Duke Gardens in the time of Covid 19

Two days ago, Duke announced that Duke Gardens would be closing to the public until further notice, starting at dusk that evening, so E, S, and I skedaddled over there to see what we could see. I'm pretty sure that counted as attending a gathering of over 100 people, because many other people had the same idea.

En route; this gorgeous blooming tree was near W. Trinity & Washington.

En route: the Duke expression wall. Peace be with us all!

E's garden goal was to catch a falling cherry petal mid-air.

 

Mission accomplished.

Tau Day, peaches, and paleo

Tau Day (6.28) was this past Thursday, which required baking pies. I went around in circles on how many to make, because I couldn't decide whether to represent tau with one or two pies--would two pies be four pi, or two tau, or what? I ended up making three pies/three tau/six pi, then called for help to eat them. One friend wanted to come a fashionable 6.283185307179586476925286766559 minutes late, but he was off by a factor of e.

I made chocolate cream pie, blueberry pie, and peach custard pie. N thumbs up.

The chocolate cream pie filling was adapted from here, using two 70% dark chocolate bars and reducing the sugar a bit. Yum.

The blueberry pie is my mom's recipe, made with freshly picked farm-share berries: 1/3 pie volume fresh blueberries, add a little water and sugar; bring to boil, add lemon juice to taste, then add some cornstarch in water to thicken; remove from heat, add 2/3 pie volume fresh blueberries, dump in prebaked crust. Yum.

The cream of the crop was the peach custard pie--a last-minute entry made from this recipe. I used Greek yogurt instead of sour cream, 4 egg yolks instead of 3, chopped candied ginger instead of cinnamon (not because I didn't have any cinnamon, but because ginger is the absolute most appropriate spice for peaches), and two layers of peaches instead of one, because four medium sliced peaches wouldn't fit in a single overlapping layer. I used one ripe peach and three crunchy peaches (thus my hesitation), because that's all that was available from OUR VERY OWN BACKYARD PEACH TREE (screw hesitation).

We bought the tree as a sapling three years ago at Costco. A friend asked what variety of peach we got, and all I could tell her was Kirkland.

This is the first year the tree has borne fruit that has survived into the summer. There were so many peaches on one branch that their weight snapped the branch.

Our neighbor J warned us to beware of local fauna getting to the peaches before we could. When I checked on the tree on Thursday, I saw this:

so I picked these:

I like that I can see wee tooth marks in the nibbled peach, and I like thinking about a squirrel (or raccoon?) sitting in the tree enjoying fruit, or having a peach party with its buddies. Peaches are so much tastier than acorns or compost; imagine the revelry! Nonetheless, a friend has offered to lend me her slingshot and arsenal of dried chickpeas.

The Tau Day pies left me with a bunch of leftover egg whites. Usually I'd make an angel food cake or meringues, but it was too humid for the latter, and I wanted to try something new. Googling yielded dozens of websites that recommended turning them into two-ingredient "Paleo" banana egg-white pancakes. "You'll never believe how good these are!," recipe blog authors joyfully claim--recipe blog writers who care about fitness and body image and, I am convinced, have tastebuds numbed by years of eating protein powder just like our prehistoric ancestors never did. So as a public service announcement, I offer the following observations:

1. These pancakes are not anything any sane paleohuman would have ever cooked, because no one who had prehistoric bananas and chicken eggs around in the same place at the same time would have sacrificed either for these.

2. Banana egg-white pancakes are gross. Do not eat them.

3. Re. optional toppings: what kind of trade routes and prehistoric succulent refineries do Paleo fans think would have ever put bananas, agave syrup, and peanut butter in the same vicinity? Oy.

4. See #2.

Next time, angel food cake.

Garden

For the first time since we moved into our house 13 years ago, we've planted a real garden. Oh, we've tried a few things in the past, including an herb garden in the front yard (the survivors of which have been a 12-year-old pot of chives and an indomitable rosemary bush), and some tomatoes (imagine this: they don't grow well in clay, and apparently they expect to be watered). In the past two years, we've also tried three times, and failed three times, to grow mint, although I have high hopes for the sprig I found when we hacked back the rosemary earlier this spring.

I'm pretty good with indoor plants, though. My great achievement of the winter involved coddling a grief-stricken portulacaria afra back to vigorous health in our claw-foot bathtub upstairs; indeed, it was that victory that gave us the confidence to try coddling some outdoor plants this year.

Reinvigorated elephant bush is happy to be back on the porch for the summer.

We took our friend R's advice and built a raised bed. S built the frame out of some pine 2x4s; then he and E leveled the ground in front of where a gutter drainage pipe empties into the yard. We put the frame down over some mole-barrier cloth, filled it with several years' worth of beautiful dark compost from our immense compost pile, and topped it off with 10 sacks of organic soil.

E and I planted tomatoes (one heirloom variety and two kinds of cherries), herbs (basil, parsley, and sage), jalapeño peppers, watermelon, and yellow crookneck squash that should have been zucchini except someone had put it back in the wrong spot at Home Depot and I didn't notice the label until we got home. We also planted sweet mint in a terracotta pot and put it next to the garden bed, and we carried the big pot of chives from the front yard to the back yard so they could mentor the newer herbs. Finally, we planted radish seeds, to fill space until the squash and watermelon take over.

