The 4th of July used to be the day the Pacific Northwest gained some freedom from the gray and the rain for an extended period of time. We welcomed and worshiped blue skies and warm, drying rays of sun, even if we were granted only eight weeks or so to do so and asked to make peace with growing short-season veggies.
This year we’ve had clear skies and temps in the 80s and 90s leading up to the day, with the hot weather forecasted to peak on the 4th. This weather has me and my garden feeling a little confused. Join me below the muddled little vine for a look around the place to see what I'm talking about.
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The record-breaking hot weather has caused a few mid-to-late July events to happen at the very end of June.
Here's a sunflower head about to open. The finches will be pleased, even if it does confuse them and they alter their natural patterns a little:
There are already pumpkins on the vine. It seems every year I find myself hoping they form and orange-up before it gets too far into autumn and too cold and wet. Should we move Halloween up a few weeks or would that cause an early (-ier) onset of Christmas?
Nasturtium flower for scale
Now this is simply unheard of: a ripe tomato by the last day of June (ripened outside, not in a greenhouse) when many gardeners in these parts are lucky to have them ripen before the first frost. We grow hard, green tomatoes like nobody else can—except for maybe folks in Alaska:
My son was wandering around with me on my inspection of the gardens an evening or two ago and asked, “Are we the new California?” referring to the earliness of things. Maybe we will be given our ever-warming summers and their growing lack of water. We have that going on too, but it's nothing like it is in CA.
And then there’s this, which hasn't happened ever in the 14 years that I've lived here:
My property came with a cluster of ornamental fruit trees in the backyard that provide explosions of lovely blooms in the early spring, welcome shade in the summer—especially right now—but not a lot of fruit. The cherries and the plums are small, hard, and scarce. Bird food really, and nothing more. Until this year.
Here's the flowering plum that we sit under in the evening when the air has cooled. There's a Golden-leaved Black Locust growing behind it, making it seem taller than it really is:
Every branch this year is loaded to the point of bending down under the weight of the fruit:
My local fruit tree expert says the weather was warm enough early enough to bring out the bees when the trees were in flower, which is before their usual time. Normally, there are very few bees about, if any—maybe a few hoverflies—when the trees need them. This heat-induced increase in polllinators has resulted in flowering, or ornamental, plums all over the area going wild and thriving in the current temperatures. Regular plums are fruiting normally because they flower later, around the same time as pears.
While I’m genuinely worried about the many impacts the weather is having on our precious West, I can’t turn my back on the bounty. I stood in one place and picked a very large bowl of these plums without ever venturing up a ladder. George helps us get an idea of the size of the fruit—slightly larger than big cherries.
I put all the plums in a large stock pot with a quart or so of water:
And then cooked the fruit down to a nice pulp:
After I ran the pulp through a mouli, or food mill, to separate the skins and the pits from the pulp and juice, I added sugar and pectin, cooked some more, and then filled canning jars with the sticky sweetness. The family pronounced the jam not only edible, but pretty darn tasty:
There are now 14 pints of jam in the cupboard, with another batch in process. I’ll add blackberry and blueberry jam to the pantry later. Or sooner. Last year, I just about missed the blueberries because they came along so early. Then again, the weather could get freaky (-ier) and decide to do something like send the temps down and bring rain and rot. That's global warming climate change for you.
Me and my garden simply aren't sure what to expect anymore—the last few years it seemed like the growing season was shifting to later in the year—but we'll continue to work together to reduce my family's carbon footprint. Gardens and trees are always good for that—and the bees.
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Your Turn: What's going on in your corner of the world?
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