Beautiful prickly pear blossoms - - but watch those sharp spikes!

June is in full swing here in Middle Tennessee: as I drive through The Shire in the mornings, the landscape is awash in the kind of gorgeous, lush green that used to make my eyes hurt when I arrived on visits from dry, golden California years ago. The fields and sprawling yards are overflowing with flowers of every color, but in early to mid June the beautiful deep orange of our native Tiger lily dominates the color palette, accented with the delicate white, politely bobbing heads of Queen Anne’s Lace.

Delicate Queen Anne’s Lace

I have always loved the Tiger lily, and adding to its beauty is the plain fact that it’s a useful edible plant. Every part of this lily is edible, and you can find something of use in every season. The flowers can be picked clean of pistil and stamen, rinsed clean and eaten as they are or used as small wraps for other foods like fresh, cool tuna salad. Somewhere in my recipe collection are directions on using Tiger lily blooms to wrap a dish that was baked. The roots may be harvested in winter and eaten rather like potatoes or other tubers. For those interested in keeping land that will sustain you, the Tiger lily is a great choice—and it will naturally spread each year all by itself.

In a small corner of my yard sits an old bucket with a prickly pear cactus I dug from the yard to save our riding mower tires (and our feet!). This is another great Tennessee native plant that yields edible parts; the flat pads of the low-growing cactus may be peeled and prepared in much the same way as green peppers. My preference is to peel and chop them, sauté them lightly in a pan with a few veggies and incorporate them into a nice omelette as I used to have at a dusty old cafe in the dry California Salinas Valley many years ago.

Despite a late start this year, the vegetable garden has taken off. We already have more zucchini than we can possibly eat, and the crookneck squash is just starting to ripen. I imagine I’ll have to dredge up some creative ideas for preparing it this summer so we don’t get tired of it too quickly! The tomatoes will be late, but there looks to be plenty of fruit. We did not use the cages this year, so it remains to be seen whether the deer will take more than their fair share.

Young Louis XIV is growing bigger by the day - - and how about those lovely feathered feet?

My beautiful, rare booted bantam chicks are growing by the day. I have learned from experience now that self-hatched chicks are just friendlier than any I could buy from elsewhere. Having them imprinted on me—and handling them every day—makes for the sweetest, most trusting little chickens! The booted bantams will ride around on my shoulder, and my favorite little cockerel Louis XIV likes to just ride around with me all afternoon as I work in the yard. He rules from the throne of my shoulder, chirping away at all the other birds and issuing orders about his little kingdom. His father was quite a handsome fellow, so I expect great things from my little monarch. His namesake lived a long, productive life with plenty of female company, and I hope for the same for my Louis.

My young Australorp cockerel gives me a sideways glance as he struts on by

The first of my two black Australorp cockerels just went with his pullet to live at a lovely farmstead nearby. As much as I’d love to keep the last one (young Mick) as a young husband to my Dame Edna, I’m afraid that my suburban neighbors would not love him as much as I do—so off he will soon go to live on a farm in the country. I did not realize how hard it would be to sell off my chicks! I am so fond of them all, and I know each of them as individuals. This makes it quite difficult when the time comes for them to leave. This was the original plan—to gain the experience of hatching, to keep a few pullets for myself, and to sell the rest—but while moving along smoothly, the plan stings a bit. We’ll see how I feel about this next year.

Aunt Bea terrorizing half-blind Baby Mija: who knew short chickens could be so mischievous?

The rest of my girls are doing well. My three young hens are growing faster every day, and they spend their afternoons strutting around the yard like tall, sleek supermodels in a clique-ish huddle. Squatty little bantam cochin Aunt Bea still terrorizes my now-huge Baby Mija for some inexplicable reason. As little Bea breezes across the yard I can just see the look of horror on Mija’s poor, half-blind face; Bea seems to sense this, and she deliberately moves toward Mija just to get the chase going. The sight of a squatty, feather-footed bantam Cochin running across the yard after a full-grown chicken is something that must be seen to be appreciated; I really must get the video camera out one day and capture it.

Favorite, simple grilled summer supper

There is plenty of yard work to be done at this time of year so the place doesn’t start looking like a Heironymus Bosch painting; however, the extreme, unseasonable heat has made things slow going. Temperatures here have been in the mid to high 90s already, and nights are not much relief. By mid-afternoon on the weekends we are usually tapped out and ready to sit in the shade (or inside!) with a nice cool glass of Pinot Gris and just talk about yard work. RT will fire up the grill, and just to keep things simple we go to our old fall-back summer supper—steaks and fresh veggies, lightly salted and peppered and thrown right on the grill. Simple and no fuss.

One of the great early summer treasures here in the South are the sweet, delicious peaches. The real-deal peaches around here are only available for a few weeks to a month, and they are savored for the brief time they’re here. After our supper the other day, I whipped up one of my favorite peach desserts to enjoy out in the shade. I learned this recipe from a crazy pastry chef I used to know, and its delicious richness combined with the freshness of in-season fruit is absolutely spectacular.

Rich, sweet Amaretto Sabayon over fresh Georgia peaches: Heaven indeed

I started with fresh Georgia peaches, first washed and dried then carefully sliced into bowls. The Amaretto Sabayon was whipped up in a double boiler I made by using a stainless steel bowl over a pot of simmering water. We used fresh eggs from the hens, of course, and when the lightly foamy concoction was ready we spooned it over the peaches and sprinkled with some of our own freshly-picked blueberries. Perfect! I placed the “recipe” here on my website if you’d like to try for yourself.

Every season has so many beautiful things to savor, whether food, wine, good company, beloved animals, mysterious plants or any of the other million things I can think of that I so enjoy experiencing. What a treat to move through this world exploring it with all my senses! On warm June days like this, it feels like a (hot) playground custom-made for me.

Lovely Echinacea blooms in the patio garden