Keeping Up With The Figs Plus The Late Summer Garden

Our fig tree started last week to present fruit ripe enough for picking. Presently it is yielding about twenty large figs daily. Learning from our massive blackberry harvest earlier in the season, I knew I wanted to process our figgy bounty in a similar way. Without generating any more heat than what the summer was already providing along with retaining as much vitamin content as possible, the uncooked fruit in the case of the blackberries were put through a Foley mill followed by an addition of confectioner's sugar per sweetness preference; in the case of the figs, they, along with maple syrup, cinnamon, ginger, and nutmeg added to taste, were pureed with a stick blender. Once portioned and popped into the freezer, these home-grown fruits will be ready for future use in all kinds of goodies. I do reserve daily some fresh fig puree to mix into yogurt or if I am experiencing a super home-grown-fruit-appreciation day, I make a tall parfait to take out into the garden. It showcases our blackberries, blueberries, and figs all in one fell swoop. First goes in a layer of crumbled blueberry muffin, followed with the spiced fig puree, blackberry coulis, and yogurt. Topped with more muffin crumbs and a deluge of fig puree and blackberry coulis, it is out of this world with the goodness of fruit.

I love digging a spoon in and seeing swirls of fig puree and blackberry coulis spontaneously appear in a plethora of patterns.

  

A blueberry muffin crumb gracing the gustatory situation just makes everything even better.

Not only are fig trees vigorous, they are also easy to grow and maintain. Pruning is not that difficult as the wood isn't too hard. Since arriving here ten years ago, I haven't yet fertilised it. I do water it in between rains during summer. How to know when they are ripe? First thing, you need to know the colour for your fig variety when it's mature. Ours is mostly purplish brown with swatches of green. Also the fig should not be right angles to its twig/branch, but instead be drooping a bit. Additionally when pressing ever so gently, it will feel like a small balloon filled tightly with air. Lastly, though not always, there will be a drop of juice oozing from the bottom centre. Those are best eating right out of hand immediately. Picking involves slightly twisting the stout stem that afixes each fig to its branch until there's a plump packet of delight sitting in your palm. Since their skin is fragile, bruising easily which is why storebought figs are expensive, place each fig in a single layer. Recycled egg cartons are great as fig harvest baskets.

Two thirds of our tree is in our garden and the other third is in .  .  .

. . . in the yard of a refrigeration depot which is directly behind our urban garden. When their entrance is open I can harvest figs from that side. This coming late winter, I will remember to prune that part of the tree which presently is touching the ground!

Late summer is such a lovely time. It's so enjoyable to sit under the pergola and gaze upon . . .

. . . all the abundance.

Out in the front garden, the border directly in front of the balcony stairs leading to the front entrance door is a tropical riot of yucca and canna with a cooling splash of temperate dahlias, lobelia, and sedum.

À la prochaine!

High Summer 2020

A fresh spring garden, all bright green and friendly, became a lush summer solstice one which is now becoming a glorious mature profusion but not surprisingly showing signs of wear and tear. Watering, weeding, and deadheading will prolong the abundance for a while.

There are three large pots of orange/yellow calendula and deepest blue lobelia, all sowed from seed, throughout our garden. They did need to be sprayed with sulfur to combat a fungal disease called calendula smut. And they may need to be dosed again in order for them to continue flowering all through summer.

For years now social media images of a pot on its side spilling out lobelia visually simulating a small stream intriqued me, and this was the summer I finally got around realising this clever concept.

The 'stream' flows amidst cannas and dahlias. I love it so. It was just a matter of burying one quarter of the depth of an empty pot put on its side, filling it one thirds with soil, and planting by laying the roots laterally with the flowers placed beyond the pot's opening before topping up with more soil. 

It is now the fourth summer that this fragrant tuberous begonia has graced a small sous sol window sill. I hope it will bloom yet again in 2021.

Pots of miniature roses have found their home in a large tub along with a blueberry bush. In this way, not only does the display look full, when the roses are watered/fertilised so is the blueberry!

Hydrangeas are now fading into glorious subtle tones/texture and by autumn will become much like silver lace which always is a treat to behold.

The ivy topiary heart is being shaped gradually.  I just love it! Sculpting greenery is fun and gives so much joy. The structure on which it grows is a thick honeysuckle trunk that gave up the ghost nearly a decade ago. Requiring both patience and decisiveness makes topiary quite a learning experience.

Beets are putting out foliage which when thinned are added to minestrone.

Green beans are flowering. Soon tiny pods will appear and in several weeks they will be ready for picking.

À la prochaine!

A Frosty Morn Delights

Frost is captivating. When looked at from afar, it relaxes the mind, slowing down a zigzag of pesky thoughts enough to get to the point of wanting to go on out and get close to it. The laundry can wait. And that goes for checking email too.

Solid ice in the bird bath is thumped out of its giant plant saucer. Shards lay gleaming on the frosted grass; the bath gets filled with fresh water.

Nothing showcases ice better than the hot pink of penstemon.

There's wind ready and willing to disseminate a dandelion's pollen, but the pollen says not right this moment, but thanks anyway.

