It’s looking like a real vineyard out there, but the head of the vineyard (someone we will call eldest son B) has told me that he is “not ready” to make vino this season.

I do not know what technical problem holds up his process. We all suspect he does not think our feet are clean enough. In any case, in the face of this delay, I wish I could give my shoulders a gallic shrug and say, “There will always be next year’s vintage.” but I have a serious case of garden guilt, and this precludes any sort of relaxed response to eldest son B’s laissez faire attitude about the grape harvest.

My garden guilt means I find it painful to waste anything the garden throws at us, except for maybe zucchinis. So yesterday, I looked at the rows and rows of ripening grapes, the product of many years of eldest son B’s pruning and many hours of Sophie, Emily and me on our hands and knees weeding the small vineyard for eldest son B….

and thoughts turned to grape cookery.

First it was necessary to wipe the last peach froth from our moustaches, because the last two weeks has seen us wallowing in peaches morning noon and night.

For days we waddled back and forth to the peach trees, wearing our peaches on our hips and lips, garden guilt driving us to new heights of peach creativity. It was Top Chef all over again as we had peaches in drinks, soups, salads, main courses, and dessert.

Besides the de rigueur bowls of peaches at every meal, there were peach crumble pies, peach custard pies, peach kuchens, peach smoothies, peaches and cream, peaches on pancakes, peach blinis and that was just the normal stuff. With this year’s bumper crop, we learned that peaches go with just about everything even tacos

Why, even the dogs were dining on peaches. While usually it was just peaches for their breakfast, one day I treated them to a big slice of leftover peach kuchen, because there was another hot peach pie waiting for the humans.

But last night, as the peach harvest began to slow, it was grape time and I had one of my Sisyphus like ideas to make a GRAPE PIE.

This was a deranged idea for many reasons. First, wine grapes are about the size of my red currant cherry tomatoes. Second they are 98% seeds. But this didn’t stop me. After all, I am now spending so much time collecting wee tomatoes in the garden, I figured how bad could it be to de-seed 6 cups of eldest son B’s grapes. The answer to this question. my friends, was, “Surprisingly bad.”

Perching myself in front of Man vs Wild’s Bear Grylls with various children rooting me on, I figured I would pass the time pleasantly while Bear fought crocodiles in Northern Australia. An hour later as Bear Grylls broke through a tangle mess of mangroves to civilization, my heroic efforts had garnered us a 1/2 cup of grape skins and arms covered in sticky grape juice.

We broke for dinner which at this point in the summer is gazpacho and more gazpacho because really, just how many red currant cherry tomatoes can one pop in one’s mouth- at some point they have to be blenderized just to simplify the eating process. Plus gazpacho is great for garden guilt as it’s a great way to use abundant cukes, garlic, and peppers (and real he man tomatoes if you have them).

Two hours hard labor after dinner and STILL the bowl only had about four cups of grape skins. It was time to just make the pie and have it be a slender but delicately undernourished thing ( the only thing around here that could claim this).

My first and only GRAPE PIE came out of the oven at ten and people were frankly too exhausted by the process of watching me de-seed grapes to even try her ’til this morning. Pie for breakfast has sort of gotten mundane around here, but this morning her loveliness drew people in.

Don’t be fooled by this close up, those grapes are smaller than they look- But who’s complaining? She was delicious, tasting a lot like ……….blueberry pie………which means I have now officially sworn off ever making a Grape Pie again.

Eldest son B is out of town this week. Sadly this means he may never ever taste Grape Pie unless he battles grapes seeds in his own four hour de-seeding marathon.

4 hour marathon prep for Grape Pie + 20 minute prep for Blueberry Pie= No second Grape Pie for eldest son B

Funny how I can manage a gallic shrug about that!

Right now we are particularly enjoying our Monet lilies, because our resident frog has become quite a character. Morning , noon and night he holds court in the pottery bowl fountain in the small pond outside our office.

We hope one of us is going to see how he gets in and out of the bowl. Does he leap from the edges of the pond? Does he clamber up the sloping sides of the bowl? How on earth is he coming and going from his castle? It’s amazing how much pleasure one saucy frog has given us. Our pottery bowl runneth over!

This summer has been a whirlwind of activity. This week Jim, Will and Ben jacked up the building where we dry the Red Shiso, the plant we use as our Flower Essence stabilizer. They then rebuilt its foundation and cleared out much of the brush that had made a visit to the Red Shiso barn something akin to a visit to Baba Yaga’s hut built on chicken feet.

Apparently the building practically was built on chicken feet, and it was a lucky thing it didn’t sail right off its old foundations when we were in it. The building tipped down hill 8 inches on its old foundation but is now plumb, square, level and ready for this year’s crop of Red Shiso.

Inside the office, Emily and Jess finished designing the new logos for the Flower Essences Emily made in Sicily and Santorini this spring. We all love the logo with its soft warm colors and view of Cefalu, an ancient city on the north coast of Sicily. We plan to take this whole collection of Mediterranean Flowers forward right after the autumnal equinox, always a great time to launch new Flower Essences (This also works for me because it’s difficult for me to get major inside projects done during the growing season!).

