Summer's Lease Hath All Too Short a Date

Summer has flown by. Just yesterday I was building my tiny potager, and now it's grown and weedy and actually producing vegetables faster than I can harvest them. The zucchini in the picture were too tiny to pick a week ago and grew into these mega-zuchs while we were out of town. I'm not sure whether they are fit to eat, but I think I'll try to do something with them.

The best part of the vegetable garden is how much L loves it. She wants to go out to inspect it at least twice a day and heartily eats what we harvest. Last night she ate an entire (normal size) zucchini by herself. Her joy in discovering new growth among the corn, squashes, and tomatoes, and measuring the daily growth of the "icebox watermelons" matches my own.

I had big plans for this summer and am happy to say that I have largely succeeded in them. I spent quality time with family and friends; I indulged in hobbies; I focused on home and garden. It was the first time since my Junior year of high school that I had an entire summer off, and I didn't waste a minute of it.

School starts this week, which means summer is officially over. This weekend we bought back-to-school clothes and shoes. Next weekend I will be filling out piles of forms the kids bring home and writing checks for field trips, class tee-shirts, lunch cards, classroom parties, and more. I will be checking Friday folders and scheduling preemptive parent/teacher conferences (to get a jump on things) and logging in to Edline each evening to check grades and make sure homework is getting done. I didn't realize until my oldest child started school how much of my time would be required.

End of summer also marks a career transition for me. First I have to figure out what that is going to be. The idea was daunting until it occurred to me what a great opportunity this is. I have a portfolio of experience, a network of people who have faith in me, and the world at my feet. What a gift!

This entry title, Summer's Lease Hath All Too Short a Date, came easily to mind as I thought about how quickly time has passed since my last entry just after Memorial Day. It is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 18:

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer's lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimm'd;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd;
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow'st;
Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow'st:


So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
–William Shakespeare

Three Day Weekend

This was a three day weekend, and we spent most of it gardening and cutting firewood. I was finally able to start the ornamental vegetable garden I envisioned. I recently learned that the garden style I wanted has a long history with a formal name: Potager. If there is an Italian equivalent, someone please let me know. Thanks to Melanie at Old Country Gardens for posting about Potageres.

Below is a Google Earth image of the area where I built the Potager. The garden is situated on a flat piece of land that I believe was formerly a growing field when our subdivision was a working farm. Since the road ends in a cove, I refer to that area as the "Cove Lot." It is a barren expanse of cement-like clay/dirt where a few weeds survive, fire ants have built some impressive high-rise developments, and a few crickets hang out.

Thankfully we have a monster vintage Troy Built tiller, a hand-me-down from my in-laws. It churned through the cement clay with ease. It took me three passes per row to get the depth and softness I wanted. I started tilling on Friday night at about 8pm, the earliest I was able to get started. I figured I would get about an hour in, but it turned out that the night was clear enough and the little street lamps were bright enough that I was able to finish the job around 11pm.


You can see the before and after of the ground following tilling, and also some of the chunks of concrete left from the house construction. I also tilled up pieces of wood, shingles, and scraps of metal.

On Saturday morning I was ready to start building the raised beds. I got little marking flags and my measuring tape and was ready to go. I had one yard of garden mix on the ground, two yards in the trailer, and I knew that would not be enough. I used the mix from the trailer so we could go get some more before the landscape place closed. I didn't want to be stranded on Sunday and Monday with no dirt!


I broke from the garden project on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning to split wood (I love the hydraulic wood splitter as much as the monster tiller), but by yesterday evening, the raised beds were complete, and I started putting in the plants.

I took these photos this morning. I couldn't wait to get out to the garden to see if it made it through the night. Sparing it from the deer, bunnies, and other woodland creatures may be my biggest challenge.

Happily, it is raining again today.

Above is a salsa garden: better boy tomatoes, jalapeno plants, a pablano plant, and lots of cilantro sprigs. I will leave the onions to the local growers; we have some fine vidalia growers in the area!


This is an Italian garden: about 6 varieties of tomatoes, lots of sweet basil, and oregano. In the picture below are two eggplants and zuccini. Sweet corn is in the longbed that runs down the center.

After all the rain we had, the tilled clay/dirt turned to the consistency of oatmeal. I couldn't get the trailer any closer to the beds, and there was no way to use the wheel barrow, so I hauled the garden mix one bucket at a time, sinking up to my ankles in the mush. At one point I could barely lift my feet out of it without leaving my boots behind.

It goes without saying that there is lots more I want to do with this bed. More raised beds, more plants, mulch, maybe a *little* water feature...

Giardino di Erba

I finally got my herb garden in. Two years ago I had a respectable miniature herb garden in pots on our little townhouse patio. It was lush and pretty, and I harvested herbs all season long for cooking. Last summer, our first at Villa Pellegrini, the herbs languished in their pots, overgrown and root bound, and I was just too busy to overhaul them. My prize rosemary, that I had trained into a little tree, died of thirst this winter. Yes, I did forget that even in winter, plants do need water.

