Country Mouse Monday: summer doldrums

It's that time of the summer that I dread a little every year, the time I think of as the doldrums, when it's so hot out, the social calendar so busy, and the plants so big now that I am more and more absent from the garden just as it reaches its peak of packed-ness and glory.

It's almost like the garden that was dreamed and planned and created just gets to a point where it takes over, doesn't need me, runs itself, and I take a step back, then another step.

This is when I start to miss the zucchini, and they grow to enormous dimension, hidden under all that foliage, too large to give away. Enough zucchini bread already. I am overwhelmed and it falls apart a bit.

The doldrums happen every summer.

And every summer I vow I'll do better next season.  I'll remain engaged.  I'll stay on top of things just when they're at their most overwhelming.  I won't get tired.  I'll stick with it.

I didn't plant zucchini on purpose this year since it plays such a chief role in my overwhelm every summer, making me feel like such a slacker right about now.

Now we're right there, just at the threshold, so if I'm going to change it up, here's my chance.  

This is the year I beat the doldrums.  

Listen: it's normal to get tired.  I know that.  It's normal to start to feel overwhelmed.  So I've tried to put safeties in place to prevent the burn-out of other years, to keep the enthusiasm high even as the basket is heavier and heavier.  After all, heavy baskets are what it's all about, right?

This past weekend was so full.  We were out Friday night til midnight (ack, too late for me!) playing cards and having fun with friends. I was gone with family all day and evening Saturday (ack, 10 pm!), with just a smidge of early morning time in the garden, cutting sunflowers and basil to take as gifts. I was super tired yesterday, with a meeting in the middle of the day and then lunch out.  By the time I got home, after grocery shopping, all I wanted was a nap, but instead I knew I had to get crackin' or else waste the gorgeousness of the fresh peaches from the neighbors' tree.

'Cause that's the thing with the doldrums. Once you give in, it's over.

I knew I just had to keep moving, keep doing; even just a little, would be enough to stop the slide into idleness and into the bad feeling idleness produces.

A crumble ensued, with the peaches, the last of the half-flat of organic strawberries from the Farmer's Market last weekend, and a banana thrown in just because.  I just couldn't bear to let that peachy goodness go to waste.  If we didn't do something with them all at once, pronto, into the compost bin they'd go.  So, even though I was tired, I made crumble.  And oh man, that crumble-part, while it seemed a bit fussy at the time (Cook's Illustrated, page 748), is so good.

While the crumble was baking and the Olympics were on in the background, I read the Urban Farm magazine I'd picked up in a bookstore in Burlingame the day before, while on the full-day family field-trip.

The magazine was a considered choice, a weapon in my fight against the doldrums.  It contains a spread on canning, something I long to be comfortable with, as well as an article about honey harvest.  And lots of pretty pictures.  And ads for beekeeping supply companies.  I have worked much harder on our garden this year, and am so happy about that, so the purchase was one part celebration, another part doldrum-prevention.

And a big dose of blackberries.  

The magazine's feature story roused me to action.  Once the crumble was out of the oven, down Joe and Mr Burns and I went to the blackberry patch at the corner.  While Burnsy waited (sorta patiently), Joe and I stained our hands and lips and filled two little containers with free sweetness, while I dreamed of jam and pie and cordial.  There's nothing quite like neighborhood gleaning, hanging out on the corner, plucking fat juicy berries on a hot late summer Sunday afternoon while bikes and cars whiz by. 

A little bit of effort = a lot of yum.

Returning home, still tired, I put the blackberries to cook down on the stove, planning ahead to this morning's breakfast of mini-pie -- that is, toast with butter and blackberry jam. Delicious!  

And so worth the teensy bit of effort required to stay on my feet, to take advantage of the bounty to make even more goodness.

I suppose that's really the thing about the doldrums.

If you just keep moving, keep doing, make your own breeze as you move around the farm and kitchen, you can fill your own sails and keep on going.

Not to mention having delicious things to eat.  I'm keeping my eye on that particular prize, with a breakfast belly full of fresh jam of my own making, and tonight a dinner belly full of caprese with our own tomatoes and basil on greens from our salad bed, and in a few weeks peppers and eggplants galore.

I think it's working, so far I'm escaping the doldrums, with effort, with work, but it's so so worth it.  I sleep fully, deeply, all night, wake up ready to hunt for food in all that foliage, eat as much as we can of all that goodness we helped make happen, right here on this little patch of earth.

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