The Fall of The Harvest That Did Not Live Up To Expectations began with a dark omen; a tragedy! The double fruit tree that Autumn had become a proud parent of, the peach / nectarine hybrid, was growing like a weed. The peach side was the only side that grew fruit this year, and we decided not to thin the six large fruits on the tree; why bother thinning, we'll have more fruit! But one sunny day when the tree was thirsty enough to drink just enough water to fatten the fruits just so much, we came home to discover a fruit parent's worst nightmare. The peaches grew so large that the weight of the six fruits was too much for the grafted branch to bear, and it broke off, letting such delicious potential fall, unattached to its umbilical, to the ground. A fretful week of hastened ripening in the sun led nowhere, and the soft, sour peaches were sadly tossed into the compost.
As the patio in its entirety lived on, the high summer sun was hitting it with a vengeful force come the noon hours of the weekend, and we easily convinced ourselves that a patio umbrella was finally in order. A quick and easy trip to Home Depot allowed us to purchase a wonderfully large, bright red patio umbrella! With a bit of cardboard rigging and wood sawing, John succeeded in setting the umbrella firmly in the "universal" umbrella holder, without the large original amount of sway. The color is fantastic, if not a bit faded by now, but at the time it served us exceedingly well. A saturday morning breakfast brunch in a world colored red was all the more merrier by not having to wear sunscreen two hours before noon. It helped enable noontime parties and late afternoon leisure, and everybody commented on the bright color; this included the neighborhood hummingbirds, who on several occasions either tried drinking from the umbrella or mating with it.
In high hopes of our bountiful spring plantings, John christened Zucchinigeddon as it began with a nice harvest of a couple of the French zucchini, tossed into a pasta sauce for a superb late evening dinner. Encouraged, the lone surviving sugar pumpkin decided it liked life and started climbing into the zucchini, only to be encouraged upward with the help of a trellis leaning against the back garden's wall. A row of trimmed, manicured cherry tomato monsters hung, ashamed, out from the wire supports, but proffered a healthy amount of delicious, dark red fruits. The lettuce grew like there was no tomorrow; for months on end, we didn't have to buy salad at the store! Behind the lettuce the chard evolved casually, but eventually populated our pans and plates every week with an assortment of colors. On the patio, the heirloom tomatoes grew fitfully (probably due to John's lack of soil knowledge) but eventually produced a good number of green zebra, pink brandywine, and red tigerella tomatoes. And so the promise of a harvest was seen.
Soon the days grew more even and the sun started missing the deepest nooks of our garden. Autumn's basil plot seeded quickly, leaving us either frantically clipping off flowering buds or ignoring it entirely. The original columnar apple tree had blossomed once, but refused to successfully accept any bees' offerings of pollen. After the two original zucchini, only one more grew out of the myriad blossoms from the plants, and we slowly admitted that Zucchinigeddon had passed us by this year. The lettuce bolted eventually, and growing tired of clipping it back we found a recipe for (what else?) lettuce soup, which, with enough leeks, tasted good enough to dub a success... although it really started tasting more like leek soup. Being inundated with a slow but constant supply of chard we also found a recipe for chard pie; more like a sour cream quiche with a fluffy egg filling, but it worked! We were feeling good about using whatever we could from the soil we had sown.
The mead factory did not stall this summer. A friend of John's, known well in the wine industry, procured a curious element to age mead in; a new french oak, quarter cask wine barrel! The nearly eight gallon mini-barrel was the perfect size for a healthy amount of mead to sit for a few weeks. With a thirty pound bucket of honey bought from a beekeeper up north, the biggest batch ever of Quail Cottage mead was made; enough to fill the eight gallon barrel as well as several other control growlers! The hunt began for a good brown bottle beer to start drinking enough of to be able to bottle the mead when it finished. In addition to mead, a welcome addition to the brewing pantry was a tart green apple cider made from young apple thinnings of Autumn's parent's garden. Pulverized in the juicer, seeds, skins and all, the juice mixed well with a simple agave and brewed into a wonderfully delicate hard cider! After sending some bottles back home to Santa Cruz, the rest were added to the growing supply of mysterious brown bottles packed into the three mini-fridges in the garage. It was considered, at some point, just to air condition the entire garage, but sadly it's not insulated well...
Fall came into full swing and an introduction to October cuisine began with using the lone pumpkin from the back garden. The plant decided it lived long enough; the small pumpkin, hanging from a brown and broken stem at the top of the trellis ripened slowly, gathering more and more orange tint as the sun weakened, like a last offering from a mother's life. We honored it well; getting bored with the standard cheesecake recipes, John decided to substitute mascarpone in this pumpkin cheesecake. With the baked and shredded pumpkin blended in, served on a frozen slab of marble with fall berries and its own pumpkin seeds sprinkled on top, it was a dashing success. Hardened hurriedly in the freezer, it was a delectably smooth, creamy texture with a beautiful pumpkin enhancement for the less sweet Italian cream cheese. Served at a late summer party on the patio with some of our best friends, it became a symbolic culmination to this year's harvest. The night ended well, friends stayed late, much wine and mead and whisky was sipped, and old, rancid flour was thrown onto the fire in a spectacular display of fireworks (although leaving John's car covered in flour dust for weeks to come).
The rain has finally decided to stay more frequently, and like a welcome but mysterious stranger, we regard it with cautious appreciation. Deep fall weather means deep fall foods. The slow cooker is being used more often, once for a hearty Guinness beef stew so good that it made grown men cry. Autumn successfully grew a native sourdough starter that regularly feeds our kitchen (and our neighbors, too!) with tasty fresh sour breads, rolls, and biscuits. And a new kitchen toy now graces our oven; after months (years!) of looking at recipes that suggested a heavy Dutch oven, Autumn finally broke down (with John's encouragement) and found a beautiful, cast iron, deep red Le Creuset "French" oven. Christened with a new motto of "a new recipe per week!" she made a mouth watering cassoulet of duck confit, sausage, and tender pork shoulder, with white beans and vegetables. As rich as needed for this cold weather... duck confit is made by marinating duck legs in duck fat for a good number of days! We may be on our ways to rendering ourselves fattened before the holidays even arrive...
As the darkened skies of evening arrive tonight an hour earlier, we finish up a light chicken soup (made in the French oven!) with whatever can be salvaged from a great evening of roast chicken the night before with Autumn's parents, made with the promise of a useful new kitchen tool (the French oven!) and with champagne in our quail glasses, newly acquired this summer. Reading a history of Ireland to prepare for a vacancy of Autumn's side of the bed in two months, we share a bottle of wine and think that despite what lays behind, there is always a promise of more in the future, correlated directly to our desires, promises, and actions. Tomatoes may whither and die with a waning sun, but what falls from their fruits lays in the ground until a flood of warmth rises them up, gives them life, and lets them grow into even larger plants. So too shall we hold on to our dreams and plans, until the time is right, to act and grow even larger. Until then, we toast to you a calm goodnight, with rain at our door and each other in our eyes.