Hello, Summer! Goodbye, Peas… & Other Tales

first coneflower (echinacea) of the season

Well, it gave it a valiant effort – summer tried to stay away.  It tried with all its might to dig in its heels, shake its head in defiance, and refuse to go any further north than about midway up the Pacific Coast.  “No, thank you,” Summer said, on June 20th, as she twirled her golden hair and adjusted her Prada sunglasses.  “I’ve decided not to visit the Pacific Northwest this year.  I hear it rains a lot up there, which makes my hair frizzy.  It just won’t do.  Besides, I’ve got this year-round gig in places like Hawaii and Phoenix, which is very tiring.  I think I need a break.  Anybody know where I can get a good G&T around here?”

But just when we thought all was lost, good old Mother Nature came storming into the room, all business.  “Summer, you overly-primped, overly-tanned, overly-drunken cow!  It seems you have forgotten about a little date I like to call, ‘June twenty-first.'”  She glared at Summer over the tops of her frame-less reading glasses and held up a stack of white papers.  “It states right here in your contract that you are legally obligated to take up residence in the entire northern hemisphere no later than June 21st until Earth ceases to exist.”

Summer shifted uncomfortably in her lounge chair and tried not to look Mother Nature in the eye, but said nothing.

“HAS EARTH CEASED TO EXIST?!?!?!”

Silence.  Summer’s perfectly-coiffed hair began to visibly deflate.

“HAS IT?!?!”

Summer cringed.  “Um, well… no…. not exactly… but…”  her voice started to tremble.  “I don’t want to go.  Can’t I just skip the Pacific Northwest?  It’s just one little area… they probably won’t even miss me… they simply love the rain.  I’m quite sure of it.”

Summer glanced at her reflection in the glassy surface of her infinity-edged swimming pool and let out a small gasp.

“Oh no!  You’ve made my hair go flat!”  She sobbed.  “Why do you have to yell at me like that?  You know what it does to my complexion.  It’s not like I haven’t been working.  It was 108 in Phoenix yesterday!  Don’t I get any credit for that?”

But Mother Nature had already turned around and was striding toward the door.  “I don’t have time for this,” she said without looking back.  “I have to go see Spring and ask her what the hell she was thinking this year.  83 degrees, breeding snakes, and leafed-out hydrangeas in February, and frost warnings in May??  You girls really need to cut back on the drinking.”

Summer jumped at the sound of the slamming door, spilling her pink cocktail on her white Gucci bikini, starting her sobs anew.  It would surely stain.  She looked up when she heard the door open again.

“You will be there.  Tomorrow.  Or else.” <slam>

same flower, as color creeps into the petals

That was a true story.  That’s exactly how it happened, verbatim.  Don’t ask me where I get my info.  I’ll never reveal my sources.**

Of course, though summer did eventually begrudgingly show up here, she wasn’t exactly on time.  On June 21st, the summer solstice, while all my favorite bloggers were saying hello to summer with bright, sunny posts, I was here, as usual, staring out my window at the gray rain.  I guess she had to get that bikini to the dry-cleaners before the stain set in.  But, just when I had accepted the fact that we really were just going to have winter, spring, fall this year… it cleared up.  Monday evening, June 21st, just as the sun was getting low in the sky, the clouds broke and the atmosphere came alive with hope.

When Life Gives You Rain… Take Pretty Pictures?

Sharifa Asma rose, with rain drops on the summer solstice

It really felt like a marked change.  The air was different.  Somehow it felt like it was finally going to stick.  Summer had arrived – breathless, a little tipsy, and with blisters on her feet from running in Jimmy Choos – but she had arrived nonetheless, just barely in time not to breach contract.  And so I timidly headed out the door, armed with my camera.  Why not make the most of it, I thought.  I was still uncertain that it wasn’t all a trick, but I’d take my chances.  I was rewarded with some pretty cool pictures.

jewel-toned nasturtium

The raindrops clung to every surface for dear life, like they knew it was their last hurrah.

dwarf gray sugar pea blossoms

dill

And as the clouds started to give way, the sun was setting, and it made for a pretty magical sky (click on the pictures to get the full size, for best effect).

the sun breaks through, June 21st

evening sky, June 21st

And that was that.  The next day was brilliant, clear and 80 and the day after that got up to at least 87 and the a/c even kicked on in the house (I promptly turn it off, because I felt like it was jumping the gun, but still).  Every day since has been lovely and summery, filled with shorts, slip-flops, sunscreen, happiness and joy.

