Saturday, October 3, 2009

cleaning up

In an attempt to make the most of my (somewhat pathetic) garden this year, I've been saving as much of everything I can manage to find out there among the weeds. Into our little Ronco dehydrator go hot peppers, tomatoes, herbs - my entire world smells like sage. In fact, I just picked so much of it, I can now taste it in my mouth - the essential oils that make the stems and leaves so sticky have managed to work their way into my bloodstream. The parsley is next, and then perhaps the lemon verbena. I pureed the leftover basil leaves with some extra virgin olive oil, put it in mini muffin tins to freeze and transferred them to a freezer bag. Chives are fairly resilient and will winter over - in the past I've been able to dig through the snow to find some still fresh and green, ready for a steaming, buttery, baked potato.

There's always this hopefulness at the end of the year - a wish for just one more sunny day that will grant us that last ripe tomato before the first snowfall.

4 comments:

Sean said...

With your basil, make pesto sauce for pasta. It's easy, will last forever (regularly eat 2+ year old pesto that's been chilling in the deep freeze the entire time), and it's SO good.

Mose Jefferson said...

My Pineapple Sage crapped out on me this year, and my Lemon Verbena clippings (stolen from the lot of my neighborhood bar) didn't take. Thank God for rosemary, tomatoes, and squash!

og said...

Make hotbeds, and start your tomatoes in them. if you make them big enough you can use them like mini greenhouses and have maters way late in the season. Also, you can grow a small cherry in a big pot indoors, even in a little apartment. Cherry tomatoes all winter long.

Tom said...

you got lucky. I got slammed with the blight and powdery mildew like mad.