Just over a week until autumn begins so I am taking a break from bloggery to enjoy these last days. Thanks for following my posts.
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End of Summer
Tag: summer
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Taking Stock of Summer
I’m getting to a place where I wrote the best of what I will about Labor Day. In 2022 I wrote this post, which covers the bases. No need to re-write it this Labor Day weekend. There is more to life than annual traditions.
It is no secret unions are in decline. In his new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, Robert Reich points to the problem. The post-World War II economy was so affluent that unions did not seem necessary to most people in the wake of reforms that happened during the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration. As a result, there was less impetus to form unions, and in right to work states like Iowa, a union could represent a workplace but workers were not required to join. The latest from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2024) is, “The union membership rate of public-sector workers (32.2 percent) continued to be more than five times higher than the rate of private-sector workers (5.9 percent).” As we know from the administration’s move to invalidate union contracts among Veterans Affairs workers, the pressure will be on to diminish union strength among public-sector workers.
While summer is not over, the garden is winding down with leafy green vegetables, tomatoes, hot peppers, and apples remaining to be harvested. Instead of time off this weekend, I need to focus on work in my kitchen and garden, then digest what just happened. Short version: I withdrew from in-person society and reduced my contacts with people I know to focus on the immediate place where I live. I strove to make that life better.
Vegetables and fruit grew as well as they have ever done in my garden. The abundance produced from a small number of seeds and minimal cultivation is astounding. In particular, the green beans, cucumbers, and leafy green vegetables have been of good quality and mostly pest free. All five apple trees produced fruit. So did the pear tree. This year has been a bin buster.
As my concept of a kitchen garden matures, I have become a better meal planner and cook. One of the benefits of writing a meal plan has been a reduction in our grocery bill. If we write the meal plan to the garden, and then shop to the meal plan, the tendency is to spend less money, waste less food, and cook better meals. When I go to the grocer, my cart looks a lot different from other shoppers (yes, I look). More fresh fruit and vegetables and a small percentage of branded products. Life around the garden and kitchen makes more sense. I’m thriving in it.
Right now I have three pots going on the stove: two tomatoes and one hot peppers. Learning to process these items took time, but I know where I’m going. I mostly can tomato puree from plum tomatoes. I pickle a couple of quart jars of sliced hot peppers and then make a hot pepper paste to use on tacos. I learned to can only what we need.
This summer I exercised daily, even when the weather kept me indoors part of the day. That, combined with counting calories, led me to lose about a pound of weight per week. I have a way to go to get my BMI below 30. However, I feel healthy and that is important.
It has been a summer of plain folk living our best life. There are challenges, yet it was a decent summer in a turbulent time. For that, I am thankful.
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Summer Consumables
2025 is turning into an alcohol-free year. I didn’t even purchase my normal case of bottled beer for the summer. Some days, I don’t know who I am.
I drove across the lakes to the North Liberty Community Food Pantry and donated the day’s harvest of yellow squash and cucumbers. It was the third food bank donation this week. I like having an outlet when I grow too much of something. It enables me to pick the best produce for the kitchen yet find a home for all of it. Patrons of the food pantry truly need what donors provide.
On the way home I stopped at the convenience store to gamble $2 on the lottery. I noticed the display of many types of shots of liquor between the two cash registers and asked,
"Do you sell a lot of these?"
"We do," replied the cashier.
"I imagine you sell a lot on Friday nights," I said. "Actually, mornings are the biggest sales. You'd be surprised how many people need a shot to start their work day."
I went to the orchard where I worked eight seasons and bought Michigan cherries. A family member grows them and they are some of the best I have ever tasted. Expensive? Yes. Worth it? Also yes. It is a summer tradition worth continuing as long as I can afford it. In the sales display with the cherries they had bags of Lodi apples. This signifies the apple harvest has begun its long season continuing into late October.
The first crop of Zestar! apples will soon ripen in my garden. I picked one today and while the sugars are beginning to form, they are not yet ripe. It won’t be long, though, maybe a week or two.
The work of planting is mostly finished. From here, the work changes to weeding, harvesting, cooking, and leveraging other growers for what I don’t produce myself. It is all part of the circle of life when you grow food. I feel a part of something bigger than myself on days like this.
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Summer Days
On July 2, 1995, when our child was ten years old, the two of us rode our bikes to Solon on the state park trail. We read the newspaper and ate breakfast at the Country Café. On the way home we stopped to pick wild blackberries growing along the trail. I made blackberry jam with some of them. It was hard not to eat them all as we picked them.
We then rode to watch the Freedom Festival regatta by the public boat landing. The sky was clear blue with a few cumulus clouds. Sails billowed in a breeze imperceptible from the shore.
