Back from vacation

We are back from a vacation visiting family and friends in Northern California and Oregon, and enjoying a couple of days of "couple time." Of course, upon my return, I was greeted by an overgrown mess in both the garden and the yard. It is risky to take two weeks away just when the weeds are really getting going. On the other hand, it is nice to see real results from a couple of hours of work.

I dug the potatoes and onions upon my return, so now we need to get busy eating. I am planning to make a potato-fennel gratin tomorrow night, since I also have some fennel growing in the garden. There are still some really nice beets left, so I will probably pull the rest of those and roast them to have in salads.

Unfortunately, the pests are out in abundance. Something is laying eggs on my squash, so every day I go and scrape them off and hope that I am not missing anything. My cucumbers are wilting from some fungus, so I am starting some new ones. I am really disappointed because they are just getting ready to bear fruit, and it looks like they are going to die. I think that I am making a mistake by planting them too soon. Next year I will wait until later to start them, because I suspect that they are getting infected by something that flies through early in the season. It is frustrating.

I picked two grape tomatoes today, which is the sum total of the tomato crop so far. The other plants have quite a bit of fruit, but they are a little pokey. I guess it has just been too cool. Currently the best looking thing in the garden is a profusion of orange cosmos that I planted amongst the tomatoes and peppers; I had read that they are good companions for those plants, and they make a cheerful bouquet.

On the trip we spent a couple of days in Ashland, Oregon, where we saw plays that were part of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival. It was great fun, and Ashland is a very pleasant little town. We had an excellent dinner at the Peerless Restaurant and Bar (http://www.peerlessrestaurant.com/index.html), which was probably the culinary highlight of the trip. We split a mixture of Washington and British Columbia oysters to start, and then I had a curried melon soup (containing cantaloupe, honeydew, some mango, and coconut milk). Glen had a salad with Asian pear and Rogue Creamery blue cheese. We split an order of pappardelle with duck confit and smoked tomato sauce, and we also split an order of butternut squash gnocchi with browned butter and sage, which helped to soak up the sauce from the pappardelle. Glen drank some pale ale with the meal, but I had a prosecco with the oysters and, with the rest of the food, a split of Cristom Oregon pinot noir, which was very tasty. I'll definitely look for it here. It had some earth in the nose that reminded me a bit of the way Virginia wines usually taste, but in a more muted way. For dessert we tried each of their four gelatos; the star was a dark chocolate with cracked pepper and cayenne. All in all, it was a very satisfying al fresco dining experience.