Generically Titled Update
It feels as though I'm overdue in posting here, but every possible subject I can think of seems doomy and gloomy, which is not really representative of where I am. I take side-eyed comfort in the fact that this is a somewhat difficult time due to measurable, concrete circumstances rather than free-floating depression. There's no one huge terrible thing, but my house is in great disarray, and the books have really overrun the available shelf space, and it seems that many of my necessary household possessions (e.g. vacuum cleaner) are succumbing to planned obsolescence all at once, and one of our oldest cats has a chronic, increasingly unpleasant (for us more than her) health problem, and this and that and blah blah blah.
On the bright side, the weather has been cool and gorgeous, and I've cleaned up much of the garden's summer disorder, planted petunias and parsley and chocolate mint, harvested a very respectable crop of Padron peppers, for which Chris was previously paying his produce guy $10 a pound. They're very tasty, but I had no idea they were such fancy boutique peppers and had been putting them on my homemade pizzas and things. Now they're featured on the Green Goddess' dinner menu in a seared tuna dish with smoked plum sauce. Moving up in the world!
Eggplants are starting to come in too, in all different colors (I planted an assortment). And this is strange: did you ever hear of cucumber vines that produced one (1) tiny cucumber all summer, the season when cucumbers are supposed to grow, and then took off fruiting when the weather turned cooler? Last year I tried to grow Mexican Sour Gherkins, a charming miniature cultivar whose fruits look like tiny watermelons, but all my seedlings damped off. This year the vines grew so vigorously they killed my two other types of cucumber, but had only produced a single ripe fruit (admittedly tasty, but there wasn't much I could do with it). All the others turned black and dropped off while still tiny. Now they actually appear to be staying on the vine and ripening. We shall see.
On the bright side, the weather has been cool and gorgeous, and I've cleaned up much of the garden's summer disorder, planted petunias and parsley and chocolate mint, harvested a very respectable crop of Padron peppers, for which Chris was previously paying his produce guy $10 a pound. They're very tasty, but I had no idea they were such fancy boutique peppers and had been putting them on my homemade pizzas and things. Now they're featured on the Green Goddess' dinner menu in a seared tuna dish with smoked plum sauce. Moving up in the world!
Eggplants are starting to come in too, in all different colors (I planted an assortment). And this is strange: did you ever hear of cucumber vines that produced one (1) tiny cucumber all summer, the season when cucumbers are supposed to grow, and then took off fruiting when the weather turned cooler? Last year I tried to grow Mexican Sour Gherkins, a charming miniature cultivar whose fruits look like tiny watermelons, but all my seedlings damped off. This year the vines grew so vigorously they killed my two other types of cucumber, but had only produced a single ripe fruit (admittedly tasty, but there wasn't much I could do with it). All the others turned black and dropped off while still tiny. Now they actually appear to be staying on the vine and ripening. We shall see.
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