This year, I am starting over with a fresh crop of herbs. We had enough landscaping stone left from from the front yard project to make a little stacked raised bed border just off the kitchen porch. Our landscaper built the border and even filled it with garden mix for an extraordinarily reasonable price, which meant that I could get right to the fun part of buying and setting out herbs.

For now the herbs are the usual suspects, mostly from Lowe's, plus a few little specialties from the Memphis Botanic Garden's annual sale and Lichterman Nature Center's annual sale, both held conveniently on the same rainy day in April: Parsley (standard and Italian), Sage (a couple of varieties), Rosemary (a new start), and Thyme (three varieties). Plus some dill, taragon, and LOTS of Basil. I am trying again with Cilantro, from seed, although I have not had much luck in the past with it. It needs a lot of direct sun. I will add some in the vegetable garden when I get it planted. I also added in some annual flowers and border plants for a little flair. Now that I have the basics in, I can focus on collecting some "boutique" herb varieties.

Target had these little write-on plant markers in their dollar bin last summer. I got several packs of them, but now I wish I'd gotten more. This little Rosemary sprig is a far cry from the thick, bushy Rosemary I'm used to. I may need to buy it a friend.

I got this dill from the Botanic Garden sale. It was not cheap, and it must be a yummy variety, because in literally two days, a gang of slugs ate all of it. This picture is all that remains. Fortunately I got what must be a hardier variety at Lowe's that is on the other side of the garden and has not been slug molested yet. I was going to set out some beer traps, but it has only just stopped raining. Plus someone mentioned that dogs have a fondness for beer traps, and I can just see Matt drinking the free beer buffet.

I had a seed packet of dill, so I sowed some more last night, along with some lavender, so we will see how it does. I don't really need much dill, I just remember my grandmother and my great aunt growing heaps of it and I want to recreate that. They used theirs to make"cucumber pickles," which is what they called them. I have no intention of doing any pickling.

The Little World of Don Camillo: Discovering An Italian Treasure

A few weeks ago, I made the most amazing discovery. I was looking through books at a second-hand store, with an eye out for anything Italian or Catholic, and put my hand right on The Little World of Don Camillo by Giovanni Guareschi. It obviously sounded Italian, and as I leafed through the first few pages, I noted that it was published 1950 New York by Pellegrini and Cudahy. Pellegrini! Swoon!

Some of you may be nodding and smiling, "Yes of course, how could you not have heard of Don Camillo?" and I have to agree with the sentiment. The author and his characters were quite famous internationally a couple of generations ago. Not just books, but film, radio, and television productions.

The little cartoon illustrations made me think the book was juvenile fiction, but in fact Guareschi takes on some of the heavy political and religious themes of his day in a playful and humerous manner. The overlying theme is Christianity/Catholicism versus Communism. The writing style, along with the illustrations, remind me of James Thurber, one of my favorite humorists.

The Little World of Don Camillo opens with a chapter called, "How I Got Like This." The chapter is actually a letter from Guareschi to the reader and is somewhat an explanation, somewhat an apology, and largely a shrug. The letter is so humerous, painful, and matter-of-fact, sometimes in one sentence, that I fell in love with the author and Don Camillo (whom I hadn't met yet) on the first page. Some exerpts from "How I Got Like This":

"I was born in Parma near the Po River; people born in this area have heads as hard as pig iron and I succeeded in becoming editor-in-chief of Bertoldo. This is the magazine in which Saul Steinberg, who at that time was studying architecture in Milan, published his first drawings and for which he worked until he left to go to America.

"For reasons entirely beyond my control, the war broke out and one day in 1942 I went on a terrific drunk because my brother was lost in Russia and I couldn't find anything about him. That night I went up and down the streets of Milan shouting things which filled several sheets of legal-size paper - as I found out the next day when I was arrested by the political police. Then a lot of people worried about me and they finally got me released. However, the political police wanted me out of circulation and so had me called into the army, and on the 9th of September 1943, with the fall of Fascism, I was taken prisoner again, this time at Alessendria in Northern Italy by the Germans. Since I did not want to work for the Germans, I was sent to a Polish concentration camp. I was in various concentration camps until April 1945, when my camp was taken over by the English, and after five months I was sent back to Italy.

"The period I spent in prison was the most intensely active of my life. In fact I had to do everything to stay alive and succeeded almost completely by dedicating myself to a precise programme which is summarized in my slogan 'I will not die even if they kill me'. (It is not easy to remain alive when one is reduced to sack of bones of which the total weight is one hundred pounds, and this includes lice, bedbugs, fleas, hunger, and melancholy.)

"When I returned to Italy I found that many things were changed, especially the Italians, and I spent a good deal of time trying to figure out whether they had changed for the better or for the worse. In the end I discovered that they had not changed at all, and then I became so depressed that I shut myself in my house."

