Hiatus

Hiatus is defined as "a pause or gap in a sequence, series, or process." A pause is certainly what I intended, but a month-long lapse hardly qualifies. My apologies to anyone out there wondering what happened to this blog.

Since June 22, the date of my last post, we've had multiple visitors and have taken a vacation ourselves, escaping for a week to the cool Pacific Northwest. I took a pair of shorts with me and didn't wear them at all. The weather was mild and sunny, but hardly warm enough to inspire me to bare my legs. A scant two years on the Gulf Coast has made me an admitted wimp when it comes to cold.

Seattle and the surrounding area is a great place for locavores, and we enjoyed some of the pickings on our trip. Below, my daughter (right) and our friends' daughter share a pint of the biggest, best raspberries I've ever had - and organic ones at that - at Seattle's bustling Pike Place Market. The girls went through them so fast that I bought another pint, which they consumed sitting at the stand, 'one-for-you, one-for-me'. We also had local salad greens peppered with nasturtiums and violas from our friends' garden.

My relationship to this blog over the last month has been similar to my relationship to my garden: absent. When I think of Deep South gardening in high summer, I think of the doldrums: in its seafaring sense, of "an equatorial region of the Atlantic Ocean with calms, sudden storms, and light unpredictable winds," and the more common derivative, "a period of inactivity or a state of stagnation." My back yard, like yours no doubt, has been swelteringly hot, overtaken by weeds lush from summer rains, and overrun with mosquitoes. We're fortunate that our Midtown yard isn't shaded by the large trees so common in our neighborhoods, and we have plenty of good light for a vegetable garden; the down side is that there is no relief from the blistering summer sun. This year the mosquitoes seem worse than ever. Just stepping into the grass raises swarms of them. A few moments taken turning the compost pile entails stamping my feet and swatting my legs to drive off the little bloodsuckers. If it were just me I'd don long sleeves and pants and sweat it out for an hour or so just to get something done in the garden, but I can't subject my three year-old to the intense heat and danger - or at the very least discomfort - of mosquito bites.

I missed two of the last four farmers markets downtown. One was during our trip, and for the last (held yesterday) my daughter was sick with a fever, probably picked up during our travels. The market had been winding down during the last month, with fewer vendors and slimmer pickings at the ones that remained. I overheard one woman say grumpily to her friend a few weeks ago, "I wish I'd known there were no greens; the market's not even worth coming to!" On my last visit, I bought a carton of figs and made a fig and honey galette with fresh goat cheese. I felt like I was eating at a gourmet restaurant! I do feel fortunate to live in a climate where we can grow such a variety of foods: from the usual market fare of tomatoes, corn, and melons; to pecans, figs, citrus, even bananas!; and the mid-winter harvests of greens, peas, and cruciferous vegetables.

Statistically-speaking, two of our three hottest months are nearly over (though September runs a close fourth), and with school just around the corner in August I'm already starting to think of fall, if not exactly feel it in the air.

I'd love to hear your stories of what's surviving in your garden right now. A friend still has thriving potted basil, some well-shaded parsley, and a few cherry tomatoes here and there. For me, there's always the rosemary and thyme, and a few limp chives.