First off: Nicoise salad. From my garden. Well, I didn't grow the tuna, olives, or eggs (though if my boyfriend had anything to say about it, I'd be growing the eggs). But I grew the lettuce that was the bed under the salad, the potatoes (my first of the year!), green beans, cherry tomatoes, and basil. And I made the dressing, which is a little like growing it, but not at all like that. So despite the cool early summer and the worries that I'd never get anything to grow, and the hard work, it is suddenly worth it.
The rest of the summer has been pretty wildly busy with a music festival and all the business that goes into being on a committee that puts one on. Summer can be the slow season at work, but not when 1/6 (or more) of the therapists are on maternity leave or changing jobs at any given time for...well, it's been nine months so far, with another two months to go before the last one is back from maternity leave. Makes me want to get pregnant just to get a break. My last big project has been trying to train to climb Mt. St. Helens. I've got my passes, and my motel room booked...now I just need the lungs, thighs, and knees to actually pull it off.
Back to the garden: I've discovered that the tree in the backyard that sheds all those nutshells is actually a filbert tree. The squirrels manage to eat about 9 out of every 10 nuts before they even fall (you're supposed to harvest them after they fall out of the tree), leaving me with maybe a half a pound of hazelnuts drying in the basement. We'll see if they're any good. The garlic is all harvested, and the black raspberries (and just a few red ones) were delicious. One of the four tomato plants died before it could really even flower, but the other three look amazing. It's been too cool for the peppers, so I have just three tiny ones on the two plants. One of the three blueberry bushes we planted this spring actually gave us a couple dozen berries this year, which was a nice bonus. The artichoke actually grew (this spring, I thought it would stay six inches tall forever, and that the slugs would then eat it down to the ground), and I'm going to get one nice big one and maybe two babies. I've got some lettuce (second time's the charm, after cabbageworms and aphids ate the first batch), basil, sage, thyme, and rosemary. The cabbageworms are back to work on the parsley (sigh).
At one point this spring I was disappointed that I didn't get more grass dug up for more garden. Now I don't know what I'd do if I had managed that! I would like to get some fall things planted for overwintering.
The last garden note is that I'm experimenting for the first time with non-food plants. The lovely boyfriend is a big fan of jasmine, so we planted some to twine up a privacy fence, and so far, so good. The roses that came with my apartment, and the roses and hydrangea that came with the boyfriend's house, I've adopted out of necessity, but this was a choice.
What I've noticed lately is that time goes so fast when I'm busy all the time. It makes it really hard to be in the moment, and every deadline and new challenge comes at a rush. I've got a couple of vacations planned, and I don't know if that will ease things, or just make life a little more hurried. In about a week, we're going to Bumbershoot music and arts festival in Seattle, taking an extra-long five-day Labor Day weekend. I'll go back to work for one day before we head out again, this time to Boston. Boyfriend's got a conference out there, and a best-friend-from-high-school whom I haven't even met yet, and the friend's new wife neither of us have met. Once his conference starts, I'll go visit my brother in Connecticut for a couple of days before heading home. I'm counting that all as one big two-week vacation. More off in the distance, we're increasingly seriously planning two weeks in Greece around Christmas. No plane tickets yet or anything, just a guidebook and some vague ideas. It sounds more fun than Arkansas, or even Myrtle Beach...and we might as well be fair and slight both sets of parents, rather than either his or mine. That was actually the original, admittedly a bit passive-aggressive, motive for traveling for Christmas. Spend the holidays together without having to pick one family over the other.
Next up: Cherry jam! Two kinds. And more canning, which I haven't done a ton of this summer.
P.S. The strawberry-balsamic-thyme jam turned out awesome. Like regular strawberry jam with just...something. Depth, mystery, richness.