"I am 5 feet 10 inches high and I have written eight books in all. I have also done a movie which is called People Like This, now being distributed throughout Italy. Many people like the movie; others do not like it. As far as I am concerned, the movie leaves me indifferent. Many things in life me indifferent now, but that is not my fault. It is the fault of the war. The war destroyed a lot of things we had within us. We have seen too many dead and too many living. In addition to 5 feet 10 inches, I have all my hair.
G.G. "

The main characters of The Little World of Don Camillo are Don Camillo, the priest in a town in the Po Valley in Italy; Peppone, the Communist Mayor, who is athiest but shows up in Don Camillo's church regularly, just in case; and Christ, the Crucifix figure hanging in the church, whom Don Camillo consults and converses with. About his characters, Guareschi writes:

"If there is a priest anywhere who feels offended by my treatment of Don Camillo, he is welcome to break the biggest candle available over my head. And if there is a Communist who feels offended by Peppone, he is welcome to break a hammer and sickle on my back. But if there is anyone who is offended by the conversations of Christ, I can't help it; for the one who speaks in this story is not Christ but my Christ—that is, the voice of my conscience."

If you are a Catholic reading the book [and this is me the blogger talking], you might squirm a little. That seems to be Guareschi's intent. I am new to Catholicism and Guareschi, so I can't really be sure. However, if you are Protestant, you are almost certain to squirm, which might be good for you. If you find yourself squirming too much, give the book to a Catholic, preferably Italian, and repent for reading it. You will probably be forgiven. For athiests or Communists, or any of the rest of you, I have no warnings, but would love to hear anyone's opinion of Guareschi's writings.

There are many web sites devoted to keeping alive Don Camillo, the memory of Guareschi, and Guareschi's other literary and artistic contributions. However, I recommend that before you Google and are any more tainted by outside opinion than I have already done, you get a copy of The Little World and read it for yourself. Amazon.com has copies for as little as $3.91. I paid $1 for my first edition at the second-hand store. I told you it was a treasure.

Vincitori e Perdenti

Vincitori

For Pasqua (Easter) I decided to make a coconut cake. I had a recipe from my grandmother, but I was not pleased with it. My results did not turn out like Grandma's: Grandma's cake = rich and moist, tastes like coconut; my coconut cake = sawdust, tastes like sawdust.

I Googled "Italian Coconut Cake, even though coconut is not indigenous to Italy. After all, coconuts could have been carried to Italy by swallows (African or European) gripping them by the husks.

My Google results took me to a web site called New Italian Recipes (hey!), to a recipe with a warning label: "Let's don't kid ourselves, this coconut cake recipe is decadent." Just what I was looking for.

The recipe calls for all kinds of cooking that involves whole-fat dairy products, sugar, eggs, and coconut. I baked the cakes, and made the syrup, the filling, and the icing, and assembled all into a teetery, slippery, sticky tower of coconutty goodness. The results were fantastic. The only thing I might do differently next time--and I can't wait to try this again--is add a liqueur to the syrup and soak the cake in it instead of just drizzle. Otherwise, it was Perfetto!


Perdenti
I roasted a leg of lamb last year, and what with the coconut cake and all, decided to go easy on myself this year, so I bought a spiral sliced Holiday Ham. A brilliant move on my part! Not so brilliant were the biscuits I made to go with the ham.


I used to be a very good biscuit maker having descended on both sides of the family from accomplished biscuit makers. However, at some point between the cake (above) and the biscuits, I forgot that the flour was not self-rising. I peeked in the oven a couple of times to check on my biscuit progress: they were baking and browning, but they were not rising. Hmmmm...I-wonder-why-oh-yeah-now-I-remember. The result there was more of a Passover biscuit, a couple of days too late. Mom to the rescue--she picked up some brown-and-serve rolls on the way over, and all was not lost.

I decided to save the Passover biscuits for the birds, and a couple of days later I entertained myself by hurling them (now like clay pigeons) into the woods. Once again, I didn't really think things through. Matt, the border collie, fetched every single biscuit back into the house. Fortunately they were too hard for him to eat, so as he would try to slink past me, hiding a biscuit the size and density of a saucer in his mouth, I would engage in a little tug of war and retrieve it from his snarling jaws.

On a happy note, I did make a more successful batch of biscuits on Sunday. "Light" and "fluffy" did not really come to mind, but they did rise, and the family did eat them. I think I will go back to self-rising flour.

My Mom is an Olympic Champion!

Yes, it's true. She won the 100-meter run in the Tennessee Senior Olympics, finishing in 18.69 seconds. I will post a picture later, with more results. (The Commercial Appeal did not spell our name correctly: it's Stricklin.)

Congratulazioni Mom! Ti amo!

I Gave to the IRS

Pretty much says it all. :)