My Favorite Mistakes

Sheryl Crow got one. I gots many. Of the gardening kind that is. No -- the wife that is Venus is not my favorite mistake. However, there may be times when she might feel that way. Like most husbands, uh, I tend to "push the envelope."

Canning Jars

And then she snaps me back to reality with a well placed rubber band. But, I digress. This is about gardening -- more succinctly -- gardening MISTAKES. Lord knows, I've made my share of them. See those jars? Those jars in our dishwasher are the proof of my many mistakes when it comes to canning and saving fresh from the garden foods.

But mistakes also tend to make me excited. Is that strange? Most people seem to think so -- especially by the way I react when they tell me the following: "I made a mistake." YOU DID, I say in an excited voice. "THAT'S GREAT!!!"

I see mistakes as learning achievements in gardening life. Yes, you made a mistake. Guess what the good thing is about that? You'll never make it again. You've learned a hard lesson. You zigged left when you should have zagged right. That's OK. We all make them. And this is how we learn. Because, after all these years, I'm still learning.

I write this post on the weekend after I dumped every mistake that was occupying a spot in the cupboard pantry set aside for all things home-canned products. My friends -- that was a lot of dumping -- representing years of gardening errors and "I'll never do that again." Here's a short list of what went down the drain or into the trash can.

Refrigerator Pickles (Tasty!)

PICKLES: Venus and I have been canning all things pickles for six or seven years. We've tried many different recipes and solutions. I suppose our favorite would be the old fashioned dill pickle. But I've come to learn that it's downright impossible to safely can pickles without them turning soft during the Boiling Water Bath or Pressure Canning Process. I've tried many solutions. Pretty much all of them have failed.

The last failure took place two years ago when I added a solution that I believed would keep our dill pickles hard and crunchy after the canning process had taken place. Should I have tested the idea first on one jar? Of course I should have! But -- no -- instead I canned a dozen quarts of pickles on that day.

Six months later I would come to find out that the pickles I'd canned with this "special ingredient" came out soft, bitter and left this rather unpleasant alkaline taste in our mouths. Perhaps it was a bad jar, we thought. So, we opened another. This one tasted even worse. Blech! No thank you. One dozen jars of pickles sat in the pantry, untouched, for the better part of two years.

So -- we're sticking with the tried n' true refrigerator pickle instead. Ten jars is enough to get us through all those winter celebrations and holidays. If there's one thing that family members and friends love, it's a good pickle.

GRAPE JELLY: When you add nine grapevines to the Bird Back 40, guess what happens? You get a lot of grapes. Not just a lot of grapes -- but so many grapes that you cannot possibly consume them all. I'm at that point now where if I see grapes in the store or at the farmer's market, I get ill. That's what happens when you eat too many grapes.

Grape Jelly!

So what does a gardening couple with far too many grapes do? Well -- they make a fine juice. And who doesn't like grape jelly? I suppose they would also make a fine wine. Too bad I don't like wine. And so, on one particular Sunday last August (2013), the wife and I set out to make our very first and special batch of grape jelly. The recipe sounded simple enough: grape juice, sugar and pectin. That's it

I'm here today to tell you -- it ain't that easy. This is especially true for first timers like me and the wife. We didn't just screw this up -- we royally screwed it up. How can you possibly screw up grape jelly? My friend, let me count the ways...

The cooking and canning part actually worked out fine. The jelly was actually starting to set before we processed them in the canner. Long time jelly makers are now thinking the following: "I sure hope they used that water bath canner."

No -- we didn't. Stupid (that would be me) decided to run them through the pressure canner. Know what happens when you run jars of jelly through a pressure canner? You get grape syrup -- and not a very good syrup at that. The 12 beautiful jars of jelly we canned on that day came out the consistency of a runny syrup. That's not good for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. It's not good for anything to be brutally honest.

Those jars of jelly sat -- untouched -- for a year. Until last weekend that is.

OLIVES: Ever had the pleasure of tasting a home canned olive or two? I have. They are delicious! That's why I was bound and determined to can my very first olive crop last fall. Olives in a home brine of your own making are WONDERFUL. They are far better than the crap -- uh -- stuff you get in a store.

Storage Pantry with Lots of New Space!

I've brined my own olives on many occasions. But I'd never taken the next step of actually pressure canning the product for long-term storage (you cannot use water bath canners to process olives). I'm not really sure what went wrong, since I followed these instructions to the letter.

The first report that something went terribly wrong during the canning process would come some weeks later, after I gifted a jar of these special olives to gardening pal Nels Christensen. He messaged back later that evening to tell me the olives were soft to the point where they felt and tasted like a salted mush.

