I love this time of year! Not only do we get the best weather ever, but the forest is starting to offer up some of its delicacies. I missed my window for fiddlehead ferns down here at sea level, so Jonah and I walked up to Spaulding Meadows last week and gathered a giant bagful of Northwestern Lady Ferns. That night, I sauteed them with butter, garlic and lemon… delicious and asparagus-y straight out of the ground. But I think I mentioned my terrible memory of late, yes? Well, I stuck the rest in the fridge so that I could clean and freeze them. Then I just plain forgot to do it. And they spoiled. UGH! A whole year without fiddleheads. But, I think I may be able to find a few here and there still. I hope.
About a month ago, I found this old article in the Juneau Empire through a photo on Pinterest (are you on Pinterest? I find so many cool ideas there). I had never heard of growing a garden in a gutter! We have this awkward narrow porch that gets a LOT of sun in the summer and goes otherwise unused… perfect place to line with a couple of gutters and get my small garden growing. I bought two stainless steel gutters so that gave me twenty feet to grow shallow-rooted veggies and herbs. I followed the directions in the article, though instead of mounting them on the house, I just rested them in a long row down the length of porch. I also planted a few big terra cotta pots that I’ll rotate herbs in through the summer so we should have a pretty decent harvest. I’m also attempting a new-to-me variety of hanging tomato that was developed in Fairbanks for the cold weather… we’ll see how that goes. I’m really excited to be growing again, though small my efforts may be.
And the best for last. I started my spruce tip gathering yesterday! Maybe you remember how I love spruce tip jelly. So far I have 15 cups waiting for jelly and syrup to be made this week. I also really want to find a gluten-free (sorghum?) home brew recipe. Or maybe mead? We haven’t tried mead yet but I think we may give it a go this summer. I wonder if any of you further south have done anything exciting with spruce tips this year? I would love to try some new things.
Aside from all this picking and growing, summer has been lovely in general and is off to a great, mellow start. It was in the mid-70s yesterday and we all just about had heat strokes. Made me wonder how I ever grew up in Arizona and Texas.