Goodbye, Peas, We Will Miss You

golden snow peas on the vine

Fast forward to yesterday.  All of this summer-ness has been rather agreeing with the garden and things are really starting to take off.  Better late than never, right?  I mean, sure, last year I had been eating bowls full of Mara Des Bois strawberries and all kinds of peas for weeks already by now.  Bygones. I’m hardly bitter at all, really.  Anyway, back to the topic at hand, all week the pea plants were growing by leaps and bounds and were setting peas by the bushel.  I had peas set of every variety – Progress #9 shelling peas that were plumping nicely in their pods, jillions of darf gray sugar snow peas that were finally getting sweet (the few early ones were hard and green-tasting with no sugar content at all due to lack of sun), young sugar snaps, golden snows, and blue-podded blauwschokkers.  It was a rainbow of peas in a a giant forest of vines, far taller than me.

Then a couple of days ago, I started noticing tiny orange bug eggs on some of my pea pods.  No biggie.  If I saw one with eggs, I just picked it and chucked it into the grass for the chickens.

can you see the eggs?

But then, yesterday.  Yesterday was the day it all came crashing down.  Yesterday I was looking to pick a few peas for a snack, but one after the other had eggs.  Then  I stepped back and looked – every single one I could see had eggs.  I started to walk around.  They were on the goldens, too… and the purples… and the shelling… ALL of them.  Every.  Single.  Pea.

eggs on the blauwschokkers too :(

and the shelling peas

Dismayed, I headed inside and googled “tiny orange insect eggs on pea pods.”  Nothing helpful.  After a few more failed attempts, I found a reference to a site that supposedly had pictures of different bug eggs and their corresponding insects to help you identify your eggs.  Problem was, I knew that site would have lots of moth eggs and pictures of moths and caterpillars.  And if you know me, or if you follow this site, then you know that site was off-limits for my eyes.  So, I enlisted Brian, my trusty bug-picture looker-upper (this was not the first time).  In no time he had my solution, though he didn’t find it on the bug-egg picture site.  Pea weevils.  I have pea weevils.  I’ve never even freakin’ heard of pea weevils.

Pea weevils.

In a nutshell, the are from Asia but are now present on all continents.  They are a small beetle that overwinters inside dried peas or in the soil or in wood or under your house or pretty much anywhere, and then wakes up when temperatures hit about 63 degrees F.  They immediately seek out pea plants and feed on pea pollen, get fat, have sex, and lay a bunch of eggs – about a dozen per pod.  On every single pod, apparently.  And here’s the real kicker – once the eggs are laid, there is literally nothing you can do.  Insecticides – organic or not – do nothing.  The larvae hatch and burrow directly through the pod and into the developing peas, where they make nice little homes and eat the peas from the insides out until there is nothing left but empty shells and a bunch of fat, white grubs.  BARF.

The only way to control them is to kill the adults before they lay the eggs, which means you would have to know the adults are there… which you usually don’t.  They apparently are not a problem every year in every place, and a lot has to do with timing.  This year, the Pacific Northwest is having a terrible problem with them because the pea crops are so delayed.  Normally, they get going before it’s warm enough for the bugs to wake up and so only late crops are susceptible.  But this year, it was SO COLD and SO DARK and SO RAINY that even peas were delayed, and that’s saying something.

So, what does one do about this lovely little pest?  One destroys her crop.  The whole thing.  They say to burn the plants, actually.  There is nothing else to be done.  So this evening, I headed out with my gloves and my clippers and I systematically murdered my pea plants.  It about killed me to do it.

the roosters check out the mountain of pea vines

I figured feeding them to the chickens would be as effective as burning them, only less wasteful.  The girls were already in bed for the night, but the boys came to check them out and took a few nibbles.  We’ll see if they really like them tomorrow.

