the Soxophone Player

It’s been a very good year for the vegetable garden here at the farm.

The mid-size (Ultra Girl) and cherry tomatoes have been fabulous.

The Beefsteak, like the one in the photo, are plentiful but perhaps a little less fabulous – a lot of them are gnarly shaped – I think from too much rain – if they grow too fast their skin can’t keep up. But I planted a lot of plants, so there is still plenty of feasting on these big honkin’ sandwich busters.

But there’s only so many BLT’s you can eat.

As if!

But here’s an alternative sandwich, if you’re looking for one. (I’m not the author of this recipe -I’ve been making them for years and I don’t recall the original source.)

You need:

• tomato
• english muffins
• eggs + whatever you use to make French Toast dipping
• Dijon mustard
• Gruyere cheese or substitute
• Rosemary

Start with English Muffins and whatever egg mixture you would use when you make French Toast. I just use egg, a little milk, salt and pepper.

Do up the English Muffins as French Toast, well dipped in the egg, on griddle or fry pan. (Non stick pan if you like, or a pound of butter in the pan if you prefer ;o))

While you’re doing this stage, turn your oven broiler on.

Put the French Toasted English Muffins on a baking sheet. Spread Dijon mustard on the tops of the toasts.

On top of the mustard, put a layer of sliced Gruyere cheese – I prefer the non-smoked plain Gruyere – and no doubt you could substitute your fav here.

Put a generous slice of tomato on top of the cheese, and then sprinkle the tomato with rosemary – fresh if you have it.

Stick that all under the broiler for a few minutes until the cheese is soft but not runny, and enjoy!

(I’ve never been sure why the cheese didn’t go on top – maybe it prevents tomato from getting warmed.)

During my years in the big smoke I had tremendous luck with hybrid-T roses – I always brought home a few new bushes for dw each mothers’ day. In particular I would search out the most fragrant varieties, so the garden and house always smelt fabulous in season.,

But at the farm I’ve never had any luck with roses. They do poorly and usually die the first winter.

So I was very pleased to find this bloom outside my window yesterday.

Almost perfect – not just in my eyes,  but, it seems,  in the eyes of whatever was nibbling on the gorgeous pink petals.

This is my vegetable garden – photo taken first week of June.

Normally its the May 24 weekend (Queen’s official birthday) that gardens go in, but we were a week early owing to the warm spring weather. By the first week in June the peas were up and the tomato transplants were well settling in.

And this shot was taken ~ 5 weeks later on July 13th.

We’ve been eating lettuce, radishes, strawberries, lots of peas and a few cucumbers so far.

The tomatos look promising….many flowers and small fruit…the row of really tall plants are Beefsteak Tomatoes – the kind where one slice will make a big sandwich. The shorter row to the right of those are Ultra Girl Tomatoes  and Plum (Italian) Tomatoes. The Ultras should finish early. The Plum are great for slicing into coins and dehydrating for winter enjoyment.

In the foreground are cucumber plants – lots of flowers and fruit forming. We had a few early ones in the weekend salad.

The peas – crawling up the chicken wire on the right side of the garden – are really really really prolific. Zillions! A great snack is to just eat them right out of the pods in situ!

It’s amazing that such bounty originated from about a handful of seeds.

The poor performers so far – my onions are crap – only one sprouted from the whole bag. And my ‘premium’ Pumpkin seeds did nadda in the garden. Thankfully I only planted a few in the garden – I planted the rest in the manure pile and they are coming along.

Every year when the swallows return in the spring they build a nest over the window of my mudroom.  There are always three adults and they share in the rearing of the young. When they build the nest, they do in one day.

This year spring was early. Everything seems to be (and still is) about two weeks ahead in the growing.

When the swallows came back, early, they took two weeks to build the nest instead of one day. Smart birds, says I.

Last week I noticed two things:

- there was only one chick in the nest instead of the usual 4 or 5

- they – the same adults – built a second nest, over the man-door to the garage, about 15 feet away from the original nest.

Here’s the little guy in his home nest several days ago.

I don’t know why he’s the only one – if they only had one, or they had a normal brood and some died or fell out of the nest or???

But yesterday, all of a sudden this little guy moved to the new nest!

I presume it flew there, but who knows!

This is all very unusual.

Did they move the little one because they were preparing to lay a second batch and needed to get the teenager out of the house so they could clean up the nursery?

Is it a harbinger of a nasty winter coming? (Some animals know, and have fewer offspring.)

Or have the birds flipped their wings?

Has the pollution from the city moved north and settled over the farm? And if so, will I move into the nest with the bird?

Nature can be very confusing!

There was a Beatles song: Rain

When the Rain comes, they run and hide their heads

They might as well be dead

when the rain comes. When the rain comes.

