Tag: cucumbers

Gardening · New House · Reading

A Gathering of Poetry | August 2025

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a small green bowl filled with dusty blueberries

It was the best of summer times – with plentiful potatoes and just the right sized zucchini, it was the worst of summer times – with chipmunks stealing succulent blueberries and cucumbers that overwhelmed.  Almost making me regret planting this last garden on First Street all the while exploring options for next summer’s raised beds on Solstice Place. While carrots were not part of my planting plan, Leah Naomi Green’s poem is fitting for this month’s Gathering of Poetry.

Carrot

Take all summer, 
your ember

from the sun, 
its walking meditation.

Store it in small vaults of light
to keep the rest of us

when winter seals 
around each day.

We'll flicker 
to the table.

We'll gather 
to your orange flame.

Please excuse my blatant plagiarism of the hallowed Dickens Tale and for being a tad bit late in joining Bonnie and Kat for this Gathering of Poetry.

Bibliographic credit:  Green, Leah Naomi. The More Extravagant Feast.  © 2020 Graywolf Press.

Baking · Gardening

Tasty Rhubarb Scones

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five rhubarb scones on a blue plate

Fresh rhubarb pecan scones arrive hot from the oven in honor of this first day of meteorological summer.  Our lush rhubarb patch with five plants on the south side of the garage sprouted early and produced crisps in April, bread and cakes in May, and dozens of scones baked each month.

Moving from the alley to our raised bed, nearly all the planting is complete thanks to the healthy selections at Sargent’s on 2nd and Annie’s in Madison: beets, cucumbers, nasturtiums, peppers, potatoes, tomatoes, and zucchini, as well as garlic that survived a dry, nearly snowless winter.  We revel in the wonder that is summer in Minnesota, where we experience frigid short winter days only to enjoy, just months later, long fertile growing hours.

Gardening

Perfection Free Zone

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small gray, three tiered fountain in foreground with blue flower pots in the background

At our house, the placement of the solar-powered bubbling fountain is a summer milestone. So, while sipping a refreshing G&T, I can toast that task done.

My potted herbs frame the backdoor and the large Italian terracotta pot is filled with geraniums – my annual homage to Grandma Kuster.  The surplus of these vibrant red Swiss-window box flowers now greets front door visitors; a very useful placement of a “more than needed” purchase.

The summer veggies are off to a good start.  They already offer easily recognizable healthy leaves, albeit in a slightly revised selection of garden goodness:  1 grape tomato, 2 green peppers, 3 nasturtiums, 4 cucumbers, and 21 hills of four varieties of potatoes.

Despite things looking good, I was feeling like whoa-is-me Eeyore; guilty for not having accomplished more especially as I watched our next-door neighbors convert their front yard from lawn to micro-prairie restoration in yesterday’s drizzly Saturday weather.

Then this morning, with a standing room only crowd for the annual flower communion, there was the slightest slip-up in the service.   (Really, it was smaller than tiny, negligible, infinitesimal – are there other synonyms?)  We all laughed, especially when Rev. Ruth declared the sanctuary to be a Perfection Free Zone.  Inspiring advice to take from church into the garden and unto the screened porch (which still needs cleaning).

Gardening

Edible Fruit:   Cucumbers

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green cucumber with yellow bud watercolor painting on a pale cream background

Inspired by Mike Wohnoutka’s “cute little cucumber in watercolor,” I conducted a culinary cucumber audit.  I can count on one hand, fingers only without even using my opposable thumb, the recipes I use featuring cucumbers, a favorite in our summer garden.

  • The most prevalent and showing up almost daily is a cold cucumber salad, ala Grandma Kuster, with thinly sliced cucumbers, salt, pepper, and vinegar.  (I always use my thyme & peppercorn infused apple cider vinegar that I put up the previous growing season.)  Quick adds might include dried or fresh dill, chives, finely chopped green peppers, or bits of tomato making the salad look like the Italian flag.
  • Cucumber sandwiches for the English high tea at church complimenting the Yorkshire Gold tea, scones, clotted cream, and a delicious assortment of other sweet and savory delectable treats.
  • Cold cucumber soup – refreshing on a muggy day.
  • Tzatziki – that tasty blend of grated cucs, Greek yogurt, lemon, dill, and garlic, delicious on grilled vegetables or spread on pita wedges.

