Freezing in a Heat Wave
The spinach doesn’t like hot weather at all and wants to bolt. I have been freezing it all week –besides eating it in salads, mostly. I also have been freezing broccoli as well as cooking it for supper several times. Because of the unseasonable heat, the process of freezing vegetables has to be done yesterday and fast. I also have to freeze rhubarb. We moved our surviving rhubarb that had gotten overrun into the main garden a couple of years ago and bought three more plants. Last year I think I cooked it only twice. But it’s more plentiful this year.
Yesterday, we had company, our friend John and his new boyfriend and Jeannette from my poetry group. I made a strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert. That’s one of my favorite pies. I’m more of a pie baker than a baker of cakes, although I do that occasionally. I love a well made crust. I hadn’t baked a pie in about an year and a half, since the Solstice Party in 2019, so I was a bit flustered at first. But I settled down, although it took me far longer than usual. The result was great. I made potroast with small potatoes, parsnips, carrots, onion, garlic, celery, many herbs. We had a big salad from the garden.
Today is Belmont race day, but there are many other stakes races at Belmont besides the final Triple Crown race. I have to freeze more spinach today and get into my garden, but I hope to watch at least a few of them. My choice is Rombauer. Anyone who doubts horses love to race should have watched on Thursday at Churchill Downs. Irad Ortez, one of the best riders in the country, was bucked off Equal Pay after she had a stumble out of the gate. He was injured by a trailing horse, but not badly. But Equal Pay went on to win the race, outrunning all the other horses. Of course, it didn’t count s ince she was riderless. That’s the third time I’ve observed it happening, that a horse loses its rider but runs like hell anyhow to beat the other horses and win.
I have to freeze dill and cilantro in little baggies. We have leftovers for supper, which on a big race day is just fine. All we’ll add is a small salad from my garden.
Not a big week for writing my own poems as I have been pushing through the manuscripts for my poetry workshop next week. There are so many restrictions on every once-public place in Wellfleet, I don’t see how we can have the annual reading by poets in the workshop, anchored at the end by me reading new work. I will miss it and the poets in the workshop will not have my crftique on their public reading performances. It infuriates me that the library is still shut. In Massachusetts, bars, gyms, restaurants, nightclubs are open but libraries are closed up tight. The Provincetown library opened, but not Wellfleet.
Some things in the garden are very early this year and some things are late. At least we have been getting enough rain lately. The cucumbers are flowering madly and I saw little cukes this morning when I was weeding. If it were a choice [which obviously it never is] between enough rain with mosquitoes and a drought with no mosquitoes, I’d take the rain every time.