seasons

Naked Ladies

/ Robinne Weiss / Leave a comment

2016-04-14 08.43.56 smDo I need to say more?

These are some of the most delightful flowers in our yard. When we first moved in, there was a row of non-descript green plants in front of our hedge. They were uninspiring. I planned on removing them.

The plants died back over summer. We mowed the remains down.

Then one day I looked out to see a row of gorgeous pink blooms! What a lovely surprise! When I described them to my mother, she immediately said, “Oh! Naked ladies!” My response was, of course, to giggle. But the name is apt, as these lovely ‘girls’ bloom long after the leaves have died back.

We did end up removing the naked ladies…in order to put them in a better spot, as the hedge was smothering them. Every year, I forget they are there, and every year I have the joy of heading outdoors one day and finding them in bloom.

They make me smile. What more can you ask from a flower?

Touched by Frost

/ Robinne Weiss / 2 Comments

2016-04-14 08.42.53 smIt happened. The first frost hit the vegetable garden. Not hard, but enough to show. Most of the tender and unprotected plants were already done for the year, anyway—the tomatoes had largely succumbed to drought, the cucumbers had given up, the melons were done, the pumpkins were already harvested, and the basil had gone to seed. The summer squashes were only lightly touched—a few of the leaves browned, but most of the growing tips in good shape.

Of course, at this time of year, any day could be the last.

So we savour each day—enjoying the tastes of summer while they last.

Pumpkins

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About a third of the harvest.

About a third of the harvest.

Autumn wouldn’t be complete without the requisite wheelbarrow loads of pumpkins and other winter squash. In spite of some late-frost drama this spring, the harvest wasn’t bad.

My kids ask every year, “Which are the pumpkins and which are the squash? What makes a pumpkin a pumpkin?”

The short answer is that a pumpkin is a squash that we call a pumpkin. There are four species and countless varieties that variously get called pumpkin and squash. Some fruits are known as pumpkins in one place, and squash in another.

I don’t bother with the distinction. The important distinctions are between varieties. Some are best made into soup, others make splendid pies. Some have robust, dry flesh that holds up well in savoury galettes. Some are just the right size for baking whole. Some keep well, and others need to be eaten quickly after harvest. Some have flesh only useful as goat food, but have naked seeds that are wonderful toasted with salt and spices.

Which is, of course, how I justify planting so many pumpkins of so many varieties. I need them all!

Standard Time

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2016-02-04 07.21.17We came off Daylight Savings Time last Sunday. And though it doesn’t change the actual day length, it does seem to shorten the days.

I’m still milking in the dark—an hour doesn’t change that. But now, it is all but dark by the time we’re doing the dinner dishes. There is no time to potter in the garden in the evening. The dinner leftovers destined for the chickens have to be saved until morning, because the chickens are already roosting for the night by the time we’re done eating.

But the truth is, there isn’t much still to be done in the garden. Oh, there are pumpkins and popcorn to harvest, and at some point I need to bring in the remaining carrots, but all those tasks can be done on the weekend. Large swaths of the garden don’t need to be weeded anymore—the crops there are done, and the chickens will appreciate the weeds when I turn them out into the garden for the winter.

So instead, I have time to read a book after dinner, which is a luxury I don’t have during Daylight Savings Time. I’m actually quite excited by it this year, as we have a new book nook my husband built along with some beautiful cabinetry for the bedroom. The perfect place to curl up with a book.

 

Puddles of Crickets

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A female small field cricket--the long ovipositor (egg laying tube) at the rear tells you she's a girl.

A female small field cricket–the long ovipositor (egg laying tube) at the rear tells you she’s a girl.

It was like walking through puddles, my daughter said.

There had been no rain.

But the grass was so alive with crickets, they rippled away from every step like splashes of water.

By the time I got there, she had splashed all the crickets away, but I could still hear them. Their little bell-like songs have been a constant background noise all summer, and are particularly loud now, in autumn, when most are adults.

It’s only the males who sing, and they do it by rubbing their short, leathery wings together. The song is fiendishly difficult to locate—it sounds like it’s coming from a dozen places at once, and finding a calling male is all but impossible for a predator. The other crickets are able to do it, though. Males’ calls stake out their territories and attract females.

When I ran the Bugmobile, I used to take crickets to schools, and I always wanted to have a couple of males so the kids could hear them singing. Catching males was a challenge. Not only are they difficult to locate by sound, but if you do stumble across one, it will drop immediately to the ground and scurry underneath the leaf litter like a cockroach. Females, on the other hand, take great bounding leaps to get away, making them easy to catch in a sweep net. I could collect a dozen females in one sweep of the net, but it might take me half an hour to search out as many males.

It was the same story when I went to photograph them for today’s blog post. Males singing all around me, and not one available for the camera. The girls were more obliging. It wasn’t quite like walking in puddles, but there were an awful lot of them hopping around in the grass.

Hedge trimming

/ Robinne Weiss / 1 Comment
Trimmer looming out of the early morning fog. Note the circular blade to the left--he switched to that later.

