The tomatoes are all harvested, either eaten or in various stages in the freezer or dried, I canned most of the pears with lemon, cardamom and cinnamon, the not so good ones I slow cooked into a thick pear sauce for winter porridge.
Every morning R measures the sugar content of the grapes while the wasps are having a feast. When the time is right, he will make wine.
And the plumeria is going full blast.
In the greenhouse, we are harvesting black, red and green peppers. I forgot to take pictures. I have started to roast them, hoping that I can digest them. I made apple sauce this morning from the windfall apples down by the fence and we ate some of it with Greek yoghurt for dessert. It is currently making its presence felt in a not so pleasant way as it passes through the dark tunnels of my digestive system.
So yes. Food wise, I am in the trial and error phase, some days are great, others not so good but miles better than what life has been pre surgery. I am working my way slowly back to the ususal life with all that chronic illness stuff. It looks like it will take a while, I couldn't say I am on top of it.
At this time of the year, our gardens and parks are taken over by harvest mites (Neotrombicula autumnalis), tiny red bastards, some call them chiggers, that make it their live's work to jump onto a human body and sit there until you are in your nice comfy bed asleep and then they bite and give you itchy hives. Hours later, mind you, not while you are in the garden so that at first you think it must be bed bugs and you frantically change all the sheets and power clean the bed inside out.
But, the trick is to have a hot soapy shower every time you come in from the garden and change all your clothes and obviously never scratch any of the bites but of course you must because instinct and out comes the antihistamine gel and this goes on until the weather changes and the nights become cool enough to kill these bastards off once and for all.
For years I suffered stoically and then suddenly, they stopped bothering me completely and whenever neighbours complained I offered a mild smile with a slightly condescending shrug. Also, R has never ever had a single bite. Apparently, babies are immune as well. But he is not a baby, just a hairy monster.
Anyway, this year, I am back among the victims and I feel very sorry for myself and currently I am in this in-between stage where part of me wants to completely avoid going into the garden and another part of me say, feck this, it's only an itch and off I wander with my first cup in the mornings inspecting the beauty, watching the green parakeets feasting in the sunflowers and the big hornbeam.
On Sunday, we sat and listened to a debate between the various local candidates in the upcoming state election where the audience was asked to select the topics for discussion beforehand. This was done via a snazzy device and shown in real time on a screen. Top issues were housing, school buildings, roads, taxes and culture. Climate change was a no show. The guy from the neo fascist crowd tried several times to raise something about parallel societies, the latest terminology for people not white or German, but got nowhere - at least that.
What beautiful grapes, I'm sure they'll make great wine. Sorry about chiggers...or anything that bites us! I hope your gradual testing of various foods leads to some that are delicious and tolerable.
ReplyDeleteThere is a wine making "laboratory" in the basement, it's a family tradition here.
DeleteWe have what we also call chiggers here, or redbugs. I think they are slightly different than yours. They are Trombiculidae from what I can gather on the internet and must be related to yours. They like to settle into where clothing touches the skin- especially where underwear rubs which makes their presence even more tortuous. They inject saliva which actually melts skin cells so that they can burrow into us. Nice, right? I remember when I was a child and the perceived wisdom was that the best treatment was to paint over the bites with clear fingernail polish, thus "smothering" them which of course did not work. I think a lot of people still believe this.
ReplyDeleteI am so glad that your GI problems have lessened, anyway. Or at least are different! I suppose trial and error is how you will learn what's best and what to avoid.
Your garden bounty sounds amazing.
All insects are related and they are ruling our world, we just try and ignore them for now.
DeleteI had to look up chiggers, we don't have them here, so now I'm itchy:) Whenever nurses have a patient with lice, we all get itchy immediately.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you're back in the land of the eating, albeit tentatively.
Your plumeria and grapes look beautiful. I still have to finish picking my tomatoes. I'm leaving them as long as possible to ripen on the vine. I have a pear tree, tiny little pears, and I want to make a pear sauce with some of them this year, to see if they taste any good.
I'm so glad you're feeling better. I have to laugh though, the people in your community want the same things as Albertans, and fascists want people to just hate "others". As you can imagine, climate change doesn't factor in here either, other than to deny it. As I write this, the sky is smoky from the fires up north.
Your fires have made the news all the way over here.
DeleteChiggers? Never heard of these. Feck is right.
ReplyDeleteCount your blessings, there may be a chigger's relative on the way to your corner of the world.
DeleteI'm so happy that the neo fascist's rant went nowhere.
ReplyDeletePolls today - one week from the vote - for our city puts them below 8%, which is a relief.
DeleteChiggers are little bastards. When we first moved out here I would get chigger bites every summer but for some reason not for many years. Your garden give you such bounty and your plumeria is gorgeous. Most of mine are pale pink with a yellow center or white. I have one my sister grew from a seed from my pink one, it's white with a yellow throat but didn't bloom this year.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear you are enjoying more foods.
This plumeria was grown from a seed as well, we gave away most of the others, down to two plants now. In Africa we had plumeria trees, frangipani they are called there, not too high, with fragrant white blossoms all year round.
DeleteCodex: I confess that I used to think people have too much time on their hands when they know how to preserve food. Now I envy it.
ReplyDeleteSmaller portion to try out maybe?
Was this a local community eve.t?
My grandmother and my mother taught me how to preserve food. When you have fruit trees and berries and grow vegetables, it's part of the game to have a basement room with rows of bottled food. It's a good skill to have in the whole sustainability scenario.
DeleteStart with jam making, it's easy and all you need to start is a bottle of good pure fruit juice and a source of pectin.
The event was one of many, organised by the local media, various lobby groups and cultural organisations . This one was organised by a small local theatre. I went to another one the following week organised by the local cyclist action group pushing for better cycling infrastructure. The neo fascist candidate did not turn up, all others did.
Codex: I think that it's a skill that needs to be learned the way you did. Too many little tricks that the internet s don't teach. We made beeswax candles and it was messy.
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