Luke tries a bite

Pippin, Shelly, Daisy Mae, and Lady B check out the peas from the high perch

The girls shuffled sleepily out to look down at the mountain of plants, but decided to wait until the morning, despite the frantic calls from the boys, “I found it!  I found it!!  No one knew these plants were here until I found them!!!”  <same rooster walks 1 foot to the left and looks at the same pile from another angle, astonished> “HEY!!  LOOK WHAT I FOUND!!  Plants!!  I found plants!!  LOOOOOK!!”  And so on and so forth.

Now I will share with you a little secret.  I couldn’t quite do it.  I couldn’t completely murder them.  So, I really only mostly murdered them.  I cut them all offan inch or two from the ground.  No pea left, no flowers left, no buds left.  But I figure… they might come back.  They were chopped before and they returned full-force… and since it’s a timing thing with these bugs… maybe I’ll have a second flush and the life cycle will already be past the egg-laying stage?  I really love peas.  And I got to eat none (save for one or two a day for a few days).  If they die, they die, but if they come back, I’ll just look for eggs again, and if I see them, I’ll just go through the whole murdering process again.

chopped pea plants

I’ll keep you posted.

The Rest of the Garden

young Pork Chop tomato

So, like I said, the garden has been quite pleased with the weather.  The peas were pleased too, don’t get me wrong.  It was just that the pea weevils were really, really pleased.  Anyway, I now have tomatoes set on three different plants, at least.  The Sungold cherries were the first that I showed you, and now I have at least one Pork Chop and at least one Sweet Carneros Pink.  This is so much earlier than the last two years.  In light of the traumatic (to say the least) spring we had, I think it’s pretty incredible.  I give all the credit to the soil blocks and grow lights.

young Sungold cherry tomatoes

young Sweet Carneros Pink tomato

My Bright Lights chard is looking beauteous maximus.

My Red Cabeza cabbages are huge and flourishing, like always.

My corn, pumpkins, and beans are doing well in the Three Sisters garden.

Though the mysterious plant choppers still seem to be around.  Yesterday, I found one corn and two beans chopped to about 2-inch sticks.  The other corn and beans in the same mound were untouched.  The chopped parts were missing this, time, though, so I guess they were eaten?  Still clean cuts.  I took the picture today, and in 24 hours the corn as already started to grow back, which is pretty incredible.

foreground, chopped plants, background, untouched plants.

Pretty Flowers

Darlow's Enigma rose

I will leave you tonight with a couple of pretty flower pictures.  This Darlow’s Enigma rose is climbing up the pillar on my front porch, where in only gets late afternoon sun.  It is happy as a clam and growing like a weed… healthy, abundant, fragrant flowers.  Pretty cool.

April in Paris sweet peas

And sweet peas, my loves.  This year I had so many projects going and the weather was so depressing that I actually forewent planting any sweet peas.  I know, I know!  How could I do that?  It too an amazing amount of willpower, trust me.  But I guess they love me as much as I love them, because I have found that my Aprils in Paris have decided to volunteer by my front door, and while they sat there, like most plants this year, tiny, droopy, and insect-ridden for months this spring, the recent sunshine has brought them to life and they have taken off like rockets and have just started to bloom, and their perfume wafts trough the front yard in heaven-scented clouds.  Um, YAY!

** Spring.  It was Spring who told me.  Like I would really protect her after she murdered my pear trees this year.

I Guess I Asked For It

crazy fungus on straw bales

Remember how I made you all question my sanity just a bit in a previous post when I told you that I’m pretty sure that if I don’t expect all possible outcomes, good and bad, of a situation, that the less-than-ideal is bound to prevail?  Well, look no further for evidence that I am not a complete nutcase.*  I have it here for you.  It comes in the form of a naive, but happy and carefree post about how finally, finally summer was here.  Finally the rain had stopped.  Finally every single day of the forecast into the foreseeable future held nothing but blue skies and warm temperatures.  Finally.

