Despite all the annoying Turnpike Exit jokes, they call New
Jersey the “Garden State” for a very good reason, the reason being the rich
fertility of its soils. Most people
don’t think of the state as a particularly fluvial place, but in fact it is a
network of medium and small waterways that have for eons been banking up flood
plains obviously designed by God to be truck gardens. The divine plan has not yet been entirely
frustrated by “developers” hawking macmansions—only mostly frustrated.
In my back
garden the vegetables are on the march as though in audition for important
roles in a Stephen King novel. The
tomatoes, somewhat stunted by a premature heat wave as they were being put in,
are only now beginning to ripen. Very
few are presenting themselves as early candidates for even a red ribbon, but
they do promise succulence. The other
ingredients of the ratatouille,
however, and especially the squash, are astonishing in their profusion and in
the speed with which the fruits appear and expand. I put in two kinds, an ordinary green
zucchini, and a yellow “summer” squash (both cucurbita pepo). I always forget just how large these plants
grow in rich soil, so that I now have considerable trouble treading among them
to gather the harvest. This must be done
on a daily basis to get them at their young and tender best. I will now also be harvesting the green
peppers (capsicum anuum) and
eggplant (solanum melongena) on more
or less the same principle.
Fruiting
is all about the sexual reproduction of the plants, which in squash is done in
a particularly spendthrift fashion, with each individual vine producing enough
seed-filled fruit to produce, with agricultural help, a thousand
offspring. But agricultural intervention
can arise from differing motives—as suggested by our phrase “nipped in the
bud”. We have only recently discovered
just how delicious is the squash flower, very lightly battered and delicately
sautéed: squash family planning with a gastronomic reward. Of course every form of the squash is
delicious—roasted, grilled, baked in casserole, blended into a scrumptious
soup. My young neighbor Anna, a high
school sophomore, shared with me her great recipe for zucchini bread—if you can
called a baked good with two cups of sugar in it anything but “cake,” that is.
One of the
peculiarities of this year’s growing season has been the combination of
extremely hot, dry periods, and occasional downpours. We got a real sousing on Saturday afternoon,
when at least five inches of rain fell over a period of about three hours. There were the usual phenomena of flash
flooding in these parts—roads under water, cars drowned in underpasses, popping
manhole lids, and the intermittent collapse of various parts of the electrical
grid. Wind had blown the metal cover off
the top of our fireplace chimney, so that we got a gallon or two of sooty water
oozing into the living room; but we were on the spot and combatted it
successfully. Later I received an email
from the University Librarian with the alarming news that my office, which is
in the library, was inundated, with a so-far undetermined loss of books and
papers. I went over and checked the
office out the next day, but it was practically empty, most of the books having
been removed to a special drying room (which sounded good) and the most badly
damaged to “Conservation” (which didn’t).
I suspect the aberrant rainfall
pattern accounts for the very poor performance of the wild raspberries this
year. We still have many jars of last
year’s jam. This year I haven’t been
able to beat the birds to enough berries to make a single pie. I went out for a final try just before dinner
the day after the big rain. There is an
historically rich spot across the street, not fifty yards from my front door. I thrashed about long enough to get wet and
scratched before giving up.
What you lose on the roundabouts
you make up for on the straightaways.
Returning the short distance from the berry canes empty handed, my
pessimism confirmed, I had to cross before reaching the street a patch of moist
greensward. The grass, over which the
University’s mowing machines had passed but a few days ago, was already in need
of cutting once again. In this grass I
stumbled upon a scattering of small white blobs, so insignificant that I
spotted them only when I was walking among them. It was a colony of infant field mushrooms (agaricus campestris). About half were still in the button
stage. Those that had opened had caps
about the diameter of a nickel and the thickness of a dime. Their gills, which in older specimens would
have been a rich dark brown, were still a pastel pink. They had probably sprung up that very dawn
following the drenching. Joan was just
about to prepare the first course: sautéed zucchini flowers. I was just in time to add the baby field
mushrooms, fresh and fresher. A great
combination, for which I intend to file a patent.
