Weekly Update: 5.31.26
Of rain, gardening, and sourdough
It was another rainy week — the sort that took me back to growing up in the Pacific Northwest. Soft-falling rain is a climate feature of the Oregon Cascades, and I remember one particularly wet summer when it rained every day. Now, the memory of a 10-year-old is hardly reliable, but I remember feeling like it rained all summer. As a kid who loved nothing better than running around outside with the other neighborhood kids, all that rain was a low-level trauma. As a naturalized Ozarker, though, that sort of rain is a rare treat to be savored — at least normally. This week, when I felt myself chaffing at being stuck indoors so much, I reminded myself to stop and soak in the beauty dripping outside the windows.
Even though the rain has been incessant, we made the most of the good weather when we had it. On Wednesday, Grace, our brother Levi, and I spent almost the entire day in the garden along with Levi’s kids. We loosened soil, formed 14 18-foot rows, and planted nearly 200 seedlings (peppers, tomatoes, basil, and cilantro).
Later in the week, we started more seeds indoors — cucumbers, three types of summer squash, six varieties of melons, and some more herbs. We plan to wait a week or so to start the winter squash, as we prefer our pumpkins to ripen closer to fall.
We still have a bunch of flower plants waiting to go in the ground. Now that our vegetable starts are planted, we can work on the lower priority flower bed. The cosmos and zinnias need full sun, so they couldn’t go in the shady flower bed we made a couple weeks ago. We are planning to construct some simple raised beds near our homestead entrance.
Aside from our gardening, we’ve been in survival mode this week as Grace’s mini-Aussie Milly has still been in heat. With all the rain, we’ve had three male dogs in the house with her — and it’s not been fun for anyone. Grace did find a stud for Milly, and he came over to our homestead for a couple visits. Unfortunately, Milly didn’t accept him this time. She is very shy, and while she liked his owner, she was wary of the unknown dog. Grace hopes they can try again next time she is in heat.
May is nearly over, which means our days are getting hotter. After a little trial and error, I found a rhythm of slow-rise sourdough proofing that allows for early morning baking. A morning bake when it’s cool outside allows us to run the whole-house exhaust fan while using the hot oven. After baking a rather flat couple of loaves followed by some rather small ones, I was thrilled to achieve two nice sized loaves yesterday morning — and then again today. While we don’t eat a lot of bread (most of our family tries to avoid gluten), we have all been loving Sunday afternoon sandwiches with slow-fermented sourdough. This type of bread has reduced gluten content due to the long ferment time.
And this week, we had Saturday evening sandwiches as well, in honor of the Feast Day of Joan of Arc. At the suggestion of Kendra Tierney’s book, we made Croque Madame sandwiches. It was a delicious (if darkly humorous) choice. Right during dinner, severe thunderstorms in the area knocked out our power for about an hour. We went ahead and finished the last few sandwiches in the warm oven — even though they are supposed to be grilled and then broiled. They were still very tasty.
It was a long week of rain and fussy dogs. I’m thankful the dog drama is almost over, and from what the forecast says, we should be able to work outside most of the week. We have so much to do in our garden. We are itching to start on our flower beds. We have a honeybee swarm we need to relocate into it’s proper hive. The world is perfectly green, the Black-Eyed-Susans are blooming, and I am so ready for June.
