Our Gourd Farm

I have always loved to grow gourds.  Even when I was a little boy gourd growing was filled with surprises and always enjoyable results.  On our normal travel routine I have often planted gourd seeds and then had to leave them on their own to produce or not for the season.  This year, though, with extended time at home, Trish and I have been able to not only plant but nurture and pet the gourds  as they make their productive way through the season.

Part of our gourd farm.

We have eleven hills of plants growing at various places around the house.  Most of them are where they can go up trees and some vines have already reached about twenty feet. They are now blooming like mad and there are about twenty-five small gourds, some up to about four inches long.

Can you find four little gourds on this vine so far?

The gourds bloom at night beginning to open up after the sun goes down.  They have both male and female blooms and it is quite easy to tell the difference.  The female bloom structure is visible different from the male and the females also have what looks like tiny gourds at the base of the bloom.

It is easy to pollinate them by hand as we have few bees on the island and don’t trust the night insects.  At the edge of darkness we go out each evening on our pollination trip.  We locate a waiting female blossom, then pluck of a male blossom nearby and touch them together.  This almost always results in success and you can tell by morning if it has worked.

Caught in the act of pollination!

We are growing four different kinds of gourds this year and hope to have a bumper crop.

Why do we grow gourds? You ask.  One reason...it is fun!

Peachy Treat!

Whenever we are in our way home from a trip, Trish and I love to stop at the Farmers’ Market  in Raleigh.  Right now the market is very spread out to allow good spacing and social distancing and still remain open during COVID-19.

We got cucumbers, green beans, okra, field peas, heirloom tomatoes, honey, corn, squash, melons, flowers, Brussels sprouts, blueberries, and peaches.

It’s hard not to over do it with all this fresh stuff.

In the winter time we eat a lot of yogurt in the season when there is a shortage of fresh fruit.  So, we love a kind of peach purée that Trish puts up when the peaches are fresh right now.  Our half bushel of beautiful peaches were turned into this lovely stuff in no time when we got back home.

Smiling because it is all finished.

Now we have 22 pints of peach purée sauce to enliven our yogurt (and maybe ice cream) when fresh peach season is long past.

We will remember fresh peaches when we enjoy this good stuff.

A Surprise Guest.

Trish and I were in Florida in February camping at Walt Disney World in our Airstream.  When we left Florida, we needed to have a little bit of warranty work done on the Airstream so we came home by Out of Doors Mart in Greensboro where we left the trailer for the work to be done.  We thought we would be picking it up in a couple of weeks.

Well, COVID-19 put an extended end to our pickup plans and the trailer sat there on their back lot for  a little more than four months after the repair was made. We really wanted to get it home, and, the car that pulls it needed service also.  So, early this week we made our first trip off the island since early March.

We left in the first ferry on Tuesday and got to the Mercedes dealer in Durham at 1:00 where we waited while the service was done.  We then drove to Greensboro and spent the night with our dear friends, Brucie and David Shook before leaving early the next morning to get the trailer and head for home.

Everything went as planned.  We even got to stop at the Farmers’ Market in Durham and load up on fresh vegetables and fruits.  We got home that evening and fell into bed.

Our camper back at home.

The next morning we went out and backed the Airstream into its normal parking place and unhooked the car.  Then we noticed something unusual.  Our bikes had been on the back of the camper this entire time and a bird had built a significant nest between the two bikes on the back of the camper.

Our bird nest hitchhiker.

Fortunately for the bird, the eggs were hatched and the babies had fledged.  We got home with only the empty nest.

If we remove the bikes with care, I think it will come out in one piece and make for us a story relic by which to remember.

Let’s Make Cookies!

My favorite thing to do is cooking.  Since we have had this wonderful long time at home, I have been free to cook to my heart’s (and stomach’s) content.

About every three or four days I make a certain kind of cookies that Trish and I have in bed with coffee and hot chocolate each morning.  They are based of the ANZAC biscuits from WW II with significant personal modifications.

The ANZAC biscuits, named for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps of WW II, were made of simple available ingredients that would not spoil so that they could be send to soldiers fighting around the world.  The original ingredients were: flour, rolled oats, cocoanut, sugar, sweet syrup and butter.  While this makes a very stable and dependable cookie to start with, I pop up the texture and flavor with my version.  Here we go!

