From commentor Heartland Liberal:
[Top photo] Varieties of tomatoes, grape and cherry, romas, heirlooms, with yellow habanero peppers and two read Carolina Reapers, which I can attest are weapons of mass destruction grade hot. Scrambled eggs with onion, peppers, and cheese, with a pile of the grape and cheery tomatoes, is a highlight this time of year, as are bacon lettuce and tomato sandwiches. For the latter, we have discovered that adding half an avocado makes a really great sandwich.
Multi-headed sunflower. This picture was taken a couple weeks ago, right now it is even larger with twice as many heads.
The flower garden, primarily zinnias and sunflowers. Attracts hordes of butterflies, hummingbirds, and goldfinches. Watching from the deck has been constant pleasure for almost two months. In foreground is water scarecrow, motion activated to spray and scare of deer. Three more surround the vegetable garden. The deer flee. The raccoons laugh.
Four pumpkin varieties. Started harvesting this week, some vines starting to die, and I wanted to get them before the insects start destroying them. The largest is the Musque de Provence variety, also called the Cinderella Pumpkin. For scale, you can see about half of the 12″ handle of a hammer I put in the wheelbarrow to return to the garage. The other varieties are heirlooms, I bought several different seed varieties to try. A couple of the varieties appear not to have produced, but I have at least four or five more of the Musque de Provence which are still green and growing.
This year the raccoons started ravaging the large tomatoes on the night before I would have started picking them vine ripe. So I started harvesting while still green, and ripening indoors. As a result, we have had several rounds of fried green tomatoes. I have become really good at whipping up fried green tomatoes and breaded southern style fried okra with cornmeal and buttermilk and egg for the dredging. We came originally from Alabama, alas, without a banjo on our knees, but with a life long appreciation for fried okra. Even cold leftovers, it is like candy.
***********
I think this is the last batch of garden pics I’ve got on file. If you sent me pics and they’ve yet to be front-paged, please email me (annelaurie dot bj at gmail dot com) with a reminder. If you’ve been meaning to get around to sending pics, this would be a great time!
What’s going on in your garden(s) this week?
satby
Beautiful garden Heartland Liberal! My tomatoes haven’t produced nearly as well because of all the 70°+ nights this summer, lots of flowers still could produce now that it’s cooled. The crop I’ve gotten hasn’t been worth the effort of keeping the vines alive though. Which has been true of pretty much my entire garden this year. We’re just in a holding pattern and hoping next year will be better.
I noticed a pumpkin vine growing in the vacant lot next to me, probably because I pitched a few soft pumpkins out there for the wildlife last fall. It’ll probably get mowed over by the city before it produces anything.
Steeplejack (phone)
I guess the insomnia/early morning shift has officially started. I’m up not because of insomnia but because I had a physically tiring day yesterday and went to bed incredibly early. Plus with no TV for the last week I feel that the Amish lifestyle is closing in on me. Nothing to distract me. And of course going to bed early means waking up (very) early.
It’s 59° (!) here in NoVA now, supposed to get up only to 66° today. It was about the same yesterday, overcast and rainy, and I caught the first faint whiff of autumn in the air. Back up into the low 80s later this week, with lots of rain predicted from the approaching hurricane. But I’ll be shoving off Wednesday for three weeks in Las Vegas.No rain there, highs around 100°!
So ends today’s entry in the geezer weather almanac.
SectionH
Heartland Liberal – great photos. From tiny focus to flower bed – sweet!
I’m happy to see you’ve got a Monarch photo.
satby
@Steeplejack (phone): same weather here, but leftovers from Gordon causing rain for the next few hours. I was supposed to mow the lawn today but it won’t be dry enough even if the rain stops early. In the 60s today and tomorrow, so I’m going to get out and tackle the 5 foot high weeds in the raised beds during dry spells. It’s such a relief not to be in such thick heat and humidity that you work up a sweat breathing.
Eric S.
This is somewhere between garden chat and on the road. I’m in Libourne, FR, and just visited the equivalent local farmers market. It is similar to the big markets in Chicago bit also quite different. The big difference is the meats. Fresh raw meats from beef to proc to chicken to seafood. There were 3 oyster stands. And, of course, this being France, CHEESE!
