Hope it brings you fair weather. 

I’ve been spending my daydreams on my garden lately.  Along with my walk-in pantry dream, my perfect-garden dream seems so simple.  Yet both are so far. 

All I want is lovely lushness, weeds at bay, bountiful veg plants.  Why is that too much to ask?

This year has been . . . umm . . . challenging

The rain and storms of this year have taken a big toll on Pinecone Meadow Farm.  Let me count the ways. 

• I lost a big hunk of the ancient ash, the one I’ve spent considerable cash on to keep the emeral ash borer at bay. 
• In the front, one stately elm succumbed to Dutch elm disease with another rapidly declining. 
• The mature crabapple has some sort of apple scab, which is caused by a fungus, which is caused by too much bloody rain.
• The westerly monsoons keep puffing on a juniper I moved in the spring to the point that it can’t stand up straight no matter how I stake it.
• The heavy rains keep the big mopheads of the Annabelle hydrangea bowing down, as if in disappointment. 

On a happier note . . .

On a happier note, the blushing bride hydrangea is putting on a great show.  I discovered I have honeysuckle in the garden.  And the butterfly bush has been working its magic for weeks now.

How does your garden grow?

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Lately I’ve felt like the hummingbird I spotted out the mudroom window the other day.  Flapping wings wildly and flitting from place to place to get things done. (Excuse the soft focus, below, but this little beauty would not stay still for me to focus.)

Nonetheless, I’m adding one more thing, just for fun, to celebrate autumn.

As many visitors here may know, I teach cooking classes for private groups. This has worked great, except for the disappointed folks who don’t have enough friends who want to make the trek to lovely Fennville, Michigan.

So for you who want to come with your sister or your two friends from college, I have some news.  I’m trying a single-session experiment where people can sign up singly instead of assembling a group.  The caveat:  I’ll need to cancel if I don’t have a full class of eight.

You game?  Class begins on Saturday, October 16 at 11 a.m. eastern time at Pinecone Meadow Farm in lovely Fennville, Michigan, about a two-hour drive from Chicago.  We’ll have a hands-on class and make a three-course lunch, then sit down at my vintage farm table to eat together.  We should be finished by 2:30 or 3.  Price is $95 per person.

On the menu

Here’s our autumn-focused menu:

• Apple celeriac soup with Honeycrisp apple “croutons”
• Chicken and root vegetable pot pie with gruyere caraway biscuit crust
• Pear clafoutis with ginger yogurt cream

Over lunch we’ll enjoy local wine from Fenn Valley Winery, with homemade ginger ale for any designated drivers.

So, again, if I can assemble eight people for the 16th, we’ll have a great time.  If you would like to reserve a spot, please e-mail me: janine (at) RusticKitchen (dot) com.

And if you’d like to spend more time in this pretty corner of the world, there’s a great u-pick orchard up the road, a goat cheese farm that welcomes visitors and nearby Saugatuck with three winery tasting rooms and some pretty wonderful ice cream.  And antiques and boutiques for people who think about more than food.

Hope to see you there.

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Photograph of the front yard of Pinecone Meadow Farm compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www.RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved. If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or let’s tweet!

Hello, dear friends.  Oh, how I’ve missed visiting here.  For some reason my blog became crippled, and the therapy needed to get it back on its feet was long and painful.  But finally, at long last, we’re back up and running.  At least up and strolling. Although I still mourn for the charming comments that were inadvertently deleted in the process.

So what have I been up to?

Well, I’ve been up to my elbows in dirt, er, soil.  I’ve decided that this is the year I’ll finally get on top of the garden at lovely Pinecone Meadow Farm.  I’ve been saying that for years, but this time I think it’s more than wishful thinking.  For newer readers, my three-and-a-half acres was mostly unmowed when I bought the place in 2007.  I still leave a good third or so as natural meadow for the critters and birds. Which doesn’t keep some four-legged marauders from knocking over the birdbath and raiding the bird feeder. But the rest is a challenge, with difficult decisions every day, like whether to pull this four-foot-tall milkweed.  Because it’s a weed, even though it’s pretty.

Everything’s coming up roses

The good news is that June is busting out all over.  And roses are EVERYWHERE.  I even found a few I didn’t know about, including a beautiful one growing inside the dead euonymus, with an unbelievable number of deep burgundy blooms.  About six feet tall.

Otherwise the flower beds that have gotten me down.  They contain a treasure trove of what nurserymen call “plant material.”  Flowers, shrubs.  Exuberant perennials like bee balm, yarrow, coneflower.  The thing is, those gorgeous plants have joyfully intermingled with weeds and grass, so dense (I estimate about a decade) to the point where I really need to dig everything out and replant.  So that’s what I’ve been up to.  First I edged the beds to at least make them look tidy.  Tidy from afar.  Then dig up perennials, divide, pick out the persistent grass, and replant.  Foot by foot, yard by yard.

In the process I’ve been laying newspaper as a weed barrier and then topping off with compost and wood chips.  Black newsprint only, please — the Wall Street Journal used to be great for this but now that they use more color, not so much.  The Blackhawks championship practically did me in with all those full pages of red ink in the Chicago Tribune.  It will compost in by next year, blocking weeds for a while.

And then we rest

Gardening sure can make a person thirsty, that’s for sure. So I’ve been making sparkly drinks to enjoy on the back porch.

