The garden might be dead, but at least we have apricots

As I was writing the last post, the apricots were starting to ripen, but  I was worried we would lose most of them to birds and bugs. The Chinese apricots did much better than expected and we dried them. I used to think of dried fruit as being somewhat tasteless and unexciting, but home-dried apricots are the opposite. I never had a dried apricot before I met Russ' parents. They used to have several large apricot trees and would dry the fruit every year. I tasted some when I first met them and was hooked. We eat them plain and add them to soups. The trick is to let them ripen as much as possible and then dip them in sugar syrup before placing them in the dehydrator.

The Learning Process

When I was a child, my family had a vegetable garden one summer, but other than that I have no prior gardening experience. Its a learning process. Gardening, and especially gardening in the desert at a high altitude, poses some unique problems. Its the middle of summer and almost everything in the garden is dead or dying, even with daily watering. The temperature regularly hits 100 degrees Fahrenheit and its never cloudy. The pumpkin starts I planted two days ago didn't have a chance and I planted my tomatoes, borlotti beans, summer squash, zucchini, strawberries and butternut squash  too late in the season for them to be established by the time high summer arrived. I'm trying to start some basil and pumpkins indoors (pictured above), but I don't know if they'll have a chance. Next year, I'll know better.

On a brighter note, the trees in the orchard are doing very well. Russ and I picked 20-25 pounds of beautiful orange apricots from one tree last night and they will be going into the dehydrator later today.