The annual Labor Day block party happened today because that’s when the people who organize it could be there.

Having forgotten to buy cream, I didn’t bring a chocolate torte this year, but I figured homegrown black cherry tomatoes were a decent trade-off, with some Durkee sauce on the side and a plastic knife to scoop it out with and a note explaining that they go together.

It’s one of the great old traditions of summer. My dad tells me he learned about Durkee’s (there should be an ‘s there. There really should) from Richard’s great uncle (probably before we were even born, right, Dad?)

Three times I saw someone bending over my bowl and wondering out loud, without reaching in, Are those tomatoes?

I did not go on and on about their having been picked in the early morning for peak sweetness, yadda yadda; I just said, Yes, and homegrown, too!

A few got eaten. The Durkee was left untouched. Leaving me wondering, is that combination just an East Coast thing? Don’t these people know how good this is? I couldn’t find it in any stores here and had to order a six-pack online, so hey, I had plenty to share if they’d let me.

Okay, searching for it to offer you all a link, I got this:

“FAMOUS SAUCE
This popular tangy sandwich spread has been around for over 100 years! It was even served in the Lincoln White House!”

With a picture of the bottle.

But when I searched for info on that actual item on the manufacturer’s website, it seems that after hanging in there since the mid-1800s, it… Is on the list of all their products but isn’t under Sauces and it isn’t filed under F. Wait, don’t tell me they’re not making it now!

Looking a little harder, I found this on food.com, along with a recipe for faking it:

“Eugene R. Durkee created the first prepared and packaged salad dressing called Durkee Famous Sauce in 1857. To appreciate his endeavor, it is important to remember this was created prior to refrigeration. His creation was carried west by the pioneers. Historians have found old, discarded Durkee dressing bottles along covered-wagon trails. Durkee Famous Sauce was even purported to be stocked in Mary Todd Lincoln’s pantry and served to Abraham Lincoln in the White House during the Civil War.”

The real stuff, as currently constituted (i.e. with soybean oil) is still on Amazon after all. Phew.

Reading that book yesterday got me looking again…

It seems to be a new product, as far as I can tell. But it’s designed by actual gardeners for actual gardeners by a company that does actual customer service.

Meaning today I finally found what looks like it would be a great greenhouse for my Alphonso mango tree, The Sunbubble. The unusual shape is perfect.

The smaller version would be plenty for now. The bigger one would be more of a challenge to heat but the tree would have longer to grow into the space before having to be kept to that size, and it makes more sense to just buy the one and be done.

As long as we don’t go out of town when it’s cold I can keep on doing my two layers of frost covers every night over the Christmas lights thing. The idea of a greenhouse would be to be able to leave the tree on its own for more than a single daytime. I once left it for five days with a single frost cover over it because it (hopefully) wasn’t going to hit freezing–and even with the claim of 85% light transmission with just the one on, the leaf color took a major hit for a month.

Being able to pop that big thing right over its head, stake it down, and be done once and for all is highly appealing regardless.

I sent them a question re heating issues… To be continued.

I got quite wrapped up in a new book that came today, “Grow Fruit Naturally,” by Lee Reich, that I ordered in part because it includes a section on mangoes, and let me tell you, there’s not a lot of information out there on how to take care of a mango tree. It even mentions Alphonsos. Especially given that mine flowered in February when it was a few months old last year, which was a warmer season, and didn’t at all during this chilly spring, that 55F+ for fruit set was worth the price of the book.

I have a large Gardman Fruit Cage I can set up over it; I just wish I knew how to find that size of greenhouse-type material to fit over it instead of/in addition to its birdnetting.

Seaberry and Medlar fruits, if you’ve never heard of them that’s okay, they’re new to me, too.

And now I finally know that that weird little fruit in my neighbor’s yard is a pineapple guava.

Who knew that some kinds of citrus turn color as they ripen–and then under certain conditions turn green again? (And why did the author leave me dangling with that little bit of information without an explanation for the how and why of it?)

