Banditos

There's been a much longer than usual gap since my last post, but I've got a good excuse.  Mr. Mulch takes an annual fishing trip to Montana and/or Wyoming each August, and since I don't fish and am usually busy getting one or another kid ready for school, I haven't accompanied him in the past.  This year, however, I realized the foolishness of that approach, so he had company.  My younger daughter (who does fish) and I tagged along on the Wyoming/Idaho portion of the trip, leaving the garden in the capable hands of my older daughter, who was very excited about taking custody of the veggies during tomato season.  


Or at least she was initially excited.  I neglected to tell her that invariably whenever Mr. Mulch goes on his August trip some kind of critter-related catastrophe usually occurs.  Last year, for example, the deer picked that particular week to finally breach our defenses and devour the beans, crop the carrots, and shear the chard.  I figured (hoped?) that our presence on the trip this year would alter the garden karma sufficiently to prevent any mishaps.  So we happily spent the week enjoying fabulous weather, gorgeous scenery, and -- for those who fished -- lots of action.

While we were enjoying the following...

View of Henry's Lake from the living room of the house we rented

Upper Mesa Falls -- with rainbow!

Yellowstone Canyon

Grand Teton Peak -- seen from Jackson Hole

... Our daughter was under siege back home.  Three days after we left, she did her morning garden patrol to discover with horror twenty odd tomatoes half eaten, strewn all over the beds.  The interloper had the nerve to simply take a bite or two from each before casting it aside and swiping another, leaving his calling card indiscriminately on every tomato he could reach, green or red.

Teeth marks!

Clearly this tomato was too young to die!

After investigating thoroughly, she determined that our unwelcome visitor was most likely a raccoon, initially lured onto the property by our compost pile -- new this year -- and quickly trading that discovery for the much more delectable goodies still fresh and tasty on the vine.  It was his insouciance that was most irritating; his casual disregard for the fruit itself.  And his terrible table manners, too.  He ate nothing completely, but simply ruined the tomatoes for anyone else.  Additional defensive measures were necessary.


I have to hand it to my daughter -- she was quite resourceful in her response to this incursion.  She managed to find enough deer netting to wrap most of the tomatoes, Christo-like, making them inaccessible to prying paws and sharp teeth.

Tomatoes wrapped in protective netting

By the time we came home -- very late on a Sunday night, she was prowling the garden,  flashlight in hand, looking for masked invaders and wishing she knew where we kept the air rifle.  At that point the carnage had slowed, mostly because the little bastard had already eaten anything he could reach, and the support for the higher vines wasn't sturdy enough to take the weight of what by now was probably a very fat raccoon.


We supplemented her defenses with a motion-detecting siren we had gotten to ward off deer who found their way in last year.  It's a nifty little device that emits an ear-splitting high-pitched siren and a pulsing strobe light when it's tripped by movement, and it worked quite well against deer, freaking them out entirely.  However, Rocky wasn't fazed by it in the least, though it kept me up most of the night.  It's uselessness was evident when we found this the next morning:

I want to wring his little neck!

So tonight, we're digging out the night vision goggles, the air rifle, and a few hand grenades.  This is war!

Tomatoes and Tarts: Orgy!

We readily admit to being tomato snobs.  We only eat them for about two months a year, when they actually grow somewhere nearby.  The rest of the year, they're just small pinkish rocks carted in from some far off generic tomato field, bred to be tough enough to endure transport -- sort of like those laptops whose skins are inch thick rubber with treads that could move a tank.  

We buy them reluctantly from our local farmers' market in early July, knowing they've been coaxed early and under plastic.  And while they're not as tasteless as commercial tomatoes, they're far from the sun-kissed fruit that will come later.  

