Recently, we enjoyed a toasted bagel with cream cheese and red pepper jelly, which was canned from the jalapeno peppers in the garden.
The figs from our tree were jammed and dehydrated for the winter.
We have enjoyed all summer a fresh chop salad of zucchini, tomatoes, cucumbers, yellow bells, onion, avocado and Japanese eggplant (mostly) from the garden.
Pomegranates are in varying stages of ripeness, and we've got buckets and buckets of them to make into jams and juices and store for later. Two strangers stopped by to visit the house today. Mary Beth was a girl when her grandparents lived here, and she lived in the house next door. She remembers the fig, the olives, and the pomegranate trees. That would conservatively estimate their age at 50+ years, and they are still vigorous producers once they got onto regular routines of fertilizer, water, and love. Unbelievable.
Some of the land out back was fenced off for burros. Yup: the kids rode burros. She remembered hearing the rumblings of the farm equipment down the road and how the kids would dash out front to wave at the farmers. Her parents put in the pool the year she went off to college, and there was a bite of nostalgia when she realized it has been here 50 years...
I've never thought much of buying whatever I want and eating it year round. This beautiful old gal has stood 112 years, and continues to teach the truth of how to live here. It is hard, continual work to tend to the bounty, from planning to planting, through tending and harvest. And then it begins again with canning and preserving once the fruit is cut from the vine. All of this was on our minds as we munched on our first-ever homemade tapenade. The olives had to journey 10 months to our table. We touched it every step of the way: from harvesting them off the trees last November, tending the brine for seven months, and from there into a savory variety of marinades for three months more, and to the table.
House of ours: we are listening.
