Eating More Bounty and Some Extreme Gardening

One of our Hungarian Hot Wax Chilis that first appeared back in May finally turned a beautiful red color. It almost didn't even feel real when I held it in my hand. Maybe that is the "wax" part of its name.



April chopped up half of it and added the tasty, spicy little bits to some mac & cheese. That little red bundle of joy added so much depth of flavor and spiciness to that bowl of mac-n-cheese. It was a "wow" moment.

I harvested the rest of the garlic this last weekend and again got some close-to-fist-sized bulbs.



They joined the rest of the bulbs on our back porch trellis to dry, which shouldn't take too long in the weather we are having now. It was officially 103 at the Portland airport last night and I'm sure it was a few degrees warmer in our neighborhood in the inner city where there are numerous heat-sink concrete buildings.

We harvested the last of our Romaine on Sunday because I knew they were going to completely bolt in this heat. I gave two big heads away to two different neighbors. In continuing to eat our bounty, I sliced our last head of Romaine lengthwise, added some olive oil and parmesan, and tossed it on the grill after grilling some beef flanken ribs from New Seasons. The grilled Romaine was so tasty. This shot is the last of the heads just before harvesting them on Sunday.



And what did I do last night when the temps were still sitting in the triple digit range? I weeded. It wasn't too bad. I was in shorts with no shirt and I sat on my little garden stool. The chickens, who seem to be surviving this hot spell quite well, gathered around me as I dug up morning glory, dandelions and grass. After about 30-45 minutes, I was dripping sweat into my glasses as I bent over. So I had to call it a day at around 7 pm. It's supposed to maybe even push our all-time record high of 107 today. It was officially an all-time record high low temperature this morning of 75 degrees (the previous record for Portland was 74). I learned the hard way this morning that I need to do my finishing hand watering in my shorts the next couple of days. I pretty much sweated through my dress shirt just walking around with the hose. So no biking to work for me until the end of the week when the temps moderate substantially.