{"id":3330,"date":"2016-07-13T17:18:12","date_gmt":"2016-07-14T00:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=3330"},"modified":"2016-07-13T17:18:12","modified_gmt":"2016-07-14T00:18:12","slug":"sweet-summer-surprises","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/?p=3330","title":{"rendered":"Sweet Summer Surprises!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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With so much dark strangeness dominating the headlines, and people’s thoughts these days, it feels like time for a lighthearted post . . . to take a few moments to remember there’s still much to be grateful for, and beauty in the world if you care to look for it. Back to the somber stuff soon enough, no doubt. *I* need a break from it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

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Technically, these grapevines are a neighbor’s, but they’ve crept through our shared fence and intertwined themselves with our nearby fruit trees. Up till this year, they’d never provided us with any grapes . . . so it was a pleasant surprise to find that this year, there are oodles of them! They’re small, rather pale seedless greenish-white grapes with a tang to them that reminds us of champagne. Definitely not like any I’ve ever found in a supermarket!<\/p>\n

This is our third summer at the new house, which had been a foreclosure. The previous owners had planted a good number of fruit trees, some of which unfortunately did not survive the several years of neglect. Others hung on, just barely, and some of those have really begun coming back to life, which is wonderful. Some survived just fine, but are badly in need of pruning, and haven’t yet provided us much fruit. I’ve done some pruning, but not nearly enough — it’s a lot of work to catch up on, and it’s just too hot to do it in summer. But we’ll have a few pears, and a peach tree seems to have revived this year too — it’s never given us any fruit before, though it tried . . . the birds got to what little there was. Apricots and pomegranates seem to like this climate . . . alas, it seems cherries do not. Drat.<\/p>\n

Vin deserves a lot of credit for keeping the trees watered . . . undoubtedly one reason for our grape bounty this year. Yesterday, we had ratatouille made with home grown tomatoes and zucchini, which was a first. He’s done OK with tomatoes, but many things struggle to survive these desert summers. And gardening is relatively new for us. Amazingly enough, the rabbits (of which there are plenty here) have pretty much left our garden — such as it is — alone. So far. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

Let’s say we didn’t buy this property for the landscaping, though there is some . . . it was pretty disappointing on first impression, to an eye accustomed to greener surroundings. It’s grown on us, partly due to our own efforts, but mother nature deserves some credit too. We’ve got various flowering trees and shrubs, largely self-planted, that are flourishing now. And more, volunteering in propitious places, also a sweet surprise. They’re growing quickly, and will be very welcome sources of both shade and privacy.<\/p>\n

And flowers too . . .<\/p>\n

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This spring, I missed my chance to take photos, and we didn’t have quite as many flowers as last year — so some of these photos are a year old. This yellow flowering plant above is a mystery; it’s nothing we planted, and it didn’t return this year much to my disappointment. We had scattered a lot of desert wildflower seeds, and had a large crop in spring 2015, but not all of them came back this year.<\/p>\n

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We’ve got a number of hollyhocks that self propagate, and grow where they want to — so far, they haven’t cooperated with my efforts to plant them in any spot where I’d like them. Anarchic little plants, those hollyhocks . . . \ud83d\ude42 Vin pictured above with our tallest ones of the summer, one 7+ ft tall!<\/p>\n

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Here’s a photo with our oldest cat (looks like she’s stalking something) in the background. She’s the only one that goes out; being set in her ways, my beautiful, obstinate princess. She gets me up at dawn most mornings to let her out, and in return she comes back in for me at sundown. Of course, she has a cat door to come in any time if she wants to, and I block that off at night to keep her safely in. Coyote country, after all.<\/p>\n

Oh, and not to worry — I’m sure Vin will be back to posting soon, it’s just that I (Brunette) have been in more of a writing mood for a change.<\/p>\n

Anyway, sorry if this has been a silly fluffy post, mainly inspired by the grapes that have brought us such delight the past few days. May the summer bring you some sweet surprises too!<\/p>\n

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With so much dark strangeness dominating the headlines, and people’s thoughts these days, it feels like time for a lighthearted post . . . to take a few moments to remember there’s still much to be grateful for, and beauty in the world if you care to look for it. Back to the somber stuff […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[69,35,76,70,57,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3330","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brunettes-rants","category-earth-stewardship","category-gardening","category-goofy-brunette","category-locavore-local-food","category-nevada"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pWqFl-RI","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3330"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3337,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions\/3337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vinsuprynowicz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}