Figs can break your heart

[lolaraincoat]

There's still quite a lot of life in the garden this fall. This weekend I gathered up beets, onions, chard, herbs, tomatillos, strawberries, raspberries, and tomatoes. The tomatoes were mostly green but it seemed like time to bring them in to finish ripening. We'll get some more raspberries, squash and tomatillos before frost kills everything,

Comments

[twotoedsloth]

A surfeit of grapes? I remember... to this very day... that one autumn my siblings somehow came home with some ridiculous amount of concord grapes, and tried to make grape jelly. Well... they didn't add enough pectin or forgot to add it at all, and the jelly didn't jell, so we wound up with some ridiculous number of jars of intense grape syrup. Can I just say... intense grape syrup on vanilla ice cream? I will say it. Intense grape syrup on vanilla ice cream. Again I say, intense grape syrup on vanilla ice cream.

[lolaraincoat]

Oh, yeah, we didn't even get as far as making jelly, because I loathe grape jelly. We made about twenty liters of grape juice, which was delicious but a hell of a lot of work, used some of the rest in making mixed-fruit jam, and ended up with maybe a third of them just going into the compost. Because we had enough grapes to fill six giant-size trash bags, you see.

Swear to god, someday I'll cut the fucking thing down and plant a great big apple tree instead. I like apples!

[elphaba_of_oz]

Mmmmmmm! Intense grape syrup on everything!

[amelia_eve]

When I lived on a farm just north of Rome, the local people would come out with buckets after a big rain and pick up snails to eat. They'd keep them for a week or so in the bucket, feeding them raw cornmeal to clean their little gullets, before cooking. I have no idea what kind they were, though. Seemed like ordinary garden snails to me.

[lolaraincoat]

Huh. Interesting! Do you remember if they had striped shells? Our have striped shells.

[amelia_eve]

I have no idea. I just remember the country people out there with rubber boots in the wet grass. I'm sure there are snail identification websites out there somewhere!

[lolaraincoat]

Oooh, at last a good reason to buy those shiny yellow rubber boots I've been coveting for years and years. And - d'oh! - of course, the internets! the internets will tell me what I need to know about snails!

[tekalynn]

"Goodbye, and keep cold...
Fear forty above more than forty below!"

from Lewis Untermeyer's parting benediction to his apple orchard, "Goodbye And Keep Cold".

[lolaraincoat]

Oh, that's wonderful. Thank you!

[elphaba_of_oz]

My dad used to put plastic on the fig tree he had at our house in Chappaqua to try to protect it from the frost. It was his folly. I don't know if he ever actually got any figs from it.

I thought figs were only hardy to zone 7. You're a brave and crazy woman, trying to grow a fig tree in that town in the great, frozen tundra you call home.

[lolaraincoat]

Oh my god no, I am neither brave nor crazy. The fig tree just ... appeared, last year, in between my poppies and my echinachea. It's a weed! But it's beautiful so I didn't pull it out.

[elphaba_of_oz]

Try the plastic. Just put a garbage bag over the tree at night when the temperature drops. Take it off in the morning so you don't cook the poor tree. It's worth a try.

[lolaraincoat]

Hmmm. Maybe. Seems like a lot of work, though. I mean, the tree is thriving - it's just that the half-dozen figs on it won't ripen before they're killed by frost.

[contrary_wise]

Grape pie recipes keep popping up all over my internet this year. They sound bizarrely appealing to me. Though perhaps less so to you who does not like grape jelly.

[lolaraincoat]

Hmmm ... well, if you'd like about a hundred pounds of grapes to try out the recipes with, check back with us sometime in early September next year. But do the recipes all require seedless grapes? Because these grapes are quite seedy.

[contrary_wise]

the recipes i've seen all call for concord grapes that you then seed. like this one: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Concord-Grape-Pie-I/Detail.aspx

i will so swing by toronto for an abundance of grapes next year!