Posts Tagged ‘local food’
Do you love picking berries, herbs, other plants from the garden? I think you’d like my book of poetry ‘within easy reach’ (Chapel street Editions, 2016). It is illustrated with my drawings and contains notes on various example of the edible ‘wild.’ Order it here.
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where we step
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my brother and I explore
the old home place, overgrown
and unused, the house fallen
into the cellar, a sock
tossed into the dresser drawer
but, barefoot not an option
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even shod, we are careful
of our feet – nails, glass, bricks
from the chimney, unease creeps
beneath the grass – we watch for
the water well, covered but
with rotted boards
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hard not to love where we step –
the mint enfolds our ankles,
rose and rosemary, our minds
chives lace our sneakers, fold
flowers from purple papers
lavender leans on the walls
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silver, graceful and wise,
the sage surveys our ruin,
thyme is bruised,
everywhere we step
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Stay safe.
All my best!
Jane
Small, small garden
Arthritis means my days of the big garden are over. But I can still enjoy digging in the earth, planting seeds, pulling weeds and harvesting, just on a smaller scale.
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On our deck are two Veg Trugs (Lee Valley Tools used to sell them) and one bag of soil, slit open and supported on a metal frame. In the ‘gardens’ I have two snow pea plants, three yellow wax bean plants, three parsley plants and one cucumber plant.
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Each day for the last month, I sit on the deck and nibble on my ‘harvest for the day.’ Sometimes it’s one bean pod and a snow pea pod, sometimes two beans, sometimes a cucumber sandwich. Seems small, but I think I enjoy these little sessions more than the buckets of produce I once harvested from my garden.
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blackberries
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blackberries
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floricanes bend
with August weight
shape an archway
show the path
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through brambles
to lake
pergola unfastens
gate, entices
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pickers
into wicked thorns
sweet indigo
temptation
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primocanes snag
hems of gloves
ankles of socks
handles of baskets
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angry scratch
for every berry
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Copyright Jane Tims 2019
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Hope you are enjoying this blackberry summer.
All my best,
Jane
Blackberry picking
On Monday we drove from our cabin down to the lake (on our newly-mowed road) and picked a bowl of wild blackberries. The brambles were brutal and we came away with several scratches between us. But we picked berries to the tremolo of the loon on the lake and will enjoy a ‘blackberry buckle’ later this week. Blackberry buckle is made by adding sugar and water to the berries and covering with spoonfuls of dumpling mix. The dumplings cook in the steam of the simmering berries.
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All my best,
Jane
How high can I climb?
Not that high. But I will have to figure out how to get those beans. I planted what I thought were yellow-wax beans on my deck. And they turned out to be yellow pole beans. I threw a couple of weighted strings into the maple and of course the beans climbed.
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All my best, Jane
Indoor garden
My harvest of romaine lettuce from my AeroGarden today. Poppy seed dressing and lunch is served!
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All my best
Jane
herb growing in winter #4
The identity of the odd plant in my AeroGarden is no longer a secret!
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What is the plant on the right hand side of my garden?
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The plant in question is the bushy ‘herb’ to the right. It has dark green leaves and a thick stem.
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As you know, I am a botanist and if this plant was presented to me in any other way, I am sure I would have identified it immediately.
But the label said ‘mint’ and so I expected mint.
My first suggestion of mistaken identity came when I popped a few of the young leaves into my tea. The taste was terrible.
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Then I took a closer look. The stem was not square – an immediate identifier of the whole mint family.
So I went back to the package material. Possibly I switched the labels. Perhaps it was curly parsley. Deep frown. Didn’t look like curly parsley.
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All this time, I kept pruning and drying the leaves. My bottle of dried mystery leaves is quite full!
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What is it?
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Then I saw the flowers and took a step back. They were yellow and clustered. The leaves were compound, very hairy. The light came on! Tomato!
You will think I am a terrible botanist!
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So now I am waiting for my first tomatoes. I have discarded the dried leaves (tomatoes are a member of the nightshade family and the leaves contain a poisonous alkaloid).
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the unopened ‘flowers’ of my tomato plant (the hairy green buds) … in a few days I will have baby tomatoes!
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Copyright Jane Tims 2018
green pepper soup from my deck garden
Since arthritis found me, I no longer keep a big garden. But for the last couple of years, I have experimented with deck gardening. This year I planted pepper and tomato plants in my Veg Trugs (mine are pop-up, foldable raised garden planters bought at Lee Valley Tools for about $70 each). They dry out quickly but otherwise are great and easy to manage. This year I have grown a nice crop of green peppers and tomatoes on my deck.
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This past weekend, I harvested my first little peppers.
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I sliced my peppers and made a nutritious soup for lunch. Ingredients: 2 peppers sliced, 1 yellow onion chopped, 1 clove garlic chopped, water, vegetable broth, gluten-free spaghetti, black pepper, basil, turmeric. Spicy but not salty. Delicious.
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
getting the better of … a squirrel?
At readings of my book within easy reach, I often include the poem ‘beaked hazelnuts’ and tell my audience:
If I don’t pick my hazelnuts by August 6, the squirrels will get there ahead of me. They watch the calendar!
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hazelnuts viewed from the underside of the shrub canopy
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The Beaked Hazelnut is a wiry shrub found in mixed woods. The edible nut is contained in a bristly, beaked husk. We have three clumps of the shrubs in our yard, probably sprung from the stashes of squirrels over the years!
For my battles with the squirrels over the hazelnuts, just have a look at
https://janetims.com/2011/08/07/competing-with-the-squirrels/
and
https://janetims.com/2011/08/18/competing-with-the-squirrels-2/
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This year, I also watched the calendar. And on August 5, I picked most of the hazelnuts on our hazelnut ‘trees’. Picking is tricky because those pods are covered with sticky sharp hairs that irritate thumb and fingers.
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Never-the-less, I have a small bowl of hazelnuts to call my own (I left a few for the squirrels, more than they ever did for me). Now I will wait for them to dry and then have a little feast!
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beaked hazelnuts
(Corylus cornuta Marsh.)
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hazelnuts hang
husks curve
translucent, lime
they ripen
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this year, they are mine
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uptight red squirrels agitate, on guard, we watch
the hazelnuts ripen, slow as cobwebs falling, nut pies
browning through the glass of the oven door
green berries losing yellow, making blue
dust motes in a crook of light
float, small hooked hairs
shine
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two more days
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hesitate
and red squirrels
bury their hazelnuts
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From within easy reach (Chapel Street Editions, 2016)
https://www.amazon.ca/Within-Easy-Reach-Jane-Spavold/dp/1988299004
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Copyright Jane Tims 2017
Tendrils
My cucumber vines are still thriving …
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And the tendrils are still so charming!
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This one wants to pull up a chair!
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On Friday, I had my first cucumber salad from my vines!
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Copyright 2017 Jane Tims
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