We did all of this at the beginning of May--a little late, but better than the previous never we were accustomed to. The weather was lovely and cool, and 2014's mosquitoes had yet to hatch.

Now, every night, squirrels dig holes in the dirt, and every morning, we fill the holes in. Generally, the squirrels avoid the larger plants, but one day we found shredded basil leaves in one of the holes, and the radish seedlings have been rearranged and buried a few times. We had dutifully followed the instructions on the radish seed packet, planting them 6 inches apart, but when R came by and visited the garden today, she gave us permission to live exuberantly and do whatever we want, so I planted 50 more seeds, 3 inches apart, in the space between herbs and peppers: some to defy seed-package authority, some for the squirrels to dig up, some for the squirrels to bury, and some, hopefully, for us to eat.

We had 3+ inches of rain last night, to the great pleasure of the tomatoes.

Early indications suggest that we will have at least three cherry tomatoes.

Shredded basil in a squirrel-dug hole. The squirrels will have tomatoes to play with 
later this summer, but where will they find fresh mozzarella and extra virgin olive oil?

Tucson and Phoenix pix

S and E flew to Germany to visit S's mom over winter break. I could have flown to frigid Illinois to visit my mom, but instead she and I both flew to Tucson to enjoy a week of warmth and sunshine.

I was a student at the University of Arizona 26-22 years ago, beginning as a grad student in Astronomy before quitting to become a pianist instead. I met S in Tucson right after the switch in programs, so it was a particularly happy time. Tucson and the university have both grown a lot since then; apart from the mountains and street layout, there was little I recognized from half a life ago.

On our first full day in Tucson, my mom and I met up with friends H-W and MB and went to the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum--one of my favorite places on the planet.

Agave

I heart prickly pear

A ceiling of saguaro bones

Saguaros in the Tucson mountains

Spiky spines

It had rained a lot the week before we arrived, and the
cacti were all looking happily plump

Metal vulture

Tree branch

The next day, we went back to the airport to exchange the rental car, because one of the ways Cheapo Rentals passes savings on to its customers is by forgetting to keep its car registrations current. Then we visited San Xavier del Bac and Saguaro National Park (West) before meeting up with old friends T and D for dinner.

18th-c. cherub all decked out for Christmas

The Mission, constructed 1783-1797

Brilliantly white scroll detail

Saguaros are tall; they start growing branches
at about 50-100 years, and can live to be over 200

Looking west over the Tucson mountains

On day 3, we hiked up Bear Canyon toward Seven Falls.

Back-lit saguaros have silver linings

We crossed the river multiple times

After we got our feet wet, the crossings got easier

The smooth rocks shortly before the end made a good resting spot

On the way out, looking back at the canyon

Black pearls instead of spines...

Lichens

Many photo ops...

On day 4, we went clothing shopping. I do not enjoy clothing shopping, but every few years, it has to happen. We went to the swanky mall in the foothills and discovered that seasonal sales make swank relatively affordable. No photos, because clothing shopping is not photo worthy.

The next day we drove up Mt. Lemmon for some purty mountain views.

Look both ways, at the same time please

There was snow on the north-facing sides of the mountains

That must have been a pretty unpleasant final ride...

View from Windy Point toward Tucson

On New Year's Eve, we drove up to Phoenix to see the Heard Museum.

A section of "Art Fence" by Tony Jojola and Rosemary Lonewolf

Dorothy Torivio (Acoma) eyeballed the layout for this 1984 prize-winning pot

 

 

 

 

Ancestral Pueblo, St. John's black-on-red jar, A.D. 1275-1325

Ancestral Pueblo, Escavada black-on-white pitcher, A.D. 925-1125

We were super duper lucky to get last-minute tickets to the Desert Botanical Garden's final Las Noches de las Luminarias event of the year. Gates opened at 5:30, just past sunset.

This prickly pear must be the tastiest, tenderest variety ever, given the 3-inch spines

The garden currently has a Chihuly installation that will continue through May. It was beautifully lit up, and made New Year's Eve in the garden the highlight of our trip.

The Solstice Elk had brought me a new point-and-shoot camera the week before the trip, and I used the camera for all of these photos. When I took this picture...

The cardón cactus is the world's largest type of cactus

...I noticed the camera was picking up stars in the night sky. Yep, picking up stars behind a brightly lit cactus, with lots of additional foreground light. So I aimed the camera straight up, and got this:

Cassiopeia

and this:

Orion and Taurus

The last magical gifts of the evening included finally finding a gasoline station before our rental car ran out of fumes; being pulled over by a cheerful police officer who simply asked me to turn on the headlights; and being pulled over again by the same officer, who had forgotten to record my driver's license info but who said not to worry that the license was in my backpack back in the hotel room, since he was confident I wasn't drunk. Thanks, nice Mr. Arizona police officer!

Happy 2014, y'all!