the rowdy beans

September 18, 2016September 17, 2016 / Apple Hill Cottage / 2 Comments

jungle of beans I pulled up one row of the rowdy jungle of green beans this morning. A few tiny white and yellow blossoms were dangling on the ends of brown leaves but I have a pantry full of beans.

a mess of beans

We can eat beans every day for a month this winter and still have some left

but those unruly beans shaded the pepper plants that are still growing.

And the autumn sun will love those peppers and caress them and grow them;

we don’t have enough peppers to eat every day for a month this winter.

It’s like life that way — choices every day.

I hated to chop those Blue Lake Pole Beans down.

Kentucky Wonder Beans

They have been a wonder this summer.

Not only have they been charming in the garden on our string trellises,

but we ate them as often as we liked;

I’ve canned them, frozen them, pickled them;

I have them drying for shell beans in every spare spot in the kitchen and back porch,

and enough to plant for next year.

And yes, there’s a recipe here…

Dilled Green Beans or Dilly Beans

Fill pint jars with lovely long green beans. Holding the jars on the side, put the beans in one at a time until you have a filled jar. To each pint jar, add some grinds of crushed red pepper, 1/2 teaspoon mustard seed, 1/2 teaspoon dill seed, and a garlic clove (or two). If you have dill flowers, you can add one to the bottom of the jar before you put in the beans, or the top of the jar afterwards. (If using the dill flowers, omit the dill seed.)

Make a brine of equal amounts of vinegar and water. I used 5 cups of each. To 10 cups of vinegar and water, add 1/2 cup pickling or kosher salt. Heat the brine to boiling; then carefully pour the brine over the beans leaving 1/4 inch head space in the jars. Seal with canning lids and process in a boiling water bath for 5 minutes.

You can see these were canned earlier in the season when my dill was still plentiful…

These will look (and taste) delicious on the Thanksgiving relish tray

with pickled beets and gingered yellow squash pickles.

August Is Yellow

September 13, 2016June 20, 2017 / Apple Hill Cottage / 9 Comments

Part One
the august sun shines like a spotlight on the ten year old
joyfully riding her new green bicycle (without the training wheels) 
down the gravel driveway.

like a pro, not even braking,
she leans to the left and whizzes onto the dirt path
packed down through years of truck tires.

through the trees she rides, slowing now, for the pull of the dirt
is harder on bicycle tires (though easier on knees).
the trees bow to her, the queen of the bicycle.

the sun glints through the leaves and the air is
saturated with the sweet scent of ripe peaches
and the hum of satisfied and satiated bees.

she pays no attention to the glorious around her
because she is ten years old and not yet aware
that her childhood Augusts were golden.


Part Two
the grandfather is waiting for her to tire of riding circles 
in the orchard. he figures it will take twice (maybe three times)
and she’ll be ready to listen to the lesson that peaches teach.

he has the ladder ready when 
she drops her bike next to the dusty green farm truck.
“Help me pick some peaches?” he asks.

he steadies the ladder and guides her small hand as they reach,
touching the fuzz gently, gently, every squeeze will bruise these 
peaches easy as you bruise those knees.

gently gently she places the peach in the basket looped over her 
      skinny arm.
he moves her hand to another hanging low on the branch. 
see this green? see this fuzz? peaches have to ripen on the tree.

their juices have to be warmed by the hot August sun. they take 
their time ripening and can’t be hurried. you can’t pick the tree 
clean, you have to go again and again to the same tree. 
       peaches teach patience.

together they fill the basket, moving the ladder around the tree
taking their time — savoring the tree-ripened juicy chin-sticky 
sweet yellow sweltering August patience-teaching peaches.

patience is not his usual shape, this short round man in the straw 
hat and farm clothes teaching peaches to the skinny girl with bruised
      knees. 
she learned peaches. she learned love. she still stamps her foot at
      patience

and she can’t abide sickly grocery store peaches.

For the next few weeks I’m taking an online poetry course over at Monna McDiarmid’s place. This first week we were asked to write about childhood, and if we wanted, to use the color yellow. I probably won’t post all the poems, but this one I liked because it was such a good memory of my grandfather, who built Apple Hill Cottage. And my sister sent me this photo just as I was writing the poem…It’s a work in progress. Comments welcome.

Iced Tea on the Back Porch

August 24, 2016August 24, 2018 / Apple Hill Cottage / 1 Comment

This is the third August that has come around and I haven’t had to think about school. Instead of thinking on lesson plans and books and remembering kids’ names, I’m thinking on canning and freezing the garden’s produce, and sitting on the back porch with a glass of mint iced tea and enjoying these soon-to-be-glorious days of September.

Last summer we worked on the porch ceiling because the wood needed to be fixed before we could even think of putting a roof on top of it. We worked on it; I just didn’t document it, because, well, I wanted to have some nice photos to post about our wonderful, rustic back porch, just right for summer and mint iced tea.

Yeah, pride is a terrible sin…

I’ve never shied away from posting horrible photos of the cottage. You, dear reader, have seen pictures of holes in the floor, ugly plaster, dead mice in the walls, ancient electric wires, and rotten insulation. I believe in truth-in-blog-posting.

Mostly.

I’ve never shown you a picture of the back of the cottage.

The truth is, from the back it looks like an Appalachian Mountain Shack. This fact was brought home to me when we had to take photographs of the cottage from every angle for our insurance company. They didn’t want any pictures of the inside. The Beautiful Rooms that we’ve finished? Nope. They wanted photos of the outside. back of cottage Okay, so you can tell this was taken in the early spring. Actually, early spring, Last Year. Since then we have replaced, scraped, and painted some of the clapboard siding and fixed up the other stuff a little, but yes it’s still ugly. Although it does give you an idea of the scope of our problems. The mismatched windows belong to the basement workshop — not a high priority for remodeling; and what will we ever do with the cave there under the steps? Right now it’s a good place for garden tools…

We started with Mr. H.C.’s hard and fast rule — work from the top down. Replace the rotted boards on the roof. Put up new plywood and new drip edge. Take out unnecessary boards. Get rid of the spiders and wasps. Paint. And oh yes, put a new roof on the whole cottage.

These views made us consider a skylight or two, but that was rejected in favor of expediency and cost. Paint is cheaper. The new color is Benjamin Moore’s Segovia Red.

Back porch rails, newly painted

My sanding workshop around the back corner of the porch was in use again, as a door-stripping workshop. Lovely old French patio doors will eventually replace this ugly old metal door. It will be a great day when that old door goes on the trash heap.

But the work stopped when we discovered lead paint on the patio doors. I don’t need any more dead brain cells, you know?

Now what was I saying?

So the porch is painted, the roof is fixed, but that ugly storm door is still there. So are Sliding Glass Doors # 5. And so is the ugly thirty-year-old indoor-outdoor carpet. Sigh. And the back of the cottage remains shack-like, with the top story painted and re-roofed, and the bottom floor ugly. (But the front is looking pretty good….)

At least no one sees the back of the cottage but the deer and the groundhogs. And they don’t care. And despite the unappealing nature of the photo above, these are views looking out from that ugly porch:

Sundays at the Cottage

Sunrise in March

The skies and the birds and the green more than make up for the shabby carpet and the old screen door. And so does iced tea on the back porch while other people are in school…