Taken in the zinnia bed early this morning.
Sparrow Tree Journal
Friday, July 18, 2025
Saturday, July 12, 2025
Wrapping up the (summer) garden
My summer 2025 garden is officially done. With the exception of the pepper plants (that are still cranking out a few peppers here and there) we've harvested everything. Yesterday we pulled up and discarded the worn-out plants and gave everything an initial tidy up. I know those of you from even slightly more northerly climes are probably scratching your heads right now, so let me explain. By this point in the summer, the intense heat and humidity have started doing a number on pretty much all vegetable plants. Our last frost date is early April, so we plant out very early. The plants have been growing and producing for three months already, and now with day after day of sweltering heat, they're just giving up the ghost. I don't blame them. I'd be ready to die out in this heat day and night, too! Plus, the f*cking stinkbugs have shown up and tried their best to attack and ruin the last of the tomatoes. (I seriously hate them, much more than the hornworms which are much easier to control).
So anyway, the garden is mostly kaput. I've kept careful notes, and this morning I sat down to "compile my data" :) Here are my results and takeaways from this year's garden.
Tomatoes:
This is always the most important part of the garden to me. I love good tomatoes eaten fresh, and when there's extra there are lots of things you can do with them. Since I really hoped to have some extra this year to can, I tried something different. Instead of growing all heirlooms (which taste great but often struggle with production in this climate) I divided my tomato-growing space in half: room for 8 heirloom indeterminate plants that I started from seed, and 5 bushy young determinate plants I bought at Lowe's. Determinates, of course, set a lot of fruit all at once, early in the season, and then they're done. Perfect for having big batches of canning tomatoes that are ready by the time our hellish South Carolina heat scorches the garden! Check out my results:
Determinates
Bush Goliath:
2 plants,
28 individual fruits
Total: 10.55 pounds
Better Bush:
1 plant
10 individual fruits
Total: 2.61 pounds
Heatmaster:
1 plant
11 individual fruits
2.86 pounds
Roma:
1 plant
24 individual fruits
5.05 pounds
Determinates
Eva Purple Ball
3 plants
43 individual fruits
10.05 pounds
Hillbilly Potato Leaf
3 plants
8 individual fruits
2.95 pounds
Berkeley Tie Dye
2 plants
14 individual fruits
2.45 pounds
All told, I ended up with 36.5 pounds of tomatoes! And that's not counting the one cherry tomato plant that's given us probably around 2 pounds of fruit (I didn't keep track of those)
Yesterday I also finished up some canning and preserving! I'd already made 6 12-oz jars of salsa and 6 half pint jars of pickled mixed peppers, and I added 2 12-oz jars of pickled jalapenos and 2 12-oz jars of pickled cowhorn peppers. I also whipped out the dehydrator and made a big jar of dried tomato slices and dried cherry tomatoes. I also dried some tiny, fiery tabasco peppers and crushed them into a jar for pepper flakes.
Tuesday, July 8, 2025
Family ties
There's a small herd of deer that live in our neighborhood. Since we're close to a creek and a city-maintained system of hiking/nature trails, there's no shortage of wildlife to see, but the deer are the most familiar. They come out most nights as the sun is setting, and since we usually walk the dogs around that time, we see them pretty regularly. Usually they'll freeze if we walk past them and as long as we're not too close, they won't run. Even the dogs have learned to be very quiet so as not to scare them.
Last year a female deer kept showing up in our front yard with two little fawns. It was the cutest thing, but I never managed to get a photo. This year, another female (or maybe the same one) has been coming around, but this time she has just one baby, and a young male is often with them.
The other night, I happened to look out the spare bedroom window at dusk and the little family was back! I grabbed my phone and took a picture, and although it's not very clear (taken on a zoomed-in phone camera, through a window and screen, at dusk...) I really, really like the shot:
Friday, July 4, 2025
Getting the job done
I don't feel much like celebrating my country today, but I wanted to share this song with you from the brilliant Lin Manuel Miranda.
THIS is a big part of what truly "makes America great".
Tuesday, July 1, 2025
In my summer kitchen
Wednesday, June 25, 2025
Sweltering
It's disgustingly hot here this week. High temps around 100F with heat index (real feel) values of around 110F. When I got in my car yesterday afternoon at 3pm, this is what my dashboard thermometer registered:
The actual temperature wasn't quite this high. This is the result of my car sitting and baking in a mostly empty parking lot with no trees and no shade while I'm at work. I think it was really more like 101...still awful. The humidity makes it 1000x worse. Then there was today...
Friday, June 20, 2025
Anniversary gift
My new cookware arrived yesterday! It's so shiny and pretty that I took a picture after I finished unpacking everything. It's not a great photo but I'll share it anyway.
Now it's time to actually use them and I'm a bit nervous. Cooking on stainless steel is going to be a learning curve, but I've watched enough YouTube tutorials on the subject that I feel like I can probably do okay. I'm hoping the quality of my cooking goes up with better tools to work with!