In the Garden

Whether a good singing voice is a nature or nurture hand-me-down, I didn’t get one from my parents.  My nerve-wracking try-out for my FCHS’s wonderful a cappella choir was soundly rejected, much to my embarrassment and disappointment, since my Besties had all been granted admittance to that tight and fun – and very talented – group.

My dad’s family were all musical and they credited their Welsh heritage for that. Family get-togethers always involved time around the piano with my aunt playing and singing and the rest of the Hills joining in.  One of the favorite songs of my granddad was “In the Garden” and my dad and he could belt it out in a beautiful duet.

Little did I know that years later that song would be recorded by many singers whom I held near and dear – Tennessee Ernie Ford, Perry Como, Rosemary Clooney, Doris Day, Willie Nelson, Glen Campbell, and Johnny Cash.  But the rendition that reminds me most of my family’s is the duet by Jo Stafford and Gordon MacCrae, recorded in 1962.

Andy may not have happy memories of his family singing that song, but he does have happy memories of Oakley, our Aussie, being in the garden.  See today’s Andy’s Corner.

As for me, hearing “In the Garden” still reminds me that our garden is often an almost spiritual place – butterflies flitting around, hummingbirds searching for nectar, bumblebees checking out the blossoms, a whiff of the sweet salvia, the hint of licorice from the agastache, the gorgeous glimmering iridescent orange in the echinacea ‘Julia’ – and the intriguing scent of the foliage of the coleonema and variegated mint bush when you brush by them.

But just as often our garden is beastly: gopher mounds, aphid attacks, tomato hornworms, voles uncovered and carried into the house by our sweet kitties, drip system malfunctions, rampaging yellow jackets, eucalyptus tree roots sucking up the moisture.  You name it, we’ve had it happen.

Gophers!

Tobacco hornworms!

Eucalyptus roots!

Ha!

Our vegetable garden is even more problematic.  Tomatoes, of course, are notorious for having issues.  Even zucchini plants, which notoriously over-produce for normal gardeners, are annoyingly sparse in producing for us for us.  Cucumbers often wither on the bush.  So each little healthy tomato or bean or zucchini or cucumber we find in our garden is an unbounded joy to us.

Once you’ve picked these precious veggies you don’t really want to cover up their just-picked flavor with a complex, ingredient-heavy recipe, so here are three minimalist ideas for your tomatoes, string beans and summer squash.

Though pan con tomate was just touted in a NYTimes article by David Tanis – and by our daughter – we prefer our own spin on it: toast, buttered, with mayonnaise, sliced tomatoes, sea salt – and maybe a bit of basil.  You decide.  But leave the bacon off once in a while.  It’s ever so much fresher and lighter.

Many of you must remember the days of cooking green beans (with ham) for a LONG time.  My mother served them that way and I thought they were delicious.  I usually now serve string beans, cooked until just barely tender, with a drizzle of olive oil, but I love Julia Child’s simple, light, buttery recipe.

We were at a little dinner party last night – and one of our weightier discussions was whether zucchini is a dreadful veggie.  Our friend Buck suggested that slicing it very, very thin and frying it in olive oil with onions and garlic until the zucchini is almost blackened, but not burned (uncovered for about 45 minutes – add the garlic toward the end) results in something fabulous.  If you don’t want to try that, here’s a zucchini recipe I can almost guarantee you’ll love.