Tag Archives: Pear

Will the Blooms Return?

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I’m thinking about flowers. [I’m not talking about my cousin’s family, though they’d be a welcome sight in this part of the world as much as any!] Perhaps it’s because, here in Texas, signs of sprouting, budding and even outright blooms are beginning to show all around us: the flowering pear trees are starting to burst like giant batches of popcorn, my infant fringeflower is sporting a deep fuchsia-colored tassel or two, and even the local redbud trees are bravely showing off glimpses of their own hot pinks and purples. It may also be that the influence of a few days spent recently on seasonal cleaning and prep in our yard brings, along with the seasonal sneezing and watering of the old eye-bulbs, the welcome scent of earth and sightings of green specks that seem to increase in size while I watch, reminds me of spring and summers past and favorite blossoms I eagerly await on their return. The recent speedy trip to San Antonio, just enough farther south from us to be a week or two ahead in the race to renew its flora, certainly enhanced my longing for the sight of flowers while it was giving me its own preview. And of course, there’s simply the persistent infatuation with all-things-growing that grips me year-round that might be one of the main instigators of this present hope.

No matter what the cause, my heart is yearning for floral happiness these days.Blog.02-28-2013.1

Too Early to be Called Springtime

Leaning back into the shade

Next to a mirror foxed with age but

Gleaming still with that low glint,

Mercurial, that holds onto its ghosts—those

Pale vapors that have passed

Through the pavilion and its garden greens,

Have dreamed while leaning in

This selfsame shade

Of fading memory and of

Incipient bloom, in this

Just-waking secret garden—

Here I will stay at rest, a shade myself

In the pale green gloaming

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Yes, the redbuds are arriving, bees and all; I’m not the only one humming with happiness.

Foodie Tuesday: Un-, Ex-, De-, Out-

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We are leaving one season and entering another. Time to divest ourselves of pretense and the impulse to be over-elaborate when making a change. I see people all around me worrying that their Thanksgiving menu isn’t finalized, their Fall-themed altar of mantel decor not as impressive as the next neighbor’s, and their Halloween costumes not thrilling and polished enough to accompany their hundred handmade sweets for the twenty-seven tiny Monsters who will come knocking. Better, sometimes, to enjoy simpler approaches and simpler pleasures! Autumn can be:

Uncomplicated.

Extricated from fussiness.

Demystified.

Outrageously edible.

photoAt the change of each season I do have a tendency to shift in my flavor preferences. When it’s been summer-hot out and finally becomes cool, those warming, earthy, old-fashioned and evocative spices and scents of Fall–cinnamon and cardamom, roasted roots and mushrooms, sweetly freckled pears and chalky-skinned, slightly scabby McIntosh apples (not the electronic kind, mind you) begin their annual siren songs of woodsy, sit-by-the-hearth allure. And I can go a little crazy.

[I can see you out there rolling your eyes at my gift for stating the obvious.]photo

It’s easy to go a bit wild, to be the over-swung pendulum flying to opposite extremes, when one has been long immured in the cooling pools of summer’s lovely seasonal foods and beginning to long for something different. But of course delicious flavors needn’t be exaggerated to be glorious. Sometimes the over-the-top approach is indeed precisely what I desire, since I’m a more-is-more kind of person in general, but sometimes a little subtlety is also a welcome thing. A restrained hand in the kitchen can allow a smaller assortment of lovely notes to interplay beautifully, and the pleasure of savoring one gorgeous individual taste at a time, too, can provide moments of sublime happiness that stretch well beyond the culinary.

I know this stuff perfectly well in my head, but my heart frequently scarpers off with my stomach quick as the dish with the proverbial spoon, and once again I have to calm myself and remember that there’s plenty of time in the season for me to slow down and savor the flavors before the next change arrives. It happened again last week, and I had a narrow escape from the annual autumnal overkill. I pressed aside my rabid plans for the sort of dangerously delirious feast that would’ve kept me comatose right up until the next fit of wildness did hit me at Thanksgiving. Fanning myself thoughtfully with a big spatula, I got busy making a much less complicated, sautéed and simmered, soup treat and found it as satisfying as could be.photo