Summer days like that are a reminder life is always just beginning. We live in each moment yet look forward to every new day with the hope that positive things will take place. Chance plays a role, although we must be active agents in making our future the best it can be.
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Heat Wave
If you do not like the song Heat Wave by Lamont Dozier and brothers Brian and Eddie Holland something may be wrong with you. Few things characterized my youth like listening to the Martha and the Vandellas recording on my hand-held, red transistor radio. It would not seem like summer in 1963 and ’64 without that song. Perhaps things changed.
We have no new songs of summer today. The heat dome that lived over the upper Midwest the last few days was oppressive and steamy: so uncomfortable my 70-year-old frame couldn’t take the heat after a few hours in it. It has been good for the tomatoes, squash, cucumbers and tomatillos in the garden, so there’s that.
At least we are not in a drought the way we have been during the past few years. In 2012, a time when Iowa field crops were substantially impacted by dryness and crushing heat, I couldn’t wait to get indoors to escape. This heat dome is less severe than that, yet summer heat has a wicked resonance after that fateful year.
What can be done about this heat wave? Hunker down and stick it out.
We will make our home here, and in doing so, make the current heat wave the stuff of legends. We’ll develop grand stories, legends, to be told on blogs, on telephone calls, and video conferences. We’ll tell it in Twitch chats, on Discord, and on text-based social media. We’ll make something out of it like the salsa the heat wave is helping produce.
We’ll make our own musical stories, even if it may not be as good as what Martha and the Vandellas sang. It will be our experience. We will own it. That will be enough to survive the heat wave.
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Ready for a Burn Pile
Birds may not like it but I mowed the plot where weeds grew after garlic was harvested. They flock in to feed on foxtail seeds. A person can’t see them until they are startled and fly away. Lucky for them, the next plot over, where I plan next year’s crop of garlic, has some weeds gone to seed.
The plot cleared is for a burn pile. Because of the drought, burning brush is not a good idea. Johnson County is not under an official burn ban today, yet I err on the side of caution. Parts of the state just north of me are under a ban. As fall approaches, I need a place to pile brush from the yard. The added benefit is when I am able to burn, minerals from the fuel return to the soil. The plan is to plant tomatoes next year where the burn pile is going.
I’m finished watering the garden. I harvested more tomatoes on Saturday. While the vines are doing well, I rolled up the hose and will put it away once the first frost is forecast, maybe in mid-October. With cooler temperatures, evaporation is less and plants do better on natural moisture, even if there is no rain. A chance of thunderstorms was forecast Saturday afternoon. It didn’t happen. We had a brief, transient mist of rain that failed to penetrate the leaf canopy. Maybe another time. We need rain.
Deer returned to our apple orchard in larger numbers. Last night at dusk, six of them were eating fallen apples, including two young deer. I had noticed their work earlier in the day. Even so, it is reassuring to see them in person. I need to clean up the fallen apples before mowing, yet if they are eating them, I’ll wait and give them time to work. With autumn approaching, there is more food for wildlife. I’m glad to see deer stop by our orchard as a part of nature’s smorgasbord.
I decided to make a dozen pints of apple butter. I don’t need more in the pantry, yet I want to be able to rotate stock and have a supply ready. The apples taste so sweet this year and have minimal bug damage. It would be a shame not to preserve as many as I can. The refrigerator already has as many as there is room. I have half a bushel ready to go over to family in Des Moines. There will be a donation to the food bank. Today’s kitchen work includes more apple butter and apple juice for making apple cider vinegar.
Last year’s cherry tomato plot had some cherry tomatoes growing around the edges. They are particularly sweet. Midweek I made two casseroles, and the cherries served as a welcome side dish for a re-heated supper. The food our kitchen has been producing this summer has been memorable. Still, one tires of days in a row of leftovers.
I stayed busy all day Saturday. There is an urgency to get things done before winter arrives. It will be here before we realize it and I want to be ready.
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High Summer in Iowa
Photographs of garden vegetables serve as therapy. Therapy to get me to write and post more often. The harvest of vegetables has been better than any year I remember. It’s not even tomato and pepper season!
The biggest writing project I’ve had in a while is finished and ready to post Thursday on multiple sites. After that, I’m covering a vacation on Blog for Iowa in August. Then, I’ll return to my autobiography. Like the concertina that opens the Broadway play Carnival, it’s time to get the writer’s squeeze box going.
There is nothing wrong with just being. When I walk on the state park trail most mornings, I listen for birds, observe where sunlight and shade fall, and feel cobwebs draped across the trail caught on my skin. There are many challenges in life. That half hour is a time to let them go and concentrate on being here.
