298: Let’s lay this one to rest

Queen Anne’s Lace getting ready to bloom

Lately I’ve been getting a lot of hits on my blog as a result of this search:  Freezing broccoli without blanching.  I have become the expert (heh) on this subject ever since I posted Freezing broccoli back in 2008.  Every year around this time, people who want to freeze broccoli without going to the trouble of blanching it start searching around for someone to tell them it’s okay to do that.

Well.

Today’s hot, hazy, and humid look at the pond.

It is NOT okay to do that.  Never.  Ever.  Unless, of course, you want your broccoli to acquire some off flavors and colors during the freezing process.  The post I referred to at the beginning of my little rant tells you how to prep it, how to blanch it, and how to freeze it.  If you decide to freeze it without blanching anyhow, I cannot be held responsible because I did warn you.  Blanching is not that difficult.  Really.  I used to blanch and freeze 17 lbs. of broccoli every year around this time.  The only reason I’m not doing it this year is because Hilgert’s closed and I haven’t found another good source.  I am, however, trying to grow my own so maybe, someday, I’ll be my own source.

An overexposed kind of day

We are experiencing the 3 H’s of summer here in the Bogs.  Hot.  Hazy.  Humid.  Bleh.  This is the kind of weather that, for me, gives summer a bad reputation.  I am grateful for air conditioning, and a basement that retains a cave-like temperature of 64 degrees.  I don’t run the air conditioning throughout most of the day if I can spend time in the basement.  My computer lives in the basement.  Our basement has big, picture windows, and it is a walk-out (meaning there is a door you can use to walk outside).  It’s really not very cave-like at all except in terms of the cool temperature.

A dragonfly in the Future Woods

How beautiful is the rain!
After the dust and the heat,
In the broad and fiery street,
In the narrow lane,
How beautiful is the rain!

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Rain in Summer

We have a 60% chance of rain today.  After looking at the radar, including what might happen over the next six hours, it seems unlikely we’ll get any.  The earth here needs it.  Badly.  I took a walk in the woods today and the ground there is hard, dry, and cracked.  That’s a sight we usually don’t see.  The woods tend to stay damp throughout the year.  Not this year, though.

Will the creek dry up?

Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth; without rain, there would be no life.

~ John Updike

I’ll keep doing my rain dance today in hopes that the forecast for our area is wrong.  Perhaps Mother Nature will have pity on the plants and trees, and bring them some much-needed water.

This is what we’d like to see. Water pouring down on the trees and earth.

Everywhere water is a thing of beauty gleaming in the dewdrop, singing in the summer rain.

~ John Ballantine Gough

Mushroom and mosses in the woods.

I was surprised to find a small patch of mushrooms thriving in the woods.  I’m guessing there is still some moisture in the old logs lying around on the ground.

Oh Lord, grant that in some way it may rain every day, say from about midnight until three o’clock in the morning, but, you see, it must be gentle and warm so that it can soak in; grant that at the same time it would not rain on campion, alyssum, heliaanthemum, lavender, and the others which you in your infinite wisdom know are drought loving plants — I will write their names on paper if you like — and grant that the sun may shine the whole day long, but not everywhere (not for instance, on spiraea, or on gentian, plantain lily, and rhododendron), and not too much; that there may be plenty of dew and little wind, enough worms, no plant-lice and snails, no mildew, and that once a week thin liquid manure and guano may fall from heaven.  Amen.

~ Karel Capek, The Gardener’s Year, 1929

Maybe not the thin liquid manure or the guano.  But I will take the rain.  🙂

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