August 2026

August flew by! Time flies when you're having fun or keeping too busy to notice. I'd like to not be busy, to slow down and savor the time a little more. But that feels more like a September project. There's so much going on in August, much of it is work that I love. After reflecting on it, I see why the time flew. When you have time, you can get into the details. August had too many things to get deep into details on anyone. Picking one would mean I had to leave out so many of the others, and I'm a person who wants to do all the things! I'm working on that; focus, details, slowing down, letting some things go. Maybe next month.

Maybe this new exercise is part of that work. I've started a new, practice where I reflect on the month at the end of it. I started doing this seasonally by using prompts, which felt forced, boring, and also overwhelming. A season is a long time to look back on! Practice requires putting the time in, like marking it on the calendar and doing it regularly. So, I write on Mondays. The Monday closest to the last day of the month, I go through my daily records, my pictures and memories. It's crazy how much you can forget over that short period of time. I often find myself saying a lot of "hmm, that was this month?''

This might be the Martian tomato. Or one of the heirlooms. My labeling techniques often fail.

What happened in August? Lots of harvesting. We picked our first tomatoes. Wow! Really? That was this month? Not last month? Ha! Suddenly August feels like a slow month, like it lasted forever! We got a bit of rain, and it was hot; many tomatoes were cracked. And it wasn't the cracked that dries and heals as a scar. No, this was a wet wound, unhealing and gaping. I'm thinking this might be due to them being some "heirloom'' varieties started from seeds from friends. Both of them supposedly come from Italy, quite a different place from New Jersey. It's a lot more Mediterranean there, drier. I know it's fun to have things from the "old country", but I'm not sure it makes much sense other than some sort of nostalgia and reconnection. In our garden, we usually make it a point to grow natives or plants more suited to our particular climate. Sure, you can acclimate the plant over time. But is it the same heirloom in the end? That's what they did in Italy. Tomatoes are not native to Italy, they have been grown three for a long time, and those particular varieties have been acclimated to that area. Terroir play a big part. I'm talking to you Jersey tomato lovers. A true Jersey tomato only grows in NJ, and a true San Marzano can only be grown in San Marzano Italy. Anything else is maybe guilty of cultural appropriation. Cultivational appropriation? Next year I'll go back to some nice Jersey tomatoes of some sort. I'll have to figure out exactly what those are. I'm thinking a Rutgers variety might fit. Cherokee purple?

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Gotu Kola, my deep dive of the month, other that tomatoes I guess, is a plant that is not native to the Americas but has acclimated to central America. We make a few exceptions to our native and fit-for-our-climate plants with Aloe and citrus. This month I harvested some to add to my tincture from 2 years ago. I'll write a separate story on Goth Kola. I divided the plant to give it time to grow roots before it comes inside for the winter.

We had a lot of apples of the not Granny Smith variety. I can't find any record of the type of apples on this grafted tree. One is more golden, one is bi-colored, both are sweet. We usually get a lot of Granny Smiths, it's the root stalk of the tree. This year we didn't get many at all (neither did the squirrels). Maybe it was due to the late frost, or conditions were just better for the other variety. I made two batches of apple muffins and an apple pie, plus shared some for Marie to make a pie. Squirrels and deer also ate their fill. We deterred the deer from coming over the fence to eat apples on our side by making an obstacle that doesn't give them enough clearance to land. There's plenty on the other side and we have enough to share.

Elderberries were abundant, thanks to a very territorial mockingbird. I decided to freeze them, which was a bit easier than drying them. I'm hoping the frozen ones will be great for the syrups that I intend to make this fall and winter. Ten pounds sit in our second freezer! I dried another pints worth for teas. Silly me did it wrong and forgot to take them off the stems first. Separating them was such a tedious job. I won't make that mistake again!

Tulsi. Look at that fuzz!

