#87: June is Busting Out All Over…Sorta

What's growing, chickens, and baking updates

This is Avice Hill, a lavender variety named for the New Zealand entomologist and herb grower who developed her from Munstead (lavendula angustifolia) seed. I see the variety about five years ago when checking out what might still be available at a local lavender grower’s farm at season’s end. Walking through row after row of potted lavender plants I see Munstead, Hidcote Giant, Provence, Silver Frost, Grosso, Betty’s Blue, Royal Velvet and many more.

Avice Hill Lavender

Tucked away in one area close to the larger fields I see Avice. She is trimmed back for the winter, but I see a few delicate flowers that have been missed. I fall in love with her immediately and know that she must join me in my garden. The next day I call and reach Victor, the lavender farmer. He agrees to hold eighteen starts for me until they are ready to pick up in the spring. When I bring them home from the farm months later, I immediately set out to transplant them into the front garden, putting a rock by each one so I can easily find them amidst all the other plantings. All is well for a time, but when I hire a neighbor’s son to mow for me, the paths in the plantings get larger and rocks moved. And Avice? Well, there are a few that don’t take but after losing most to unsupervised mowing I find only one surviving plant in a side garden behind a south facing fence. Even without full sun, and hidden amidst miners lettuce, chickweed, and crocosmia, somehow she made it.

Carefully using a small spade around her feet, yesterday I lift her out and move her to new digs…a big pot on the sunny part of the deck next to petunia, lobelia, pelargonium, nasturtium, and marigold. Hopefully her new colorful friends will inspire her to give a happy show of her own flowers.

Avice Hill on the left.

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More on the garden front…

Summer on the North Olympic Peninsula (NOP) seems to be either a tomato summer or a broccoli summer, but in late June of 2021, there was a heat bubble with historic temperatures never before experienced in cool coastal Port Angeles. Although the news said we hit 98F, my spot was in the triple digits and some of my friends hit 107 and higher. In the very first issue of my newsletter I mention turning compost at five in the morning as it is the only time possible to do it without frying myself!

#1 The Elevator Pitch

That heat does give me one of the largest tomato harvests I’ve ever had, garlic that dries quickly and completely for storage, but my apples get big black spots where the brunt of the sun beats down on them. Who knew that apples could even sunburn. And this year? Well, as we have just experienced the coldest and wettest month of May in western Washington since 1948 and there may be more of that in June, the climate needle appears to be moving in the direction of broccoli summer. For all of the twenty-two years I have lived at Pie Cottage, I have been able to grow tomatoes, but this year they are poking along like snails in slow motion. Our climate is changing so much it’s impossible to know what will do well in my little potager.

The damp and gray is greatly appreciated for keeping at bay the fifth season which I now call Smoke because of forest fires, and lettuce, kale and chard are growing…like weeds! But, tomatoes, peppers, basil are not, so I’ve made individual saunas with clear garbage bags placed over the tomato cages. Time will tell but hopefully this will work so I can harvest enough tomatoes for sauce and to dry for pizza, casseroles, soups, and stews.

Cool weather greens and tomatoes in their saunas.

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From the chicken yard…

The new girls are now into their fourth month and I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they may start laying in the next two to six weeks.

Say what?

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Bake with Kate

In Person Art of the Pie Day Camps Return

• I’m excited to be gearing up and greeting pie campers who are flying in from all over North America to make pie with me at Pie Cottage! All sessions are sold out through September.

Virtual Sessions Continue

• Rhubarb Banana Crisp on June 12 is next up and I’ve kept registration open for you.

• Registration is open now for Key Lime Pie on July 10.

• And check out July’s three-part Baking Summer Berries with Kate McDermott series presented by 92Y in NYC.

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What I’m Reading

• The Unprejudiced Palate: Classic Thoughts on Food and the Good Life, by Angelo Pellegrini

• Controlling Women: What We Must Do Now to Save Reproductive Freedom, by Kathryn Colbert and Julie F Kay

• The Sensational Past: How The Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses, by Carolyn Purnell

• Our Lady of Perpetual Hunger: A Memoir, by Lisa Donovan

• Moby-Duck: The True Story of 28,800 Bath Toys Lost at Sea and of the Beachcombers, Oceanographers, Environmentalists, and Fools, Including the Author, Who Went in Search of Them, by Donovan Hohn

• Miss Eliza’s English Kitchen: A Novel of Victorian Cookery and Friendship, by Annabel Abbs

  

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A Gratitude Moment

I’m very very grateful for the kind thoughts you sent to me after the brakes failed last month. All is well and my car is safely rolling on down the road but I have to tell you that losing brakes while driving is an experience I never ever want to have again.

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Tunes for Today

And…if you have enjoyed this edition of my newsletter, be sure to click on the little ❤️ below. ⬇️