I loved his take on the best way to grow plums without a lot of pest or disease problems. Half joking half not: “Move to California or the Mediterranean.”

Well then.

“A friend is getting into knitting,” my son texted. “Got any surplus fluff you wouldn’t mind passing along?”

Fluff being kid code around here for yarn, roving, raw fibers, the works. So I asked what colors they wear.

“Darker colors normally? Never seen him wear anything in a light shade, thinking about it.”

Yeah I was a little surprised and shouldn’t have been, but mostly I was just delighted, knowing just how much fun and even joy that person could be bringing into his life and others’ in the years to come; sure, I’d be glad to enable that a bit, here, just let me stash dive here a moment (don’t think he’d want that laceweight silk…)

Meantime: I read a week or two ago someone’s story of his squash climbing out of his raised bed, the plant within that bed dying, but where it had grown out to it had rooted to the ground and was still merrily producing new squashes. He wrote it to tell people who like to grow on trellises what they might be missing out on, but for me, it was a hey, you, water that new area that the plant had sprawled to, chasing the sun as it edged away from summertime.

So I started to.

And suddenly, after not producing a single new squash since July, there was a new one, and two days after that another new one and maybe they’ll even have time to mature before a frost (especially since they’re near the mango tree.)

And I found this description of parthenocarpy and maybe it explains how that second one has that huge flower still going while the new squash is already that big: as a seedless decoy, which would take less energy out of the plant to produce, to keep feeding the critters it needs to disperse its seeds while luring them away from some of the seeded squash so the plant has some chance of actually being reproduced next year.

We’ll see when we eventually cut into the thing.

Alright. So. Stash. Time to get to it more than that first quick glancing-over. There’s a definite dearth of manly superwash worsted around here, hmm.

Hanging on to that last bit of summer…

Two boxes for us and the one on the left for another family. I delivered it and got to see the thrilled look on the 13-year-old’s face when he opened that door and saw Andy’s peaches. They’ve had them before. He knew.

Michelle had water on to boil (one minute and then quickly over to the other pot) and icewater to cool for skinning the first four about the moment we walked in the door; picture taken immediately after. Those four made enough puree for two batches of sorbet.

The slant of the light and the earlying of the evening: it feels sudden and it’s taking me by surprise every day as if this were new to me.

Last week the littlest peach tree, in full glow of the light sunrise to nearly sunset for months, was shaded by 3:00 pm; now it is by a little after 1:00, and since this is the Baby Crawford’s first year all I can do is hope its six and a half hours (today’s count) were enough. And again I debate whether this is the year the camphor tree comes down to make more room and light for the fruit trees to grow into.

Tree service or airfare to two more weddings coming up. Well that answers that.

It’s cooler, too, and there is this sudden need to knit All The Warmth that is waiting in the skeins of patient yarn.

Knitted a little.

Re that subject line, my mom used that phrase a lot when we were kids as something to always remember to aspire to–and said it at times, too, one must confess, in carefully stifled exasperation, reminding herself of what *she* aspired to, and then repeated by a certain daughter towards her own kids and herself as they were growing up. And so on.

And now I’m going to be boring a moment and repeat what I said on Facebook just because it’s useful information to get out there.

The Produce Picks column in the San Jose Mercury News on Sunday had this line in it: “On a really hot summer day, the pear may reach the minimum desired sugar level in the morning, but the heat will chase the sugar back into the tree. It’s the tree’s way of protecting itself.” I had never heard such a thing before, and I thought I knew at least a little about fruit trees. I wondered, just pears? I would quite doubt that. I’d wondered why a fig I’d picked one morning was so very very good but the ones I’d had since were just okay. Oh. I’d picked them late in the day. So I went out early this morning and picked the two that were currently ripe (I planted the tree last year, it’s new at this) and took that first bite.