Pics in this album.
OzarkHillbilly
I got my love of fried okra from my Texas bred and buttered mother. I got my love of pickled okra from my Slovenian bred and Joliet raised father. My wife doesn’t like either. Something wrong with that woman.
NotMax
Happy New Year 5779 to those of the Hebraic persuasion.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Eric S.:
Nice pictures! Although that first one looks suspiciously like a cheeseburger with fries. But French fries, I guess, so never mind.
Steeplejack (phone)
Well, I was trying to go back to sleep, but then the housecat started clamoring for her pre-dawn breakfast. Never mind that she got a feeding when I got up a couple of hours ago. Breakfast is in the contract. Not negotiable!
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: no idea where I got my love of okra from but I love it in almost any form, though fried is my favorite.
arrieve
@Steeplejack (phone): I’m up because of jet lag. I had to cut short my trip to Africa after I got very sick — spent a memorable night in the hospital in Kigali. I did see the mountain gorillas, which was the part of the trip I cared the most about (though not under my own steam — it turns out you can’t hike up mountains with only a few spoonfuls of oatmeal and half a glass of juice in your stomach.) Now I’m just so grateful to be home, and not nauseous, that I don’t mind being awake at 2 am. Or not being on my way to Kenya. (Much.) There may be other opportunities but being that sick in foreign lands is something I can definitely do without.
Mnemosyne
I’m still awake on the West Coast, but laying down with a cat snuggled against me while I do my before-bed ice pack on my knee. I had a mild asthma attack earlier that made me anxious, plus the inhaler to resolve the asthma attack makes me jittery, so I’ve only just calmed down enough to try and sleep. I’m worried that I may also have a migraine looming, so hopefully I’ll be able to sleep.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone ???
NotMax
Weird. Sloppy lighting and make-up in some scenes of the 1940 movie currently on TCM makes Laurence Olivier appear to have a unibrow. Must have been even more evident on the silver screen.
Steeplejack (phone)
@arrieve:
Being sick in America is scary enough! Glad you made it through.
OzarkHillbilly
Anne: Sorry to hear about your sewer collapse, that really blows.
We are getting tomatoes now that there is plenty of water to go around (death to all tomato eating vermin anyway!!!) My sweet peppers are really slow to ripen, not sure why, but they sure are good when they do. Same for my Tunisian Baklouti peppers, tho the rest of my “hot” peppers are acting normal. Because of the mild winter we had last year, the squash bugs were horrific. I surrendered early. Now I find them looking for nooks and crannies to over winter in everywhere I go on our place. Next year I won’t even try. Probably the same the year after. Havewn’t got a clue what went wrong with my beans. Oh well. About the only good thing that happened in my garden this year is that we have gotten plenty of eggplant. Baba ghanoush is a great sandwich spread.A smear of that and a smear of mayo in a tortilla, some avacado, and B,L,T? It’s almost heaven if not quite West Virginia.
Steeplejack (phone)
@rikyrah:
Good morning! No ☕ today—no cream.
Mnemosyne
@arrieve:
Ugh — getting sick or injured while traveling is the worst. I was googling other people’s stories of their ACL surgery recovery and came across the story of a travel writer who managed to tear her ACL and damage a couple more ligaments while sailing around the British Virgin Islands, which meant the closest hospital was 2 days away. ? She said that her traveling companions were really great but it sounded like it really sucked for her to have to cut her trip short because of the injury.
And now, off to sleep, if I can. Night, jackals!
OzarkHillbilly
@satby: “It’s slimy!” is the complaint I hear from most. I don’t care, I love it anyway it comes. No gumbo is complete without it.
OzarkHillbilly
@arrieve:
Amen to that, especially if you can’t speak the local dialect..
NotMax
FYI (emphasis added).