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

In a large bowl mix together:
1 cup all purpose flour
1 cup rolled oats (I use Bob’s Red Mill Thick Rolled Oats)
1 cup coconut (Baker’s Sweetened is the best)
1/2 teaspoon of sea salt (coarse grains give you little bursts of saltiness)
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
8 dried figs chopped into about 8 pieces inch
1/2 cup of chopped walnuts

Putting the dry ingredients all together.  All you need is a spoon...no mixer!

Put a stick of butter and 1/4 cup corn syrup in a container and heat until melted (I do one minute in the microwave).

Heat a tablespoon of water to near boiling, then add 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda all at once and immediately stir into the butter-syrup mixture.

Stir the butter-syrup-soda water into the dry ingredients until totally mixed.  At this time add a teaspoon of vanilla.

Scoop tablespoon sized cookies onto the cookie sheets.  About a dozen to each cookie sheet, or 24 in all.  Bake the sheets separately for about twelve minutes each,  let them cool in the pan to finish cooking.

I cut the parchment sheets in half after baking and store then in a Tupperware container.

Since they have so many ingredients we enjoy in the morning, they are our staple breakfast and coffee cookies.  Try the and enjoy!

Haircut Day!

I got my hair cut in February, and, even though it grows slowly, there is no way it could reasonably go for four months without turning into a mess.

It was not just that Trish finally decided that I looked like a hairy man, it was feeling hot, greasy, frizzy, and just miserable.

What a mess to begin with.

So, yesterday was the day!

We set up shop beside the hot tub on the back deck and she went to work.  She was so very careful and took plenty of time, and, when it was over, there was a huge pile of hair on the deck and I was ready to shower and wash my hair to see how things had turned out.

It looks great!  What a good job, and, it feels to light, cool, and good.

All trimmed and ready to grow again.

Maybe I won’t even look for a place to have haircuts anymore once this time is all over since I have experienced the best of all worlds at home.

The Yard is Coming Back

Hurricane Dorian brought about five feet of water over this part of the yard and up onto the wall of and inside the garage pictured here. The salty water was filled with refuse of every sort as well as being polluted with sewage, gasoline, and diesel fuel.  Everything died and there was stench and stink for quite a long time after the best possible cleanup work.

It is so dear now to see that the back yard is back, clean, with grass growing and welcoming us to once again enjoy time there.

This week our son, Doug, and his wife, Jill, have been with us.  The garage apartment has been their home for the week, but, one night we built our first fire in the fire pit since the Hurricane and had beer and hot dogs in the yard.

Doug and I burn our hot dogs while Jill and Trish watch.

It is amazing how such a simple thing can be such a reason for joy and thankfulness.  We give thanks for fire, grass, beer, and hot dogs!

Birthday!

Yesterday was my 76th birthday!

We were awakened early by the roofers arrival at 7:07 am to take advantage of a clear and dry day to try to finish the steel roof work that had been interrupted by a week of rain.  That they had arrived signaled that it was indeed to be a beautiful day: clear skies of blue and a slightly breezy temperature in the edge of the seventies.

Trish checks out a finished portion of our new steel roof. The new skylights make windows from my upstairs office.

Our son, Doug, and his wife, Jill, had arrived the night before to spend a week on the island.  After a very lazy start to the day, I was informed that I could do whatever I wanted for the entire day.  I spent most of the day reading on the screen porch (I am in the midst of a well-plotted novel, The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan, a change of pace after just finishing Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile the day before).

It was such a lovely day: I got to watch the roofers work, I received emails and Facebook wishes, there were phone calls from friends and family members, including all the boys and grandson Frank, whose own sixth birthday he is still celebrating two weeks after the fact!

We all picked up our lunch orders at Eduardo’s Taco Truck and picnicked on the back deck in the sunshine.

The best part of the day was perhaps dinner.  We had steak on the Big Green Egg, roasted Brussels sprouts, baked sweet potatoes...and then...the biggest treat of all.  When Trish asked a couple of days ago, “What do you want for your birthday cake?” I had to think.  I’m not really much of a cake person.  I also don’t eat chocolate since I don’t do caffeine.  Then I remembered how much I loved my mother’s butterscotch pie when I was a small boy.

Beautiful!

“A butterscotch meringue pie,” I announced followed by her declaration that she had never in her life made such a thing.  But...it was done, and, a splendid thing it is.  In fact, this morning I plan to have butterscotch pie for breakfast on the screen porch.

It was the best birthday...so far!!