Currant events

Really hot, dry weather, and a bad encounter with bumblebees (again unappreciative wildlife) left Mrs. Phactor looking for a less stressful garden job this weekend.  Just such an opportunity presented itself  because late June is when one of our perennial fruit crops ripens: red currants.  The plants do OK in partial shade and 3 bushes form a transition zone between a flowering tree/shrub garden and the kitchen garden. They are mostly a trouble free plant, even the birds leave the fruits alone (probably a good thing the cedar waxwings have moved through the area much earlier in the year).  The berries take quite a bit of patience and persistence to harvest, and since it just isn't berry jelly making weather, the currants are striped off their racemes, washed, spread on a baking tray and frozen.  They are then bagged up and left frozen as individual berries until such time as it's cool enough to cook jelly that comes out as pretty as the berries. Note you can also use cranberries along with currants for jelly, or even black raspberries as they latter ripen at just about the same time.

Mid-week odds & ends

Rose, Pete - Always liked the guy as a scrappy player for the Reds. Hard to believe he'd throw a game just to make a few bucks betting, but when you break the rules and then lie about it, you've given them enough rope to really hang you. 
June rain - TPP has recorded 7.25 inches of rain this month when the area usually averages around 4.25 inches for the whole month. It's raining now and heavy rains are predicted over night. Never seen the soil so wet for so long in the summer. Weeds pull pretty easy, but all this rain makes them grow like crazy and totally weeded beds now need weeding again.
Lilies - June is lily month in our gardens. Mrs. Phactor likes her lilies, daylilies, oriental lilies, tiger lilies, all types. So some colorful masses of color are gracing the gardens, now if life just allowed us to sit on the patio a bit more and enjoy the show.
Sarah Palin - You know your irrelevance factor is climbing fast because our country's favorite incoherent commentator did not have her Phlox News contract renewed. Now she's really yesterday's news. Makes her quest for cash a lot tougher.
Confederate flag - TPP's Mother was a southerner from Mississippi. But she had the poor white perspective on race where you both lived the same way, sometimes right across the dirt road from each other, so played with their kids, and you understood that the differences were those of opportunity and money. And she got out via marriage. She'd cheer for the Arkansas Razorbacks or Mississippi women in beauty contests, but that was as much support for the "south" as she had. She did love gardenias.
Father's Day - The F1 remembered her Dad and brought many little gifts: rambutan, papaya, pepino, a blue cheese, a raclette cheese, some fancy coffee, a tamarind concentrate, and sour patch kid candies. How thoughtful! Rambutan in USA markets is fairly new, but tropical fruit that has to travel a long way is often not tip top produce. The leathery rind of rambutans and lychees should be red and pliable. Because they are often picked too green they may not have the best flavor. Some of these were pretty good, about 5.5 on the 10 point fresh tropical scale; they others were past ediblity. Made a great papaya salad with coconut, lime juice, cilantro, and hot sauce. Some of these orange-fleshed papayas are surprisingly good, maybe reaching an 7.5 to 8 flavor-wise, if you know how to pick them.
Currants - Picked several quarts of red currants from our 3 young bushes. This is enough for a year's supply of currant jelly. But today the aging back is complaining about work this low.
Japanese beetles - They have hatched, but no telling how big the population will be. Hoped the wet weather in combination with milky spore fungus would keep them in check. But bought some more netting from favorite fabric shop to cover new apple trees anyways.

Keeping currant

Always aware of currant events it has become apparent that by not keeping currant the supply of jelly has been seriously diminished. One of our favorites is made from a combination of currants and cranberries, a deep red, tart confection to spread upon a toasted muffin. Redesign of a small portion of the garden has produced the correct location for some currants, but no one, no one, carries currants as garden stock. This tells you a great deal about people who think all jelly comes from the store not understanding what a pale imitation it is. Never have more people been further removed from where their food comes from; and curiously something a easy to make as jelly is looked upon as a terrible imposition. Kids just don't know how things are made anymore at all, or what kind of tree tomatoes grow on. Maybe mail order is the only option. Now to strain my latest batch of worchestershire sauce, which isn't hard to make either.