The inner cynic says there will be much sage nodding and tut-tutting, followed by little, slapdash or no action.
arrieve
@OzarkHillbilly: The doctors all spoke French, which I do speak a little, though I discovered quickly that I prefer to confront apparently imminent death in English. It could have been worse though — if they only spoke Kinyarwanda, I know how to say Hello and Thank you, neither of which would have been much help.
satby
@arrieve: so sorry that happened but glad you’re home and on the mend. At least you got to see the gorillas!
satby
@rikyrah: Good morning ?!
OzarkHillbilly
@arrieve: Heh. I never had anything more serious than Montezuma’s revenge (and a bout of food poisoning I picked up after crossing into TX). I suspect most doctors can speak a fair amount of French/English/Spanish or whatever depending upon their colonial heritage. A buddy of mine had an appendicitis in the Yucutan and the clinic he went to only saw a Doc once a week. Fortunately for him the Doc showed up the next day just as/soon after his appendix burst. “Mooch poos, mooch poos.” The Doc was a butcher but he was a butcher that saved E’s life. He almost didn’t make it. Some friends who were with him gave him “last rites”.
HeartlandLiberal
Yestereday I stewed an Amish country chicken, then used all the meat but the breasts which I saved back for other uses to make a large pot of chicken vegetable soup. I chopped up a bunch of the okra to go in it. Added about six different herbs. Made a delicious meal. My wife eats it straight, I add dashi stock, teriyaki sauce, mirin, and some powdered herbs that give a real umami kick for savoriness to it.Then drop a large spoonful of Lee Kum Kee chiu chow chili oil and stir it in. My wife shudders, she cannot handle spicy. I pretty much wipe the bowl to get every drop. Its like making ramen noodle soup without the noodles. If you like chili heat added to soups and dishes, try the chiu chow chili oil, it is the best I have found for flavor.
FWIW, my friend and I missed the Indiana University football home opener. 62 degrees and pouring, constant rain? Nope. Too old for that. Our cats kept insisting we let them out on the front stoop, so they could hunch and complain about the rain; or open the door to the deck, so they could, well, you know, grouse and complain about the rain. Reports were last night that we had about five inches in 36 hours. A serious rain event, with flash flooding potential.
SectionH
@Eric S.: Heh, “Cheese is Not Interesting”… Actual quote from a German border guard in October 1989 when we were leaving the Netherlands headed for Zagreb. Yeah, we’d stopped and bought food (meat, bread, and Cheese!) in some Dutch town a few miles from the border. We still laugh. But cheese is enormously interesting.
HeartlandLiberal
@Mnemosyne: My wife came down with bronchitis on the last day of a 10 day transatlantic cruise three years ago. We landed in Copenhagen, went to the hotel, where next day I came down with cold symptoms. We both just dosed up, her with meds the ship doc gave her, me with stuff from a pharmacy to suppress symptoms. Then we just toughed it out. We had four days to see Copenhagen, and did not want to spend it in bed whining. Got to see the Little Mermaid being swarmed by Japanese tourists, many museums, including the National Museum, which I highly recommend. A room full of rune stones, for instance, was a highlight. And a skeleton of an Aurochs, which I got a great pic of with wife standing in front of it. We managed to get over the colds, and proceeded on to Germany by train. Got to take the last train ferry in the world that crosses from Denmark to Germany. They are building tunnel and bridge system to get trains across that stretch of water, and in a few years the train ferry will be no more. But it was really cool to watch as your train glides into the ship. Everyone had to get out for the crossing, and go up one level to a deck with restaurants and stores. I went out on the upper deck, although the strong wind almost blew me away.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: I’ve been sautéing okra a good bit lately, it is also really good brushed with olive oil and grilled.
OzarkHillbilly
@Eric S.: “Say Limburger!” I love European cheeses. It’s part of every meal I eat when I’m over there (which isn’t near as often as it should be).
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: When you grill them, are they split or whole?
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
Has your wife tried ladies’ fingers?
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: When I was growing up, Ladies’ Fingers were a baked good my mother made for desert. What are yours?
Mary G
Beautiful garden and produce, HL.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: actually there are gumbos that are fine without it.Okra is used partly as a thickener and, traditionally, I’d you use file ( ground sassafras) you don’t use okra.