Finally?

Yeah right.

I knew I was tempting fate when I wrote that, but heck… I was all caught up in the delirium of happiness last Saturday afforded me.  I tossed caution to the wind.  I wrote with passionate abandon, driven by nothing more than my giddy emotions and the promise of summer that floated in the air.  And I should have known better.

Sunday morning held that familiar wintry chill, and we waited in line on the sidewalk for brunch at The Screen Door, shivering in our fleeces.  By the time we were done, the wind had blown in and kicked the clouds out and I held out hope that perhaps it was just a cool morning.  By early afternoon, winds were high and my denial was higher.  I slathered on the sunscreen and headed out to work on my front yard landscaping project.

June 2009 - the beginning

The middle - December 2009

The current - June 2010

Determined not to be blown back inside to the realm of unproductivity (like my cool new word?), I actually made some really good progress, despite having to weight down everything that weighed less than five pounds.  The next morning dawned in the 40s and finished up with a whopping daytime high of 56 degrees, and it was so dark outside that I needed the lights on in the house all day long.  The rain started again that night while we slept.  And since then, it’s more or less been raining.  Again.  Still.  Forever.  And ever.  And ever.  And that, my friends, is what I get for posting about warm, sunny, dry summer like it was actually here to stay.  Ta DA!

Garden and Chickens

Sweetheart cherry

For the most part, the gardens and chickens are not thrilled with the weather either, but a few things are pushing bravely ahead nonetheless.  It looks like we’re going to get a nice handful of Sweetheart sweet cherries, if all goes well, and both tart cherry trees are on track to bear small crops as well.

The corn and beans in the Three Sisters garden are chugging along as best they can, though they would prefer some heat.  Only one of my seven corn/bean mounds is complete with four corn plants and four bean plants.  Each of the others is short a corn or two or a bean plant, but at this point, I don’t fee like reseeding AGAIN and so it is what it is.  The squash/pumpkins in the Three Sisters is actually doing quite well and soon I will have to thin to two plants per mound, which is never easy for me, but a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.

On perhaps the happiest (and most surprising) front, my tomatoes have decided to ignore the weather and go ahead and start setting fruit anyway.  In theory, tomatoes won’t set fruit unless the nighttime temperature stays above 55 degrees.  Heck, our daytime temperatures still aren’t always above 55 degrees yet, but apparently my tomatoes haven’t noticed.  Maybe they’re just happy that they’re not being nearly frozen every night anymore.  Now, please note that when  I say “set fruit” I mean just that – a couple of the flowers have been pollinated and I have a couple of TEENSY baby tomatoes.  I mentioned this to Sarah (who lives in Virginia and has been having a heatwave) yesterday and she said, “are they turning red yet?”  Um, not exactly.

newborn baby sungold twins

Like I said – I take what I can get at this point.  We may be a long way from homemade Caprese salads every night, but this is actually way earlier than I had any fruit set last year and we had an early, warm, dry spring last year.  In our part of the Pacific Northwest, most people don’t expect homegrown garden tomatoes until August.  I’m starting to think there’s really something to this start-em-early-and-protect-the-heck-out-of-them approach.  In the most non-tomatoey weather ever, we have fruit set!

Go, tomatoes, go!

The happiest of all, though, hands down, are the peas.  Laughing in the face of the mysterious plant choppers and loving the cool weather, my pea vines, tall and short alike, are now covered in flowers and peas of all sorts and are growing by leaps and bounds.  The unchopped plants are already way too big for the trellis that worked just fine last year.  I have strapped them to it with garden twine to keep them from breaking under their own weight as they reach out in every direction.

The peppers and eggplants, however, are not loving the weather so much.  I have no pictures because it is too sad.  The are small and droopy and lace-leafed as they sit in suspended animation, being devoured by slugs and chopped by plant choppers, waiting for their beloved dry heat.  Some send forth flowers which bloom slowly and sadly before turning black and falling off.  They need heat.  End of story.

