The Clafouti Trilogy: Part 1, Summer Foods

I baked an apricot-peach-blackberry clafouti on Monday.  The deeply apricoty apricots reminded me just how much I love warm fruit, apricots, and clafouti.

Combined with recent creations of fruit soup, zucchini pancakes and watermelon-feta salad, the clafouti felt like a wondrous rediscovery of seasonal foods, as if I had found something long lost over the sleety winter.  They had me thinking, "I should make this more often!" and then, "I can't have this more often.  This is only good with real peaches, with fresh berries, with juicy watermelon, with actual local corn on the cob . . . I don't make zucchini pancakes in the winter because I couldn't find an overgrown zucchini and wouldn't buy it if I could.  And, oh yeah, I really need to freeze some pesto."
What foods are summer to you?
Need any reminders to get out there and enjoy summer produce?
Here are a few from me:
Watermelon-feta salad    Corn on the cob    Grilled apricots    Buttermilk berry soup with fresh mint   Tomatoes, basil and mozzarella    Pesto   Clafouti   Grilled zucchini   Summer squash hash (new from the Mister)   Tabbouleh salad   Peaches   Gazpacho   Cucumber raita    Salsa   Green beans, new potatoes and bacon      BLATs (BLTs with avocado)  Cobblers, crumbles, buckles and crisps

Dianthus and Aster are still cute

Baking my birthday cake

Some readers I know, let's call them grandparents (and aunts and cousins and probably many of my friends) tolerate posts about plants and books and rodents and thoughts on life, but really come here for the cute kid images. I would be unwise not to cater to my largest demographic every once in a while.  So, for your viewing pleasure, Dianthus and Aster looking good (with garden, travels or cooking in the background, I can't do just cute):

May 9, 2013

Towns Eyes?

May 18, 2013

First fish with Grandma

Geology may not fascinate me (at Mono Lake)

Small insects do fascinate me (at Mono Lake)

We did take them to Yosemite

Lacking a Bronze Clematis

The eighth anniversary is the bronze-pottery-lace-tanzanite-clematis anniversary.  Sure, you knew that.  You gave your spouse a bouquet of eight clematis vines in a tanzanite-encrusted bronze urn with a side of lace pottery and can't imagine why the Mister and I aren't doing the same.
As of today, we've been married for eight years and an alloy flower forever representing "clever" and "intellectual"* might be just the the thing we need.
I imagine it's not, but alas, as with the desk sets we didn't give each other last year (seven years, you recall, is the desk set anniversary), we'll never know if it was.
As an alternative, I planned to commemorate the day by posting images of our wedding flowers and explaining their meanings (a la Language of Flowers).
So, here goes: the mixed flowers in unmatched vases mean that I really wanted lots of flowers around, but was unwilling to pay a florist to take away my fun of arranging them.  The big bridal bouquet means that I know when to call a professional.  The chocolate tortes with roses and lemon tarts with lavender suggest we value flavor over tradition.

Pragmatic and into food and flowers.  I'm not sure if I'm interpreting that correctly. I'm probably supposed to see love, happiness, sunshine, honesty, and grace in that bouquet and I see pragmatism.  But then I was probably not supposed to be so lazy as to not actually look them up. . .

Happy Anniversary Mister.  I'm glad you married me.  I'm glad were pragmatic into food and flowers.  Thank you for bringing sunflowers and iris to our relationship, whatever good things they represent.  Don't wait up for the bronzed clematis.

*While the anniversary gift websites reveal that clematis represents clever intellectualism, the flower always reminds me of a pamphlet from high school sex ed, "Chlamydia is not a flower."

**Photographs were taken by Krista Cooley of Cooley Photography.  I can't find a current page to link to, but she was fantastic to work with and highly recommended.

Flower Failures

I have a large dead spot at the front (street side) of my prairie plantings.  Late June last year, I had liatris, gallardia, echinacea and butterfly milkweed all flowering after the evening primrose and calylophous were done.  One of my neighbors had admitted that it was beginning to look good.

June 9, 2012

May 22, 2013.  Note border and lack of plants in the foreground.

Oenothera. Two days after planting a few days prior to being declared dead.

A year later and the prairie garden is well defined, but everything that was in that part of the garden except one aster, plus all of the poppy mallow, gaura and several oenotheras I have added is dead.  Dead dead.  My neighbor did a walk-by weeding yesterday morning.
Flea beetles, I believe, are one culprit.
Have any suggestions?

Rejoicing over the thornbushes: in which I pick Poison over Lincoln

Note: I began typing this post on June 5.  It was timely at the time.  Indulge me by thinking it is early June and the roses are blooming as you read this.

