It's August in Istanbul....after a few delicious days of cooling rain, it's back to the heat. The annual glut of red and yellow plums, mulberries and sour cherries is finished, to be remembered in the form of preserves and syrup for those who were ambitions. For those small enough to fit under the four-o'clocks, the problem is solved. For the rest of us, it's lots of showers and cold drinks. (See the end of this post for a good one!) Chiggers are having their heyday, though most of the city's residents in their apartments are unaware of it. The ticks have received extra publicity this year, because not only are they running amok, they are carrying the extra added bonus of Crimean Congo Hemorrhagic Fever. It has been serious enough to prompt the closure of certain popular summer picnic areas. The latest death was an unfortunate village man who was bitten "down there;" his eastern morals left him so mortified that he could not bring himself to be seen by a doctor.
The city is enveloped in a misty haze that produces a climate not unlike that in a sumo wrestler's armpit. Though hot summers are nothing unusual, there are usually life-saving breezes blowing in from the seas. In August, those breezes all but disappear and all you can really do is wait it out.
The consolation prizes: The Bosphorus is at its most exquisite turquoise blue, and the figs are starting to ripen! In Seattle, you could count on getting figs only about one in three years, and then if you planted an early variety. Here there's no such problem. We have three trees in our garden. One, a truly enormous tree that perhaps fed the Ottoman
hanımefendi who lived in this house, bears large honey figs with a slight brown blush when ripe and brilliant red flesh. The white part between the skin and the soft flesh inside doesn't soften like I'd like it to, and the tree is so huge that it's almost impossible to reach most of the fruit. There is another similar one near it, but with less brilliant innards; and the third produces a clearer green fruit with dark honey-colored pulp that is incredibly smooth and sweet. This year's fig jam will come from that one. With that many figs in the garden, it might seem absurd to even think about planting more, but I would love to have a good dark purple fig. There are so many fig trees in the city that all you really have to do is walk around and sample them in season, remember the one you like, then nab a branch in November after the leaves fall. Stick it in the ground, and it will be well rooted by the time spring rolls around. It will also be practically inextricable, so think before you plant!
And of course some flowers are at their peak. My next door neighbor Sevil is an archaeologist whose summers are spent working on a dig in Cappadocia. She leaves in early July, just in time to catch the fiercest heat on the Anatolian pleateau, and miss the peak of her gardening efforts. So Sevil Hoca, if you are reading, here's what's going on!
My own garden, being in its first year, is a bit more modest, and with the exception of Verbena bonariensis, which you can't kill with a stick, most things are just biding their time. Still, a few old favorites are doing their thing. One of the five plants of mullein pink (Lychnis coronaria) has been blooming on and off, and providing me with plenty of seed for future
guerilla gardening efforts. Mina lobata (right) was a bit reluctant to get started this year; she really likes the heat and humidity. But better late than never seems to be the motto, and her improbably color-shifting blooms now hover above the shy-to-bloom pomegranate that is her support. Better soil would have helped too; there will be a lot of manure going in in the fall!
Down in the vegetable patch, the branching sunflowers have done nicely as well; they were planted a little late to give the maximum show, but one of them beat the odds and is nearly 9 feet tall now. Still, I know what they can do when they are well cared for, so I won't toot my horn too much this time around. The red blooms at the lower right of the photo are Amaranth "Hopi Red Dye," which has been a favorite for about 3 years now. If it gets a good early start, it can grow to five feet or so; mine are a little shorter than that but making lots of seed for next year.
One plant I'm very pleased with is the variegated, red-kerneled popcorn I got at the Northwest Perennial Alliance plant sale. It doesn't have as much pink as I'd hoped, though two plants show a bit more. But it's a fun thing to grow and there are lots of ears. I'm not sure it's ornamental enough to actually use as an...ornamental, but I might plant a few in the actual flower garden next year just for kicks. It's too small to be a support for beans, but could look nice next to a patch of red shiso.
There is also one American-style pumpkin on the way. I've never grown pumpkins before, and am wondering if it should be so orange at this point....is this the end of the growth or will it put on more size yet? It is probably destined to be a jack-o-lantern because the local gray Adapazari squash has a better flavor than any pumpkin I've had. One correspondent near Seattle has grown them and has decided that they are
the pie squash. I love growing any winter squash; the problem is what to do with all of it, especially if you like the big ones. Cutting into an Adapazarı is a bit like slaugtering a sheep...you better either have lots of people to feed, or a spacious freezer. The other alternative (one sure to make you popular) is to distribute the extra to the neighbors.
Lemon-Ginger SyrupAs far as I'm concerned, there is hardly a better drink for a hot summer day. I usually eyeball this but the last time I made it, for the sake of sharing, I decided to measure.
Ingredients2 largish sections of fresh ginger root
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 c water
1 1/2 c lemon juice (about 8 medium lemons if they're juicy)
grated peel of 1 lemon
4 c sugar
Garnish: cucumber slices, fresh mint
Grate the ginger finely, mix with the 1/2 c sugar and allow to macerate for half an hour. Then add 1/2 c water and bring to a boil. Reduce to low and allow to simmer 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, grate the zest of one lemon into a bowl, juice the lemons, strain and add. Add the lemon juice to the ginger syrup, then add the sugar. Bring to a boil, reduce, simmer a few minutes, let cool. Strain and bottle.