Hearty Cauliflower & Mushroom Soup

Simmer 1 bunch of fresh sage leaves in 1/2 lb of pastured butter (I use salted–I’m very fond of my salt, thankyouverymuch) until the butter’s golden brown and fully infused with the herb and the leaves have given up their moisture. Strain out the leaves onto paper and let them crisp up nicely, giving them an additional sprinkle of salt if desired for crunch. Sauté 2 cups cauliflower florets and 1-1/2 cups sliced brown mushrooms (both can be fresh or frozen) in plenty of the sage butter until they’re soft and caramelized. Add a little liquid–water, dry sherry, broth, buttermilk or cream as you blend it all with a stick blender. No need to get it thin or even quite smooth: this is a rustic Fall soup, after all. Garnish it as you wish: a swirl of buttermilk or Crème fraîche, some crumbled crispy bacon, some deeply caramelized onions, or just a generous toss of those crisped sage leaves.

There’s only a little bit left to complete this recipe: take your bowl of prepared soup, curl yourself in the arms of a big, well-worn overstuffed chair, bundle up in that wonderful old afghan lap-rug your granny crocheted for you in your youth, crack open a musty classic book, and lap up your thick soup with a big, deep spoon. Sigh, turn page, sip, repeat. Winter’s just a few chapters away.photo

Foodie Tuesday: Greenglorious

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photoHow ’bout a vegetarian lunch? Whaaaat, me, sharp-fanged old carnivore that I am? Really? Oh, yes, my friends, sometimes the vegetarian route, even in my greasy old meatatarian hands, leads to a fine meal indeed. As an eater, I can always latch onto that old saying ‘I’m just happy to be here’. Whatever goodness is on offer.

Vegetarian meals, particularly in summertime, can be marvelously easy to prepare and not get me horribly overheated when I am fighting off the internal flames already. Let me be honest, my dearies, I am over fifty, a prodigy of sorts who got the great gift of hot flashes starting at the ripe young age of forty, so cookery that doesn’t require a whole lot of, well, cooking is a generally welcome thing these days. So, darlings, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Salad. That’s always an easy start. So keep it easy. Romaine lettuce, diced ripe pear. Sliced almonds, white and black sesame seeds. A touch of lemon juice. Couple of spoons full of the pickling liquid from sushi ginger, a lick of Persian lime olive oil and a jot of toasted sesame oil. Fresh, fast, cooling, nice.photo

Not that I’m opposed to heated stuff. After all, the physiological truth is that eating and drinking warm treats is pretty good at starting the body’s cooling mechanisms to work. Cool! Really! So this time around, I went with one of those dishes that are basic throw-and-go foods. Oven roasted cauliflower, fine; oven roasted me: too much of a good thing. So in a lightly oiled casserole I put a couple of cups of broken cauliflower florets, straight from the freezer (not previously cooked), tossed on a few teaspoons of cold browned butter, a couple of tablespoons of pine nuts, a handful of brown mustard seeds, and a quarter cup or so of shredded Parmesan cheese. Into the cold oven it all went at 350°F, covered for the first fifteen minutes and then uncovered until browned, and lastly left covered again at table to keep steaming while the rest of the meal got set.photo

The rest included some good gluten-free crackers to spread with almond butter and peach chutney, a few of my homemade sesame crackers and smoked almonds, and some cornichons and pickled lotus for a touch further of pizzazz. My favorite part of the meal–not a huge surprise in this hot summertime, I suppose–happened to be the day’s beverage. I put a cup each of peeled and seeded cucumber pieces, chopped fresh celery, cubed honeydew melon and fresh mint leaves into the blender with about a pint of water and the juice of a whole lime and a tablespoon or two of raw honey, gave it all a thorough smash-up, and then strained it. When I drank the blended juices straight up, that was lovely, so if you want your zing without cane sugar or effervescence, just leave out added pop. I’d chilled it that way a couple of days before, but to serve it, I combined it with equal amounts of cucumber soda (Mr. Q Cumber, yummy stuff), and it made a good, refreshing accompaniment to the rest of the meal.

Best accompaniment, of course, is always the good companionship of a fine fellow eater at the table. Yes, thanks, this was a delicious day.photo

Old Lady up a Tree

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Ha! You thought I was talking about some girlfriend of that guy who lurked in the tree outside Grandma’s window. You may be excused for thinking I’m the equivalent of my own imaginary friend, in fact, but yes indeedy I did climb a tree today. Sometimes it’s good to be a crazy old bat. Here’s why I did it:

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The backyard tree was calling my name . . .

