Friends visit and a trip to Quebec City

Umbrellas, cafes and a palace

We were lucky enough to host friends visiting from Boise this past week. After a few days in our home, we moved on to Quebec City to share some adventures. This image of a street where we settled for a lunch of wine, pizza, salad and amazing coffee featured umbrellas with a view of the Frontenac hotel. A palace, really. 

The leaves were close to full color, and unlike previous visits to Quebec, the plethora of public gardens still could be enjoyed with live plants. Some of them were still blooming, but the mixture of plant bloom, leaf colors and textures, and the sheer overwhelming abundance of these plants (with no visible weeds) was astonishing, even to a seasoned horticulturist like myself. Wow. That was a long sentence.

I tried to take some pictures of the gardens as a whole, but the camera just can't do justice to what the eye can see. So I'll settle for showing you an image of a hibiscus in bloom.

Hibiscus flower

In previous trips to QC, we had seen a coffee shop in the Plains of Abraham, a huge park in the center of the city. We wandered back on day one, and had most excellent coffee, croissants, and a table on the patio. At said table, we were entertained by a trio of penguins to the sounds of a rushing fountain. Amazing.

and the band played on. . .

It was a nice trip. . . a great interlude to all of the national nonsense, and a great opportunity to support the Canadians. 

Thanks especially to M and A, who made the long trip across the country to visit us and things Maine and Quebecois. 

So now it's back to the garden, the beautiful fall weather, and a substantial rainfall that is staving off the drought, however temporarily.

Today's heist and a breakfast of champions. . .

In spite of cool night temperatures, harvest continues. The raspberries have been especially fruitful, and the beans continue daily. The last eggplant was harvested today, and I removed the eggplant plants. There is no hope of further reproduction from them, and they were crowding the tomatoes and the indigo. 

I don't intend to do any future dying with the indigo, but the bees absolutely love the flowers, so they're worth keeping around until nature takes them out.

 

And of course, some of the apples became a pie yesterday. I interrupted my weekly ritual of bran cereal for breakfast to have a slice of apple pie with sharp cheddar melted on it. Seemed a fair trade. 

I feel like we always eat well, but this time of year it goes beyond that. It's food for the body and the soul. And there is no more pleasant task than making an apple pie. 

Because I didn't know what Indigo looked like prior to this year, I'm including an  image of it in bloom. According the internet sources, the dye is less concentrated once the plant starts flowering, which makes sense when you consider what an energy-expensive process reproduction is. But these flowers make an excellent counterpoint to larger blooms like hydrangeas in arrangements.  

The plants are extremely vigorous in full sun, and the stems have a bamboo-ish look. I'm hoping I haven't unleashed a monster in my garden.

Apples

Small harvest

Our apple harvest was pretty sad this year. Only the McIntosh tree  bore any fruit, which was a bit surprising. I had intended to remove the tree because it had a trunk injury predating our move here. But the other two trees barely bloomed owing to a large crop last year. At least that's my hypothesis. We still have 2 large fruit hanging on what I think is a Macoun tree. A treat for later. They are not ripe yet.

I had hoped to delay harvesting these apples until after our company left, but the tree had other ideas. She dropped one apple this morning, I tasted it, and realized that these would not wait for 10 days. So in they came.

They are small but very tasty. I would not plant a McIntosh tree myself, not only because of the fruit size, but because they don't store well. They are great when picked, good a week later, and mush a month later. Well, "mush" is harsh. . . but you get the idea. Mealy is the term, I guess. They do make an excellent pie, and several of those are in our future.

These Boots are Made for Annoying

Tomatoes continue to come in, as do the beans. I blanched and froze another package of Kentucky Wonders today, and will continue to harvest until our guests arrive on Thursday. Then the rest of the beans will be let go to be collected for next year's seed. 

Fall is definitely upon us. The summer seemed shorter than usual, and we are once again in a seemingly interminable dry spell. I'll need to water the "lawn" tomorrow. And make a pie.

Retreat to an old friend

I still haven't made it back to working in clay. I don't know what's holding me back, but I do know that it's to do with losing Jasper. I had a couple of half-baked ideas sitting on my metals bench, so I retreated to that as my making medium. This photo isn't great, since you can't tell that the tube-set stone is a blue topaz. But you get the idea. It's a departure from my older work. . .more contemporary looking. 

I'm still a reliable metalsmith. I'm not such a reliable ceramicist. The throwing has improved vastly, and my hand building is something I can be proud of. But the glazing. . .that final opportunity to screw up. . . remains a nemesis. So back to what is easy. Known.

I had made a blank for this anticlastic cuff when I was thinking about a piece for the Citizens' Climate Lobby silent auction. I ended up donating 2 pieces of pottery instead, so this piece of copper sat on my bench for a few months. So back to it: Annealing, hammering, annealing, hammering, repeat. It is a known  process, if a little tough on the hands. I love the shadow in the first image, but the second gives a better ideal of who she is.

 

 

I also had some PMC that I've had since before we moved to Maine. It's at least 5 years old, but was so well packaged that it was still usable. For the unfamiliar, PMC is precious metal clay. It's fine silver that has been suspended in a Fimo-like base, so it can be worked like that plastic clay. But you fire it according to directions, and the base fires out, and you're left with fine silver, which is easy to solder, patina,etc. 

My photography setup isn't fabulous, but my little Nikon Coolpix does a decent job with these small items. Both of these are post earrings, fine silver and sterling, and on the right those are garnet cabochons. 

The garden continues, but we're down to tomatoes, beans, kale and raspberries for harvesting. Potatoes, pumpkins and apples will come at the end of September if all goes as it has so far. The summer seems shorter than usual this year. I'm thinking it's because we lost 6 weeks or so with Jasper being ill and then grieving for him. I still think of him many times every day. Mostly good thoughts.

Fall bits

The regular tomatoes have decided to give it their all, but my poor cherry tomatoes were so unhappy this year. I definitely won't have my many jars of Roasted Cherry Tomato sauce to get us through the winter, though the larger tomatoes promise to keep going for a while. So there will be lots of soup with tomatoes in it. The Kentucky Wonders continue to give me about a handful a day, which results in a meal in about 3 days (today!), and a box of frozen beans in about 6 days. The raspberries continue to gear up, and if we don't have an early frost, we'll be loaded with them. JoanJ, the primocane cultivar, has exceeded my expectations both in quality and quantity. And of course there is eggplant, even if the zucchini have suffered. 

I am at the time of year where I'm a little bit tired of Caprese Salad, though the Margherita Pizzas are still much appreciated.

And of course, I am still missing Jasper. His memory, perhaps his ghost, is with me. I hope I can remember him clearly as I age so gracelessly. Smile.