Voice for Reason

happy autumn to you, and we have been getting rain daily for maybe a week now. the subsoil was really dry just last week, but well saturated now, with roots penetrating from the carrots, snow peas, field peas (looks like a bumper), onions, and i expect the garlic to show any day now. not a peep from the parsnips. the moonflowers have been putting on a show every night, and the large (apparently sphinx) moths that are the pollinators are the adults of the…wait for it….tomato hornworm. you know, the hornworms, when found on my maders, were heaved out into the street for the birds to find. those hornworms. i guess they will get a pass from now on, as they generally stick to the foliage, and only occasionally munching on fruit. live and learn.

have a butterfly-catching cat in the neighborhood, however. since the cicada supply has dried up, this kitty (called the spasmanian devil in his younger days, just wild) is now stalking butterflies in my garden. dang. can only hope that a monarch will come by, but i have no milkweed arournd that i know of. dang. dang. we are all part of the web. also painful to report, attacked the old fashioned yellow iris that i moved from my old house with a pry bar (five feet long, 40 pounds) and turning fork this weekend, trying to stem their advance. no one who was not there will know, but when you double dig a bed and the roots get down that deep, getting the rhizomes to turn loose is a fight. don’t know how much i cussed to get a wheelbarrow full, but i slept well…and now the folks at work will help me by adopting the uprooted orphans. works out.

as nights lengthen, i hope you and yours are tucked in comfortably with jobs intact and families strengthened by any adversities you may have been gifted to survive. man, that sounds kind of sideways, don’t it?? bless us all, and bless and keep the lobbyists, bankers, insurance idiots, and wall streeters…far away from us. crusty.

this same rain exploded my maders, tho, but that again is my fault for not picking faithfully. i plant only salad maders (juliet and cherry), so i had a buncha split maders (5-6 pounds or so) that would not keep for long. i boiled them yesterday and chilled them overnight. at lunch today, i stopped at grocery and got about three pounds of boneless skinless chicken breasts. i put the maders thru a colander while the chicken was browning with jalapeno, garlic and onion, and then dumped the tomato sauce on in with four or five green bell peppers and a handful of oregano and sage and a sprig of thyme and rosemary fresh outta the garden. so, the only thing not out of the garden was the chicken. would love to keep chickens, too, but fear i might stop enjoying the hawks in the neighborhood. anyway, kind of a thick tomato chicken soup resulted, and i am not dead yet, but it’s early in that pot’s life.

toads and lizards very happy. rainbarrels full; still got a buncha weeding to do, and after new moon will put down another row of snow peas. gotta gather the rest of the dry beans first. peppers horizontal now, heavy with fruit, with a mix of red and green; come get what you want, and light up your upper lip, let it glisten with sweat.

anyway, gardenin and cookin and eatin—howz about you?

the young lizards that were out much earler last year are finally to be seen, leaping from leaf to leaf in pursuit of prey. i have found the mummified remains of these lizards (Anolis carolinensis) that did not make it through the winter, ribs as fine as eyelashes bleached white; so i am worried about these little guys and their ability to pack on enough femtograms of fat to see the winter thru.

have been hacking back the growth recently, planting winters crops, and pulling weeds that were hiding under the stuff that has gone wild all summer. my tomatoes completely cover my holly hedge on one side, and have bent down the Osmanthus and Althaea on the other. have gotten decent reviews on salsa, and may make somemore, but may consign the rest of this crop to sauce, as the skins have gotten tough (my fault in that i fell down on picking daily). planted onions, garlic, parsnips, more carrots, transplanted zinnias and cauliflower and broccoli. got all that done on sunday of last weekend, and then had one of these horizonal rains come through and tamp everything into place for me.

you know, the kind of rain that windshield wipers just can’t handle? the road is there, but it’s gone? a proper frog-strangling rain. nothing since, but we gotta take what we can get. snow peas are up and the last batch of field peas are bearing. peppers are laden with red and green fruit, ready for pepper oil, salsa, or whatever requires a bit of heat. every restaurant down south has a pepper and vinegar concoction that some folks put on everything, but most folks just put it on “greens”. may do some of that, may not, as hot vinegar just does not send me the way salsa does. the tender tomatoes for the next salsa are just setting as young fruit on the fall tomatoes, sprawling under and around the peppers, so i will be picking them into the same bucket. finally, i hope to pull whole tomato plants up before frost to keep some for fresh use after we have entered the brown days of winter. we shall see.

that’s it. day to day. step by step. sun moves south. earth cools. critters get friskier, including me. crusty

this past weekend was salsa weekend, and with the understanding that not all grandmothers are created equally, grandmother’s gate-fixing weekend. the gate was a blight upon a wonderful wooden picket fence, but now it opens, closes, and stays closed. the salsa was the usual rough chop of whatever was on hand, coming to about 2.5 gallons. on chips or to cook with, aok. back to my pre-school rhythm of basic errands and goofing off on saturdays and then working outside until dark on sundays. be fine if i did not have to get up and go to work = weekends are too short.

fired the grill at lunch today, and put a rind-on pork shoulder (99¢ a pound down to th winn dixie) over pecan and charcoal, and left to slow cook for the afternoon. i admire these folks who pray over their smokers and manage to produce succulent bbq on a bare rack. i aint that kinda guy. fix it and fergit it, and you can if you sear your shoulder (or whatever) and then put it in a heavy pan on the grill, damp the heat way back, and walk off and leave it. it winds up being a braise for the first part of cooking, and today i used a can of beer for the liquid, and as the liquid evaporates and the temperature gradually declines, you wind up with some fine vulcanization on the outside and tender goodness on the inside. the vulcanized part, of course, is the best. cut in strips, little salsa, wrapped in tortilla. i guess i am trying to build up another fat layer for winter. dont need to. my belt is still too small.

as you and yours settle into school or whatever is on your plate, i hope there is room for everything, and nothing hits the floor. gonna go haul some grass clippings so my worms will have something to eat this winter. you know me, big time worm rancher.

all best, crusty