Fresh Figs!

That's all.

Just Fresh Figs.

Juicy and sweet.

A summertime treat!



© Copyright 2011 Mountain Harvest Basket

Strawberry Pies

Luscious Strawberries, Sweet Glaze and Flaky Crust


So I bought a flat (12 pints) of fresh, locally grown, organic, ripe strawberries. Washed them and hulled them:

Fresh. Ripe. Juicy.



Made a couple of flaky pie crusts:

Ugly but flaky!


Cooked up some strawberry glaze and made two very tasty fresh strawberry pies!


Fresh Strawberry Pie


I also had some berries left over to use in my yogurt and smoothies. Next batch of strawberries will be used to make some homemade jam. Yum!


© Copyright 2011 Mountain Harvest Basket

Montmorency Cherries for the 4th

Cherry Filled Bowl


Also known as "sour" cherries. These Montmorency cherries are best for cooking and baking rather than for eating fresh out of hand.

So far this season I have harvested about 1 quart of these sour cherries, which is about 4 times more than I harvested last year! And there are more still ripening on the tree. Yay!



And yes, of course, I will make my World Famous Cherry Pie with them and probably use the remainder of the Sweet Cherries to round out the taste too.



Summer is definitely here! Hot and sunny (and humid) here today.

Have a safe and happy 4th of July weekend, everyone!



© Copyright 2011 Mountain Harvest Basket

Just Peachy

Adult Smoothie!


Hot, humid, sunny weather combined with some beautiful, ripe, juicy organic peaches and nectarines:



Mixed with some creativity and a little rum, amaretto and local honey:



Add a couple of handfuls of ice cubes. Then poured into my favorite crystal goblet:


Made a refreshing "adult smoothie", also known as a Peach Nectarine Daquiri.

Hit the spot yesterday evening after working in my garden for a few hours. The fresh fruit really made the drink special.

Happy Summer Solstice today! Longest day of the year. Enjoy the sunshine if you have it where you are.






© Copyright 2011 Mountain Harvest Basket

Cherry Flavored Life

Freshly picked Sweet Cherries from my own tree



Life is just a bowl of cherries! An interesting saying.

Today was a good day. It was finally sunny here, and warm. I wore shorts for the first time in many months. I ran errands. I deposited money. I picked 1.5 pounds of sweet cherries from my own cherry tree, with more on the tree that are ripening. This year I got to them before the birds, the deer and the squirrels did. Hurrah! Hurrah!

They taste very sweet and are filled with sunshine and sweet rainwater.

Some days are not a "just a bowl of cherries". One of my favorite artists, Mary Engelbreit, said it nicely in her work below. I have a copy of this very poster in my home. Helps me to laugh when I need it.



Now every time I see a "bowl of cherries" I think of this illustration. Cracks me up, it's so cute and colorful.

I need more cute and colorful things in my life.

And more sweet, fresh, sunshine cherries.

Happy Spring everyone!








© Copyright 2011 Mountain Harvest Basket

Future Banana Bread

Future Banana Bread or Artistic Still Life Display??


My house will smell lovely with the scent of freshly baked banana bread. My taste buds will thrill at the sweetness and delicate crunch of that first warm bite.

That is if I can make the time to actually get into my kitchen and bake it.

Soon, say I. I will do it "soon".



© Copyright 2010 Mountain Harvest Basket

Best. Cherry. Pie. Ever!

Leaky, but luscious, Cherry Pie

First off, this is a VERY belated blog post. I made this cherry pie way back in mid July at the peak of the summer fruit season. Hot days and balmy nights. The whole summer thing. I've just been so busy since then, that today, over 3 months later, is the first chance I got to compose this post.

I've made cherry pies before, but only from canned tart cherries. This is the first time I have ever made a cherry pie from fresh cherries. This time I had enough fresh fruit available and a very handy cherry pitter to make the best cherry pie I have ever tasted. Ever.

This is the first year that I could use fresh sour cherries from my young Montmorency Cherry tree. (I call her Mary Montmorency.) She gave me just over one cup of fresh tart cherries.


(Mary) Montmorency Tart Cherry Harvest 2010

Well, one cup of cherries is not enough to make a whole pie, so I also used a combination of Bing Cherries and Van Cherries from my sweet dual graft cherry tree. Usually I just eat these nice sweet cherries out of hand for snacking, but this year my dual graft tree produced enough for snacking and some baking projects. I had a bit over 3 cups of fresh cherries, tart and sweet ones combined, for my pie.