Trimmer looming out of the early morning fog next door. Note the circular blade to the left–he switched to that later.

THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! THWACK!

The sound, like a helicopter crashing into a stand of trees, is unmistakable, though the first time I heard it, I had no idea what it was—a giant hedge trimmer.

Hedges are a necessity here on the windswept Canterbury Plains, and autumn is hedge trimming season.

Our hedge, hemmed in by fruit trees and the septic system, has to be trimmed by hand—a full-day job for my husband and me, and one we put off as long as we can every year.

Here's another, snapped along the roadside on the way to town.

Here’s another, snapped along the roadside on the way to town.

Our neighbours, however, have their hedges trimmed by professional hedging contractors. The hedge trimming machines they use are terrifying—giant, armoured vehicles with a long crane arm bearing any one of a number of wicked-looking cutting devices.

There are circular saw blades the size of a man, two-metre wide lawn mower blades, heavy chains that just beat the branches off the hedge. The machines must be Occupational Safety and Health’s worst nightmare. Some have an 18 metre reach, and the result is perfectly trimmed hedges the size of castle battlements.

 

Baking Bellybuttons

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Before baking--moons in the night sky. How romantic!

Before baking–moons in the night sky. How romantic!

I had to bake on the equinox. Something to celebrate the season, and the coming long nights.

I had some marzipan left over from recent birthday cakes, so I made chocolate cupcakes, each with a little ball of marzipan dropped into the batter–you know, a moon in the night sky.

After baking--bellybuttons. How...um...something.

After baking–bellybuttons. How…um…something.

But the marzipan moons sank, leaving the cupcakes looking a bit like bellybuttons.

Delicious bellybuttons, I might add…

 

The Dark Side

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Near-full moon means bright evenings, but dark mornings.

Near-full moon means bright evenings, but dark mornings.

Today we tip to the dark side. Tomorrow, night will outstrip day for the first time in six months.

It seems the equinox should be momentous. Autumn should sweep in, chilly and dark, leaving summer behind.

But yesterday, the temperature reached 33 degrees (91F). Today is on track to be even warmer, and tomorrow, the same. Though darkness creeps up on us, the sun has not abandoned us yet.

Still, it is time to remember to appreciate the dark.

This morning, I milked and fed the animals in the dark, as I’ve done for the past month. But before I went back inside and turned on the lights, I paused to appreciate the night sky. The milky way slashed from northern to southern horizon, southern cross glinting in its midst. Pavo, Scorpius, and Lupus were there too—a veritable menagerie of constellations, though truth be told, I can identify only a handful of them without a star chart.

But in the still of early morning, it didn’t matter whether I could find the peacock’s tail in the sky. It was enough to look up and appreciate the vast universe, accessible to us only in the dark.

Invasion of the Cabbage Whites

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2016-03-02 14.24.23The small cabbage white butterfly (Pieris rapae) is the bane of gardeners’ existence all over the world. Native to Europe, Asia and North Africa, the butterfly is now found throughout most of North America, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand.

In my little corner of New Zealand, the butterfly is especially common, presumably because of the huge numbers of commercial brassica crops grown here. In late summer, the roadsides shimmer with the butterflies, and their tattered wings flutter like flags in my car’s grille.

These butterflies are the reason broccoli is a seasonal crop for us. Broccoli can be grown year-round here, but mid- to late-summer broccoli becomes infested with caterpillars. For a few years, I dutifully treated my broccoli with Bt (an organic bacterial toxin that selectively kills caterpillars), but I eventually stopped bothering.

By mid-summer, there is so much other food coming out of the garden that, truth is, we don’t need the broccoli. And having a broccoli-free part of the year helps bring variety to our diets, and makes broccoli more special when it is available in winter and spring.

Sour grapes? Not at all! Just learning to work with the local wildlife instead of against it. Makes life easier for everyone!

The Beginning of the End

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Pumpkins are filling out and beginning to harden off.

Pumpkins are filling out and beginning to harden off.

March 1—first day of autumn here. It is appropriately autumnal today, with a grey sky and brisk, cool wind.

But it didn’t take a cool day, or the calendar to tell me summer was coming to a close. I have been milking in the dark for weeks—a sure sign the equinox is coming. Last week, the first of the elm leaves crunched brown and crisp underfoot. The poplar trees are looking sparse. The dry beans have started to senesce—pods bleaching, yellow leaves plopping to the ground.

The coming weekend will be full of harvest activities—no time for the beach, regardless of how hot it is. Soy beans, dry beans, and corn will all need harvesting. We’ll make the year’s summer soup. I’ll make another batch of pesto for the freezer before the basil is finished. I’ll dry some tomatoes.

There will be plenty more hot days, and likely a few trips to the beach. There will be many more tomatoes, eggplants, beans, and melons. Summer’s not really over. But it’s beginning to pack its bags and get rid of whatever it can’t take with it when it leaves for the Northern Hemisphere.