Mike is an award-winning author and illustrator.  A talented Minnesota treasure!  Check out the Goodreads list of his books.

Graphic credit:  © Mike Whonoutka

Gardening

Brought to you by the letter B

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a round basket filled with bright green basil leaves
fresh blueberries in a gray and blue porcelain bowl

If we were on Sesame Street, today’s harvest would be a B – day with a Basket of Basil, a Bunch of Broccoli, and a little bit of Blueberries.

The basil is drying in the oven, the broccoli is ready for tonight’s salad and the blueberries may make muffins, grace vanilla ice cream, or simply provide the perfect snack.  We anticipate a meager berry season as this first picking only yielded a cup and did not fill the Caradori bowl.  Thus, the tasty decisions must be made with careful deliberation.

After the Bs, my alphabet harvest gets a bit jumbled, as I also harvested Mini-Me™ cucumbers (a first time variety in our garden) and rhubarb for another dozen scones.

Baking

Summer sweets for our winter pleasure

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left to right: two triangular scones, three slices of bread, five blueberry muffins on a clear plate with painted blue flowers
Rhubarb Pecan Scones, Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread and Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins – July 2021

The beauty and the bane of summer bounty are the kitchen hours required to transform a morning’s abundance into delicious treats.  On blue sky, temperature-perfect days just made for hours of pleasure on my screened porch knitting the 4-Day Fireworks KAL sweater, I joined the women of ages past toiling in summer kitchens.  Admittedly, my experience was far more pleasant as my work time was spent in air conditioned comfort with good tunes coming from surround sound.  Some of the tasty delights will be eaten immediately and some will be stashed in our small deep freeze to be enjoyed on frigid winter days as a talisman against the cold and a sunny reminder that spring will come, even in the North Country.

My Sunday & Monday garden-to-kitchen yield:

  • Blueberry Sour Cream Muffins – two dozen regular-sized and 24 minis using  a recipe shared by Betty D. from Older Mommy Still Yummy
  • 16 Rhubarb Pecan Scones – an annual favorite from Rhubarb Renaissance by Kim Ode 
  • Two loaves of Chocolate Chip Zucchini Bread – courtesy of Mary Ann H. and the St. Ann’s Parish Cookbook, Olmitz, Kansas; and
  • Tsatsiki – The Enchanted Broccoli Forest variety just because we have an abundance of cucumbers and it goes so well with toasted pita bread and Greek seasoned chicken-kabobs.

Bon appétit!

Gardening

First Planting

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The excitement over my first, post vaccination day trip to St. Paul in April and lunch out with a friend in a restaurant which followed strict (and therefore reassuring) COVID protocols, slipped into what can only be dubbed COVID malaise.  While our neighbors have been in their yard for weeks, adding raised beds and planting, I can only claim a minimalist effort having helped Richard turn over the six, 4×4 foot vegetable squares, sans seeds or seedlings.   While the chilly temps and night time frost advisories offered the cover of an excuse, I simply lacked my annual dose of springtime, get-in-the-dirt time enthusiasm.

But then, Michelle inspired me.  During last night’s A Late Show with Stephen Colbert, our former First Lady offered her heartfelt comments about coping with pandemic anxieties.  I took her words to heart: “… push beyond … just the doing gets you out of the funk.”  After stops at two green houses for healthy plants and an assortment of vegetable seeds, we spent the afternoon planting.  Today’s in the ground tally of various varieties includes: 

4 tomato plants and 3 basil plants in square foot garden
Tender tomato & basil plants
  • Cucumber – 6
  • Tomato – 5
  • Basil – 5
  • Pepper – 4
  • Zucchini – 2
  • Kale – 1

Tomorrow’s goal (assuming the rain holds off):  Potatoes, beets, lettuce, radishes, beans, nasturtiums, and a flavorful collection of potted herbs:  more basil, plus dill, leeks, oregano, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme.  Michelle was right – “just the doing” was the prescription I needed.