Raven
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: split
Raven
We also are love sautéed collards and other greens
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
Okra. (South-east Asian English)
evodevo
Mmmmm …fried green tomatoes….. we hardly had any this year. I am envious…
Immanentize
@HeartlandLiberal:
Beautiful garden bounty and yummy chicken dishes!
My garden is still putting out tomatoes but they are puttering out. Like Satby, I have taken out three or four tomato plants that folded in the heat. Tomatillos going strong and I was able to make the best enchiladas verde ever. Peppers still producing, but again the extreme night heat hurt sweet pepper production.
Meanwhile, I am off to a memorial service for the husband of my closest work friend who died a year ago. My friend was able to sponsor a bench on the Boston Greenway right across from Rowes Wharf. You cannot inscribe them with any memorial language, and neither my friend nor her husband would want that anyway. The bench is going to say:
“To dance beneath the diamond sky.”.
If you are ever in Boston, go find the bench, take a load off and think of Larry S. who died suddenly and way too young.
Immanentize
@Raven:
I make a really good seafood gumbo. Recipe from a Cajun family from Lafayette. Roux and okra as thickeners. File for taste on top after it is served.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: Thanx for the info. I love greens in all forms, the wife… not. :-(
We have been adopted. Our neighbor took in a couple of dumped dogs that showed up at her door last week (she has “SAP” tattooed across her forehead in ink that only dogs can see) even tho she already has 2 older cats that are not at all into new family additions. So I’ve been helping her out with their behaviors, food, shelter needs, etc etc. The day before Gordon showed up the smaller one decided he liked it much better over here (because we have “SAP” tattooed across our foreheads in ink that only dogs can see) and has now made himself quite at home on our front porch.
He’s a medium aged boy of apparent beagle/spaniel heritage with Lil’ Bit eyes, sweet disposition, and burrs beyond removal. He does not want to come into the house because, I think, the first time he snuck in I took him back out and said “No.” as he had not yet been properly introduced to the Woofmeister or Miss Kitty. He finds the chickens fascinating and loves to wander (still has his balls, going to the vet on Wednesday) (and the groomer too? I hope) and follows me everywhere I go. Woof has exhibited no signs of jealousy, so I don’t think we will have any difficulties integrating him into the family.
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@OzarkHillbilly: When my wife discovered cheese listed on the dessert menu in a restaurant in Ticino (Italian part of Switzerland), she knew those were her kind of people.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: Got a recipe?
Lapassionara
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t think I have ever had slimy okra. If it is not over cooked, it is wonderful.
These photos are great. I love the goldfinches especially.
My current garden project is digging up a day lily bed. If you know day lilies, you know this is not easy to do.
HinTN
@HeartlandLiberal:
We are overrun with deer here, to the point that I only raise zinnias and Mexican sunflowers, which they don’t seem to favor. We’ve given the raising of vegetables over to the next generation and simply by their produce fresh each week. Your tomatoes are gorgeous and I lurve me some okra, raw or roasted with a little olive oil and ground salt & pepper.
biff murphy
fresh sourdough, bacon, and fresh garden tomato…best BLT evah!
Dog Mom
Beautiful garden and harvest pictures today. I am making a pot of Three Sisters Veggie soup. I will be soaking some Iroquois White corn – an heirloom corn with a slightly nutty taste, great nutrition and a chewy texture. I would encourage the BJ foodies to give it a try.
tybee
not sure what cold okra is. we never have any left to turn cold no matter how much gets fried.
HinTN
@Immanentize:
Most excellent!
tybee
@raven: eating the small pods right off the plant is pretty good, too.
HinTN
@OzarkHillbilly: I’m guessing whole. Otherwise very messy.
tybee
@HinTN: we grill them whole, brushed or sprayed with oil and lightly salted.
good stuff.
and we’ll eat okra anyway it can be fixed. raw, grilled, sauté’d, fried, boiled…steamed in the microwave with basil is pretty good, too.
i know a cajun cook who was horrified when we asked if there was file’ in her gumbo. when she stopped cursing us for accusing her of such, she said a proper roux does not need file’ for a thickener.
i like file’ anyway.