As any vegetable gardener will attest, the best tomatoes come straight from one's own garden and, in all humility, ours are no exception.  In fact, tomatoes are probably the reason Mr. Mulch ever got into vegetable gardening in the first place.  We grow several varieties of heirlooms for eating and paste tomatoes for sauce and purees.  Their names are as intoxicating as their flavors, and in the interminably dark days of February when we're starting to plan the next year's garden, simply reciting the names can trigger intense drooling: Pruden's Purple, Black Krim, Fourth of July (which missed its due date this year), Cherokee Purple, Japanese Black Triffle, Rose de Berne, Brandy Boy, ginormous bulbous Black Brandywine, and the literal, but oh so luscious, Yellow Brandywine.
 

Right now the vines are filled with fruit in various stages of redness -- and some yellowness.  Some are so heavily laden it's a wonder they're still upright.  And when the vines look like this...

Fruit on the vine

The garden basket I use to carry the day's haul looks like this...

Fruit in the basket

Any conversation about the days' menu starts with the assumption that tomatoes will figure into the eating one way or another.  At the beginning of this surfeit, we usually start with a taste test.  That's how we decide which of the year's new varieties will be making a return appearance next season.  The biggest challenge in sampling is remembering which variety we're actually eating.  Apart from the yellow beefsteak, which is a no-brainer, it's sometimes hard to tell the difference between a Brandy Boy and a Brandywine once they're on the plate.  So this year I resorted to a very lo-tech approach to keeping things straight.

Fruit on the plate...

... and soon to be in the tummy

From this point on, our indulging in tomatoes becomes a bit... shall we say... orgiastic?  We eat them with virtually every meal.  Mr. Mulch is a bit of a purist, so the largest and tastiest are simply peeled, sliced, and devoured.  But even he gets to the point where he's willing to accept some tampering with their natural deliciousness.  When that happens, I often resort to a wonderful tomato tart recipe I found in the New York Times several years ago -- Granny's Tomato Tart.   It has several appealing attributes, not the least of which is that it uses up quite a few large tomatoes.  But it also includes a shot of Dijon mustard, a layer of gruyere which bonds with the crust and keeps the tomatoes from making it soggy, and a sprinkling of whatever herbs I want to grab from the herb garden.

 

Here are the tarts, all assembled and ready to cook

After cooking, they don't look much different, but oh, the aroma!

Ready to eat, with a little avocado garnish -- yum!

 
There is one problem with growing your own tomatoes -- though it is, as they say, a good problem to have. No matter how carefully you plan; no matter how intensely you've looked forward to this, the only time of the year when you can eat them three times a day if you want; no matter how much gazpacho you make; no matter how much sauce you put up in neat ball jars to provide solace through the long winter; no matter what you do -- at some point in August, you will be completely overwhelmed.  Because every time you make a trip to the garden, you return with this:

Just a quick, casual harvest today

And then, something unthinkable happens.  Although your every instinct cries out against it, and you know you'll regret this come next December, you can't. Possibly.  Eat. Another. Tomato.  And so you start looking for neighbors, friends, casual acquaintances on whom to offload some of your bounty.  

Happily, that's also the point where you discover just how many friends you do have!

Badger Beauty

The husband of one of my dearest friends is an alum and ardent supporter of the University of Wisconsin, whose mascot is a badger.  This would be an irrelevant and unremarkable bit of trivia except for the fact that I am an alum of the University of Michigan, home of the Wolverines.  

Wisconsin Mascot, the somewhat nasty badger

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Michigan Mascot, the much nastier Wolverine

 

 

 

 

 

The rivalry between the two schools is not quite as vituperative as that between Michigan and Ohio State, but it's substantial enough to provide a good deal of amusement as we trade good-natured barbs and silly cartoons of vicious sharp-toothed critters who are in fact both members of the same weasel family.  We also gloat with abandon when our respective teams win.  Sadly, Michigan's teams have been less than stellar lately, so I'm rather gloat-deprived.

These good friends make frequent pilgrimages to Madison, and often bring back souvenirs to demonstrate the relative superiority of UW's hometown as compared to Ann Arbor, site U of M's home campus.  I remain largely unimpressed by mementos related primarily to cows and cheese.