A paprika heuchera stuns with picot edging of delicate lace along with a piqué interior of dots. 

A dried sedum clustered flowerhead's swaying in the wind on leggy stems isn't hampered by a newly acquired coat of rime.

Solar lamps encrusted with white accentuate the geometrical purity of a circle and a diamond.

Within sweet alyssum's flowerhead each tiny bloom bears a close resemblance to candied violets.

Weak, wintry sunshine washes over thawed Queen Elizabeth hedge roses facing east in the front garden, fading the vibrant colour into one of old, tattered, salmon-coloured silk.

Pots of lobelia adorning a series of sous sol window sills facing west are still holding onto their blooms since June! Their icy blue fits right in.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINKS

How frost can harm and help your garden

Easing Into Late Summer 2019

All that frenzied, early morning watering done during the canicules (heatwaves), one in June, the other in July, paid off. The garden has held on to most of its lushness. The basket of lobelia which was sowed early spring still captivates as it moves gently with the breeze under the pergola and looks that it will remain doing so through August and September. Perhaps a moderate trim, about one third up from the bottom, will be in order to keep it looking fresh.

Sitting in the pergola's low recliner enables my seeing a nice slice of sky framed between two spruces located on a neighbouring business property and the tops of two pots, each placed on an upturned urn, flanking the start of our back garden's central path.

The pot closest to me is one of black-eyed Susan vine nestled in a rose of Sharon which self-seeded very close to an ivy-covered pillar. A much more robust rose of Sharon is in the right-hand corner of the below photo.

After doing some strenuous gardening like digging up two sunny beds of mid-season Rosabelle potatoes (yellow flesh, pink skin, all-purpose), I rush to the shady pergola and collapse on a lounge chair, removing my sun-protection gear of hat and glasses.

As I catch my breath and cool off with a glass of iced coffee, I can see the lovely blue and green glass balls placed in the blueberry pot situated across from me on the sunny part of the patio. They are hand blown and originally were used to float fishing nets. The blue one most likely is from Norway and the green one from Japan. The former was bought in a Grenoble flea market twenty years ago and the latter from an Oregon shop ten years earlier than its Norwegian companion. Both of these breakaway floats took decades to reach French and American shores. They managed not to shatter during our many relocations. This was the season they were liberated from a dusty sous sol corner, cobwebs wiped off, and washed with the garden hose. They are happy and so am I.

Part of my rest is an amble around the house.  The pergola flanks the west side, so up I go and say hello to pots of lobelia on a series of grilled sous sol window sills.

Making a sharp turn at an intersection of the side and front gardens, I mosey on up the front stairs leading to the entrance balcony. On the way I stoop to get a whiff of the fragrant, cascading tuberous begonia comfy on a small sous sol window sill.

Onto the balcony where pots of lobelia and Japanese holly are doing well.

The lobelia is flourishing in its big container.

Back down the stairs I go and make a sharp right onto the small, undulating path just shy of the overhanging balcony where I see late-blooming lavender 'Hidcote Giant' on the left and a pink hydrangea on the right. This lavender is much taller than 'Hidcote' which finished putting out its blue spikes a month ago. The taller variety hasn't bloomed much since our arrival ten years ago. I had blamed the dearth of flowers on its somewhat shady location. Since I started watering consistently and everywhere last summer, boy, what a flower display this month of August! Almost as abundant as the shorter bushes. Don't ever underestimate the power of water for a garden. Further down, across the driveway, is a potted collection of shade-loving gardenia, tuberous begonia, hellebore, and various heucheras with differently coloured foliage from lime green to paprika sheltering themselves from the sun under a cherry plum tree and a box elder. Mostly shady, that is, until late afternoon, when that spot gets a sudden burst of short-lived sunlight.

À la prochaine!

RELATED LINK

Glass From The Past | Fishing Floats Documentary

Early Summer Garden 2019

Though the weather is cooler than the recent Official Canicule (heat wave), it's still HOT. Therefore I am watering the garden daily in the early morning and seeking refuge under the pergola along with a hanging basket of multi-hued lobelia or in our house. Your house you say? Yes, it stays cool because of our keeping to the recommended protocol for stone houses: keep both shutters and windows closed during the day but at night while keeping the shutters closed, open the windows.

The delicate blooms of lobelia present themselves as a flurry of stars or fireflies or dust motes in a sun beam depending upon flights of imagination. They flutter overhead as we recline in lounge chairs made even more cushiony with throw pillows. That basket was gifted to me more a quarter of century ago, tagged along with us from country to country, until this spring when I noted there was a suitable hook already securely fixed to one of the pergola overhead beams which jogged my memory of the basket, now covered with cobwebs in the sous sol and sans the original chains. I went ahead and sowed shade-loving lobelia indoors late winter thinking I could make do with cord instead of chains. The material I used broke, the rope The Calm One then strung up didn't, but he thought that it would eventually break so he trotted off to the local DIY place and got some chains. It was worth every bit of trouble as it is just sublime to see.

After preparing a bed for sowing carrots, I rushed to the pergola for some relief, removing my hat to let the breeze have its way with my hair, and sipped some iced coffee.

