Back in the magnificent Methow
07/19/2010

Micheal and I arrived back in the Methow last week after a month in Santa Barbara.  We'd left our property in the throes of a long, wet spring: garden planted, watered, and mulched with straw; weeds under control; birds raising young in their nests.  A month later we returned to find the weeds chest-high along the driveway and in the unplanted field in front of our house; the garden knee-deep in pigweed, orchard grass, and other undesirables; the birds’ nests empty; the alfalfa cut and gone.  Summer had arrived and settled in before we did.

The garden was looking lush—but not with the kind of crop I’d intended.  Apparently I’d sown weeds along with the straw mulch and they had outpaced my vegetable plantings.  Watered faithfully, first by spring rains, then by my good friend Chris; then baked by 90-degree temperatures, they were doing their best to reclaim the land for wild.  I spent two hours a day hand-pulling them, only to get nearly half-way through the tangle by week’s end.  Micheal came in with the gasoline-powered Mantis on Sunday and tilled the other half of the weeds into the soil in another two hours.  Garden reclaimed.  But not in bounteous shape.  Only my lettuces, herbs, and carrots are in a harvest-ready state.  (And the lettuces, God love ‘em, are beautiful.)  Everything else—peppers, tomatoes, onions, eggplant, broccoli, cauliflower, corn, melons, and cucumbers are struggling to produce.  Chris said that actually the cukes and melon starts I see now were planted by her only a week ago, after the seeds I’d planted failed to sprout.  Ah, the mysteries of horticulture.  I have no idea what they didn’t like about the environment I provided for them.  They’d been so happy last year!

The final disappointment (and I realize how lucky I am to have a list of disappointments so surmountable) was that the six pounds of morel mushrooms I'd dried in May, intending to give as Christmas presents this year, had rotted in the root cellar.  Why???  A quick Google search revealed: Do not store dried morels in sealed plastic bags.  What had I used?  Sealed plastic bags.

Last night, though, Micheal and I enjoyed our first meal containing enough Methow-grown ingredients to make us feel as if we were truly “back in the Methow.”   It was a simple meal: spaghetti sauce made with Chris Thompson’s sweet Italian sausage, a jar of last year’s canned tomatoes, FRESH oregano and marjoram from this year’s garden (the pivotal, difference-making secret), yellow peppers and sweet onions, spooned over pasta, served with a salad of mixed greens from the garden.  Simple, but everything tasted fresh and ALIVE. 

It’s good to be back.