I believe it's a foxglove, which I don't recall ever seeing here before.

Exciting stuff! 

Especially since it's in a place where the animals are not, so I don't have to try to transplant it to avoid accidental poisoning.

And so interesting:

This morning I also walked up the road a hundred feet or so, to check on a little patch of columbines in front of my Upper West Side paddock. Some years I've seen two or three colors of columbine there, but this year I saw only one color - a lovely purple. Today there are just three blossoms remaining, Here's one:

I hope you've got some flowers blooming wherever you are.

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batch batch cooking

Tortellini pressure-cooked in sauce, ready for freezer.

I've been doing "batch" cooking for nearly as long as I've been cooking, because it always made sense: make the effort (and the mess) once, eat well, and have a few servings tucked in the freezer for another day. When I started using a "multi-cooker" - mine is a Gourmia brand, not the famed Instant Pot - I also started cooking batches in a sequence, with two or three things different things cooked over the course of an afternoon or even a couple of hours. For example, the first thing could be plain pasta, followed by a pot of bulgur, followed by winter squash or a pot of soup.

The speed of pressure cooking is what many people seem to focus on, and it's true that once you've waited several minutes for the pressure to come up, the actual cooking times are almost incredibly short and presumably energy-efficient compared to other methods. But a major advantage for me is the kind of attention needed: intermittent.  Compared to cooking in a regular pot on the stove, there isn't any hovering or stirring or keeping an eye on. This frees up bits of time for little tasks, such as slicing apples for the herd or dealing with a sliding pile of mail or folding the laundry. I'm still in the kitchen but  getting extra things done in addition to restocking the fridge and freezer. It makes the entire cooking endeavor feel more efficient and productive, and I love that.

Speaking of pasta, have I mentioned my new favorite shape? After decades of rotini fandom, a trip through the Aldi markdown aisle a couple of years ago led me to cavatappi:

And because I rarely have the chance to shop in Aldi, I bought a few boxes. By the time I'd worked out the best way to cook cavatappi in the Gourmia I had also created a new way to eat pasta: with a spritz of oil, a dollop of salsa, and a sprinkling of shredded sharp cheddar melted in. I've been cooking this pasta for two years now and have yet to put pasta sauce on it.

After running out of the Aldi boxes, I started looking for cavatappi online and couldn't find it anywhere. It seemed impossible, so I visited the Barilla website and started scrolling through pictures of their many pasta products. Behold:

Here's what cavatappi or cellentani looks like when it's been pressure-cooked for 3 minutes, then frozen, then thawed:

This week, in the interest of eating cold things, I've branched out from my usual salsa and cheddar method, and used the thawed pasta for a salad with tuna and mayo. If I'd had celery or frozen peas or corn, they would have gone in also, but it was good anyway. So good. This form of pasta just seems perfect to me: thick enough to have a good chewing texture but hollow, so not overly dense. Spiraled and ridged to hold whatever is added - salsa or mayo or even just butter. If you like rotini, I strongly recommend trying this. Hot or cold. Except today. Today is definitely a day for more cold pasta salad, at least here in Massachusetts.

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more

Sambucus watching the rain from a cozy nest in the Peace Pavilion.

Another rainy night and day. So dark in the house that lamps are needed to see the other end of a room. Since morning chores it's been an indoor day, with my main responsibility being toweling off Moxie and Della every time they come in after brief forays in the saturated underbrush.

The barncams pay for themselves in terms of safety every single day, and on a rainy day (or night) they save me many uncomfortable trips just to check on the herd. Plus there's the entertainment value. After moving the cameras around from the laptop to check on every goat, usually from an overhead angle, it's always fun to suddenly have a face pop up right at lens-level.

Violet on her bench of choice.

Sorry to keep on and on about the rain.

It's the element underlying everything else here at the moment.

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garden snaps

 The "Egyptian onions" or "walking onions" are on the move at last.

It took several years to get these established here, despite their mint-like reputation for vigorous spreading. This year they are looking very healthy, and are already dropping their heads to the ground to create more plants.

Two varieties of pole beans are starting to come up.

Some of the plants have already been destroyed by an unidentified critter.

Very unfortunate.

Also unfortunate is that something got into the terrace garden in the last 48 hours and munched off the top couple of feet of many of my thornless raspberry plants, which I've spent years encouraging. Based on the height of the browse line it almost has to be deer damage, which has never been an issue here before.

In happier news, there are a few more spiderworts blooming up by the barn:

And for everyone who has been sharing pictures of their tomato plants, here are some of mine, seeded directly into one of the tall metal beds back on the 19th of May:

Hang in there, little tomato plants!

This last one is not really a garden picture, but under the category "Reasons to Carry a Hand Lens" here is Prunella vulgaris, the very common little "heal-all" plant, growing along one of my paths between paddocks and house:

I hope your gardens are doing well.

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update

Lately we've been having rain.

Lots of rain.

For everyone whose gardens or lawns are going totally wild:

I see you.

Most of this happened in one week:

 But! This week we had a forecast of three days in a row with only a minimal chance of rain - yesterday was the third day - and I've tried to make a bit of progress on the many seasonal tasks that are way behind schedule. Not just because of the weather. My Occasional Helper has been unavailable for many of his Tuesday/Thursday visits lately. This means that when he does come, the priority is just the heavy lifting that's piled up; not the seasonal tasks. I'm glad he gets here at all, of course, and he has often stepped up for an unforeseen or unusual task, even if not on his regular workdays, which I'm very, very grateful for. But my gosh, am I ever feeling this gardening season slipping away from me. It's already too late for some of my carefully planned projects, and I've reached a point in my life where "I'll have to get to that next year" doesn't sit well.

Oh well, all I can do is all I can do, and today I am planting beans before the rain that's expected this afternoon, so there's that!

Thank gods for the perennials planted over the years, like this amsonia. It grows naturally in a tidy clump which has helped it remain upright despite all the rain.

My spiderwort plants, which do not grow in a tidy clump but rather seem to fling themselves all over the garden, have been sadly flattened by repeated rainstorms, despite my efforts to prop them up. Yesterday I was thinking there might not be any spiderwort flowers this year, but then I happened upon this one, supported by surrounding tall stalks of tansy. I'll bet that tiny bee was relieved to find at least one flower where there are usually dozens:

And here's some of the "wild lettuce" which seems to weather anything, and also seems to grow a foot overnight. I'm taking it out near the gardens because each plant produces roughly 2 billion windborne seeds and it spreads like crazy. I'd never heard of letting goats eat this - and it's got a very sticky sap - but another goat person, my long-time blogpal Leigh, saves this plant to use as a component of her homegrown goat feed, so I'm going to try drying some this year. (Are you here, Leigh? Please check me on this!)

Celebration time: yesterday Moxie and I put up the little screentent again. Now there's a chaise that the biting bugs can not - for the most part - reach. Huzzah!

Since the return of rain is predicted, last night after chores I brought in everything I had dragged outside to air during the Three Magical Days of Dryness. Including all seven drawers from an old wooden dresser. Anything stored in that dresser always smells musty to me, no matter what I've tried. If anyone can suggest a way to get musty smells out of old wooden furniture, please, please share that knowledge! I don't have many storage options in the house, and I don't want to have to turn that dresser into a workshop tool box.

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