To serve - pour an inch or so into the bottom of a glass (depending on taste and the size of your glass), add cold water and ice. Add 10 or 12 very thin slices of cucumber and a sprig or two of fresh mint.
An alternative is to juice the cucumbers. Make sure you have small cucumbers with a
non-bitter peel! Easier said than done in some areas of the world, but give it a try if you can. Cut into cubes, process to a pulp, then squeeze the pulp through a cloth. This is most convenient when making a large pitcher of the beverage. This gives more cucumber taste, and lends a beautiful shade of green to the drink, but it should be served immediatly because the color will fade in a few hours.
Well, as summer winds down into autumn, I suppose I should post a picture of my upper flower garden as it is at the end of its first year. It's been another year of surprises, pleasures and disappointments as usual, but considering the rush job that it was and the stress to all the plants involved, it could have been a lot worse. Some plants, notable a beautiful sage I grew from seed brought from the island of Samos, went into exuberant growth in the spring only to succumb once the weather got hot. My attempt to start my favorite Pacific coast iris here seems to have predictably failed, though there seems to be something rather iris-like popping up where I don't remember planting any iris...still I'll let it go a while before I get my hopes up. Hosta "Sum and Substance" looks like crap, having fed several generations of fat, happy snails, but is hanging in there. The Cardiocrinums I brought are down but fine. Well, at least one of them is. And the Sarcococca confusa, or sweet box that I brought 2 years ago has flower buds on it. Other successes include two very nice Symphytums, a Buddleia japonica, several Sempervivums, Euphorbia "Emberglow," Salvia guaranitica "Black and Blue," and Verbena bonariense, which I may or may not be sorry I planted! 
Autumn was always a mixed time for me as a youngster growing up in Iowa. The warm dry days and crisp cold nights gave us beautiful fall color. But I always greeted it with mixed feelings; the brilliant maples, blooming chrysanthemums and sweet scent of fallen sycamore leaves also meant the torture of having to force my feet, which had spread out over a summer spent 99% barefoot, into tight leather shoes, the "Back to School" sales (it always seemed those ads were devised for no purpose other than to rub it in), and seemingly endless months of icy winter. And I thought chrysathemums smelled awful anyway. I used to hate marigolds, but as the weather started getting nippy and they started to go ratty, I could get a little weepy even for them.
I'm not completely over this. Even though, as the following post will attest, moving to the west coast of the US and then to Istanbul has forced a bit of change to my attitudes, I still tend to see the coming of fall in terms of what favorite plants are putting out their last blooms, will soon ome to an end, or what last hopes will soon be snuffed out by an early frost. Like this bottle gourd. I bought the seeds in spring. Late spring. Okay, May. And then came home and planted them, as the weather was already starting to get pretty warm. If I'd planted them a little earlier, the roots would have gotten better established before the heat kicked in. And as they say in Greece, "If my grandma had b_ _ _ _, she'd be my grandpa." So the plants started putting out gourds way too late, and now the lower leaves have dried off; I'm hoping for just one ripe gourd before either frost or rot does the vine in. I guess I can always stir-fry it.
Many of our favorite annuals are actually tropical plants, so for them, fall is like a bad joke. I what they would think, if they could think, about the sudden change in the weather just as they're at their peak growth:"What the hell? I didn't evolve for this!" Luckily most of them manage to produce seed early enough to ensure a new generation, if I'm diligent enough to collect it. Even as curmudgeonly I can be about fall, I have to admit that for some, the seed pods are half the fun. One is Dolichos lablab, which incidently combines, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful words of botanical Latin with one of the silliest sounding. It's also known as hyacinth bean for its beautiful hot pink, fragrant flowers. But the pods are just as interesting; purple, shiny with an almost metallic glint. They'll soon fade to a most inelegant gray and shrivel to let me know the seed is ripe.
I suppose the quintessential fruit of fall in Turkey is the pomegranate, or nar in Turkish. It was an exotic fruit for me when I was growing up, and my mother still remembers being thrilled as a five year-old girl in Greece, when she lived in a house with pomegranates growing right outside her bedroom window. I'm cheating a bit as this isn't actually my pomegranate tree, it's down below in Sevil's garden. Our pomegranate flowers but generally doesn't set fruit and when it does, the fruit is inedible. I just keep it around for esthetic value. Though it would have more esthetic value if it was covered with beautiful fruit! Other fruits of autumn here include hurma (Japanese persimmon), muşmula (medlar), ayva (quince) and hünnap (Jujube). But pomegrantes are definitely queen this time of year; there are many different varieties, some with pale pink seeds and a sweet flavor, and others with deep red kernels and a delicious tartness. To taste the best ones you need to go to Antakya down south (or have friends from there), where they grow pomegranates that weigh nearly a kilo, some with kernels as large as large corn. Not only do they eat them, they boil the juice of the sour ones into a thick syrup, nar ekşisi, which is used in a variety of dishes. Ours isn't all that special, but I suppose it works as a segue into the next installment!