Aleta
@OzarkHillbilly: He sounds like a keeper.
“He does not want to come into the house because, I think, the first time he snuck in I took him back out and said “No.” as he had not yet been properly introduced.” The kind of dog who wants to be a good citizen.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
My Mamaw (Georgia) was always frying green tomatoes and okra. I scarfed those tomatoes and politely ate around the okra. Yuck!
debbie
@HeartlandLiberal:
I love your flower garden. Watching the deer vs. scarecrow is better than any old football game!
satby
@OzarkHillbilly: Congratulations and good on you and your neighbor! It’s not SAP, it’s GOOD FOLKS tattooed in invisible dog eyes only ink.
Speaking of foundlings, Dervish Casper Tunch 1st is heading out tomorrow to go live with the other kittens at Becky’s house. I’m listening to him tear up my bedroom upstairs right now. He really needs playmates his own size.
debbie
@Raven:
Collards with apple cider vinegar and bacon are the best!
danielx
Third day of rain ending today…hopefully. Nothing much compared with what east coast juicers will have to deal with later this week, but it surely rained out a lot of events this weekend. Flooding expected….
BruceFromOhio
That looks absolutely delicious!
This year has seen a bumper crop of basil, cherry and roma tomatoes, and tarragon. The rain has been long but steady, and the drainage is keeping up just fine. It provides a fine excuse to lay around the house and watch the hand-egg contests.
Amir Khalid
@OzarkHillbilly:
Alas, I’m no cook.
p.a.
@tybee: Hell if Justin Wilson used it it’s OK. He said a dark roux is best: more flavor, but it has less thickening power. Hence, filé. Just wish he had used wooden spoons making his roux. That metal-on-metal scrape made me cringe.
BruceFromOhio
@Immanentize:
A fine thought, and would it be that we are all remembered so.
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
PAM Dirac
@HinTN:
With one hand waving free. I call my little private vineyard “Waving Free Vineyard”. I paid one of my daughter’s friends to make a logo that is a take on Kokopelli dancing with one hand waving free. I was going to start harvesting this week, but we have had almost 3 inches of rain since Friday and who knows how much Florence will send us. The nice thing about doing it for a hobby is I can say “there’s always next year”.
Gelfling 545
@Lapassionara: oh, Lord! I have to do this as well and every day I say “ Maybe tomorrow.”
OzarkHillbilly
@Aleta: He’s keeping us whether we like it or not.
@satby: S.A.P. is short for Stupid Animal People.
MomSense
I’m loving the hydra sunflower. Such a pretty garden.
ThresherK
It’s barely 60 right now and I realize I’ve gone all summer without gazpacho. That’s gotta be fixed, hopefully today.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: Sigh.
The google gave me this and this.
Denali
@Bruce FromOhio,
Who wrote it? Beautiful.
@Heartland Liberal,
Love the Monarch photo.
OzarkHillbilly
@Amir Khalid: Also this.
PAM Dirac
@Denali:
Bob Dylan – Mr. Tambourine Man
Leto
@debbie: One of the things my wife taught me was that most of the food I’d had growing up was badly prepared/made. There are a few things we’ll disagree over (she insists Miracle Whip is edible, I insist Moon Pies are the bee’s knees) but for the most part when she says, “Try this” the autoresponse is, “Yes ma’am”.
It’s about 58F here, drizzling, and the office finally feels wonderful. No a/c here, but have opened the windows and have fans pumping in tons of cool air. Enjoying it while I can.