Across the way, sitting on the uncovered part of the patio, is a pot of black-eyed Susan vine (Thunbergia alata) and a bordeaux-red ivy geranium which is waiting to be placed out in the front garden when it has filled out enough.

Down the central path, on the right, is the sprawling blackberry bush. It needed to be staked and now the berries are no longer brushing the grass so they won't rot or get mowed down before I can pick them. I see a blackberry roly poly⁠—shortcake dough brushed with butter and spread with sugared berries, rolled up, topped with more berries, baked, and served with whipped cream⁠—in its future.

The strawberry patch has slowed down considerably but is still putting out a dessert bowl of berries weekly.

Daylilies are called that because each bloom lasts just a day, but look at the number of buds! This variety's name is El Desperado. It has golden yellow flowers with a burgundy centre and edge.

Another daylily, a potted Stella de Oro which is a reblooming variety, is keeping an equally golden Thunbergia alata company on a double sous sol window sill. It's good they both can take on a full frontal sun, because that window faces south. The tuteur is one of the old dried seed pods stuck on sticks that we found stored in a wood cupboard under the indoors barbecue. If that hanging basket can be brought to life, so can these sticks!

The hydrangea on the other hand is tucked in the front garden which faces north. It's just as happy as its sun-loving peers. I appreciate that aspect of gardening so much, that is, finding the right place so each plant can thrive.

Another golden sun worshiper is this rose.

À la prochaine!

Late Spring Garden 2019

The potager is humming along, revving up its growth rate to take on the summer push which will lead into late summer/autumnal harvesting: peas, potatoes, green beans, peaches, figs, and blackberries to name a few.

The old pear tree festooned with golden trumpet vine which borders the ivy-covered pergola marks the boundary between the back and west gardens. That soft-pink cloud off in the distance is the front garden's deutzia.

On the right of the back garden's main path is the pergola and a potted bougainvillea on an upturned planter. Before its lofty positioning, it was on the open patio across the path, basking in the sun and getting drenched in the rain. The sun part was fine, but being soaked frequently wasn't, at least not for abundant blooming. Last summer, after decorating the beginning of the path with two flanking potted plants, one being the bougainvillea, I noticed it put out many more flowers than usual even though it received less sun. After a little research I found out why. It needs drought stress in order to bloom. Being under the pergola protected it from rains. Presently, it is watered only when the top four inches of potting mix is dry.

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Its companion this season will be potted Thunbergia alata (Black-eyed Susan vine) which will as it grows be trained upon tuteurs. There were some dusty dried seedpod decorated sticks stuck in the wood cabinet under the indoors barbecue since moving here about ten years ago, and I finally found an use for them! The anticipated effect will be both height and draping over its pedestal. The pot in front which also contains the vine, but has a purple flowering ivy geranium to provide contrasting colour to the yellow-blooming black-eyed Susan, will go out to the front steps. The pot in front of that, yup, you guessed it, also filled with Thungbergia will be put on the balcony overlooking the front garden. The many Thunbergia along with trailing blue lobelia seedlings were started indoors late winter. The lobelia will graced the four, small casement window sills on the west side of the house, a basket under the pergola, and a huge pot on the shady part of the balcony. Here's hoping my grand plan works (historically they tend not to)! Since a path that goes nowhere, in this case, smack right against an unattractive back wall, begs for something to catch your eye, I plonked a garden chair at the path's end. In the future, a potted camellia and a mirror instead? At present, I love sitting in the chair, from which a very different perspective of the garden is to be had.

It is my wont to buy plants from online nurseries which often have much younger and less expensive plants than at the local garden centres. Greater choice, also. So where do these baby plants go when they first arrive as usually they are too small to make visual impact? In nursery beds of course. This year-and-half-old bed has penstenmon, moss pink, teucrium, a mum, three Mikado daylilies, and six laurels that were taken as cuttings from the existing hedge. They will be put in their permanent locations either this early autumn or next spring depending on their growth this season and the state of my muscle strength.

The front garden (looking towards a neighbour) is a pleasing jumble of drooping red weigela, overflowing pink deutzia, and exuberant lavender.

Bloom cuddle!

Peonies look good near bearded iris foliage and lavender.

If using for culinary and cosmetic purposes, it is best to harvest lavender when still in bud form.

Right by the driveway gate are pots of shade-loving plants as the terracotta roofing tile framed bed filled with our own wood chips luxuriates under cherry plum and box elder trees: three heucheras (tiramisu, Georgia peach, paprika), polystichum sword fern, tuberous begonia, hellebore, and the latest but not least, the centrepiece gardenia.

Gardenias and I go a ways back, first in California where it hardly bloomed because the soil was too alkaline but still made me fall in love with its beauty, then another specimen on our Grenoble tenth floor balcony, where it flourished for a decade while keeping me company and regaled me with its heady fragrance during long hours of day trading in a tiny room, and finally when arriving here, it was put in the ground and soon after perished in the cold. If ever a plant could be called a friend, that gardenia would have fit the bill. This one's container was filled with acid potting mix and will spend the winter in the sous-sol, thank you very much.

À la prochaine!