Combination of Montmorency, Bing & Van Cherries for pie

For some reason my pie crust turned out especially flaky (not sure what I did right to make it that way), and the combination of cherries made this pie taste wonderful. I can only hope to bake another one just as good as this one with next summer's cherry harvest. If not, well, I have my cherry pie memories to savor.

Tart/Sweet Fruit Filling, Flaky Crust

Looks good enough to eat!


Till next summer's cherry harvest these photo memories will have to do!

© Copyright 2010 Mountain Harvest Basket

Spring is Finally Here!

Sweet Strawberries ~ freshly picked

My strawberries have started to ripen. I have gathered those that the birds and bugs have left unsampled. Not many so far, but very nice ones.



Artichokes!

Multiple artichokes have appeared! The most and the largest in the many years that I've had this artichoke plant. Must be due to our prolonged cold & wet weather. I am tired of the cold wet weather, but am loving the artichoke production.



Blue Irises

I used to get many colors and many blooms in my iris beds. Not so much variety in recent years. This year I have many blue and some dark red blooms to enjoy. They do add cheer to my day. You can spy some golden California poppies sneaking in there between the irises.




Spring Bouquet


I made an impromptu bouquet of Sweet Williams, Sage flowers and Lavender. You can't really see the lavender in this photo, but it's there. Really. Lovely scent and color to brighten my home.

Finally, it feels like Spring here today. Tomorrow it will suddenly be summer. Then I'll be complaining that it's too hot...




© Copyright 2010 Mountain Harvest Basket

Gala Apple Harvest

Beautiful Gala Apples

I have several apple trees. One of my apple trees is a "triple graft" that grows 3 different kinds of apples on one main rootstock. This is nice because we only had to dig one hole to plant this tree, but we get a variety of apples. Gala, Jonagold and Mutsu apples are all on this one tree.



The Gala apple blossoms are the pollinators for the other two varieties, and the Gala apples ripen earlier than the other two. Usually I can pick ripe Galas in late August, but this year everything was wacko and delayed a bit. I didn't get to harvest these nice eating apples until about the second week in September.

They were numerous for my small tree, but smaller in size than they have been in the past. All of my apples were small this year. Again, I think it was our crazy weather, especially the extended heat wave we had. I probably should have watered my fruit trees a bit more deeply and more often to help compensate for the extra hot weather. But I didn't.

Anyway, my Gala apples make very good fresh eating apples for snacks and they also add a nice sweet flavor to apple crisps and pies. They are softer than the more common pie apples like Granny Smiths or Golden Delicious, so they do break down more when cooked, but they are still very tasty. I've been snacking on them when I want something sweet instead of grabbing a cookie or some candy. (not that I keep any of those things around my house, mind you)


Gala Apples up close ~ you can almost just reach out and grab one!

Happy Autumn!


© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Small Peach Harvest

Juicy Sweet Elberta Peaches

As with all of my fruit harvests this summer, my peach harvest was on the small side. My tiny Elberta peach tree is 9 years old, but still only gives me a few peaches each year. This year she grew 12 beautiful juicy peaches, but the birds got to at least 3 of them before I discovered that they were ripe. So I harvested 9 delicious peaches this year from my itty bitty tree. I ate every one of them fresh and "out of hand".

Elberta peaches are my favorite peach by far. They are free stone peaches with dark yellow flesh when ripe, and the outside has a nice tart slightly fuzzy peel that usually has a bit of a red blush.

As a young kid I remember eating my fill of peaches in late summer from the Elberta peach tree my Mom had planted in our backyard. Those peaches were huge and so juicy that when I bit into one, it would dribble juice down my chin and sometimes onto my shirt! I remember the whole sensory experience like it was yesterday. The sunshine warm freshly picked peach, fuzzy in my hand. The soft yet firm flesh giving way to my bite. The juice sweet and tangy at the same time squirting all over me. I loved it. And still do. Every time I eat a home grown Elberta peach those sweet childhood memories of my Mom and her peaches come flooding back to me. We had so many peaches that my Mom made pies, froze some sliced peaches for later eating and gave many away to friends and neighbors. Her tree would bear so heavily some years that the branches would break under the weight if not propped up to support them.

Since then, all other peaches that come my way are measured by those big juicy Elberta memories. Rarely have I found one that could compete.

My peach growing goal is to match that peach production memory of my childhood. Each year I will try my best. Those are wonderful peaches, and wonderful memories that I will keep with me always.


© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

A Bowl of Sunshine

Sunshine Yellow Meyer Lemons

Look at my bowl full of sunshine! Those are some beautiful home grown Meyer Lemons.

No, I didn't grow them here at Mountain Harvest Basket. It's difficult to grow citrus up here in the mountains. These lemons were a gift to me from Jack who brought them back from Los Angeles a week ago. His sister has a bountiful lemon tree at her house near the ocean, and she gave him a big carton full of lemons to bring home.

This is the second bunch of lemons he has brought me this summer. We have squeezed some directly into tea and on shrimp salad and grilled salmon. We have also made a few batches of fresh lemonade to quench our summer thirst. Very good lemonade! I like to make Greek salad dressing using fresh lemon juice in place of vinegar when making vinaigrette. Using the best dark olive oil I can, of course.

I used some of these juicy lemons to make a lemon meringue pie earlier in the summer. We gave some away to friends and family. We had so many lemons that we had to start squeezing a whole bunch at once before they spoiled so that we could save the juice for later use by freezing it. I have some more squeezing to do here soon. The juice freezes well and will be a welcome treat during the fall and winter months. The tart citrus flavor adds a "brightness" to so many savory and sweet dishes.

I just wanted to share some of my sunshine with you today. When life gives you lemons...☺




© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Plum Harvest

Late Santa Rosa Plums


This is just a quick post to show you my small, but delicious plum harvest. Just one small basket full. My Late Santa Rosa Plum tree usually has a bigger harvest than this, and usually they are ready earlier in the summer. This year probably due to our weird extended hot weather, the plum harvest was pretty small and their ripening was delayed until August.

I picked this basket of plums, which is the entire tree harvest, one afternoon in early August. They are very juicy, tangy and tasty. Just how I like them!

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Canning & Jamming!

Sunny Apricot Jam ~ 10 Half Pints



Started out looking like apricot soup:


Apricot Jam in Cookpot

My apricot tree did not have even one apricot on it this year. My plum tree had a few beautiful plums, but only enough to enjoy eating fresh. So in my dual effort to clean out my freezers (all 3 of them), and in order for me to even out the "jam vs Jen" score started by that strawberry jam incident last June, I used some frozen fruit to make a couple of batches of jam.

I made one batch of apricot jam and one batch of plum jam. Both fruits were gathered from local trees, pitted and frozen either last year or the year prior. They kept remarkably well in my freezer. Their colors and taste were still quite fresh. When cooked down with the sugar (I don't use added pectin in my jam) both fruits tasted great.

I had an abundance of apricot jam this time. See the photos above. The recipe makes about 8 half pints, but this batch produced 10 half pints for me. I had only prepared 8 jars, so I poured the rest into a pint jar and kept it in the fridge to use now rather than later.

My plum jam, shown below, made exactly 8 half pint jars. One of which did not seal correctly. First time that's ever happened to me in my canning experience. So I placed that jar of tangy plum jam into the fridge next to the apricot jam. Both jams make great PB&J sandwiches, especially on my homemade bread.



Bright and Tangy Plum Jam ~ 8 Half Pints


Here are the plums simmering with the sugar in the cookpot. Sort of looks like plum stew at this point.



Plum Jam in Cookpot

One of my new canning tools that makes fishing the lids out of the hot water in the canner a lot easier, is this nifty lid rack show below:


Canning Lid Rack

Using this rack, I just lower the whole thing filled with washed & rinsed canning lids into the hot water inside the canner to sterilize the lids and keep them warm until I need them. Then I lift the whole thing out and place it on the kitchen counter while I work quickly to fill the hot jars with jam and place a lid and ring on each one. Before I had this rack, I'd have to fish out each lid separately either with tongs or the little magnet tool that worked well, but had a handle that was way too short. Kept burning my fingers. This rack is way better. You can buy it at Lehman's, along with many other nifty things.

So now I have plenty of jam around here for awhile. I may make more before the summer is over. I still have more frozen fruit in my freezers. Nice to enjoy the fruity tastes all during winter.



© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Really Bad Day in the Kitchen

I have had my own kitchen for over 30 years now. I have cooked, baked, roasted, stir-fried, sauteed, canned & preserved all sorts of things. I am an experienced cook. I have had my share of kitchen mishaps and disasters over the years. That comes with the territory. Mistakes help you gain experience.

I have burned things, under-cooked things, had things stick to the pan. I've even had things catch on fire! Once, a very long time ago, the kitchen faucet even "exploded" all over me drenching me completely. Those last two were both during dinner parties that I was hosting!

