It's a bug planet! Summer's a funny season... in the first three days, we've had temps pushing one hundred degrees Fahrenheit (about 38 Celsius) and a torrential pop-up thunderstorm (of course, it occurred while I was driving to work). To make the situation even more cheery, the Aedes albopictus mosquito has finally reached the New York metro area. Yeah, summer!
Of course, there's the upside- I have been enjoying nature's bounty lately- the mulberries have been plentiful, and I made a great, big portion of stuffed wild grape leaves that have been tiding me over for the past couple of days. On the super hot days, I decided to forgo cooking and quickly ran the food processor to make hummus and a sardine/tahini puree adapted from Claudia Roden's classic A Book of Middle Eastern Food. The wild raspberries should be ripe within a week or two, and the purslane's finally beginning to make an appearance. Next week, I plan on putting up a super-geeky purslane post, which may go to some lengths to explain why the stuff takes over in the summer. The fireflies are also out in full force, both the beloved typical ones and the jittery, quick-flashing ones that resemble a tiny camera flash going off.
Yeah, the first three days of summer have been a microcosm of the season, a couple of total sweatloaf days, a violent storm, and some genuinely top-notch moments. I can live with this for the next couple of months.
For me, so far, it's a beautiful backyard--wild strawberries, dandelion greens, three ridiculously high lemon balm bushes letting me know I'm going to have a fun supplementary diet happening this summer. I have a mystery plant poking up under one of my grape vines (I have five of these-two fig trees, a lemon tree--basically, we're pushing the envelope of what can grow at the Philadelphia latitude, and letting anything edible that happens to grow, just grow). It has little white flowers that recently dropped off that kind of reminds me of blackberries--but I think this might actually not be anything so useful (I'm watching it everyday, though). I think global warming is helping our Mediterranean transplants (olives, laurel, bitter orange, etc) do well outside for about 8 mons out of the year. Also, we have bees in our yard, which used to scare me shitless, but now makes me feel really happy because--yay! Bees pollinating and not being dead because of Round-up and stuff. Win!
ReplyDeleteGreat. Another invasive species.
ReplyDeleteI guess that we are the worst invasive species, of course.
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But we're so helpful to all the other invasive species.
ReplyDeleteIt's a Beautiful Planet
ReplyDelete...it's a shame we are torching it so quickly.
(I have five of these-two fig trees, a lemon tree--basically, we're pushing the envelope of what can grow at the Philadelphia latitude, and letting anything edible that happens to grow, just grow).
ReplyDeleteWow, sounds awesome- my aunt's neighbor has a backyard in the Bronx filled with fruit trees- figs, plums, apricots, persimmons... he had a lime tree, but the fruit was low quality, so he axed it. He grew up in postwar Italy, and the privation he experienced as a boy inspired him to make sure he'd never go hungry again.
Great. Another invasive species.
I guess that we are the worst invasive species, of course.
Yeah, our sting makes Aedes look like a harmless gnat.
But we're so helpful to all the other invasive species.
Yeah, and only the nasty, opportunistic species will survive. The beautiful, fragile jewels of the planet will all be plowed under by the roaches, rats, and starlings.
...it's a shame we are torching it so quickly.
Well, we're not really torching it, just torching ourselves, with many of the most enchanting species playing the role of collateral damage. We'll leave behind a nice planet for verminous things.
We'll leave behind a nice planet for verminous things.
ReplyDeleteSo, you're saying humans will survive?
So, you're saying humans will survive?
ReplyDeleteNah, but we'll pave the way for things like us.