At the equinox, we will also be officially introducing the new ones I made here at the Farm this summer and the new ones Ben made in Ireland.

During Ben’s recent trip to Ireland, the Irish Elementals took him all the way around the western and northern coast of Ireland to make Flower Essences from beloved old Flower friends like Ladies Bedstraw and many new Flowers as well. I have asked him to guest blog about his adventures. As with last trip, his cousin Roisin helped find the Flowers as well as put Ben through his paces in an arctic swim off the magic island of Inishbofin. Thank you Roisin!

We have been wonderfully busy inside the office as well as outside. So many new folks are finding us, and we have been sending more Essences out into the world than ever before. With the energies of the world so erratic and overheated, I am so glad that so many are finding Flower Essences for themselves and the animals in their lives, since Flower Essences offer such helpful information about handling these fiery times. Our work with rescue animals continues to give us all so much joy and we have been sending Flower Essences to so many different species of animals from goats to elephants.

Elizabeth is in the final stages of cover design and final proofing of her book on her walk across the Camino of northern Spain in the summer of 2008. This book has taken the better part of two years work for her. I have read it at least ten times in all its many drafts, and I am crazy about it. I can’t wait to share that with you too, later this fall!

But today is Friday, which means I am off to work in the gardens…….with a first stop for a visit with the bees and a snack of one of the luscious peaches hanging overing the hives right now.

It’s one of the good things about having gardens and lots of ’em. Everyone can indulge in their obsessions and sometimes no one else notices for quite awhile.
For example, it took Reina’s obsession with the enormous frog in the koi pond for us to notice the frog had an obsession of his own, this lovely Pink Water Lily.

The clock is ticking (quite literally) on Ben noticing my obsession with petite vegetables. Just back from Ireland with dozens of Flower Essences and a good many funny stories, he has taken up the helm of the GHF kitchen. This afternoon, he wanted me to bring in all the tomatoes so he could make a pasta sauce for tonight.

Do you think he will notice my obsession with miniature vegetables when he learns that my description of having found a couple dozen tomatoes for him was sort of misleading?

My obsession with different varieties of Flower Tobacco is bringing more pleasure. At least to me. And this may be good since I might be banished out to this garden to eat worms. Soon.

But really, the obsession I wanted to discuss today is Jim’s. He disappeared about two days ago down to the compost structure we use for kitchen scraps. Its been a losing battle to keep every animal in a five mile radius out of this bin. Riley in particular has a penchant for disappearing right after someone has taken a juicy compost pail down to the bin, only to return a few hours later with bad breath and a serious need for Digestive Woes.

I believe I have documented Jim’s previous obsessive attempts to fortify and protect this compost bin from Riley and every other animal known to man. And of course, Jim’s most recent noble effort deserves a nod of recognition because tonight, I have no doubt, this Bastille of compost prisons is going to be stormed. In fact I know it, because Riley just walked by and when he belched, I am sure I heard him say, “Vive le jardin! Vive les chiens! Vive le COMPOST!”

Unmodified structure on left. Bastille prison on right. Good luck to all garden patriots. I will be up at the house sharing a festive meal of an 1/8 cup of pasta sauce with Ben and the rest of the fam. If they’ll have me.

Where there are young adults, there is Facebook . And where there is Facebook, there is Facebook Deflation Syndrome wherein teeth are gnashed and hair is pulled when it appears that everyone else on Facebook is having a much better life with better hair, better shoes and better destination vacations.

Today, I thought I would take the edge off Facebook Deflation Syndrome’s kissing cousin, Blog Deflation Syndrome by showing you my choice of tomato varieties for this growing season.

Last year, 83 of my 84 Tomato plants packed up from the combined effects of three months of daily rain, the Irish potato virus and a sum total of five minutes of sunshine. Being somewhat irritated at my partners in the garden who suggested I grow 84 tomato plants, I didn’t pay ANY attention to their suggestions of tomato varieties for this season and didn’t listen to their suggestions about numbers of tomato plants to grow either. I wasn’t about to believe we could have a hot summer of lots of sun. No sirrreee! I was planning on RAIN.

Think adult gardener sticking her fingers in her ears, singing at the top of her lungs and simultaneously saying, ‘I’m not listening to you.” A mature moment.

Making decisions on my very own, I decided to grow only small tomatoes like cherry tomatoes because they were the only ones to survive last year’s wet conditions.

Only I couldn’t be satisfied with CHERRY sized tomatoes or even GRAPE sized tomatoes, I had to go with a variety of CURRANT sized tomatoes. And I didn’t hedge my bets with much of anything else. Yes, there is the occasional rogue normal sized tomato out there in the garden, but mostly there are 25 plants of CURRANT SIZED TOMATOES.

Do you know how small a currant is? Or a currant tomato?

Let me show you.

No, they look too normal in this artsy shot. Let me try again.

And those shots on other people’s blogs of enormous tomatoes? Those really ARE redder, riper, juicier, bigger, better tasting tomatoes, because frankly, how could they be smaller? I have cornered the market on that!

PS If this is not enough to finish off your case of blog deflation syndrome, let me give you a stove update. Still broken. some burners functioning now but 50% of the time the oven shuts off during preheating with an F5 error message and Sears has stopped returning our calls……..