My Hood strawberry plants in the garden are enthusiastic for sure – full, lush, healthy plants, with lots of berries, but with all the excess water and no stress, the berries are soft with watered-down flavor.  I pick a handful or two every day or so and they are only OK.  My beloved Mara Des Bois in the strawberry pots are still struggling to recover from this winter’s harsh temperatures.  They are timidly sending out new leaves from their frostbitten crowns, scared that summer might never arrive.  Last year by this time, I was already picking bowls and bowls of Mara Des Bois.  To say this year has been different is a vast understatement.

Ah, Yes, The Chickens…

Sofia, broody in the baby coop

Well, the chickens are just fine and laying like crazy.  Eighteen months is supposed to be the laying peak for hens, and that seems accurate to me.  We get eggs from just about all hens every single day, and they are consistently much bigger than they used to be.  We are swimming in eggs and giving them away to neighbors and coworkers as fast as we can and they still dominate our fridge.  Because I’m a dope or a coward or probably both, Sofia and the baby are still in the baby coop and now Sofia’s gone broody AGAIN.  This presents a problem because Miss Not-Independent (Thirteen) won’t come out of the coop without mommy and so neither of them gets out to free range anymore.

Thirteen hides in the baby coop with mama

Instead, when I open the doors to both coops, all the other chickens run into the baby coop to scratch for feed like it’s somehow different from the identical feed in their own coop, and the baby pecks them on the head to chase them away and then squeaks and runs and hides if they peck back.  All through this, Sofia puffs up into a ball and says, “cluck.  cluck.  cluck.  cluck,” and gives everyone the evil eye until they leave and she can settle back on whatever egg she has at the moment.  It is not productive.

On a similar but unrelated front, Daisy Mae has decided that she is an indoor chicken.  Indoor ONLY, that is.  At some point a few months ago, she more or less decided to stop coming out to graze entirely.  Who knows why.  Perhaps it’s because the second she steps foot out the door, all three roosters come FLYING over to her with great passion furiously mate with her until she gets away, feathers flying, and dashes back into the safety of the coop.  That could have something to do with it.

Daisy Mae observes from the safety of the high perch

And so now, you can pretty much count on her to pace back and forth up on the high indoor/outdoor perch, braaaawking  and clucking with concern, while everyone else enjoys the grass.

Poor girl is missing most of the feathers on her back from all the good lovin’ she’s been getting, and so I don’t blame her a bit.  And while she is clearly the roosters’ favorite, she is also quite clearly the lowest lady on the chicken totem pole.  She is the metaphorical Mack at the bottom of the turtle tower, with no hope of a reprieve.  She eats in quick, furtive bursts when she can steal a bite, because the other hens all peck her head and chase her away from the food.  Same goes for dust baths, perches, and any other thing of which chickens are desirous.  She can’t catch a break.

*You all WERE looking for evidence, right??  I will go ahead and assume it was consuming your every waking moment, and I have therefore saved your lives by providing you with this lovely concrete evidence that my theory is correct.

Hah! Beet That!

First Beet Harvest 2010

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!  83 degrees, crystal-clear skies, a slight breeze… by George, I think we may be onto something here!  Is that?… dare I say it?… summer that’s coming around the bend?  If it feels like summer, looks like summer, and smells like summer… must it be…. summer???

After a perfect day of Cafe Velo and a French butter croissant at the farmers’ market, followed by walking around downtown Portland and watching the Grand Floral Parade, we came home to the most beautiful day OF ALL TIME and I got to pick those three lovely ladies pictured above, along with five strawberries and one, single Anne golden raspberry.  And then I died and went to heaven.  The end.

A Quick Peek

Well, yesterday*, between my whining resignation and the actual start of the downpour, we actually got a brief window of not-so-bad weather.  Not-so-bad, as in – a couple of cracks in the cloud cover so that it warmed up, and it wasn’t yet raining.  The downpour started while I was doing the sushi and bourbon thing.  Oh yes, I am a woman of my word.

