pumpkins

Do you remember this pumpkin? The vine had grown through the perimeter fence of the big terrace garden and down into the steep bank garden bordering the driveway. The pumpkin's own weight was forcing the fence into the skin, so I harvested right away although I didn't know if a pumpkin could ripen off the vine.

Reporting back: over several weeks spent on a table by a porch window, this one very gradually turned a beautiful orange!

Throughout late Summer and early Autumn, as I walked by the gardens I would sometimes catch a glimpse of bright yellow tucked deep amongst the many shades of foliage and perennial flowers. It's surprising how large a pumpkin can grow without being seen.

At least, seen by me.

I've never grown pumpkins before, and those five little pumpkin seeds have given me so much pleasure and entertainment. It was a very hard summer for all plants, but the pumpkins never gave up. In fact, here are a few pictures of the vines continuing to bloom and set fruit a week ago!

 Recently there was an unfortunate incident in which several goats managed to get into the terrace garden

while I was in the barn mixing up their grain buckets.

Which just seems rude.

In 20 minutes they completely destroyed one pumpkin and tasted several others. It was rather shocking to find so much damage. For example, I'd been admiring the beauty below for weeks. Chompity chomp chomp. You can see my boots on the right, for scale.

While they were there, the goats also ate my first-ever okra plants right down to the ground. Ditto, all the remaining pole beans that I had selected to dry for next year's seed. Someone also tried to nibble a Candy Roaster squash, but gave up. The harder skin of a winter squash must have been too much work for my little vandals!

Last night I harvested the last three pumpkins - two large and one small. I'm hoping they will keep for a while amongst the hay bales as there are already two pumpkins waiting in the kitchen and I only have room to work with one at a time.

I've been baking (or is it roasting?) them in halves or large wedges, smoothing the purée for a few seconds with a stick blender, then freezing in 2-cup packets for winter cooking. The freezer is now full right to the tippety-top (not just with pumpkin!) so I've also been using pumpkin purée to make soups and stews and cake.

Cake!

This is a new version of my tried-and-true cranberry apple mosaic cake, with lots of pumpkin (planned on one cup but my hand slipped!), more spices, and extra flour to adjust for the added moisture.  It came out as a sort of Massachusetts Fruits-cake, with cranberries from the Cape, apples from my favorite nearby orchard, and pumpkin from my own garden. Dense and flavorful, with a texture like a steamed pudding. It's not the cake I was anticipating, but it's quite good. This modified version of the recipe is another "keeper," for sure.

Apples and cranberries and - now - pumpkins!

Welcome to November!

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the why-not gardens of 2016

I tried to focus on growing just a few types of vegetable this year, such as pole beans and squash and popcorn. But because there was more room to experiment, I looked through all the not-quite-empty seed packets that have been left after each recent year of gardening, and thought, "Why not just stick a few in here and there? Nothing to lose."

Two of these why-not plantings were the poona kheera cucumbers from India, and the Rouge vif d'Etampes French heirloom pumpkin. The original plantings had germinated poorly, so I planted the now-older seeds - five pumpkin and 36 poona kheera - densely to compensate for low germination.

Well. As near as I could tell, every one of those 41 seeds germinated! One of the pumpkin seeds even got washed away after the other four sprouted, but when poked back into the ground, sprouted and soon caught up to it's cohorts.

young pumpkin plants

One edge of my big garden was soon filled hip-deep with pumpkin leaves and vines. When one vine extended into the Lower West Side goat paddock, I tried to persuade it to turn back before it was too late, but...it was already too late. The goats made short work of that branch; prickly leaves, sticky blossoms, massive stems and all.

Campion is a dedicated gardener. Specialty: pruning.

Three bright yellow pumpkins began to grow: one nearly hidden by popcorn stalks, and two outside the 6-foot perimeter fence above the bank garden. The perimeter fence is also the trellis for all the poona kheera plants, AND for the Georgia Candy Roaster winter squash plants, whose massive leaves tower over the six-foot fence. Quite a lively jungle out there!

poona kheera cucumbers

I picked the largest pumpkin last night, because the pumpkin and it's stem were being damaged by it's weight pressing into the fencing. I don't think it is ripe, but it can be perhaps be steamed and eaten like a summer squash. Although I'd rather roast it for soup or puree...does anyone have any experience with roasting or eating unripe pumpkins? Please do speak up in the comments! This beautiful pumpkin weighs nearly 19 pounds, and I do not want to waste a bit of it!

my first-ever pumpkin!

Not exactly a why-not planting, but do you remember the Suyo Long cucumbers from Tipper's Sow True Seed annual experimental project? Seven of the ten seeds germinated, and I quickly put little collars on to protect them from bad things like cutworms.

suyo seedlings

Since it seemed all seven seedlings were likely to survive, I thinned them by - why not? - moving four plants to a raised bed by the goat barn, to see which conditions the cucumbers might prefer. All seven plants have done well all summer!

They are such interesting cucumber plants. The tiny cucumbers look like this:

baby suyo long cucumber

As they grow, those strange, spiky-looking bright green things become strange, spiky-looking little white nubs. They may look sharp, but they aren't. I've even seen them described as "thorns" but I guess those people have never encountered an actual thorn! These little nubs just brush right off when you run a hand over the cucumber. Or even just your thumb. See?

