Everything is up. Even the leeks of desperation sown where the leek seedlings failed. Leeklings? Bush beans and pole beans jumped out as well. There are a few patches for second sowings but now it looks like the main task is weeding. But what does a parsnip look like when it is first up? How do you know for sure what is the weed and what isn’t? That’s the trouble when you take a decade off from vegetable gardening – no institutional memory is left. Somewhere I even had a book that I kept notes in. Now it’s all just “throw some seeds there, see what happens.” I ate a pea shoot. It felt a bit like infanticide what with all the July peas in their pods that shoot represented. But it was good and I felt righteous. The neighbourhood smells good. Last Thursday at the softball game there was so much lilac in the air it was like being back in the flower shop my mother ran. The hubbard squash looks like it is ready for greatness. Good thing too as the front lawn looks awful. It needs a bit of cucurbita action to give it some interest. The onion patch near the front door looks so good I only feel badly about not making it five times the size.
Category: Food
Garden 2012: It’s Getting Crowded Out There
A hot Victoria Day weekend saw a whole lot of seedlings out there in the yard. Carrots and onions were joined by beets, collards, lettuce and bok choi sticking their heads up. Squash has been joined by zucchini and musk melon. I should rip up more lawn. And why not? It is nothing but a dandelion nursery. Driving around this JFK-era subdivision and you see a hell of a lot of lawn where tens of thousands of onions could grow. Outlawing the lawn mower could help. Or at least the two-stroke polluto-king model. Built an apparently ugly structure-ish thing for the sweet peas. Over by the shed. Twine now dangles from it down to where green tendrils reach up to meet them.
If Greece fails, everyone’s going to want a edible yard for 2013. Why not get in before the hip crowd? Carrots alone still leave you plenty of time and options.
Garden 2012: The Ugly Shrubs Are Dead Dead Dead
We each chose a most hated shrub and killed them today. One of the great things about gardening is being that grim reaper who takes away so that others might have a little more light, a sip more water or just the spot occupied by that the ugly thing in the corner by the fence. My own dead semi-tree of choice was chopped and stacked to be replaced by a big pile of sheep poo and peat moss where the squash shall hold dominion this summer. The ground there was a bit mossy and weighed down by clay so I buried a small short gravel and rock drain to draw the water away. The first effort at starting the Blue Hubbards was a total failure but six others live on the kitchen window sill to be hardened off over the next week. Yesterday, was all planting. Purple fleshed carrots. Multi-coloured Swiss chard. 500 onion sets. And a dump run. There was an hour wait at the transfer station all for the joy of dumping broken foldie-uppie camping chairs along with the remains of a basketball hoop, a deceased elliptical training machine and a load of other crap. Sugar snap peas are up. The leeks look hopeful even if only green threads in their laundry room trays. Purple Cherokee tomatoes are leggy but may make it. Time will tell.
Garden 2012: The Ugly Shrubs Are Dead Dead Dead
We each chose a most hated shrub and killed them today. One of the great things about gardening is being that grim reaper who takes away so that others might have a little more light, a sip more water or just the spot occupied by that the ugly thing in the corner by the fence. My own dead semi-tree of choice was chopped and stacked to be replaced by a big pile of sheep poo and peat moss where the squash shall hold dominion this summer. The ground there was a bit mossy and weighed down by clay so I buried a small short gravel and rock drain to draw the water away.
The first effort at starting the Blue Hubbards was a total failure but six others live on the kitchen window sill to be hardened off over the next week. Yesterday, was all planting. Purple fleshed carrots. Multi-coloured Swiss chard. 500 onion sets. And a dump run. There was an hour wait at the transfer station all for the joy of dumping broken foldie-uppie camping chairs along with the remains of a basketball hoop, a deceased elliptical training machine and a load of other crap. Sugar snap peas are up. The leeks look hopeful even if only green threads in their laundry room trays. Purple Cherokee tomatoes are leggy but may make it. Time will tell.
Ontario: Robust Porter, Great Lakes, Etobicoke
I was handed this beer at last week‘s beer event. I just would like to mention that this is one of the best Ontario-made beers I have ever had. Part of their Project X series, it’s on limited release and, sadly, limited production. Too bad. Thick sheeting mocha cream head over deep dark ale. Thick aroma, too. Cocoa and mint. Pumpernickel and cream. If I had thought of a beer future back in the 90s, it might have been this. Before hop mania. Before sour. When malt and roast reigned. This has it. Masses of dark malt with dry roast coffee as well as sticky date and raisin notes all carried along with a rich light sour even yogurty yeastiness. It is heavy. In the best sense. As heavy as you wished your coffee in the morning could be.
I think I recall Troy telling me as he passed the bottle that this was named after Burt Reynolds. Can’t recall why.
Garden 2012: The Return Of The Risk Of Frost
We were fooled. Warm has been replaced by cold. Next week there is a risk of frost. Fortunately, we did not go too far down the road of planting. The peas are just taking their first peak above soil and the blue hubbard squash has been transplanted into pots that can be brought inside. Seeing as I have not even done the taxes, this is good timing. The Arkansas leeks and Cherokee Purple tomatoes seeds were only planted in the trays yesterday waiting down in the basement to decide when it is time to sprout. Very early days.
