works of wanderlust

Tag: backyard adventures

  • Apple Harvest

    The local radio (yes, I still listen to the radio) was discussing apples this afternoon.

    The public broadcaster hosts an afternoon general interest show where a pair or trio of hosts chatter about local news topics, update on weather and traffic, interview local businesses, and generally have a daily topic encouraging people to engage and discuss and drop comments onto their feeds to participate in said chatter.

    Today the topic was apples.

    I don’t know how it goes in your part of the world, but around here almost everyone has or knows someone who has an apple tree.

    Mine is a magnificent fifteen year old baking variety apple. She stands nearly as tall as my two-storey house, and this year dropped roughly two thousand greenish-red orbs of tartly sweet goodness into bowls, pails, dirt, grass, the neighbour’s yard, and even quite nearly onto the dog’s head.

    We made some pies.

    We froze some sliced samples.

    But in reality we just couldn’t keep up.

    I posted online with pleas for friends to come pick… but again, everyone has or knows someone who has an apple tree, so no takers.

    Next year will likely be a quieter year for fruit in our yard, the tree seeming to be a biannual giver of bounty.

    I didn’t call in or participate in the radio program, not by tweet or by text, but I did pause to listen, aligning my own experience participating in the growing of the local crop right in my backyard with countless neighbours around the city. It was a moment almost as sweet as a fresh backyard apple.

  • Last Day of Summer

    And just like that the leaves turned yellow, the air felt crisper, and another summer drifted into memory.

    In three short months we managed to squeeze in quite a lot of action, particularlly considering that the world was still fairly locked down with this pandemic.

    We visited the mountains for two weeks across two separate trips, completed a modest list of hikes, kayaked on a couple mountain lakes, photographed glaciers, and enjoyed the wilderness.

    We cooked outdoors on our new backyard fire pit, roasting a crazy variety of meats, a garden’s worth of vegetables, and too many marshmallows to count.

    We hosted friends in our backyard, spending lovely afternoons or evenings with (on different occasions) family for elaborate meals, co-workers for beers, friends for campfires, and my running crew for a brithday party.

    We met our neighbours in the park, new friendly relationships spurred on by the magnetic conversation starting magic of a cute puppy who makes pals with anyone and drags me into it at the other end of a leash.

    We ran as I hosted at least a dozen weeks of adventure runs around and just outside the city, encouraging a dozen (give or take) of my running crew to join me in exploring new trails and unfamiliar routes, often with an ice cream or beer at the end of it.

    We enjoyed our own backyard.

    We toured our own city.

    We lived in our space, not always by choice, but making the best of the situation.

    The summer of 2021 ends in a couple short hours and it may not have been perfect, but it certainly was not wasted.

  • Short: Friday Fires

    Long work days, short cool evenings.

    I had my phone in one hand and an axe in the other (metaphorically speaking, of course) as Friday’s quitting time slipped into view. The benefit of (still) working from home is that I can check the laptop for rogue, last-minute emails even while I heat up the backyard firepit for a cookout.

    At five pm I cracked a beer and stoked the coals just right to grill up some juicy steaks and a foil packet of freshly dug garden spuds.

    Not a terrible way to start the weekend. Not terrible at all.

  • Haskap

    Four large lush bushes occupy various spots in my backyard. I planted these shrubs about eight to ten years ago as worked to fill my garden beds with as many fruit-bearing plants as could reasonably live adapted to this crazy northern climate zone.

    Lonicera caerulea is also known in some parts of the world as honeysuckle or honeyberry, but in Canada we tend to refer to this bush and it’s fruit as a haskap.

    My haskap bushes started to bear ripe fruit this past week and I’ve been eagerly plucking as many as I can before the robins eat more than their fair share. I don’t mind, but I do like to have a few of the tart-sweet berries before they all become bird food.

    I don’t know much about the haskap itself. For a few years a nearby university known for their horticultural work breeding plants that were slightly more adapted to surviving the long winters seemed to be mentioned frequently around greenhouses as I and my fellow local gardeners bought and planted each a few of the adapted shrubs. The work of that same university is responsible for the breed of my backyard apple tree which is now at least fourteen seasons growing in it’s current spot and has easily produced tens of thousands of apples. This is not a climate where anything that hasn’t been winter hardened will grow much past September, and only the best adapted of trees and shrubs survive our minus forty winters. The haskap, on the other hand, seems to thrive in these parts.

    The haskap is a little more subtle than my apple tree though.

    My metre-wide bushes usually produce only a cup or two of the elongated blue-purple treats, right around this time of the year, and by the time we graze our fill there is rarely anything left behind but scraps for the most persistent of the local avian population.

    I have a few varieties of berries in my backyard, yet these haskap are the ones that draw the most curiosity from visitors… but only those lucky enough to stop by during the short couple weeks when their colourful, oblong orbs dangle ready to be tasted.

  • Campfire Corn Roast

    My foray in to roasting vegetables over the fire veered into more traditional territory this afternoon after picking up a few ears of fresh corn from the grocery store.

    Step one was to remove the silk while leaving the husk as intact as possible. This is done by carefully peeling back each fibrous layer one at a time without breaking them off. When the final layer of husk has been pulled back, the hair-like strands of silk can be pulled away easily… tho getting those last few is a meticulous process. Then reversing the husk peel, each layer is folded back up around covering the kernels again.

    Step two involves a long soak. I’ve read online that some people soak their corn for hours or even overnight. Time was pressing so mine got a deluxe ninety minute bath in ten centimeters of cold tap water in my kitchen sink. The point of this is to introduce a lot of moisture to the ears helping to (a) slow burning and (b) induce steaming.

    With nearly an hour left in my soak I got to work chopping wood for step three which was, as the title of this post implies, building a roaring fire to create a bed of hot, crackling embers over which the corn could be roasted. I suppose if one wanted to settle for a charcoal barbecue or even a gas grill I would not object. After all, corn over a flame, whatever flame, is always better than a simple cob dropped in a pot of boiling water.

    Step four was that point in the corn-fire relationship where the two really got to know each other. Wet corn sizzled and crackled over the glowing red coals at the base of my fire pit. I started the cook with a lot of careful clock-watching, letting the ears cook for a solid five minutes before turning them (even if it was tempting to intervene on the blackening, charring results.) After each five minutes per side, the black bits that had been rotated away from the flame flaked away exposing more unburnt husk, which in turn cooked and burned and shed. As I neared the end of the cook, the tips of the ears had burn away and the kernels at the tip charred a bit.

    The whole family helped with step five which as one might guess involved some butter, salt and pepper and a whole lot of sweet, fire-roasted corn. Delicious.