I was hummin’ it quite a bit yesterday (I believe!)

It just dumped and dumped.

If you can make it out in my pic, taken from kitchen window, the downspout on the gutters can’t keep up with the volume and it was just roaring over the end.

Happily the tomato plants were fine in their cages, and the peas held on to the chicken wire for dear life. The peonies, of course, were already flogged to death in a similar storm a few weeks ago.

Today there are some mean looking clouds, but so far no rain…

Quick Batman, to the lawn tractor.

I gripe a lot about government.

A LOT.

OK, CONSTANTLY!

So it behooves me to comment when I have something nice to say.

There is a programme in my province (Ontario) offered by Hydro One (our primary Hydro utility) to collect old kilowatt sucking appliances.

You can book an appointment online and they will come and cart away the offending appliances which must be, generally speaking, 15 or more years old, but still working.  They will recycle the appliances.

So I decided to part with my 1976 Beaumark freezer and 1985 Hotpoint beer Fridge.

Its great that it’s a free service to move heavy old objects and greater still that the objects will find a new a better life.

But most amazing of all….

I was filling the forms in online. The first part of the form books an appointment date and time – you select from a generous selection of times available in your particular postal code area – and you give your address and contact information. Then on the second part of the form you fill in the make, model, colour, age etc of your applicable appliances.

So. While I’m still filling in the second section, the phone rings. It’s an automated message fromHydro One confirming the pick up appointment!

And when I get back to my desk from the phone, to complete the second part of the form, there is an email waiting, also confirming the appointment.

Holy crap!

I wish I could get my sock making so organized…

I caught the elusive Snappy sunbathing on the bank of the front pond yesterday. I saw him two weeks ago but the sound of the velcro strap on my camera case being opened was enough to send him back to the depths of the murky water. Being a warm, sunny, turtle basking kind of a day yesterday, I approached the pond with my camera at the ready. And snappy didn’t disappoint:

Click for larger.

The toe nails on this guy (or gal) are absolutely prehistoric. No doubt they could inflict some serious damage.

To be honest, I thought Snappy was dead. I stepped around, cracking twigs, getting several shots with no response. And I found it strange that Jesse didn’t even notice him (mustn’t smell?).  But Jesse and went for a walk through the fields, and when we came back to the pond Snappy was gone, so I guess Snappy Lives…

A sign of a good sheep mother is that she eats the afterbirth and all the yuk at lambing time. I believe its a good trait of any prey animal – to get rid of the scent and thus have less chance of being sniffed out by predators.

Like wise, I guess the sign of a good predator is one who rolls about in dead prey animals or their yuk, to disguise his scent while on the hunt approaching prey.

Good boy Jesse.

Good #$$*((%#@7 Boy!

The snow is fast disappearing from the farm. With rain forecast  for the next several days, that may be the end of winter.

Above is the first sign I’ve seen of the first groundhog, who has started its spring cleaning by pushing some muck out of its hole. I haven’t actually seen the varmint yet,  but his tracks show he’s been scoping out the area around his door. This hole is actually quite near the house, and Jesse it paying close attention.

Jesse and I have been making plenty of our own tracks, here seen on the back trail beyond the knoll. #1 is my Skidoo trail, and #2 you can make out my ski pole marks. I like to set a Cross Country ski trail by skidoo. And #3 are my Snow Shoe tracks. I’m a true Canadian, so am extremely fond of winter. I love it when Jesse and I can explore the trails on the farm….and with the rains coming we may be housebound until the mud season has come and gone.

The sunny weather of late has wakened many from their winter naps, and #4 shows the tracks left by raccoons, rabbits, skunks, porcupine, turkeys, and, I think, weasels.

Interestingly, there are no deer tracks, and there haven’t been for about three weeks – since the last major dump of snow. Since I ALWAYS see lots of deer tracks, and the deer themselves, I presume they have yarded up  -probably around the wild apple trees in the bottom land of the back corner.

Deer, like sheep, don’t really care to trek through deep snow. As prey animals they know they are vulnerable to attack when the snow is too deep for them to run fast. And the coyotes are smart enough to know where the deepest snow is (the ravines and gullies)…and they would be quick to chase their prey into these areas of deepest snow to make the kill. Whenever I suspect a kill in winter, I check the gullies first!

Jesse scoping out the mysterious crater.

Could it be a meteorite?

Or a Soxophone Player?

Resting on top of the knoll.

A beautiful day on the farm.

Georgian Bay in the background – didn’t freeze over this winter other than about 100 feet around the shore.

There is still lots of snow on the farm, but with several days of +5 degrees, it may be gone before long. So Jesse and I are trying to enjoy an outing each day while it lasts.