I was able to harvest a little more peppermint and lemon balm before they flowered. I didn't get a lot this year due to an attempted transition in the beds. Also, there was a whole lot of passionflower. I'm waiting on those fruits. It's finally growing where we wanted it, on the trellis, so come fall, we'll remove some from everywhere else to make more room for strawberries and other things. Passionfruit gets crazy. It's not invasive since it's native, but it sure is aggressive, or maybe opportunistic is a better way of putting it. I harvested a good amount of parsley, scullcup, tulsi, marshmallow and culinary sage. I'm afraid we're losing our old sage plant. It's been with us since the beginning of this garden, 15 years. The stems have become woody, and quite brittle. We have another to take its place, or another place. It's a little too close to traffic and unwieldy hoses. Arugula went crazy as usual. Another plant we'll be taming next year. I love arugula, but I don't need it everywhere.

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What a jungle! Good weeds, bad weeds, so much life!

We got almost six inches of rain this month, so weeds got crazy. I spent a few good, sweaty, buggy days cleaning it all up so I could see beds again and what is not a weed could see some light and have room to breathe! By weed I mean a plant in overabundance. I don't know if there are any true weeds in our garden. They all serve a purpose for us. All that rain also gave us an overabundance of mosquitoes. We try everything short of spraying chemicals, but when you have a jungle like we do, they're just a part of it.
​I again attempted to grow some fall crops. I tried to protect them, but critters still got in to dig up the seeds. Others just refused to come up. Basil, lettuce and bok choi did well and are in the ground. Success! Beets and carrots are taking their sweet time. Fingers crossed. I'll start others even earlier next year. Just. Keep. Planting.

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Hot Ring-billed gull panting. Check out that tongue!

I wasn't sure what this young mockingbird was doing, then I realized it was learning to sun itself.

We watched a lot of birds in the back yard. Fledgling catbirds, cardinals, blue jays, mocking birds and house sparrows were all out begging for food. It was quite noisy and the parents sure were busy! By the end of the month, parents became bald as they started going through their molt. They look so ridiculous. Blue Jays seem a little self-conscious about it. I watched mockingbirds learn how to sun themselves and young catbirds tried to imitate the hummingbird and attempted some hovering maneuvers. We saw a few goldfinches fly through, but they don't seem to stick around our yard like they used to. I think we need more flowers. Mom and pop mockingbird finally loosened their grip on the territory of our house and porch, so others were welcome to come visit again. The end of the month brought some migrating friends back, like the redstarts and other warblers snatching up the abundant insects. I almost forgot about the thrasher that seems to have taken up residency somewhere close by. I escaped the heat and mosquitoes by going to the beach. The water was so warm, and I watched seagulls panting on the sand, tongues out, lined up to catch a breeze.

Canned "raw" tomato puree. You can use this for anything! Soup, chili, spaghetti and meatballs...

We were busy in the kitchen, canning raw tomato puree for winter as well as some cooked sauce for pizzas. We were gifted a big bag of tomatillos, so we made a batch of salsa verde and canned a few half pints. We don't grow corn, but we froze some that was getting too old and was headed to the trash. Sounds appetizing. It wasn't that old. We made a big batch of pico de gallo that all got eaten in tacos and nachos and burritos.
​We grew green beans again this year after many years off due to chickens disrupting the bed or groundhogs eating the seedlings. We made lots of Giambotta. We won't have soup in summer, but somehow a hearty stew is ok? We succeeded with cucumbers again too. So, we ate lots of salads, tzatziki and some panzanella. Cucumber, feta, cherry tomatoes, red onion and Italian vinaigrette is a new favorite. Add a little chicken and you've got a meal!

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I bought myself a surfboard that I still haven't used yet because all of this work kept me so busy! That's part of my September-slow-down plan.
We've cleaned out the mushroom grow room. Or Marie did. We helped a little. That's a little weird to say out loud. The mushroom growing is now over. It's hard to admit that, but part of the letting go. We'll grow a few in a tent, like how we started, so I have lion's mane for tinctures. Life happened and we had to get a new washing machine. I made a lot of new batches of product teas, fire cider, tinctures, and salve. It didn't feel like I've been selling much, but I ran out of everything.