Lots of time for digging, however. Me and the lad were out this morning digging out a root ball of an ex-shrub. It took secateurs, shovels and an axe but the score ended up Nature 0 Mankind 1. I appear to be at the one shrub stage of life. Whacking away at the damn thing did not exactly set stars spinning about my head but a second might have. I wonder at what point the gardening shifts from telling me how out of shape I am and move on to letting me know the effort is worth it.
Brewers’ Plate 2012 And My Happy Schooling
What a pleasant Wednesday. I ate. I sipped. I asked myself a lot about how people in downtown Toronto spend their Wednesday evenings. I did not think I got swept away in pairing mania but, and it is a subtle but so bear with me, there were many wonderful combinations to be found.
For example, Beau’s Mates with Dates and the cheese made from water buffalo milk from Montefort Dairy was a really interesting side by side but it was not one of the proposed pairings on offer. Similarly, a deftly tucked away bottle of Ten Bitter Years from Black Oak went very well with the dessert crepe being given away in a booth but that was not the beer on offer because the crepe had Ontario black walnuts. The chef and I talked about the weirdness of the texture of the crepe and nuts with a very bombish IPA. But we agreed that there was a twigginess in the hops of the beer that worked with the walnuts which tasted like you face would after an hour of chainsawing hardwood.
So did I pair? Probably. Was the event a good one. It really was. I am going to just post this now but add some more thoughts as my day’s class on contract drafting proceeds. Unless it is riveting. Which it could be. You never know.
Garden 2012: Today I Did Dig And Split The Rhubarb
Rhubarb is one of my favorite things. Spring food. Sour and astringent. It makes the years since childhood contract. A cup of white sugar into which a raw stem was rammed, the stalk chewed as if on a dare. Stewed rhubarb leading to the earliest bowel related humour at our table, pretend mad dashes for the washroom mid-dessert. Pies. Lard rich crust glazed with a crackle of rhubarb filling. Later, as a young married couple, we made weak rhubarb juice on a slow simmer that was cooled then mixed with cheap Ontario white wine as a particularly fine weekend drink. Today, I dug up and separated the rhizomes, halfway between thick carrots and thick sweet potatoes. I separated them in the patch where the compost bin used to sit and gave them a long soak of water from the hose. What was one plant should now be six. If I had a farm, I would have a rhubarb house. I understand the best in England are built over coal mines with only the light of one candle to ensure the stems are as pale as possible.
No yard should be without rhubarb.
Garden 2012: Peas Are In The Ground… Repeat… Peas Are…
Easter long weekend saw an assault on nature or at least that sort of nature that exists in a mid-60s subdivision. We have great plans to eat where we did mow so the following tasks were undertaken:
♦ ugly basketball hoop with sun-rotted plastic base disassembled;
♦ awkward juniper chopped down and ax play appreciated;
♦ willow and pear trees extending into neighbours’ space pruned with saw;
♦ 10 x 10 feet of front lawn removed, sheep poo inserted;
♦ 21 feet or so of sugar snap peas planted; and
♦ compost bin in-grown with tree roots attacked, defeated and moved.
Children now old enough to be useful if paid. Chives survived the winter. Cabernet Franc grape vines ordered. Cardoon and leek seeds in the house.
Saturday Afternoon Beer As I Smoked Meat By The Shed
After two weeks off that saw a lot of road, it was good to have a Saturday to commune with 5 pounds of pork and 5 hours next to the Weber set up as a smoker. As perfect a summer day as ever there was, the fire sparked quickly given the subtle breeze. I dry rubbed the joint for only an hour or so and then settled in for a long afternoon’s watch.
Despite the moment, I took a few scribbled notes:
⇒ Mill Street Organic Lager is a beer that had been mainly offered in an irritating 10 ounce bottles but is now available in 500 ml cans. It has a nice body for a 4.2% beer – some pale malt roundness framed by slightly astringent hopping leafing to an autumn apple finish. one of the few Canadian better sort of sessionable beers. Good beer at a good price that lets you have a few.
⇒ I should be grateful to have a Rickard’s Blonde in the fridge – because I happily downed the first two samples sent and then had to go back and ask for more. It’s a slightly sweeter lager than the Mill Street, a bit darker with a slightly peachy tone supported by heavy carbonation. Its light astringency is present from first sip onwards leading to a bit of a rougher hop finish. Its sameness from the sip to swallow got me thinking but it is quite worth buying for what it claims to be.
⇒ Hop Devil is an old pal that served as a change of pace mid-smoke. It pounds that crystal malt that some English beer commentators now suggest is overkill. The hops have black pepper and pine tree with maybe a bit of menthol. A beer I would happily have on hand anytime.
⇒ The Samson came my way care of a pal who was traveling through Quebec and found this at the Government SAQ store up in Gaspé on the Atlantic coast. Apple butter with molasses notes open up into black cherry. Bready and bready crusty make me think of the drink that Dr. Pepper wishes it was allowed to be. No need of this to be held out for the few and the easterly. Nothing Earth shattering but more evidence that Canada needs better beer distribution.
Shed. Beer. Shed beer. They held me in good stead as the afternoon wore on. Slow smoked the pork and slow passed the hours as I day dreamed about the human condition as well as the drawing to the end of holidays.