OzarkHillbilly
@Denali: Bob Dylan
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you
Though I know that evening’s empire has returned into sand
Vanished from my hand
Left me blindly here to stand but still not sleeping
My weariness amazes me, I’m branded on my feet
I have no one to meet
And the ancient empty street’s too dead for dreaming
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you
Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship
My senses have been stripped
My hands can’t feel to grip
My toes too numb to step
Wait only for my boot heels to be wandering
I’m ready to go anywhere, I’m ready for to fade
Into my own parade
Cast your dancing spell my way, I promise to go under it
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you
Though you might hear laughing, spinning, swinging madly across the sun
It’s not aimed at anyone
It’s just escaping on the run
And but for the sky there are no fences facing
And if you hear vague traces of skipping reels of rhyme
To your tambourine in time
It’s just a ragged clown behind
I wouldn’t pay it any mind
It’s just a shadow you’re seeing that he’s chasing
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you
And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind
Down the foggy ruins of time
Far past the frozen leaves
The haunted frightened trees
Out to the windy beach
Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow
Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one hand waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today until tomorrow
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to
Hey! Mr. Tambourine man, play a song for me
In the jingle jangle morning I’ll come following you
debbie
@PAM Dirac:
Proof the man’s a poet.
debbie
@Leto:
I can’t even consider MW on an empty stomach!
ThresherK
@Leto: Miracle Whip v. Hellman’s* is what many call a mixed marriage.
If you’re the type to graze over the old ad Tumblrs you’ll see lots of both.
(* Is it still Best Foods in the far West?)
ThresherK
Hey, someone answer this semi-lurker: Can I use the (less than, greater than) to make thinks “i” Italics any longer?
Another Scott
@ThresherK: Use [em]this is italics[/em] (with angle brackets replacing the corresponding square brackets) to write this is italics here. The “i” tag has been deprecated – use “em”.
Similarly, [b]this is bold[/b] for this is bold.
Similarly, one can nest them as bold-italic.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Scott.
Gin & Tonic
@ThresherK: Without getting too deep into HTML “standards”, the supported way is “em” inside of angle brackets, which produces emphasized text. Using “i” inside angle brackets produces italic text, which likely looks the same, but the “i” is not considered to have semantic significance. Let’s see how they worked in this post.
Gin & Tonic
Looks like the “i” has indeed been deprecated, as Another Scott says, since it did nothing in my post. Oh, for the bygone days when we could edit or delete posts….
scav
Had a fried green tomato BLT yesterday: very worth it. And the great fall garden migration has begun — filled the truck and should be moving plants all day.
OzarkHillbilly
@ThresherK:
Leto
@debbie: I won’t eat it. It’s horrible. I think BettyC called it, “Satan’s semen” and that’s totes appropros.
@ThresherK: Hellman’s or Dukes are the preferred brands, though I’d like to give making my own a shot. Just need the time to do it :)
OzarkHillbilly
@Leto: It’s easy to make, you need an Immersion Blender, egg/s, olive oil, and a 2nd person to drizzle the oil in while you blend it. I have helped my wife make it several times and the process is simple enough that I feel sure given a half dozen or so attempts anybody can get it right. She makes a killer garlic mayo that I love.
Steeplejack
@ThresherK:
As others have said, use <em>italics</em> to get italics.
All you explainers: use < and > to display angle brackets.
(Sure hope all this code works. ?)
opiejeanne
Wow! Heartland Liberal, that’s a nice haul.
Steeplejack
@Steeplejack:
Whew.
opiejeanne
@Steeplejack (phone): Autumn started in August in the PNW. That slight snap in the cool morning air and the smell of dying maple leaves. God help me, I turned on the thermostat for the heater in August.
Some of the early apples cooked on the trees it was so hot two weeks earlier.
Steeplejack
Cool and wet now here in NoVA, somewhere between strong drizzle and light rain, temp now 62°. When I got up for good after sunrise I saw that the ground is saturated; I could see standing water where the grass is patchy.
No plans that require me to be out and about, so it’s all right. I like the rain, anyway. I replaced the windshield wipers on the doughty Kia with some fancy Bosch ones a while back, and I get a kick out of them every time they’re on.
I am making occasional trips to the dumpster and rcycling bins, but that’s not a big hassle. Decluttering and sprucing up before my trip.
opiejeanne
@Eric S.: Very nice. The market photos are great, and I discovered by accident that the martial arts photos are moving pictures. I love France and want to go back but it has to be pretty soon because there is a fast approaching point where I won’t want to fly ever again, except short trips.
