Moon above the garden.
IN THE FLOWERS
This Week’s Flower Challenge: This week we’d like to direct your attention one of the least noticed, but perhaps most important components of flower arranging: filler.
Think of filler as everything besides the show-stoppers—those big, bright blooms that call to you to come pick them from across the garden. Filler can be foliage, seed pods, or even smaller flowers that form the matrix and structure of your bouquet. They also provide ambience. Say the flowers that are calling to you this week are zinnias. Zinnias on their own are what they are. But zinnias with filler can be anything: moody, cheerful, sultry, playful, elegant, understated, over-the-top. This week, try adding a little extra something to your bouquet in the form of filler. It’s an amazing opportunity to utilize the wild and weird, the grasses, flowering herbs, seed heads and dried stems that will start to proliferate more and more as we ease into fall.
Some suggestions:
For moodiness, we love purples: flowering purple basil, the purple foliage and unopened buds of the Bishop’s Children Dahlias (above the amaranth and the gnome homes), the green and purple shiso.
For delicacy: the tiny white flowers of Gaura on it’s long, bud covered stems; feathery cosmo foliage and unopened buds; the tiny and prolific Daylight White Scabiosa; delicate white and purple chive blossoms; verdant and smooth nasturtium leaves and buds; and fuzzy, white-blooming catnip.
For texture and interest: red-gold sorrel seed heads, long strands of peppermint from below the little apple tree, flowering basil stems, grass seeds, blooming lemon balm and the technicolored velvet of celosia.
Zinnias and nasturtium feeling moody with catnip, purple basil, garlic chives, and celosia.
IN THE HERBS
Oregano, Marjoram, Thyme, Chives & Garlic Chives, Lemon Balm, Lemon Verbena, Chamomile, Tulsi Basil, Purple & Green & Bi-color Shiso (aka Perilla), Mints, Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Thai Basil, Green Coriander, Dill Flowers, Anise Hyssop, Sage, Tarragon, and Vietnamese Cilantro, Culinary Sage, Sorrel, Husk Cherries, Lemongrass.
Herb Challenge: We’ve heard from several members that they’ve been making shiso furikake from the shiso planting in the garden. Furikake, in case you’re unfamiliar with it, is a Japanese topping for rice, which frequently includes sesame seeds, seaweed, salt, sugar, bonito flakes, and more. It’s a delicious and easy way to bring an extra kick of umami into whatever you’re eating. (Moon Fruit Mushroom Farm has an amazing shiitake furikake for sale in the Marketplace at Green Valley, in case you want some inspiration!)
Shiso Furikake
To make your own furikake, simply dry shiso or perilla leaves, then grind in a mortar and pestle or a spice grinder, with your choice of the above ingredients. While the red shiso is what would traditionally be used to make shiso furikake, feel free to incorporate any of the varieties that we have growing! For easy harvesting and good regrowth on the plants, cut low down on a stem and store in an uncrowded paper bag until dry when you can pull the leaves off and grind.
FAQ
When does the CSA end? Exact dates are TBD, depending on the weather. The flower and herb garden will starting winding down in October and we’ll put her to bed in November. But expect some good blooms all the way til then. The strawberries will usually wrap up a little earlier, producing through the end of September.
If I go away can a friend use my share? Yes! If you’ll be out of town or unable to come pick strawbs and flowers, feel free to send a friend or relative in your stead. Please verbally orient them as to the directions and how things work as we are not always around.
FARMER’S LOG
Today we’ll leave you with a poem in honor of this misty, drizzly blessing of a day.
RAIN LIGHT
by W.S. Merwin
All day the stars watch from long ago
my mother said I am going now
when you are alone you will be all right
whether or not you know you will know
look at the old house in the dawn rain
all the flowers are forms of water
the sun reminds them through a white cloud
touches the patchwork spread on the hill
the washed colors of the afterlife
that lived there long before you were born
see how they wake without a question
even though the whole world is burning
See you in the fields,
David and Kayta
