Cooler Days for Gardening

tiny bee on a globe mallow in our front yard

After an out-of-state, nine-day trip, we've almost put away all the stuff we had packed for our travels though the tent that we used in an overnight camping adventure in the Cascade Mountains of Washington still sits crumpled on a chair in our study. When we returned to Arizona, early fall seemed to have arrived. The wildflowers in our yard were blooming prolifically, temperatures hovered in the fifties at night, and with the windows open at night we could hear elk bugling in the nearby mountains. 

Globe mallow, a native plant, growing in our front yard

While we were gone, one of our neighbors picked the ripening vegetables in our garden and the apples that fell from our trees and canned salsa, spaghetti sauce, and apple butter. Tom got busy the first weekend we were home and canned more tomatoes--35 pints total for the season so far. And this week, I have been cleaning up the garden and planting seeds that I hope will have time to germinate, grow, and produce before the first freeze. I should have planted the seeds --two kinds of arugula, a spicy mustard mix, Crimson Crunch radishes, a mesclun mix--mid-August, but I didn't free up any room for fall planting until I dug the potatoes. Then Tom transplanted onions into two of those rows. But when we returned from Washington state, I cleared out the cowpen daisies that were past their bloom, and Tom pulled up a couple of dead tomato plants. Gardening here is an experiment for us, anyway, and we can always blame any failures on our being newcomers and unfamiliar with the climate.

Yesterday I spent all afternoon making salsa from tomatoes, peppers, and cilantro from our garden. I'm a slow worker when it comes to cooking anything more than dinner. I'll chop up some vegetables, take a break and read some headline news on my computer, return to chop up more vegetables, take a break to check on the garden, and return to the work at hand. That's why it took me all afternoon. Also, I simmered the salsa for 75 minutes to get it to the right consistency. 

salsa ingredients from our garden, serrano peppers, tomatoes, bell peppers, cilantro

And after all that work, I got only 6 pints of salsa (we ate one pint already) out of about 12 tomatoes. I am freezer-canning the salsa rather than pressure canning and hope to can some more salsa as tomatoes continue to ripen in our garden and greenhouse.

Salsa simmering on the stove

five little half-pints of salsa for the freezer

This morning I took the cats out for a brief romp in the yard before their second breakfast. (We space out small meals throughout the day; Tom feeds them first around 4 AM.) Taking them out before meals makes it easier to call them inside.

Sunlight and shadow--cats getting their morning yard time

Cassie in the daisy fleabane flowers that haven't opened yet for the day

While the cats sniffed around the yard, I wandered into the garden. The birdhouse gourd vines have covered the back fence, and several large gourds are ripening. Instructions I found online counsel harvesting the gourds after the stems turn brown, then gently washing and storing the gourds in a cool, dry place to cure. The stems of my gourds are still green, and I'm anxious that the gourds be ready to harvest before the first freeze so that they won't rot.

birdhouse gourds

more gourds

It was a beautiful early morning in the garden.

early morning in the garden at Casa Malpollos

Tomato plants escaping from the greenhouse; shadow of a neighbor's shed

A high wind yesterday blew apples from the apple trees

Not having grown apples before, we're not sure when they're ripe for harvesting. Our neighbor Gloria says after the first frost, but she has made apple butter with the ones that have fallen from our trees and says the apples are tart and a little sweet.