Summer Bounty

Let's take a walk on the Steppe, shall we?

When we left off, I had introduced to you a most treasured woman- one of character and love. All is well with her now!

Summer has burst forth upon us here on the Steppe, and the land is certainly showing it. Our garden is bursting with fresh veggies to eat, which is a wonderful thing.

Let me take you back 8 years, to when we first arrived here. In the bleakness of winter, in which temperatures can reach a constant low of around 10-20 F BELOW zero. Hmmm... come to think of it, that's pretty cold! Nothing much grows here anyway, but added to the long, long cold season, and the fact that our host people don't venture too far away from their mundane eating habits, very little was available in the way of produce. Potatoes, carrots, onions and cabbage were ALL you could get here from October to May. Let's just say, I've become quite a creative conjurer of potato dishes.

If an outsider wanted to have a little more variety in their diet during the winter months, he would have to GROW it. And that is just what we did! We longed for something, ANYTHING! green and leafy during those long winter days, so we took to experimenting with what might grow here in the sandy, salty soil. We discovered that chard did exceptionally well. For those of you who need to know, it is a lot like spinach, but has a MUCH longer lifespan. Tomatoes, squash, and sunflowers also do very well, but it was the chard that we ended up growing the most of. It was (and still is) a joy to pull out a bag of chopped, frozen green delicacy in the middle of winter to get some antioxidants flowing through out veins once again. Besides that, we really like it- even the little ones.

Fast forward. As the economy grew, people began to travel more, and discovered that there was more to life than root veggies, pasta, and rice flavored with grease. Yes sireee! They discovered that God is actually pretty darned creative and that zucchini, green beans, and brocolli exist on planet Earth, and that they are actually good for you. Well, okay, they do agree that they ARE good for you, but we, for the life of us, cannot convince them that they TASTE good too. So, the above mentioned are only available from ONE seller in the city, and only ocassionally. Ah well. It's a good thing that the chard, melons, basil, kohlrabi, leeks, and winter squash are doing well.

Here is this year's progress:

May

Yesterday

The chard in all its glory- a rainbow of yummy colors!

Eggplants almost ready to turn into baba ghanou! Yum!

A beautiful row of sunflower soldiers, ready to march into bloom- complements of NariLoo!

The tomatoes are bursting with blooms as well, and the basil holds its own around the stump. This year's peppers (in the leftish foreground) bit the big one due to an unbelievable aphid infestation. We tried spraying with dish soap, cooking oil, and Coca Cola, all to no avail. I fear no peppers this year... (If you doubt the Coke treatment, it's on the net)

The empty rows just got planted with a second crop of kolrhabi, as it was the champion this year. Hope we like it... it's a new one to us, just this year.

Well this wraps up another walk on the steppe. You'd think the lazy days of summer would afford me more time to be taking time out with you, but alas, it also means the kids have more free time, and you know that adds more computer time competition.

Until next time,

Your SteppeSister