Our friend Jack and his structurally-sound beanstalk are the things of which fairy tales are made. In my garden, a goldfinch can bring down a pole bean just by considering it as a pleasant and potential perch. Like everyone, poles beans need all the support they can get. Here’s how I do it: the modified wattle (not to be confused with the dance from the 70s).

Early in the season pole beans have a place to grow.

And when it comes to elaborate structures, I say less is more and besides I need to be able to rototill it into the ground next spring. As with most of my projects and thrifty nature, I ask, “What can I use that I already have?” The answer: tree shoots or saplings. Yep, I’ve got sticks for days.  After cutting down some young maples, the stump or stool sends up shoots; it’s a practice called coppicing, but any unbranched stick will do.  My hands-down favorite green bean to plant is Fortex. It’s french filet type that never gets stringy and has amazing flavor and vigor; at least in the Pacific Northwest.

Wattle Pole Bean Fence: How-To 

Materials: 7-8 ft sticks, some sturdy, some more flexible

1. Firmly push strong sticks into ground until secure.
2. Space 6-8 inches apart and repeat down the row’s length
3. When vertical sticks are in, start to weave weaker branches horizontally
4. Alternate weaving the branches in and out of the vertical sticks
5. Repeat but the next row weave out and in.
6. Repeat until you have about 6-8 inches of sturdy weave.
7. Plant your bean seeds at the base of each vertical pole.

A wattle is simply branches woven as a fence.

Strong enough for a flock of goldfinch and mess of beans.

A bountiful morning when you have the right tools. 

Berry (and cherry) picking is serious business; you pick, eat a few, then try to get them in the bucket without spilling your handful from a high altitude. And then there’s the bending down to fill the bucket part. (Bad backs need not apply.) There’s got to be a better way!

The tallclover prototype during its testing phase: lightweight and no rope burns.

I took my design inspiration for a better berry-pickin’ bucket from the clever folks at Bybee-Nims Farms at the base of Mt. Si near North Bend, WA. Their berry bucket: a clothesline cut to four feet, ends threaded through two opposite holes in an open coffee can and then knotted, basically a bucket pendant necklace.

The prototype: cheap, comfortable and with several applications.

I adapted the idea, using a light weight plastic storage container and a soft twist tie (foam-covered, wire-core) for the rope.  My extensive testing proves the design reliable and my capacity to eat fresh berries without match.  It’s an especially handy when you’re on a ladder. But why limit it to a berry/cherry picking bucket, what about as:

• a cereal bowl for your morning commute or late night snacking
• a place to store your reading glasses
• a new-fangled air sickness bag
•  a popcorn holder when at the theater

Ah the list goes on, but for now I have a date with some overripe raspberries. Ladies, gentlemen, don your buckets.

Anna & Ryan: The smiles say it all.

Yesterday, love came to rest on Vashon. That’s not to say it’s not hanging around our island on a daily basis, but this was a different kind of love: the sneaking-up kind of love that gets you teary-eyed before you know it, the tonic kind of love that cures what ails you, the knock-on-the-door kind of love that doesn’t wait for an invitation or key turn before busting the door off its hinges to proclaim,  “I’m here. Join me now or get out of the way!” I’m here to tell you, none of us stepped aside.

 Yes, yesterday love set sail for Vashon, and I was fortunate enough to be caught in the wake of its charge, to be witness to a day where wishes came true and words melted our hearts. We all saw a different kind of love that day, not one that  wanes or withdraws but one that lives out loud and defines a lifetime. Congratulations, Anna & Ryan!

Beautiful Anna, as held by the two who hold her so dearly.

One leaf, one stream, some sun, seaweed and a whole lot of pretty.

Nature can surely frame a pretty picture, and last Sunday, friends and I discovered the subtle beauty of one place where each step afforded a new work of art: Fern Cove and lower Shinglemill Creek. This chartreuse leaf caught the eye and imagination of my friend Mary Ann and lead me into the cold creek to catch a closer look and try to capture its artful pose. Nature cooperated handsomely.

Fern Cove, Vashon Island (low tide)

The Vashon Park District just completed the restoration of the Belle Baldwin House , which guests can rent weekly. The 1912 house is located on the beach above, about 40 feet to the right of the driftwood.

 Stella Cherries poised for the picking. 

Here’s an update on how my young orchard grows.

• Stella: Sweet Cherry, 4 years old, first harvest 2008, 3 pounds, healthy, no insect or disease issues
• Lapin: Sweet Cherry, 4 years old, first harvest 2007, 1  pound, moderate grower, no insect or disease issues
• Early Burlat: Sweet Cherry, 4 years old, no harvest, moderate grower, no insect or disease issues
• Rainer: Sweet Cherry, 4 years  old, first harvest 2008, 20 cherries, healthy, no insect or disease issues
• Montmorency: Sour or Pie Cherry, 3 years old, first harvest 2008, very healthy (despite shaded area), likely five pounds of small cherries, should be ready to pick in a week two.

In general, the cherry trees are healthy in a full-sun location (except sour cherry trees shaded by large walnuts), in very loamy, sandy soil with excellent drainage, which requires supplemental watering. Foilage is rich green and new growth is about 11 inches so far this summer.

Stella Cherries: the before picture; the after, no so pretty.  