Afternoon ambient temperatures now reach into the 90s. Except to check the garden, I stay indoors when it is so hot. We are fortunate to be able to afford air conditioning. Once the household chores are caught up, I can sit at my table and write. I’ve been doing more of it now that high summer has arrived in Iowa.
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After a Day of Rain
Rain was forecast all day Saturday and it did sprinkle some in each hour. In between sprinkling I made my way to the garden and found the first head of cauliflower was ready to pick. I grabbed it and headed back indoors.
It was a punk day while rotating between my writing desk, the living room, the kitchen, and taking naps. We both continue to suffer from contact dermatitis, my spouse worse than me. There was tending to treatments to alleviate pain and itchiness. At the end of the day I was tired, yet I can’t put a finger on exactly what exhausted me.
I’m in a pickle over the vegetable harvest. The refrigerator and freezer are close to capacity and I’m only just beginning. Pickling cucumbers and other veggies is not a path to exit, since I have too many pickles canned in jars from previous years. I messaged a friend who works at the local food bank and if they are working the day before Independence Day, I will transfer much of what I have to them for distribution. I like the excess produce as we can take the best and give the rest away to people who need or want it.
It is a lazy, early summer day. It’s not hot like it can get in August, yet spring is over. It’s an in between time of organizing for the next big project, yet not starting it. It’s time for taking naps in the middle of the day. How long it took us to get to this place in our lives.
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Toward Summer
There have been two points of catharsis this year: finishing winter writing and sending the draft of my autobiography to a few friends, and finishing initial garden planting last week. Heading toward summer, new things are on the horizon.
More than at any time during the year summer is an opportunity to take on long-standing projects. I expect there will be plenty to do, including cleaning and organizing the garage, landscaping the yard, and tending neglected home maintenance tasks. We spent a lot on home appliances in the last month, so there is no extra money to take a vacation. We haven’t taken a vacation since our child was in high school 20 years ago. There is no pressing need either.
Summer was the time for political activities such as walking in parades, barbecues and picnics, and listening to speeches. Our political activities have become separated from most of society and these old-time activities have become irrelevant to winning elections or much else. If I had a business, I’d enter a float in our local parade. Otherwise, I’ll avoid town the day of parades. There are no planned trips to the many parades, festivals and activities planned in our part of the state.
Each summer I debate reading The Great Gatsby, my favorite summer novel. Most years I re-read it, although that decision is not made for 2023. Since I set a daily goal of reading 25 pages, the question now is which book will go into the rotation next. I’m so familiar with Gatsby it is a one or two day read. If I missed this summer it would be no loss. There are plenty of other good books to read in my library.
The garden has been producing for about a month so cooking has changed with fresh vegetables. Greens are on the table almost every meal, and when tomatoes, peppers and cabbage come in, I’ll consult my personal recipe list and prepare some seasonal dishes.
Summer is about freezing, drying, and canning food from the garden. I need a dozen more quarts of vegetable broth and this will be the year to replenish the pantry with all things apple. Tomatoes are the other main canning item. I process them whole and in the form of sauce. It was a struggle to get tomatoes to take in the garden, yet they are growing now and there should be a good harvest. Canning alone will fill any voids in the schedule.
Before we realize it, summer will lead to autumn and harvest. It’s time to enjoy life while we can. Happy summer!
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Summer Heat and Humidity
The gutters overflowed with water in a recent rain storm. During the following heat and humidity I climbed the ladder to have a look. Sure enough both sides were plugged with leaves and maple tree seeds. It took less than a minute per side to clean them.
While up there I inspected the roof. The south peak is showing wear, as it is windward. The roof will be good for a while longer. It was the only planned ascension this year.
I go indoors when the heat index is in the 90s. Ten or more years ago it didn’t bother me to work hour after hour in heat and humidity. With a cooler of water bottles on ice, I had everything needed to work straight through. The record drought in 2012 raised my awareness. I began needing a break from the heat about every hour or I would get dizzy. Now I don’t push it. If the forecast is in the high eighties and it’s humid I find indoors work to do.
It’s not like the lawn needs mowing. While the two recent rains greened things a bit, most of the grass remains dormant. I don’t like mowing when it is in this condition. The number of yard and garden tasks is backlogging into a real project. There is no reason it can’t wait until the ambient temperature is cooler.
Perhaps the worst thing about drought-like conditions, combined with a resurgence of the coronavirus, is the isolation. I have intense desire to be with people. Like with the heat and humidity, I’m taking no chances and staying home.
There will be a fall, I’m certain. It will get cooler. I will work in the yard again. In the second year of the pandemic I yearn to do things with people. I’ll be ready when inhospitable conditions abate.
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