Roused from sleep in the wee hours of the morning, I wondered what was causing the strange rustling noise that had wakened me. Could it be?
It was. Wafting its soothing sounds through the open bedroom window was a light rainfall, the first in two months.
That more-than-welcome rain early in the month initiated an unusually abrupt shift from hot and sunny to cool and rainy, literally overnight, and earlier than usual. It’s more common in our climate for temperatures to cool gradually through September and for seasonal rains to begin around now, the third week in the month, as fall officially begins.
The early rains were a godsend, damping down forest fires, clearing smoky air, giving gardeners a rest from watering, and perking plants up for continuing bountiful harvests.
I look back on the summer as a season of abundance, and also of comradeship as friends pitched in to help out with tasks that an injury prevented me from taking on. Daphne, a longtime gardening companion, was here every two weeks as usual. She was a trouper at digging over emptied plots and at plum picking, taking over the ladder work forbidden to me — sadly. A perch up an orchard ladder, picking or pruning, is my happy place.
We reversed roles this year, Daphne and I — she up the ladder, picking, me scurrying about below, gathering fallen plums and emptying bowls of picked plums into boxes.
I was more than pleased to share the bounty, mainly plums, apples, zucchini and cabbages. When Daphne was expecting visitors and wanted to make salads ahead of time, I cut a red and a green cabbage, which she turned into a colourful coleslaw.
Gisela, a former neighbour, and her partner came one evening to pick plums. Peter was surprisingly agile as he stepped off the ladder into the tree, as has been my habit in the past, to access plums clustered at the tree’s centre. We shared out the plums at the end of that picking. The next day, they delivered a delicious plum cake.
Other friends and neighbours helped and were offered plums and apples. Tom made applesauce with the red-fleshed Discovery apples, flavouring it with fresh lemon juice and honey. His wife Marlene pronounced the rosy sauce “heavenly.”
A friend who retired at winter’s end has come by every week to help. Caron is adept at tidying beds, trimming plants back into comeliness and arranging a fish compost mulch attractively around them. She helped in picking plums and apples, taking some home to enjoy.
Caron also made applesauce, and because she had prune plums from my tree on hand at the same time, she added chopped plums to the apple sauce. She declared the blend most pleasing, both in colour and flavour.
I tried the combination and find it delicious. I cooked the chopped fruit in a big wok with a cinnamon stick and fresh lemon juice, adding a light sprinkling of sugar toward the end of the cooking. After the mixture had cooled a little, I removed the cinnamon stick and used an immersion blender to create a creamy fruit blend good for use as sauce, jam, or pie filling.
Zucchini linguine. Caron turned culinary artiste with a zucchini from my garden. She sautéed garlic and onion for a few minutes in oil before adding the zucchini, which she had cut into long chunks and spiralized. Once the zucchini strips had cooked for a few minutes, she added salt and pepper and lifted the mixture out, leaving most of the liquid in the wok.
As the zucchini was kept warm in low oven heat, Caron cooked more garlic and cut tomatoes in the wok for a sauce to serve over the zucchini with grated parmesan over top.
Optional additions to the tomato sauce: basil, oregano, sugar.
Garden Events
HCP workshops. The Horticulture Centre of the Pacific, 505 Quayle Rd. in Saanich, is offering the following workshops. To register call 250-479-6162. Details at hcp.ca
• Gathering Basket, Saturday, Sept. 29, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Learn to create a sturdy rectangular woven basket to use for shopping, storage and gathering garden produce. HCP members $120, others $140.
• The Art of Bonsai: Winter Care, Saturday, Sept. 29, 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. Learn how to trim, refine and repot your bonsai while meeting its winter-care requirements. Bring your own bonsai or suitable small shrub. Members $35, others $45.