Steeplejack
@opiejeanne:
I love the Northwest. For a long time, when I lived in Atlanta, I thought the only place I would like to move to would be Seattle or Portland. But Seattle seems to have become Californicated somewhat, and I haven’t been to Portland in so long I don’t know what’s going on there.
I have a friend who did a work move to Boise, and he likes it a lot, but to me it has that “blue dot in a red sea” thing way too much.
Steeplejack
Okay, my rest period is extending into dawdling, so I’m back to work. This hour’s lesson: saving boxes because you might use them to send something to somebody just leads to you having a lot of empty boxes.
germy
Leto
@OzarkHillbilly: We’ve meant to get another immersion blender since coming back to the states (our old one was 240v) so this might be a good reason to invest in another. :)
germy
It’s rare when an obituary can give me a chuckle, but this one did:
I guess every comedian’s dream is to get one last, good laugh.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/bill-daily-comic-actor-in-i-dream-of-jeannie-and-the-bob-newhart-show-dies-at-91/2018/09/08/3f7a6a58-b381-11e8-aed9-001309990777_story.html?utm_term=.d5876f0813b2
Lapassionara
@Steeplejack: corrugated cardboard (without a lot of colored printing on it) is great for the garden. I save all I can find. When I finish digging out the day lilies, I will put down a thick layer of news papers, cover with card board, then a layer of mulch and a sprinkle of Preen. Next summer, I should be able to use the bed for sun loving perennials.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Have we heard from our parachuter today?
Leto
@opiejeanne: We loved the weather/climate in England and we’ve been told the PNW is similar; I think we’d love to make a trip out there just to check it out.
frosty
@Steeplejack:
Sigh. That’s me. Basement is FOB and I guess one of my winter projects will be to clear them out. OTOH, we got some great used boxes cheap when we moved 15 years ago. They’re all folded up and tucked out of the way in the upstairs garage for the next move. Why buy ’em twice?
frosty
PS: FOB = Full O Boxes. But you all probably figured that out.
Elizabelle
@arrieve: Welcome back. I’m sorry your trip was truncated, but glad you got to see the gorillas. What happened? Do you suspect a virus or something else? Frightening to have a health emergency overseas.
satby
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I imagine the jump hasn’t happened/ will happen soon.
J R in WV
@Raven:
Here that is called “wilted lettuce” and made by frying bacon, then adding onions and vinegar, then adding the greens and stirring hard while things mix. You typically try to not cook the greens down any, but just to cover them with the “dressing”.
Can be delicious with fresh stuff…
When we kept chickens and I tracked the age of the eggs, I made fresh mayonaisse with olive oil and fresh lemon juice, hollandaise for dipping veges in, etc, often. It really is better homemade, for nearly everything.
If you don’t care for canned bottled mayo, try making some yourself with really fresh ingredients — maybe you’ll learn something!
SenyorDave
@germy: I guess SW needs to get her stories straight before her coach spills the beans (story from Yahoo Sports):
The first penalty was for receiving illegal on-court coaching from her coach Patrick Mouratoglou. She denied the violation, saying to chair umpire Carlos Ramos that she’d rather lose than cheat. She also told Ramos, who she later called a good umpire, that her team had no coaching signals and had never talked about doing so during a match.
Mouratoglou, however, admitted to ESPN’s Pam Shriver after the match that he was indeed coaching Williams from the box – a surprise to the 23-time major champion.
Her coach was cheating. period! Players are responsible for their coach. The penalty was warranted. She called the umpire a thief and she expects an apology? Sure, she’s fighting for women. I assume she was fighting for women in 20019 at the US Open when she threatened a lineswoman, saying “to take this [ expletive] ball and shove it down your [expletive] throat, you hear that?” Afterwards she said she wasn’t serious, it was just a figure of speech. GOAT, poor sport.
Doug R
@Steeplejack (phone): The Guess Who – No Sugar Tonight Lyrics.
satby
@Lapassionara: I used cardboard covered with mulch to help convert a weed patch to a veggie garden in MI. After tilling it all up, at planting time I laid the cardboard over the Preened ground, poked holes for the vegetable seedlings, and munched around and between the rows. Tilled it all under in fall, more cardboard and leaf and grass clippings over winter, then repeated tilling the decomposed stuff in the next spring, with a repeat of the planting cycle. The farm field behind my lot had cement gray dirt, my garden had black soil again by year three. Didn’t require a ton of weeding either, so the raised beds here will probably get the same treatment.