THAT. That was what I’d been wondering where it had gone. That was what a ripe straight-off-the-tree fig was supposed to taste like. Moral of the story, and it probably applies to tomatoes, too: pick in the morning.

(And I knew Andy does. Now I know more of why.)

People chimed in who knew more than I do and the verdict was, yes, it’s true of every edible thing in the garden.

In that case, I figure it should be better known than it is. The food you grow tastes better if you pick it early in the day. Spread the word like come-post.

I picked up a peach this morning from last week’s box from Andy’s and put it right back down: an impressive puddle had been hidden under it–we should have eaten that one four days ago. I guess we handled it too many times trying to find the softest and ripest. There was a heartfelt thought of, oh if only…

I don’t feed the squirrels but I just couldn’t toss it. Not one of those peaches.

Maybe it would encourage them to search for food away from my ripening figs? Right? So I put it in a bowl so it wouldn’t weep across the carpeting and took it to the farthest point in the yard from my figs and the neighbors’ tomatoes over yonder and put it on a stump, the remains of one of the fence-threatening trees we cut down two years ago to make way for replanting in fruit trees.

I went out this evening to check if it might by any chance still be there, unnoticed.

As if!

You can see where more of that pink juice ran out onto that stump. It took me a moment to find the pit a yard away and yes, it really is that red.

But what is funny and intriguing and quizzical is this: a gently rounded stone with no sharp points had been placed right where I had put that peach down. It was definitely larger than the pit. It couldn’t have gotten there without that peach having been gotten out of the way first. Wherever it had come from it had not been there before and I don’t know how far they’d had to carry it and it would have been heavy in their mouths for getting it up and onto that stump.

But they did.

They left me a tip.

Random thoughts:

I googled why squirrels don’t like figs, because my friend said they don’t, and oh goodness oh yes they definitely do. I guess mine just haven’t found out what they are yet.

So, more acanthus stalks now artfully placed going up the tree trunk all around like it’s ready for some Burning Fig festival.

Funky color play with the lighting there (picture taken standing up). I really do need to block that.

What they were, what they are now.

Burpee’s told me their Pilgrim butternuts start out and stay the color shown on the seed packet, so no, what I was describing was not that and that the critters must have planted mine.

I wonder if they simply had a plant that got pollinated by something they didn’t want. Either way, my six remaining squashes are gradually coming to look like what I want anyway, so, close enough, I figure.

A few warm days in a row and while all the others sat there green, two of the figs decided it was time to turn reddish brown: one on this branch, one on that. Just like last week. They’re not drooping quite enough yet, though, and when I tested by lifting each one to horizontal they did not come away from the tree.

But one has two tiny droplets of sugar on the outside of the skin halfway down already, something the ones I’ve picked so far have not. I was tempted. It wants to be sweeter still? Okay, I can wait–probably won’t have to for long, like, tomorrow, probably.

My birder friend Alice told me that I would find the birds would go after them but the squirrels somehow really don’t seem to like figs, to which I say well Hallelujah for that! I guess they don’t like the smell of the latex in the sap? They tend to walk carefully around the mango tree not too close and that’s the one thing those two trees have in common.

One of the ripening ones hadn’t even been covered in a clamshell but I guess the jays hadn’t figured out how to get at it among the ones that were. It is now.

I like this idea of them ripening a good snack worth’s for two at a time. I don’t know how long the process will stay that way, but if we get a whole bunch at once I will roll them in melted butter, roast them, and drizzle honey on top. If they need it. Which clearly they won’t.

The bottom third of the Indian Free peach is tucked in because that’s where the birdnetting hit the top of it this past spring and after an initial tight squeeze, it grew right on through. Looks kinda like a compression sock on a tree.

And yes that fence is six feet tall and yes it’s eighteen months old.

Meantime my somewhat far-fetched goal for a Saturday had been to do a sixteen-row pattern repeat on my afghan (3856 stitches’ worth) but as we got past noon and there were all these errands to run I was resigned to the idea that it just wasn’t going to happen.