That wasn't right. "Try putting them in the refrigerator overnight," I advised. He did just that. And the next day, the olives were just as mushy. Did I give him a bad jar perchance? Nope -- as I opened one of my jars I was rewarded with olives that were just as mushy. Quart after quart -- pint after pint -- they were all bad.

Weeks of curing and fermentation went literally down the drain. The olives were safely canned alright. They passed the safety test with flying colors. But who wants to munch on olives that have the consistency of Cream of Wheat?

CONCLUSION: The time finally came last weekend to get rid of all those gardening and canning mistakes. I was tired of looking at them. Plus, hey, we needed the jars for other canning projects. This is September after all. The months of August and September are critically important for preserving the home harvest for treats to be shared during those cold winter months.

Did we manage to preserve everything? No -- not quite. Perhaps, one day, when I'm retired and have a little more time on my hands. But I can promise you this much: Those jars of grape jelly and pluot jam are going to make someone happy this winter.

Why Kitty Hide?

It's a question that I cannot answer: "Why Kitty Hide?"

It's also a question, in restrospect, that I miss and could hear over and over again.

The wife that is Venus and I hosted our niece and nephew this weekend at our North Natomas home. The parents of the 2-year old girl (think TERRIBLE TWO'S) and 5-year old boy needed a bit of a break to be honest. We were more than happy to help them out.

Venus and I both know that the seeds that bring about a love for gardening must be nurtured at an early age. Our niece and nephew had never planted a garden before, until this weekend, and they seemed to enjoy it immensely.

I think they also loved running from "The Scarecrow" monster, a motion detection system that shoots a stream of water at whatever crosses its path. Still, they seemed to have a lot of fun planting the final crops of the 2009 garden -- a bed for our pickling cucumbers.

Our pickling efforts went fairly well last year, our first, but we learned that not all cucumbers make great pickles. That's why we ordered more than one variety of pickling cucumbers last winter, and had the kids plant our seed-starting efforts this weekend.

While little Celina loved running about the garden, she was most interested in the cats. And she simply could not understand why they would run in terror from this shrieking little girl. And so, throughout the weekend, this innocent little girl would look me straight in the eye and ask: "Why Kitty Hide?"

I learned that there was no good answer to this puzzling question. In fact, it didn't matter what answer I gave, as it usually prompted the response of: "Why Kitty Hide?"

And not just any kitty, but all four of them.

So, while we did our best to distract Celina with efforts such as planting pole beans, she still couldn't get over the fact that these flurry, fluffy creatures didn't want to come anywhere near her. That's why I hear the question over and over again today: "Why Kitty Hide?"

As it turns out -- both little Mark and little Celina do have a bit of that gardening gene in them. Celina, however, isn't quite ready to put anything harvested from the garden in her mouth at this point (not many 2-year olds are ready at age 2), but Marquitos was a different story. I was surprised.

It took a long time before Bill Bird would let a tomato come near him. I certainly wasn't eating garden produce at age 5. It would take several more years of cajoling and outright threats from my mother before I dared eat a slice of cucumber. But -- little Marky? He's different.

That little boy not only treasured the last cutting of broccoli from the garden, he proceeded to eat a great deal of it for dinner that night. Of course, it did help that his Aunt Venus prepared his most favorite meal of Mac N' Cheese, but it's rare to see a 5-year old boy not only consume garden produce, but actually like it.

But it didn't stop there. Not hardly. Mark was to discover the next day that he actually liked fresh peas from the garden. You could have knocked me over. I never would have believed it. A five year old boy picking pea pods, splitting them open, and devouring every pea inside? It took me years to get to that point.

Venus and I do not have children, yet. For most couples, acquiring children is akin to falling off a turnip truck. But for other couples, well, it can be a struggle. Put us in that "struggle" category. And, I think it's then that you come to realize that children are really God's greatest gift.

There is really nothing like teaching a child to dig a small hole for a starter plant or seed. The joy of watching a young child tear into a pea pod, or hunger for something else you have just harvested from the backyard is hard to describe. But there is a sense of satisfaction. The hard work of previous weekends is paying off. It's paying off in ways you never imagined.

I know that the weekend we spent with our niece and nephew helped plant the seeds for future gardens in future years. I know that they look forward to coming back later this summer, when they will see the seeds that they planted this spring flower and produce. Hopefully, they'll get to sample their work, and begin to understand the answers to some of the gardening questions they have.

But -- there is one question that can probably never be answered.

Why Kitty Hide?