Posts from — July 2009

After spending so much time with our hands and feet in the dirt, we do love the water.

Also, beer and cantaloupe. At the same time.

So we were lucky enough to dodge the bullet on a number of cool weather crop problems – late blight, blossom end rot, slugs. But we did get the Japanese beetles, all over the pinwheels marigolds, zinnias, and beans.

Fortunately, they’re too busy hanging out on top of each other making little beetles to be particularly evasive or crafty. You can just walk along the row, pick them off the leaves, plunk them in a jar of water, and let nature take its course.

This round definitely goes to Nathan Palmer, beetle catcher par excellence.

So apparently we’re popular with the king.

And he really likes misshapen butternut squash.

Well then.

That’s interesting.

Having Meredith here over the weekend and staying in the camper with me, I got to thinking about how far I’ve come with Catalina. Merry went with me around Christmas to put a deposit down on her, in a normal residential neighborhood in a dumpy North Shore town. Catalina had been sitting in the driveway for a long time, tires flat, propped on wooden pallets and cinderblocks, filled with all sorts of trash and carpenter’s odds and ends.

Looking at the pictures now, I’m not entirely sure what I saw in her. The $200 price tag, to be sure. But really, she was a fixer-upper of fairly epic proportions. I am not a plumber, a carpenter, an electrician, not even a born tinkerer really. I’d prefer to pick up the phone book and get somebody who knows what they’re doing to come help.

But somehow, in the height of summer, she’s become this rather dreamy place to live, shady and simple, and I’m proud that I was actually able to put such an oddball idea in motion. It’s a little tough when I have guests – she’s really built for one or two. And it seems that something or other is always breaking – most recently, one of the benches on the dinette gave out when my friend was sitting down to dinner.

I’ve already found a buyer for her, a farmer I used to work for, and she’s going to stay on-island after I go, when the winter comes on. I thought about keeping her, maybe towing her somewhere else for the winter, but it would be really expensive, and she’s really old, and I’m afraid I’d mess up my beloved truck, which always comes first in my heart. Also, I love the idea of other twenty-something flower girls sleeping in the little loft in summers to come, adding to her bit by bit. Maybe somebody’ll finally finish the goddam electrical wiring – sure as hell won’t be me.

So I got back to the stand around lunch today, and someone had given us this outstanding ceramic chicken. I was thrilled. It reminded me of one of my favorite thrift stores, Chicken Alley in Vineyard Haven. They have a permanent collection of chicken objects behind the register, figurines and potholders and such, and whenever I go in there it’s the things I want most that aren’t for sale.

I carried her around, this chicken, for like five minutes, trying to get everyone on the farm to agree upon how awesome she is. Suffice it to say they were slightly less enthused.

She’s going to stay down there and guard the produce. I think it’s perhaps a theft deterrent to have this ceramic chicken watching your every move. We’ll see.

Nathan and I went down to Sepiessa late this morning, to harvest for tomorrow’s market. I set him up picking pea shoots, which he gamely consented to – as any field worker can tell you, picking pea shoots is perhaps one of the most annoying and unfulfilling harvest tasks around. You feel like you’re going blind, looking for the telltale curlicues amid the thickets of green, and after half an hour or so of focused work you’ll have a few ounces to show for your labor.

I went out among the tomatoes with a paper cronig’s bag in hand, partly to avoid picking pea shoots, and partly because I am an eternal optimist regarding those plants. We fertilized and mulched and watered our little guts out over them, and whatever we can get out of them, however paltry, however woefully short of our expectations, I am going to collect every last freakin bit of it.

To my surprise, there were a decent number of fruits to take away – maybe ten pounds or so. Nothing to call the bank over. But still not bad for July.

The beans are in – a little green haricot vert type, ‘gold rush’ yellow wax, and a gorgeous purple-streaked dual purpose bean – dragon langerie.

I’m not entirely sure what the correct french pronunciation of dragon langerie is, but when a customer asked at market what kind of beans they were, Caitlin replied dragon lingerie. As in underwear.

The lady in question did not seem particularly amused by this answer and continued to poke at the beans. Meanwhile, I rolled around in the back of the truck, consumed by giggles. There’s something about the idea of a dragon in a pink triangle top. Come on now. That’s clearly funny.

From now on, they’re dragon tongue beans. No translation necessary.

The arrival of friends and family to help has arrived, in the nick of time.

It’s magical.

Not only do I get help with weeding the peppers or harvesting basil in the rain, I have reason to drive out to Aquinnah just to look at the cliffs in the rain, to spend two hours reading the paper on Sunday morning, to remember that the vacationers do not have a monopoly on the good life. All things considered, it might be me who has the leg up.

Hey check it out, cut and paste this link:

http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/26/travel/20090726-vineyard-slide-show_2.html

That’s me!

Doing a sudoku. Unsuccessfully. Wednesday markets are boring sometimes. True fact.

My favorite flower is in. I love the blue with the green, the strong sculptural shape. Maybe I’ll even pick some for the Catalina.

So many farmers and hobbyists do flowers on the Vineyard. The market is really saturated here. But still I can’t help myself, putting in yet more sunflowers, churning out bouquets. Beats weeding the onions any day of the week.