The last month or so of my life has not gone according to plan.  Given how poor I am about planning the end of the school year and trip preparations (previously mentioned here, and here among other places), and that I am about to embark upon my third trip in a month, this is not terribly surprising.  As I've grumbled about all the things that have gone wrong, from believing that students who put on acts of confidence and competence, to leaving data sheets on the copier (sadly, a time honored tradition in my life), to being nearly washed out of my field site and wondered how it is possible to have student issues, body issues, garden issues, colleague issues, cat issues, stuff issues, computer issues, kid and husband issues, weather issues and garage door issues all at the same time, I've tried to remind myself of the (alleged) Abraham Lincoln quote hanging on my office door, "We can complain that rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice that the thorn bushes have roses."

Not actually a rose.  I guess every thistle has its spines.

And since my roses are blooming, and I want to remain an optimist, it seems apt.

But I have to disagree with Lincoln, or at least with my reading of the Lincoln quote, which suggests it is better to view them as flowering thorn bushes rather than prickly rose bushes.  I really don't want to be in a state in which I think that taking students to a conference*, travelling, having a house and garden, my job or Dianthus and Aster are thorn bushes.  Considering them to be thorn bushes seems to be setting expectations a bit too low, even for me, and somehow diminishes the experience of those who are enduring real thorns, be they my friend whose husband needs a second stem cell transplant, my former colleague who had a massive heart attack the day after graduation (did you even know that they do sextuple by-pass?), my unemployed best friends, or the people whose houses were in the way of the tornadoes. Being unemployed for a year yet loving the extra time for ones babies; that's appreciate the flowers on the thorn bushes.  Having a great, but by no means perfect, job, well, that's a rose bush.  The rose bush has some thorns, but then they all do.  

When you are among the thorn bushes, keep your eyes open for anything to rejoice about.  And, when you enter the rose garden, watch out for the thorns, for every rose has one**.

*Exhausting and expensive. And, no, we don't get paid overtime for taking three undergraduate students to a national conference.  Since this particular conference happened when school is not in session, I didn't get paid at all.

**"Just like every night has its dawn." ????  It's hard for me to take myself seriously when I am about to post  something quoting such a ridiculous poison song.

A whiff of the past

I don't have a particularly discerning nose.  My father esteems my sense of smell enough to want me to be the vintner for the family winery*, but his reasoning  behind that is somewhat mysterious, given the number of times I let something burn in the oven, blissfully unaware of the smoke odor filling the house.  I seldom wear and never remember fragrances.  Stores that sell scented candles typically gag me.  As a result, I'm usually dubious about the research reporting the close connections between smell and memory.

And then something like the smell of downtown Lawrence in May hit me.  Downtown Lawrence in May smells like finals are in and undergraduates are gone, it smells like spring, it smells like falling in love, and it smells like a specific longing for a group of friends, a bunny in the vacant lot, a walking lifestyle and all of the other trappings of one of the best times in my life; all encapsulated in the aroma of linden (Tilia) trees along the sidewalk.

And the next day I stopped by the Kansas Biological Survey. Perhaps it is because the hand-drawn face was still hanging on the bathroom door, or perhaps it was the fact that none of my former colleagues was surprised to see me show up for work, but it may have been the overpowering smell of fake-flower air freshener that erased seven years of professional accomplishment and two kids and made me feel like a graduate student coming in to type in my cube.

Two weeks later, I arrived at my parents house in Denver and felt immediately welcome, refreshed and, somehow, sweet.  While my parents are welcoming and their garden is exceptionally lush this year and every change feels better after a few hundred miles in the car with toddlers, it took me two days to identify that the sweetness was not their generosity of spirit or a transformation of my attitude, but the delicious background fragrance of their honey locust (Gleditsia)  tree.

Once identified, the smell evoked a less visceral response, but brought to mind a broken foot, my first internship at the Denver Botanic Gardens, and the computer-programmer, biker chick, plant nerd who first helped me recognize blooming honey locust.

So there must be something to that smell-memory connection.

What fragrances evoke things for you?

*To be clear, there is no family winery, but jobs have been assigned in the unlikely event we ever have one.

The photographic Georgia O'Keefe of my own mind

I do love getting close to flowers, with somewhat mixed results.  All except the prairie turnip are from my garden in Oklahoma.

April 27

Peony-flowered Tulip, April 27

Peony, May 9

May 9

May 9

Sedum, May 9

Prairie Turnip, Richmond Prairie, May 29