Thursday, 11 August 2016
Sending you a flower today, this time from a ginger plant. Lovely, subtle colors. Unknown function of the dangling parts.
Not sure why Tío Flaco is a good choice for a food brand. It means Uncle Skinny/Thin. Great colors, though….
Saturday, 6 August 2016
I’m not real keen on celebrating my own birthdays, but I’m happy to celebrate others’. Tonight was a classy 75th high-quality years. Gooooooo Lovely Linda! 💚
Thursday, 28 July 2016
I didn’t get the oregano buds cut off, so they are blooming and trying to attract pollinators.
The fennel, on the other hand, has moved past the blooming stage, and is curing its seeds.
Sunday, 24 July 2016
I get a little charge of excitement when I discover that what I have in the pantry and leftovers can be combined into a tasty (vs lame) menu, without additional shopping.
Friday, 22 July 2016
Experimented. Maybe I’ve done this before, but it was aeons ago. The GrillMeisterSupreme™ did the heat portion of the operation (also veggies), then we all fell on the spread. Yum.
Wednesday, 20 July 2016
I didn’t stumble this morning (yawn!) when I made the switch back to our venerable drip coffee-maker from the northern coffee method, a French press.
Sunday, 17 July 2016
MaNachur is ripening the black raspberries—not the same as blackberries. My favorite. Thank you, the Botanist. And next to these canes are some newly planted foxgloves, rescued from this side of the road, resuscitated on the other side of the road by a far better gardener than I, and now returned to this side of the road. I think they may have originally been planted by my great-grandmother (or under an arrangement she made).
Day 2 of the two-day project: the workbench is assembled and all parts are functional (note the nifty built-in light!), and the drawers now hold some tools. The (back) porch is pretty darned clean and we are taaarrrred.
At this late hour, we have had a line of lightning-thunderstorms come through and now its all drippy out, although another cell may tease us before midnight.
Thursday, 7 July 2016
This morning’s fog kept the sun from punching through until sometimes shortly after, maybe?, nine? Loved that it obscured the woods….
Foraged in the long grass for chives. I’ve been using them frequently…local farm-to-table produce, I guess….
Sunday, 5 June 2016
Turns out the electricity came back sometime after midnight and before 1AM. I slept through the signal, but the Guru heard the radio playing dance music. We forgot it was on when the power…went.
So, in the interests of recognized continuity, these are the chives I remember from my deep childhood, probably escaped from great-grandmother’s garden maybe shortly before WWII. Maybe. Without a doubt, they have been here a while. Baked potatoes anyone?
Today’s big excitement was picking the 2016 crop of rhubarb and making a simple compote with a bit of water and more sugar than I expected. No photos of the deep crimson compote…none of that greenish, grayish stuff, just a deep red sauce extracted from these jewel-tones…. The fine genes of our rhubarb are from careful husbandry a decade ago (and more) by the Botanist. [Tomorrow’s chore is to weed the (surviving) five rhubarb crowns and give them the gazinta to get through another summer/winter.]
Okay, an artsy shot. The gate has sentinel white lupines. And outside, to the left where you cannot see, is a robust group of lilacs I do not remember from times past. Clearly, my memory is from years ago, and not from, well, last year.
Sometimes, anyway.
Saturday, 4 June 2016
The apples are showing the inexorable march of time…the petals are almost entirely gone (bits of withered brown tissue remains), and the apples are just beginning to form.
We cheated and purchased some sets yesterday, and put them out today. Just planting is easy. The prepping can be considerable. Today it was. We had to remove all the weeds from the Botanist’s garden mound, and otherwise make it habitable. The plants are a patio cherry tomato, a plum tomato, and two pots of multiple plants of Genovese basil. We got the plants in and watered them in a bit. Then we added the squirrel cage (to keep them plus rabbits, deer, chipmunks, skunks…OUT) and another screen overlay to protect the second tomato and give it a larger space to grow.
Just as we were gathering the tools to go in, it began to lightly sprinkle. Just in time, we said, like we’re weather sages, hah!
Soon after we ate, while the Guru was slogging through kitchen-cleanup, the lights flickered once, then stayed off. Still some daylight outside, despite the now-rain overcast. We figure it was about 7:45P.
Maybe a quarter hour later, we decided we should call the electric company, and had to punch through to the “report a power outage” option, and finally get to a recorded message, which indicated an outage in our general area by mailing address. Hmmm.
So, we decided to take a drive, and see if…well, just be a bit nosy. We made a half-hour loop, including through McMillan (where we found the old county garage with an elegant sign), and never found houses with the lights on. Lots of people have security lights over their driveways, and zippo, no light. That made it easy to gauge.
Our theory by the time we returned to our place was that a good-sized area had lost power…. Another call the the Electric Co after 10P, and a new recording indicated that the outage area was north of “our” lake and south of “the” swamp, plus to the west. That’s a lot of customers.
There was a flicker of on maybe around 9:45P, but no sustained on. So, we lit tea lights and made us each a drink. Great plan!
I COULD have posted on time—that is, on the day of, avoiding a “10:22P” post, by using battery power, but wondering when the electricity would come back was distracting. So, a delayed post, marked as usual by the “10:22P” time-stamp.