Metaphors come in all shapes and sizes (as do cliches), and this morning one of my favorites came to mind and to rest at my breakfast table. Life is just a bowl of cherries indeed. And with such a glowing cache of fresh-picked gems before me, the world seems pretty fine. Mr. Ray Henderson’s 1931 classic sums it up quite nicely; words to live by, just keep an eye out for the robins.

People are queer, they’re always crowing, scrambling and rushing about;
Why don’t they stop someday, address themselves this way?
Why are we here? Where are we going? It’s time that we found out.
We’re not here to stay; we’re on a short holiday.

Life is just a bowl of cherries.
Don’t take it serious; it’s too mysterious.
You work, you save, you worry so,
But you can’t take your dough when you go, go, go.

So keep repeating it’s the berries,
The strongest oak must fall,
The sweet things in life, to you were just loaned
So how can you lose what you’ve never owned?
Life is just a bowl of cherries,
So live and laugh at it all.

Life is just a bowl of cherries.
Don’t take it serious; it’s too mysterious.
At eight each morning I have got a date,
To take my plunge ’round the Empire State.
You’ll admit it’s not the berries,
In a building that’s so tall;
There’s a guy in the show, the girls love to kiss;
Get thousands a week just for crooning like this:
Life is just a bowl of . . . aw, nuts!
So live and laugh at it all!

MP3 music sample: Life Is a Bowl of Cherries

 It took four days for this peach to ripen, note the dripping juice.

I love peaches too much to eat them as the rock hard flavorless orbs we’ve come to expect from the local grocer.  It’s worth every penny to buy from local growers or grow peaches yourself as it seems impossible to ship perfectly ripe peaches. Heck, I can’t take a bag full of my peaches to a neighbor across the street without having jam upon arrival.

After years of trying many techniques, I believe I’ve found the best way to ripen a peach if picked too early or trucked in from another local and picked firm.  It’s simple and it works.

Grocery stores will say to ripen peaches in paper bags, but I’ve never been satisfied with the results and peaches end up rotting or becoming mealy crowded together, victims of stale and moisture-rententive air.  It’s the kitchen equivalent of being locked in school bus on a hot summer day.

1. First of all, never squeeze a peach as you basically ruin it. The bruised tissue just rots and consumes the peach in a matter of hours. It took a full year to grow that peach, show a little respect. Select unbruised peaches with nice color, full shape and nice weight for the size.

Beauty and the beastly (if not grubby) garden hand

2. Place the peach or nectarine stem side down on a linen napkin or cotton tea towel as these fabrics breathe.  Forget  terry cloth as it holds moisture and tends to encourage mold. (You are free to roll your eyes, but I tell you this works.)

3. Make sure the fruit doesn’t touch and is kept in a cool place out of the sun.

4. Cover them up with another linen napkin or cotton tea towel. It may take a few days, sometimes even a week.

Let your treasure rest and ripen.

5. They are ripe when they smell like a peach and the stem side is pressed down a bit from the weight and softening of the peach as it ripens. The resulting peach: perfumed, juicy, soft, delectable.

If you have too many that ripen at once, you can refrigerate them to stop the ripening, but that’s only if you can’t five to six peaches a day.

 A match made in tastebud heaven: a little strawberry-rhubarb jam on a slice of Macrina Bakery raisin bread.

Our unseasonably cool summer (okay, late spring) has left my tomato starts and basil shivering in their beds, drooping from a low-temperature hangover. This, while my garden’s leaf master, rhubarb, stands tall, beaming under the cloudy, inclement skies of a Puget Sound marine layer, bulking out as a bumper crop of grand proportion. Looking to the cupboard for some spreadable fruit delight to dress up my dry toast, I found that the larder was low. Down to a couple jams jars labeled with smeared dates and questionable freshness, I called upon said bumper crop of rhubarb to rescue me from a potential unsavory encounter with a past due date or stale snacking experience. 

I borrowed a strawberry-rhubarb jam recipe from Mes Confitures: The Jams and Jellies of Christine Ferber. What I like about her technique is something I’ve always done because I never used bottle pectin and it help solidfy the fruit mixture; you let the fruit and sugar rest for a day or so and in doing so, the sugar draws out the juices and preserves the fruit’s shape and structure, much like salting something. (Lutefisk can be handed down for generations.)  It usually takes me about three days to make jam, a very no-big-deal three days. Day one: It sits, absorbs sugar. Day two: I let it simmer gently, shutting off the heat to let it evaporate some. Day three: I heat it again to simmer and know it’s ready when the jam congeals as two separate drops off of my stirring spoon. Then, I bottled it up, using small jars. It takes a few steps; but I find it’s a very small price to pay for sunshine in a jar, especially when its namesake is so reluctant to appear.

“Summer is the time when one sheds one’s tensions with one’s clothes,

and the right kind of day is jeweled balm for the battered spirit.

 A few of those days and you can become drunk with the belief that all’s right with the world.”

–Ada Louise Huxtable

Summer is an elusive season for the Pacific Northwest. There are certainly harbingers suggesting that we’re heading in the right direction, but it’s the pace of things that leaves me anxious and wondering, “Will summer ever arrive?”  I’m encouraged by the  dinnertime din that someone somewhere is mowing something, or the welcomed return of darting swallows overheard, or the lush, rapid and rampant growth of weeds in every corner of friable space.

Purists (and the science-minded) chide me that my laments are unfounded and that summer is still a month away, but I know better. When the hammock goes up the calendar is marked. (As the photo implies, Gracie tends to agree.)