The suyo cucumbers certainly earn their "long" title, and most of mine were grown on a trellis and have been quite straight. These two examples are each about 20 inches long:

suyo long

suyo also-long

I love the texture of the suyo peel; it is crisp and not bitter at all. A few of the cucumbers got so big the seeds developed so I scraped out those cores as a treat for the hens. I did the same with some of the poona kheera, and those I did peel because the rind is thicker - still not bitter, though! LeShodu, my Matriarch doe, greatly enjoys eating the strips of rind, one by one. I think her teeth may not be as strong as they used to be, so this is a nice way for her to get some soft "bark" without actually having to gnaw on a tree.

The suyo and the poona kheera are both still producing well, and I'm eating lots of cucumber salads - both a savory and a sweet version which I found on this post at The Blind Pig and The Acorn. In fact, I've got a tote full of cucumbers in the kitchen right this minutes, so I'm going to quit nattering and get busy slicing.

Hope your week is beginning well!

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wordy wednesday

The weather has lightened up, and everyone is enjoying it.

It's sunny, and it's hot. But not stultifyingly humid.

And there's an occasional breeze.

The air is breathable.

Ahhhhh.

Betula had been basking in the sun, but when he saw me walking up from the garden, he got up and walked down to meet me halfway.

 LeShodu naturally assumed that I would walk to her.

She is rarely mistaken.

~~~

We had a brief but heavy rain one evening,

and the corn is higher than my knees at last:

The corn - it's organic popcorn, actually! - 

still has a long way to go.

But the summer squash is coming along:

~~~

In very "other" news, I'm in the process of switching to a new laptop. It's a necessary step - overdue, really - but now I must get it done because the tiny laptop needs to go away for repair ASAP. I've been switching over for a week now, bit by bit.

I am not going to make you look at pictures of a laptop.

Look, pumpkin leaves! Aren't they glorious?

I'll talk about the laptops though. Two big hurdles are: getting the goatcams talking to the new laptop, and finding a replacement for Picasa, which I've been happy with as an image manager (mostly) and editor (a bit), but which Google cut loose a while ago. Oh, Google. You are a blister at times.

I do so little "post-processing" of images, I have no need of PhotoShop. And I don't want my images in "the cloud" so I'm not even looking at Google's "replacement" for Picasa.

FastStone was recommended but doesn't seem to have keyword tagging. Tagging is a feature I need at this point; otherwise I will never find anything when I want it. Ideally, I need to find software that will not only offer tagging but which will read the tags on tens of thousands of images already tagged in Picasa.

What are y'all using? Any software suggestions will be much appreciated!

~~~

Hurdle 2: the goatcams are critical to my peace of mind; no exaggeration. There's just no calculating how many unnecessary trips to the barns and paddocks they've prevented, especially in the middle of the night. Nor how many times I've gone out with a flashlight because a goatcam let me know there was something genuinely amiss. They've certainly saved at least one life.

After many hair-tearing failures this week, I managed to get one of the cameras talking to the new laptop this afternoon. I have such a headache now, I'm going to rest on that one scrawny laurel til tomorrow, when I'll tackle the second camera again.

And speaking of tomorrow, it's the Giveaway Giveaway! I just discovered that I did not put a time on the random drawing, so to be fair, I will keep entries open til midnight Eastern Time on Thursday, and will draw and post the winner on Friday. That means there's still time to share, so please do...this is just a tiny giveaway, but the more people who hear about Kiva, the better our world may be :)

~~~~~

ordinary extraordinary life

The middle of June! Time is getting away from me lately.

Each day contains some of the same ordinary elements:

weeding, planting, more weeding, goat chores, home chores, seasonal chores, watering the gardens, more weeding.

Every little thing takes me a long time, but it's all good.

New perennials in a new raised bed:
white coneflower, english lavender, harebells,
and a pink coreopsis.

Heliotrope - the scent is amazing.

One of the white spiderworts has returned!

Bonus: pumpkin from the "leftover seeds" box.

Asian cucumbers, soon to be transplanted.

.

Piper and I have been out for short walks most days, and sometimes I carry my sketchbook into the woods. I don't look for something to draw; I look for a combination of landscape elements that will make it physically possible for me to sit with a sketchpad for 15 minutes or so, and then - this is important - stand up again.

Once I've found such a place - that's the hard part - I sit.

And then I look around for something to draw.

That's the easy part.

While I focus on ahhht (I'm from Massachusetts), Piper runs loops around me. She explores the area. Then she chooses a Lookout.

Here she is perched high above me, on a slope:

And for the first time in over a year, she actually allowed me to take her picture. She didn't immediately duck her head or turn away at the sight of the camera.

We were serenaded by a redwing blackbird,

perched in the branch of a fallen tree, out in the pond:

We also saw a pair of Great Blue Herons, and the next day we saw one in another part of the wetland. Last year, I saw two in the same area and hoped they would nest nearby, but I never saw them again.

Fingers crossed for this year!

Birds are such a chirping, swooping, fluttering gift. Yesterday, when I was distributing hay on the Upper West Side, I saw something I've never seen before in my life: a Scarlet Tanager. Even if I'd had my camera, I wouldn't have taken a picture; it was a moment to savor.

But if he becomes a frequent visitor, I'll try :)

Meanwhile, after hearing my neighbor shouting "Go! Go away! Get out of here!" early yesterday morning, I think the bears may be about at last.

I've removed the biggest bird feeder, leaving just the hummingbird feeder, and smaller hanging feeders that will only be up during the day, when I am at home.

So we won't be seeing this for a few months:

Squirrels: the Tiniest Bears of All

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