None of those "disasters" can compare to the stupid, stupid mistake I made in my kitchen today. None of those previous mishaps made anywhere near the mess or calamity that I managed to pull off today.

I am so frickin' pissed right now! I am so mad that I feel like crying (for the past hour) but can't even relax enough to allow the tears to flow.

What the hell happened, you might ask? OK, I will tell you.

Remember that beautiful flat of organic strawberries that I wrote about in my last post? Well, I made that nice Shiny Red Pie and ate most of it myself, and then decided to save out enough strawberries to make a batch of strawberry jam. I love strawberry jam and so does my family, so I put aside about 5 or 6 pint baskets worth and waited until today when I finally had time to devote to the cooking and canning process. Fresh berries don't keep very long and I really didn't want to freeze them, so I had to make time in my day to make the jam and get it canned properly. I also wanted to enjoy the creative process.

Ok, so I carefully wash and hull 6 pints of strawberries. I realize I don't have enough sugar for the recipe, so off to the local market I go to buy a 5lb bag. Paid way too much for it, but hey, it's convenient to buy it here so close to home. Back home, I locate my half pint canning jars and a bunch of brand new lids and rims. I wash the whole case of them, even though I will only need 8 or 9 jars for the recipe.

Great, now I have everything I need. Finally. All organized and ready to go. Strawberries, washed and hulled. Check. Sugar, measured out and ready to pour into the cook pot. Check. Jars, lids, rims all washed and sterilized, ready and waiting in the preheated canner full of hot water.
Again, check.

I mash the strawberries with the sugar in the cook pot. I heat them gently until the sugar dissolves. I turn up the heat like the recipe says and insert the jelly thermometer to watch for the proper gel temperature. Up here at 3000 ft altitude, that would be 214 degrees F.

Now all I need to do is wait and stir, wait and stir, until the gel point temp is reached. I've made jam before. I've made lots of jam and many kinds of jam before. Strawberry, blackberry, peach, plum, apricot...even apple jelly. I've made jam. I know how to do it. Really don't even need to look at the recipe anymore, but I do so out of insecurity and...anal-ness.

It's taking awhile to boil and get any reading on the thermometer that is anywhere near 200 degrees. So I remember that I always seem to have the flame too low when I make jam not wanting to scorch the bottom or ruin the batch. So I turn up the flame, and I put the lid on the pot.

Fine. I stand there for a minute or so and then decide to leave the kitchen and go outside for a minute. Just a minute. One, maybe two minutes tops.

Huge mistake! Gigantic, stupid, huge mistake!! Don't ever do this. Don't ever, EVER do this.

I really was only gone for about two minutes. When I re-entered my kitchen the jam pot was fully boiling over and streaming red, gooey, sticky jam all down the pot, all over the stove and all down inside and under my stove top!

It was a big f*cking mess!! I have never, ever made that big of a mess in my kitchen before. There was partially cooked jam everywhere. I moved the cook pot of jam, now only half full. (Crap!) off of the stove. I also moved the very heavy and very hot canner full of sterilized jars and boiling water off of the stove. Removed the burners and then mopped up the thick sticky red mess from the top of the stove with a sponge and a wet dish towel. I was dripping sticky syrup all over the place. Then when I had removed enough of the jam from the stove top to allow me to lift the top and check to see if the pilot light was still lit (it was) I could then see where the rest of my pot of half cooked jam landed. It filled the depressions under the burners with about a half inch of red goo. I sopped that up with the sponge and rag, but it was no easy job. I had to climb halfway inside my stovetop to reach the mess and clean it without burning myself on the pilot flame or without making further mess. It was a crappy job, and I was so angry at myself for allowing it to happen in the first place.

I finally got it cleaned up enough to turn my attention back to my jam pot to see if I could salvage my beloved strawberry jam and all of the work that had gone into it. I wiped down the outside of the pot and put it back on the flame. Put the canner back on the fire too. I salvaged only about 1/2 of the recipe. That is actually what am I pissed off about the most. The mess was bad and unfortunate, but messes happen sometimes. I am really upset that I wasted half of my jam recipe. Those wonderful berries don't come along everyday.

So I finished cooking what was left of my jam as if nothing bad had happened. I turned up the flame to get it to the correct gelling temperature and then I filled the jars and processed them in my water bath canner for 10 minutes. (10 minutes because I live at 3000 ft, sea level would only require 5 minutes)

I lost over half of my beautiful deep red strawberry jam to that overflow spill and to my stupid lack of attention. I am still really pissed.