Turns out it was the errands that weren’t going to happen after he got out the red laser pointer thermometer thingy: the next thing you know, he was making a dot on my wool-socked feet. All it needed was a cat chasing it. What?

Then at his.

Why are you…?

Actually, it was pretty genius. His foot with the wound was ten degrees warmer, consistently, and that sealed it: he finally called the doctor.

The doctor: Go to Urgent Care. Now.

Turned out there was swelling above the ankle now and it had gotten much worse over the course of the day.

H o u r s later I finished that pattern repeat a half-minute before the nurse finished winding that white netting tape around and around. But the important part is, another day and he might well have been on IV antibiotics and it looks like we came in soon enough.

Yay $5 laser thermometers. Not just for measuring caramel sauce temps. Yay geek geniuses. Yay for antibiotics that still (hopefully) work.

Last year they had a drought and a poor crop and weren’t selling the seeds and I just had to wait.

But guess what I just got in the mail. They even came with two empty seed packets to save your own in later. If you want heritage varieties, this is definitely a heritage variety: a soft-shelled watermelon that was the best-selling one of the 1800s and considered the sweetest.

Until the arrival of the railroads induced breeding that was shipping-centric at the expense of flavor (sounds like tomatoes) and the market bottomed out for these.

Just this one family kept growing their ancestors’ variety, 170 years on their land. They got discovered. It had been thought to be extinct.

You can read their story here. And the Bradford Watermelon’s Revolutionary War history here.

They say they get an average of one watermelon per plant. How many gallons of California water to grow a single one? I’m not sure I want to know but I know I want to try. Re saving the seeds, they can cross-breed with any squash plants that might be around and although that might make for some really odd and curious future food I’m not sure I’m that adventurous. Half Bradford and half zucchini? Wait–it IS intriguing…  Baseball bat size for the win! (Yeah, but.)

I’ve got almost a year to figure out how I’m going to keep the critters from eating them.

Just because they can doesn’t mean they should keep at it. Their only reward is seeing the boxes tumbling down.

But clearly the sport appeals to them. At this point we have a lot of green Fujis in the fridge and not a lot left on the tree and what you don’t see there is the ends of the branches that were broken in the act.

On the other hand, stepping a few feet to the right, the squirrels have not yet realized that figs are food–or rather, there was one bite in one very green ditched one on the ground awhile ago and that was that. I left it there so its buddies could all taste it and go eww, too.

And so Richard and I split our first-ever homegrown summer fig today and that, my friends, was exactly what a fig aspires to be. The depth of flavor, the sweetness, the intensity that gives one last did-you-catch-that? at the end. Two more are becoming reddish brown and starting to droop and I’m really liking this idea of my forty-nine more taking turns ripening one by one.

Oh, and, the afghan? Debby’s friend’s ‘what if I wake up stupid?’ comment is exactly why I have to rip immediately when I have to rip.

It’s so good to be able to say I got way beyond those rows today. The yarn held up well to the abuse, too.

Suddenly wondering what knitting needles made out of applewood might be like… I know, I know, don’t encourage them.

Thank you, everybody. Pilgrim is the name of the butternut variety I bought. I went looking, and found a site with photos of a butternut that looks like mine (scroll to the bottom.) Well, yay, that is definitely encouraging!

So hopefully the coloring is just an idiosyncrasy of that variety and it really will be what we want and not an offspring of the gourds next door. Our Vermont maple syrup and butter wait in happy anticipation. I should mention, the wateriness in yesterday’s picture is because I steamed those two halves in the microwave, trying a little too hard to soften the ends.

The critters have stopped raiding them (they made off with the first two) since I guarded the edges with those thorny stalks mentioned earlier; we now have two new and one fairly large one in among the leaves. The plant is nearly twice the size it was two weeks ago and I expect there will be more squash to come.

Monday, I will ask Burpee. And hope.