waiting…waiting

Emily Followill

The winter holidays might steal the spotlight as the season for sparkling wine, but we firmly believe that summer is where it’s at. (That said, there’s no wrong time of year to open a bottle of bubbly, if you ask us!) When the temperatures rise and we’re spending more time than usual in the sun (slathered in SPF, of course), we don’t crave a heavy IPA, potent bourbon-based cocktail, or powerful red wine. Instead, we find ourselves gravitating toward lower-ABV, ultra-refreshing (and hydrating!) spritzes. 

I’m hoping some of my 2008 progeny will start turning red, but if not, I have a stash of green-tomato recipes. (For now I’ll hold onto them, as it’s not yet time to give up…look for them in a few weeks here, and enjoy the Oven-Roasted Tomato idea down at the bottom of this post meantime.)But really, I marvel each summer-into-fall when I stock my freezer with the harvest turned to many quarts of sauce: How did I even get one ripe fruit, considering what could have happened?No fruit. Only green fruit. Fruit with spots. Fruit with black bottoms. Fruit with cracks. Fruit eaten by marauders of every taxonomic order.Tomato leaves spotted. Or dropping off. Or eaten and just plain gone (ho

AS I KNOW I have already mentioned (do I sound desperate yet?), I am waiting for things to happen, for sure signs of life as I crawl around the leaf litter these tenaciously cold days, uncovering possibilities. What am I waiting (hoping) for? Things like the fiercely alive, sharpened-looking shoots of hostas.

I AM WAITING for the first bunch of homegrown tulips to set on the dining table, but so far all I have is foliage and some emerging buds. I am happy to say I’ve been visited by the blue cohosh of “waiting, waiting: part 1” and by those sharp little hosta shoots from “waiting, waiting: part 2.” From here on out it will all happen fast, maybe too fast, and then I will be regretting instead of waiting.

And in the last few years there has been a bonus: a heavy crop of beech nuts. When the first one came, littering the ground throughout the canopy and beyond, delighting the squirrels, I wondered why, “suddenly,” it was so productive, and then I read: a European beech, various sources report must be at least 30 years old to start producing a full crop of beechnuts. So my tree is right on schedule.I say “I added” the tree, but that’s not quite true. Even at maybe 5 feet tall, burlap-covered rootball included, the young beech was far too heavy for me to haul uphill myself. Two neighbors helped, and I encircled its trunk with a tube of hardware cloth when we were done, and watered it well, and imagined it a giant someday. The great public gardens I’d grown up visiting near New York City all had giant old European beeches, the fancy of the men who’d made the grand estates th

Shepherd’s Hut makers, Court & Hunt have decided to branch out from the  practicality of  the hut  and also make this delicious and totally covetable summerhouse on wheels.  I hung it around for ages, wishing I had the life, the garden (and the money) that would accommodate it, but in the end I made do with a postcard.  Can’t you just see it in the evening light with candles flickering in the sconces as  Elizabeth Bennet waits a rendezvous with Mr Darcy?  

There have been times in the past several years since I planted the apricot tree that I have seriously considered chopping it down. It has produced very few fruit and I did wonder why I gave it space in the garden.  Not this year though.  Last month I had to thin the fruit, so laden were the branches  and now the remaining fruit have swelled and are weighing down the branches with hundreds of glorious golden fruit. As far as possible, I have covere

Sweet Peas in Waiting The autumn sown sweet pea plants are looking very good in the coldframe and they seem perfectly content with my regime of benign neglect (i.e. occasionally peering inside the frame).

It’s taken months of waiting and nightly slug patrols, but finally I’ve got my reward – from now until autumn-proper arrives I will walk out the front door and be greeted by the peerless beauty of morning glories.  I love these flowers for their delicate ephemeral beauty and their pure blue hue.  Just looking at them makes me feel happy.