I mean, really. If you had this Bradford flowering pear tree glowing at you through the kitchen window, could you have resisted? Granted, there was also a squirrel-decimated finch feeder glaring from its branches, and removing the skeletal remains from sight seemed like rationalization enough, if I needed any, but the pear trees are unsure we actually had a winter, and so both our front and backyard pears are not only bursting into bloom a tad early they are starting to leaf before the blooms are even fully open, and getting just a little ahead of themselves, as I often do too. It’s not especially sunny today, but pretty warm, and who wants a ladder when it feels like springtime? It may be apropos that from up there I had a nice view of the sweet cedar bat house I’d mounted in the adjacent red oak, but I think a tiny bit of tree-climbing may also have cleared a few of the bats from my own belfry, or at least knocked out a cobweb or two.

You might even wonder why I’d be looking out the window all that much when it’s grey and overcast and kind of, well, lackluster in the great and brown-grassy out of doors here in the first place. Here’s why I did that:

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The little patio nursery is awakening . . .

You could ignore this? Me, I just have to look every few minutes or so just in case the sprouts are suddenly eight inches taller. It could happen. See those adorable little fine-haired leaflets? The dainty little red stems on what I will assume are the sprouts of beetroot plants?

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The charmingly incorrect way I have of throwing everything in together and planting at the same time, same depth, same channel ought to at least entertain me . . .

No one who hangs around this blog for the briefest length of time will mistake me for an orderly, proper, or logical gardener. But I love my mad-scientist fun in yard and garden and the often profligately rewarding things the dirt gives back without regard for my deserving. I was going to say, “my deserts”, but you might easily mistake me in this instance for plotting an entire property full of nothing but cacti, given last year’s Texas drought, my stated intent to move toward a fairly solidly xeriscaped property, better water management, prairie-native plants, succulents, and all of that sort of thing. And I do plan all of that in the long term. But it won’t stop me from, say, planting a few things here and there that mightn’t be strictly ideal for the situation, because I do have that experimental urge and my wildly impractical loves. So yes, I did go ahead and put in a few orange and white tulips in the planters out front, thank you very much. And here’s why:

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The yard--front and back--thus far boasts some fantastic trees (and the two little sticks, one of which you can barely discern here centered on the porch, that I intend to raise into trees eventually), but there's not a lot more to commend it . . . yet . . .

I have my ambitions. Not least of them is to get proper drainage around the house perimeter and evict the hopelessly useless and rarely attractive lawn in favor of paths and planting beds and places that would invite the local bees and butterflies and birds and the greenbelt denizens from out back to come and linger, and the eyes and hearts of visitors to find pleasure. All of this, in place of dull hard St. Augustine “grass”; having lived in temperate climates I find I can’t quite call this scratchy variegated-brown stuff by the honorific reserved for something a lot kinder underfoot and a lot more able to thrive on its own than what we’ve got now. I like to believe I can make a bit of a change for the better! It’ll take a lot of resources, but I have hope. Here’s why:

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In an earlier time and place I went from a similarly "low maintenance" yard (don't you just adore Realtor Speak!) of mostly unhealthy grass and stumpy evergreen shrubs yard to something nicer in only a couple of years . . .

I think you can get a hint of the Why, no? Granted, that was a west-coast climate very friendly to all manner of plants from just this side of tropical (I did grow a banana tree as an annual out back) to alpine. But I’m optimistic that with the right ingredients, a bit of effort and plenty of imagination, I will be able to transform, if slowly, this place too. I may not achieve the lushness of my temperate garden, but I look forward to something a bit more dramatic and inviting. Here’s why:

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The neighborhood wasn't honestly the most upscale, but given the growing climate, I finally decided Parkland wasn't *entirely* a misnomer for it either . . .

This photo was taken less than two years after the whole property had been bulldozed. I dug up and salvaged a number of the rhododendrons and other shrubs, and of course the magnificent Douglas-fir off camera to the right held its ground (after the arborist gave it some tender loving care following its attack by lightning!), but the rest was a big scraped-off dirt pile. So I’ve seen what dirt can do. I’m going to go on believing in what it’ll offer until and unless it proves otherwise. Then you can all say I was just out of my tree.