Green Spaces in Rural Places

We finished our wheat harvest on Sept. 2. Now I have time to catch up on my garden chores, if only the weather and my body cooperate. While I'm much recovered from my boute with pneumonia, I haven't yet recovered my pre-illness stamina. I miss it. The damp, cooler temperatures and high winds are not helping in that recovery.

The cooler mornings find me working inside the house, catching up on laundry and the dreaded dusting and vacuuming, definitely not my favorite things to do. The warmer afternoons have me outside working in the yard and garden. My neglected flowerpots are getting watered regularly again. I think I only lost three to lack of water. I've even managed to find and pick the long-ignored green beans from one row. There were still enough good ones for a couple of meals. I'm thinking most of them are going to go to seed. Maybe I won't have to purchase packets of bean seeds next spring.

The tomatoes are coming on strong now. The cherry tomatoes always seem to start ripening before the others, and this year was no exception. Those early ones went with me to the fields, along with freshly pulled carrots, for snacking between lunch and supper.

The full-sized tomatoes are now ripening faster than Mom and I can eat them, so I'm dusting off my sauce recipes. I grow a variety of tomatoes, including a couple types of heirlooms, and mix them together in my canning. Sometimes I peel and can them whole, or diced, other times I'll cook them into sauces that can be used for chile, spaghetti, pizza or soups.

My brother, Paul Woodford, recently mentioned on his cooking blog (pwoodford.net/cookelog) that he'd peeled and cooked with fresh tomatoes. A friend of his asked how he peeled them, leaving me to wonder how many people in this area don't know this easy trick?

Put a large pot of water on to boil. While the water is heating, wash your tomatoes. Cut out the stem end, then lightly score an 'x' on the blossom end with a sharp knife. You just want to cut the skin, not deep into the tomato. Once the water is boiling, gently lower the tomatoes into the water. They should be completely submerged (if not, roll them over after a few seconds to scald the skin all the way around the fruit).

Once the skin starts cracking and pulling loose, dip them out and plunge them into a large bowl or sink full of cold water to stop the cooking. The skins should slip off easily and can be discarded. (You can peel peaches the same way, minus the cutting out of the stem end and scoring of an "x.")

I have several recipes, found online, for sauces featuring tomatoes. One I make quite often also uses various onions, green peppers, garlic, basil and oregano, all of which I grow in my garden. The only items not from my garden are the freshly ground black pepper, sea salt, olive oil (used for caramelizing the onion), and sun-dried tomatoes. Another one I like is called Maryland Caramel Tomatoes, which uses brown sugar, and is great on meatloaf.

My flowers are blooming abundantly now, as well. The dinnerplate dahlias are 4-5' tall and producing huge flowers. The gladiola are blooming in many colors. The zinnias are running rampant. I put square tomato cages over the dahlia tubers when I planted them, and those have saved them from the winds. I put up a fence where I plant the glad bulbs for the same reason. That fence also gives the scarlet runner beans a support to vine up. The zinnias are planted in the tire next to the fence, so they are also somewhat protected from the winds.

All the flowers have once again drawn in at least one hummingbird. We usually see a few come through early in the spring on their way north, and again this time of year as they migrate back south. They stay longer in the fall, as I have more flowers now for them. I've not had my cell phone handy when the hummer had buzzed by me, so I don't have any photos to share - yet. Sometimes they even land on the cage by the dahlias and take a break from hovering.