Oddly, in the middle of me cleaning up the sticky mess, I was composing this blog post in my head. I couldn't wait to tell you all about it. You people keep me sane. Thanks.

Here's a photo of my stupid 4 jars of organic homemade strawberry jam.

Organic Strawberry Jam





© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Shiny Red Pie

Flat of Beautiful Organic Strawberries

I have a whole flat of beautifully ripe, locally grown, organic strawberries.

What to do...what to do...?

Eat several right away before even arriving home with my red bounty?...yes.. that's good.

Mix a few into my morning yogurt along with some of my luscious homegrown boysenberries?....

Mmmm...yes, good again.

Make strawberry jam? Well, yes, but not right now. Must figure out what to do with these fresh berries. They don't keep fresh long you know.

I know!! I will make a fresh strawberry pie! I've never done that before. I've eaten lots of fresh strawberry pie, in restaurants mostly, but never have I made my own at home.

Now where was that recipe I found after much searching and exploring? Oh yeah, right here in my Betty Crocker Big Red cookbook. Silly me. Looking all over the internet for a simple pie recipe and here was one right here at home. Some slight modifications, and the recipe is now mine. Ha!

So made pie I did:


Fresh Shiny Red Strawberry Pie


All those fresh, ripe & tangy strawberries mixed in there with a just a little sugar for sweetness and a little cornstarch to make a nice thick syrup that holds everything together.


Shiny Red Pie ~ closeup


Just strawberries, sugar, cornstarch, water and a flaky homemade pie crust.

Fruit as nature (and Betty Crocker) intended it.



Ooh... a piece is missing...



My Dessert ~ MMmmmmm....

Well, it's almost completely natural and unadorned. Gotta have a little whipped cream for decoration, you know.


© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Berry Sweet

Sweet Homegrown Boysenberries


My boysenberries are doing well this year. There are many berries and they are all of good size. They seem sweeter than they have in years past. I think it may be due to our extended cooler weather this year. We have had cooler days and nights during this late Spring than I have ever experienced up here. It is starting to warm up now, and it will do so very quickly. Reminds me that I have a bit of garden irrigation repair to complete before it gets really hot around here.

Well, my berries have been enjoying the weather. My harvest is bountiful. I picked two of those plastic green pint baskets full yesterday afternoon:


Berry Harvest ~ 2 pints!


Of course, I actually picked more berries than the 2 pints worth you see in the photo. Many berries never made it into the harvest basket. (oh my!) Many of them volunteered to go directly into my mouth and skip the basket experience altogether.

And they are sweeter and larger than last year's harvest. I've even been enjoying the redder ones which are tarter than the dark purple ones.

I grow both Boysenberries and Blackberries, but I like the boysenberries the best. Their vines are easier to train and grow. They offer their ripe harvest earlier in the season than the blackberries do. And their seeds are fewer, smaller and easier to chew and digest than the blackberry seeds. Oh, and their vines are thornless! That's a plus too.

Those two pints of berries filled my special berry bowl to the top:


Boysenberries in Berry Bowl


This was my Mom's special berry bowl that she loved. It was a gift from me to her. Now it is mine to cherish. I think of her every time I use it.

Read more about this special berry bowl and last year's berry harvest by clicking HERE.

Have a berry good day!



© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Spring Blossoms

Braeburn Apple Blossoms

Even though today was cold and rainy here in the mountains, Spring has definitely sprung around here. Earlier this week we had high temperatures in the 80's. It was downright hot! I wore shorts & sandals (and had to shave my legs)!

Anyway, since I haven't posted anything here in awhile, I thought I'd get back into the blogging swing of things by showing you some pretty Spring blossoms.

The photo above is a close up shot of my Braeburn apple tree blossoms. The tree is covered in delicate pink blossoms this year. More than I have seen in years past. I love their pink color. This tree is now 10 years old. Some years it produces an abundance of crisp and tart apples. Other years, not so much.

This next photo is not actually of blossoms, but if you look closely you can see some tiny plums on this Santa Rosa plum tree. It blossomed a few weeks ago, and some of the blossoms and fruit survived the freakish late snow storm we had recently.


Santa Rosa Plum Tree ~ see the tiny green plums?