Anywho, during this reprieve, I dashed out and grabbed some quick pics of the garden so that I could show you all the progress.  It’s been raining ever since.

golden snow pea blossoms

Aren’t they beautiful?  I’ve never grown a garden pea that has anything but white flowers, but the Golden Snows have two-tone purple flowers that are every bit as lovely as sweet pea blooms, and they even have a light fragrance!  If the peas themselves are any good, I would call these a true winner that I will grow every year.  For some reason, all the pea plants that have not been chopped are golden snow peas.  The others are all making their comebacks, slowly but surely, though the occasional chop still happens.  And the Golden Snows are not immune.  As I went to take that picture, I noticed one of the tall vines looked wilted.  Upon closer inspection. I found that the top 2 feet had been chopped off of the bottom 1 foot of vine.

chopped pea vine

The top half still clung to the trellis, with its sadly wilted leaves and flowers, in complete denial that it had been chopped.  If you look at this one closely, you’ll see that it’s not as scissor-clean as some of the other cuts, but it’s still a completely mystery.  It was cut way up high on the plant, with no footprints or slime trail or any other evidence of insect or animal, and the top half was still completely intact.  I’ve never experienced a garden pest such as this.  I’m basically speechless.

Pork Chop tomato plant

And then there are my lovely ladies.  Ah yes, my happily-recovered tomato plants.  I could just look at them all day.  They make me so happy!

Sweet Carneros Pink tomato plant

Pork Chop and Sweet Carneros Pink are the biggest, but they’re all looking good, and most of them have flowers.

Sungold cherry tomato flowers

As usual, the big winners amongst my various cole crops are the Red Cabeza cabbages.  Most other things (broccolis, cauliflowers, Napa cabbages) all bolted for the second year in a row.  Who knows why.

Red Cabeza cabbage

My lovely little beet clumps are beeting-up (I made that up just now and I rather like it) nicely.

rainbow mix beets

Chard is going swimmingly, especially compared to last year.

bright lights chard

My lovely little rows of garlic have ever-fattening stems as they start to form bulbs below ground, all the while helping to keep buggies off of my other plants.

row of garlic in the eggplant and pepper bed

And in the straw bale garden, the pumpkins and melons are starting to come into their own, forming true leaves.

The pumpkins in the Three Sisters’ garden look much the same, as they were planted on the same day.  Whenever we have a day of heat and sun, the corn grows visibly, while the rest of the time it just sits there.  Also, yesterday**, as I trudged out to feed the chickens in the downpour, I noticed that my French Gold pole beans (from Renee’s Garden) have started to sprout next to the corn, which will act as the “poles” for them to climb.

OK, that’s it for now.  And an end is in sight – the forecast shows sunny and warm, starting tomorrow, into the indefinite future.  Here’s hoping.

*I started this post last night, June 9th, but didn’t finish it.  So, my first “yesterday” refers to Tuesday, June 8th.

**I finished this post this morning, June 10th, and my second “yesterday” refers to Wednesday, June 9th.  How’s that for confusing?

Five Stages of Weather Grief

Denial: despite forecast for more rain and a morning temp of 43 degrees, Lisa wakes up, sees the sun, and dresses in tank top, shorts, and flip flops while leaving all windows open and ceiling fans on.

Anger: Upon seeing the clouds roll in and blot out the sun by 9am. “Dear Sun, I am sick and tired of your little games. Where do you get off teasing me like this?! I had PLANS for today. Don’t you care about my plans? HUH?? What about me? Don’t I matter to you???”

Bargaining: “OK, fine, I’ll put on jeans, slippers, and a sweater. Just please don’t rain. Just let me get some things done outside first. I can handle cold and gray if it just doesn’t rain again.”

Acceptance: Lisa checks the forecast and sees that a heavy rainstorm with another inch of rain is coming. She gives up, bundles up, makes hot tea, closes the windows, turns on the heat, and decides to drown her misery tonight in sushi and bourbon.

*Laura kindly pointed out that I missed stage 4 – depression.  That one seems self-apparent, no?  Same ol’, same ol’ – “hmmm… maybe we’ll just not have summer this year.  The whole garden is probably going to die.  At least I don’t have to worry about getting skinny so that I can wear shorts in public…”