A garden gift
Summer begins at 12:38 this afternoon and I’m ready to celebrate! My wife and I begin our day by changing our heavy, winter bed cover in exchange for a light, pastel quilt. We open all windows in our home, replacing the stale winter air with the morning summer breeze freshening as the sun begins to rise, then let the dogs out to run in the yard. This cool first morning of summer requires slippers and a robe over my pajamas to maintain my body-heat. I willingly accept the chilly morning air knowing warm mornings are on the way.
Long, warm, sunny days dressed in shorts and T-shirt slowly melt into comfortably cool evenings requiring a sweatshirt and wool socks to keep warm. One hardy enough to survive a cold, gray and rainy Northwest winter is rewarded with a brilliantly-blue, warm Northwest summer filled with fly fishing, gardening, golfing and a ridiculously innumerable amount of outdoor activities.
Sitting comfortably warm on my back deck covered in layers of cotton bedclothes, I watch the dogs play. I quietly scold as one or the other jumps into a flower bed or attempts to chew the pepper plant I carefully planted weeks ago in a terracotta planter to accelerate the heat and nurture the plant’s growth. As the dogs begin to tire, my attention turns to the garden. Everything is growing.
The tomato plants offer green fruit the size of a silver dollar, weeks ahead of previous years. The second harvest of rocket (also known as arugula) is ready to be picked and the romaine lettuce requires thinning. The strawberries need to be harvested before the robins consume the whole patch and all my herbs must be cut and hung to dry in the drying shed.
The short growing season in the Northwest makes growing watermelon risky at best but each year I try. With the unseasonably warm spring and extended growing season this year, I feel confident I will be eating watermelon with my grandchildren this September. Walking slowly through the garden I pick a leaf of rocket and test the flavor. The lettuce proves to be peppery and tasting of the earth; just as rocket should be.
My mind begins to race. How should I prepare this amazing leaf to highlight its character without diminishing its attributes? I tear off a few more leaves, pick a strawberry, strip some thyme off a stem in my herb bed and run into the house searching for feta cheese. I wrap the strawberry, thyme and feta around the rocket leaves, salt and pepper the contents and create a packet (like a dolma). Sprinkling extra virgin olive oil over the parcel and adding a few drops of aged balsamic vinegar finishes the experiment.
I place the bite-size garden gift into my mouth which explodes in flavor; like fireworks on the Fourth of July. The vine-sweet, dark-red strawberry balanced by the salty, briny feta cheese is perfectly complemented by the acidic sweetness of the vinegar and the peppery flavor of the lettuce.
The olive oil moistens the appetizer while supplying another layer of peppery, earthy goodness. The thyme reminds me of the Mediterranean roots of this simple bite created from the first bounty of my garden. This bite is a celebration; a gift and reminder of the great things this summer has to offer. I can’t wait for my next garden gift.
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Send comments or other suggestions to William Rutherford at [email protected] or visit pensiveparenting.com.