Next up is my newest Bartlett pear tree. It is so new that it has not produced any fruit yet. My old Bartlett pear died a few years ago. Probably due to gophers attacking its roots (even though I installed a wire gopher basket) or perhaps due to root rot. I am not sure. I purchased and planted this new little Bartlett 2 or 3 winters ago. I usually buy bare root fruit trees. They are easier to handle, cost less and seem to grow faster and stronger when transplanted.


Young Bartlett Pear Tree ~ lotsa blooms, no fruit yet


The photo below is not fruit tree blossoms or even native ornamental flowers. This is a pretty bouquet that graced our Greek Orthodox Easter dinner table last Sunday evening. Bob gave me this bright bouquet of flowers and it added just the right splash of color to go with our traditional bright red Greek Easter eggs.


Bright Spring Bouquet

I will post about both of our Easter celebrations another day. I am so behind on my posting!

Happy Spring everyone! Enjoy the warming weather.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

Healthy Baby

Annelise enjoying the bananas!

Jack's granddaughter Annelise will have her first birthday on April 11th. Her Mom and Dad are having a party for her complete with music, cake, ice cream etc. We are planning to attend, and I will report back here about the festivities.

For now though, I just had to share this latest cute photo of Annelise learning to enjoy healthy foods while shopping with her Mom and Dad!

She is such a cutie! I love this photo.

© Copyright 2009 Mountain Harvest Basket

*Falling* Down on the Job

I have been so busy with Fall chores around my home, garden and business that I truly have been "falling" down on the job of keeping my blog up to date. My apologies to my loyal readers. I'll try not to let that happen again. (yeah, right.)

Fall seems to be the time to gather, clean, organize and plan. Plan for winter. Plan for the upcoming holidays. Clean and organize everything. An awesome task around my cluttered and busy home. And I must say that I don't seem to have much energy for any of that lately. But I plod on, however slowly.

In the above photo you see a close-up in my produce scale of these beautiful Jonagold apples:

Jonagold Apple Harvest ~ almost 9 lbs!

My triple graft apple tree (has 3 kinds of apples on one tree) gave me the best Jonagold harvest ever this year! I picked more Jonagolds this year than I have in the past 9 years from that little tree. Mother Nature really outdid herself there. These apples are sweet, juicy and crisp. Great eating apples. Nature's perfect snacks.

Also on that same triple graft apple tree are my Mutsu apples seen here after harvesting:

Mutsu Apple Harvest ~ 4 1/2 lbs

Big beautiful green apples with a yellow-pink blush. This year the Mutsu apples were bigger than normal, but the overall harvest was about the same as usual. Maybe a bit heavier. These are not quite as sweet as the Jonagolds, but are still very tasty.

Also from that same tree I harvested about 8 pounds of Gala apples in September
Those apples are getting soft now and are not as good eaten out of hand as the rest, but will still be fine for baking or making applesauce and jelly.

That tree had so many Galas this year that the Gala trunk of the tree broke in half from the weight of the apples. I had to pick about 4 pounds of apples prematurely in order to unweight the branches and hopefully save the tree. I tied and taped up the broken trunk and pray that the tree will heal itself. The Gala trunk of this tree is vital to the apple production on the rest of the tree, since the Gala apple blossoms are the pollinators for the Jonagold and the Mutsu blossoms. I guess I really should thin out my apples the next time the harvest looks heavy. Before the tree breaks.

Shown below is the very last zucchini summer squash from my summer 2008 garden. I found him hiding at the edge of my garden underneath a big squash leaf. Surprised and pleased me!

Big Clarimore Zuke ~ soon to be soup!

Hardware Bob had made enough basil pesto for the season so he allowed me to harvest the rest of his basil plants before the cold nights froze the beautiful green leaves. I made one last batch of pesto and then bunched the rest for drying. We will use the dried basil in our winter cooking. Winter comfort foods such as soups and stews need lots of herbs and spices.

Basil drying for winter storage and use ~ thank you Bob!

Below is a gratuitious photo of my pretty red petunias that have survived through 2 summers and one winter so far, even with me forgetting to water and prune them. Also growing in the pot are a few yellow marigolds that started from some seed casually scattered in there.

Pretty Red Petunias ~ will you make it through another Winter?

Well, it's late October. Fall is well established, however, we are still having very warm days with cooler nights. The upcoming cold weather is going to be a shock to our systems no doubt. I have cleaned and readied my woodstove that I use for winter heating, but have not yet made a fire in it this season. The cold weather will come soon enough. I am just going to enjoy the sun as long as I can.

Happy Fall everyone!

© Copyright 2008 Mountain Harvest Basket