First, there’s my widely-published recipe for homemade ginger ale.  I make ginger syrup in big batches and keep it in a bottle in the door of the refrigerator.  Add club soda and you’re set.

And then there’s my cabernet syrup for strawberries, and now for soda it seems.  This photo is of my rhubarb fizz. The concept is so easy — make a simple syrup of half liquid, half sugar.  Boil until thick.  Cool and top with sparkling water.  The possibilities are endless.

Which flavors can you think of?

Dot, dot, dot…

In other news, I went to a vintage auto show in South Haven, Mich., and took a LOT of photos. I stumbled on it on my way to the farmers market and was enthralled.  Not only by the unbelievably gorgeous cars (and so shiny!) but by the interesting people.

If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me!  Photo and recipe compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

Photo of vintage chimney pot from the Sandwich, Illinois Antique Market turned lawn ornament by Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

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Spring.  We have so many things to love about it.  Besides the fact that the blizzards stop for a while.

Outside we have blossoms everywhere.  Warmer weather means that hens lay more frequently, and thus egg dishes populate springtime menus.  On the table we have asparagus.  And we have morel mushrooms.

For three springs I’ve kept my eyes peeled for morels in the backyard at Pinecone Meadow Farm.  They’re delightful little morsels that can’t be cultivated, which is why you won’t see them in the grocery store and why they claim a dear penny at the farmers market.

In my area of southwest Michigan, neighbors talk about mushroom hunting in their woods, and have suggested that I should be able to find a few under the giant spruce in my back yard, the one that kids used to climb for a view of Lake Michigan a few miles away.  (At least that’s what the guy at the paint store told me — he grew up knowing the family that lived there years ago.)

But for three years, nothing.

And then, one morning early this week, there it was.  Right next to the French doors amidst the fallen crabapple petals and creeping myrtle.  My first ever morel mushroom.  A big fat white one.

After photographing it for posterity, I searched the rest of the three-and-a-half acres.  Nothing.

Not to be put off, I picked my mushroom, swished it in a little glass of water to get any undesirables out of the crevaces, and chopped it up.  Moments later it was my breakfast with some luscious farm eggs from Songbird Acres.

Scrambled eggs with morels

Per serving

1 tablespoon butter

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon minced onion

1 chubby morel mushroom, coarsely chopped

1 egg (or two if you like)

1 tablespoon heavy cream or milk

Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat a skillet over medium heat.  Add butter and oil and swirl the pan until the butter melts.  Add the onion and morel and gently saute until the onion becomes translucent.  Meanwhile, break the egg(s) into a small bowl and stir vigorously with the cream until thoroughly blended, but don’t be so vigorous as to beat in a lot of air — you don’t want bubbles.  Pour over the onions and mushroom and let sit for a minute or two.  Patience is key.  Season with salt and pepper.  Gently fold the eggs into the middle, giving the skillet a good shake or two to move the uncooked egg onto the pan’s surface.  Keep folding until they reach your desired consistency.  I like mine on the damp side, although I understand that others want them fully cooked.  You decide.

If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me!  Photo and recipe compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweet with me!

Photo of lilacs and lunaria “money plant” in the sunroom compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

Photographs of Idared apple buds, azalea and pulmonaria compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.

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This is the first asparagus from my garden.  (Susy over at Chiot’s Run posted her first asparagus too.)  Unless you count the lonely spear I found in the way-back meadow two years ago, this is my first-ever homegrown asparagus, from plants I put in three years ago.

This little spear makes my heart sing, and not just because I love asparagus.

It’s because it gives me hope.  Hope in the face of a major soil fail.

To fully understand, we have to go back a few years.

I bought Pinecone Meadow Farm as a weekend escape and gardening spot in southwest Michigan.   I adopted the cat that came with the house.  I installed my vegetable garden where the previous people had theirs.  I had a fancy, not-cheap-at-all lattice fence put around it.  I planted things.  Asparagus, raspberries, blueberries.  Rhubarb!  Plus tomatoes, carrots, arugula.

It was then that I learned my gorgeous fence was on the site of the burned-down barn.  Meaning the soil was filled with crummy elements that do not, I repeat, do NOT enrich the soil.  I’ve had some successes, mostly thanks to soil amendments and great tomato plants donated by my neighbor Al.  But most things have not thrived for me.

I should have known better than to follow the planting lead of people who would abandon a pet.  And who left shell casings and golf balls in the flower beds.  Even without these disheartening signs, I should have had the soil tested.

So this year, I’m taking most of the garden out of cultivation to plant some cover crops that will nourish my garden.  And for the rest I’ll amend like crazy, then put in raised beds with new soil this fall.

That’s the plan.  Wish me luck.

But in the meantime, one of my asparagus plants survives. Hope is the gardener’s best friend.

Roasted asparagus, plain and simple

1 bunch asparagus

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

coarse salt to taste

freshly-ground black pepper

1 tablespoon fresh-squeeze lemon juice or balsamic vinegar

Preheat oven to 450 degrees.  Trim tough ends off the asparagus by bending them until they break — each spear will tell you where it needs to be trimmed.  Place on a baking sheet with sides, drizzle with olive oil and toss to coat.  Season with salt and pepper.  Roast until fork tender, about five to ten minutes depending on the size.  Remove from oven and drizzle with lemon juice.

If you enjoy this post, please consider subscribing to my newsletter, or my feed. Or tweetwith me!  Photo and recipe compliments of Janine MacLachlan, www. RusticKitchen.com.  All rights reserved.