PEACHES

"A peach, slightly unbalanced, so that it listed to one side, its hue the colour of an early sunrise..."

                                         -Allegra Goodman

Wouldn't be summer without peaches. Lots of them. Ripening in bowls. Ready to be eaten. Ready to be cut up into pie.

I used to have a cat called Peaches. She looked a lot like Rona. Poofy and the colour of golden peaches. Fluffy thing. She followed me everywhere.

The neighbours liked to go to Las Vegas, for the summer, way back when, and  said we could  pick peaches  from their peach vines growing along the sides of their house. The vines  resembled pythons without heads,  slithering along the siding. 

The peaches hung like  moons. I'd pick them on hot July and August days. Every day I'd pick peaches. My cat, Peaches, would follow me back and forth between houses. She would chase  quail that  toddled up and down the driveway. To no avail. They were faster than she was. The ultimate goal for the peaches was  Peach Pie  with blackberries that my mother would make. She always made it with her  shortcrust pastry.   The blackberries bled and bled into the peaches ....

PEACH BLACKBERRY PIE

SHORTCRUST Pastry: 4 cups flour, pinch of salt, 1 1/4 cups cold butter, 10 large tblsp COLD butter

Cut in butter with flour and salt, till crumbly. Add water a little at a time, till it forms a nice ball of pastry. Work quickly so it does not get tough. Divide in two. Flatten each disc. Wrap in cling film and keep in fridge or freezer till you need it.

I remember my mother doubling this recipe quite often. I also remember Peaches, the cat, taking a liking to  pie pans. She would sit in them. She preferred the glass ones.  So in between making the pastry, we would be washing pie pans. Only to find Peaches sitting in them again. Finally we gave her a pie pan of her own to sit in, on the table. She would sit there, purrfectly centered in her pie pan,  grinning her cat grin. Probably imagining she was a pie......

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Line piepan with a disc of pastry Brush with some of  beaten egg

Cut up a ton of peaches  at least 5 cups or more. throw in a cup or two of blackberries

Mix with 2 tblsp lemon juice, 2/4 cup flour,1 cup white sugar, sprinkle cinnamon, sprinkle nutmeg. 

Pile into pastry lined piepan. Dot with dobs of butter.Cover with other pastry disc.

Brush with beaten egg.  Do this twice if making double pies.

Slash to make gashes in pastry. Bake at 450 for 15 minutes.

Lower to 350 for an additional 35 minutes. Or longer. Till juices bubble.

That year we left the two pies  out on the counter to cool. Went about the day. One pie was for us, and the other one for the neighbours who were coming home from Las Vegas the next day. In the kitchen, Peaches had vacated her pie pan. We found  paw prints  in one of the pies,  pastry smooshed and  peaches flicked all over. Blackberries  stuck to the fuzzy paws of one guilty  cat.

So the neighbours got the undamaged pie. We salvaged a couple of pieces out of the other one. A little slice of gold. And Peaches sat in her  own pie pan. Grinning at us.

Photographs 2021

 

Soggy Facelift....

 "My extravagance is my garden. It's the first thing I look at every morning. It gives me so  much pleasure..." -Ina Garten

 And so the muddy, soggy  facelift continues......supervised by Spencer, who visits from up the hill and three houses down. He has his own flowerpot.

 Before the garden crew started to dig, the patio looked like this.Tired. Dull. Annoying cause it looked like cows had chewed on it.

 It used to be a small trench of sedums that I started by laying in dirt along the cracks.They were nice. English garden look. But only lasted one year. 

 Then over the past six years it got out of hand...

 Wayyyyyyyy out of hand. Humps of grass tripping and trapping everyone who tried to walk over them.

 So today.....finally ...it was time for a change.  Something new. 

 The garden crew was amazing......they chopped  those grass clumps and lugged them onto tarps.

 Then the tarps were hauled out to the top of our steep driveway...waiting to be picked up to be taken to compost dump.

 Even the birds wondered what was going on. Hundreds of juncos and robins tried to feed in the rain. There was nothing but mud sloshing. Rain drowning. Shovels scraping.

 "Weather means more when you are gardening.Nothing like listening to a shower...."-M. Cox

 Chop chop. Hack Hack.  I watched the crew smash away the weeds, the grass, the muck.

 Spencer and Cordelia  stayed out of the way. 

 After three hours, the crew had scraped away most of the mess.

 More tarps were brought out. While the rain pounded down. Another two hours went by.

 And then it was CLEAR. 

 Space and more space.Like a huge weight taken away,  I could imagine all the more pots I could have now.Stuffed with tomatoes and flowers and things to make bees buzz. Pots and more pots..... oh, the anticipation of stuffing things into dirt in pots......

 "I like gardening.....it's a place where I find myself, when I need to lose myself...." -Alice Sebold

Photographs 2018

Stuff those Blackberries into a Pie...

                  Get ready to stuff those blackberries into a pie.

                                      Tis the season. Christmas is only 4 months away,
                                              so better practise your baking skills now.

                                 First. Find some blackberries. We found them in a wood clearing.

                                        Pick as many as you can plop into a bowl.

                                         Eat as many as you can.

                                   Wash well in a colander. Pick out the yukky ones. Eat some more.

                                  Combine about 3 cups of blackberries with four cut up apples.

                               Combine with about 1/2 cup flour, dash of lemon juice, 3/4 cup sugar.

                                 Stuff into pie shell. You can make your own pastry. Or use frozen shells.

          Bake for 12 minutes at 425. then at 350 for about an hour. The waiting is the hardest part.

                                  Sniff the sweet peas while you wait.

                                    Pick as many as you can.

                Watch Spencer Hover.

                          Admire the light going through the water in the sweet peas you just picked.

                             Sniff the air to see if the pie is ready.

                             It is ready if the innards are bubbling out. Carve with a dull knife, lift the piece with a spatula, smother with cream or ice cream.  The best!  Must be summer. And only 4 months to Christmas............