But this year, I have to hand it to them, they nailed it.  When they came to dinner in late Spring, they handed me a bag of gladiola bulbs which they had hidden from overzealous security guards (transporting agricultural matter might be a no-no).  Since we then proceeded to polish off several Scotches and a couple bottles of wine, I no longer have any memory of the explanation for the connection between gladioli and Wisconsin, but I'm sure there was one, apart from the certainty that there would be some red and some white blooms.

I had never grown gladioli, since in our zone they need to be treated as annuals, much like dahlias.  I have little patience for plants that need to be dug up and coddled through winter before being coaxed into another season.  But here these were, and there was an empty space where the irises had finished blooming, so in they went.  And then I forgot about them.  

Oh, sure, I noticed when they sent long spears of foliage, iris-like, rising 3 feet above the ground.  But I must've missed the blooms swelling along their long stalks because one morning I looked out the living room window and saw this:

And this...

And this...

But there was one so gorgeous that I had to cut it an bring it inside where we could enjoy it without breaking a sweat.  And even though I know this will bleed into the right hand column, the color is so peachy-apricotty-lemony gorgeous that it needs to be seen close up.

 

Sure is prettier than either mascot.  And although I still can't fully embrace Wisconsin memorabilia, I will not only make an exception for this, but I have put my friends on notice that they will not be welcome next year unless they make bringing a piece of badger beauty with them an annual ritual.

Alien Invasion

Last year was a big year for cicadas.  Their whirring hum was a constant backdrop for any outdoor activity.  It was also the first time we became acquainted with cicadas' natural predator, a variety of wasp uninterested in typical wasp-like behavior -- that is the unprovoked and incredibly painful stinging of hapless humans.  This species, whose official name is Sphecius speciosus, is commonly referred to as cicada killer because its sole (and rather perverse) purpose is to keep the population of cicadas under control.  Couldn't we have skipped this symbiotic relationship altogether and reduced the count of the insect world by two species -- who would have noticed?


In any event, we first saw a couple of these bugs last year.  They're hard NOT to notice.  The females are the larger of the two genders and they're the insect equivalent of a C-130 Hercules cargo plane.  They're huge -- about 2" long and bigger than some hummingbirds.  It's hard to get a sense of scale from this picture, but trust me, she's ginormous.

The females have stingers but use them primarily to stun their prey, though they will defend themselves if you step on them.  The males, smaller and a bit nimbler (more like a B-52), have no stingers and spend much of their time wrestling in midair with one another over who gets to date which lady.


We adopted a benign attitude towards them last year.  They reciprocated.  A good time was had by all.


This year, not so much.


It turns out that the bountiful cicada supply of last year was used to nourish a bumper crop of cicada killer larvae who slumbered through the winter and emerged in legions this summer.  And this year's population has been busy getting ready to multiply exponentially -- even though the cicada pickins' are slimmer.  And how do we know this?  Because these insects don't cover their tracks.  At all.  They burrow into sandy or dry soil, excavating huge mounds of debris with a telltale tunnel down into an insect catacomb where they deposit larvae in multiple cells, walling each in with one or two cicadas (dead) to serve as their room service meals throughout the winter.  


This is not a problem if you have a patch of barren soil in an inconspicuous place in the corner of your backyard.  However, on our property the only dry sandy soil is between the flagstones in the patio.  In the middle of our outdoor dining area.  Which now looks as though a small army has been digging foxholes and preparing for battle.

They have heaved up at least half of the patio. The dining table, no longer level, now sits at a rakish angle and corn cobs roll off it if you don't pay attention.  And although we know that they don't sting, it's still unnerving to have half a dozen of these dirigibles buzzing our heads as we try to enjoy dining al fresco.  And unless we do something about these larvae-filled mazes below the patio, next year we'll have to start setting places for them at the table.  Any suggestions?