OzarkHillbilly
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Which one?
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I was in Paris and had a UTI. Trying to communicate with staff at the hospital was interesting but I found people who spoke enough English and French to help me until I was put in a room with a med student. She understood what I had, but couldn’t figure out why my pee was bright orange (I had taken a pill called AZO that has a red dye in it, to knock down the pain). I have very limited French and none of the info I needed to give her was in my phrase book. Not quite hilarity ensued.
They were very kind, they took care of me, and got all of my info to send me a bill. That was 6 years ago, still haven’t gotten the bill.
Steeplejack
@Doug R:
Seems like there’s another song with “no cream in my coffee,” but I can’t place it.
I don’t use sugar, just a little dab of honey. But I have a heavy hand with the cream—and it’s got to be real cream, the heavier the better. I didn’t start drinking coffee until I was about 30 (lots of travel in the software biz), so I never built up a resistance to strong black joe. Even now I have only one cup about 3-5 days a week.
Steeplejack
@OzarkHillbilly:
In think Omnes is an ex-parachutist at this point?
Aleta
A columnist at Slate quoted the official rule below. He seems to say that an offense can’t just be because a coach is signaling. That the player has to be clearly observed to be watching, so that it is a communication. (I didn’t know about it; maybe there’s more to the rule’s interpretation than he mentioned.)
( The writer lists mistakes on ‘both sides’ as his opinion.)
opiejeanne
@OzarkHillbilly: I don’t think I’ve ever heard the full lyrics. Thanks.
opiejeanne
@Steeplejack: Idaho always makes my skin crawl when we cross it. Too many guns, too many aggressive stickers on cars about how this grandma will end you with her AK47 or something.
Seattle is still Seattle, and I’m from California; they are tearing down perfectly nice older homes in the neighborhoods around Seattle to build cheap ugly modern 3-8 unit apartments with no parking, so the neighborhood streets are starting to become a nightmare.
In the city in some areas they were just putting up big apartment blocks with no parking, but the mass transit isn’t good enough to just tell people they can’t have cars. The worst are the micro apartments. but they may have stopped doing that because there aren’t enough people who want to live in 300 square feet.
The planning commission doesn’t care about preservation of neighborhoods. They seem to have lost their minds, and you can’t blame that on Californians, this is homegrown idiocy. Housing is at a premium thanks to Amazon and a couple of other companies, and the people coming here to work for them come from all over.
opiejeanne
@Leto: It is very similar to England, and just like England we had a hot summer. I have two bids for AC sitting on the dining room table right now, a thing I swore I wouldn’t have here, or need. After the last two years, I think I’m going to break down and have it installed.
opiejeanne
@satby: What’s this about? What parachutist?
Omnes Omnibus
@Dorothy A. Winsor: Parachutist. She probably still doing pre-jump training. The actual jump is likely to be around 1:00 or 2:00 this afternoon,
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@ThresherK: I had a sudden impulse last week to make an end of summer gazpacho. My daughter claims she planted that impulse by asking about gazpacho periodically. I don’t remember her ever mentioning it, so perhaps she did some clever subliminal persuasion.
Ended up making two huge batches.
Might make up another to use some of that left over cilantro. There’s a Spanish proverb I heard once, “Muy bien es cilantro peep no tanto (cilantro is great but not too much, roughly).” But for my own consumption, I don’t believe in the concept of “too much cilantro”
Ceci n est pas mon nym
@Ceci n est pas mon nym: PERO no tanto, dammit. Spell check is horrible enough but when you’re trying to type in Not English… Yeaargh!
Steeplejack (phone)
@opiejeanne:
Subaru Diane is jumping out of a plane today.
Steeplejack (phone)
@opiejeanne, @Steeplejack (phone):
Mission accomplished!
opiejeanne
@Steeplejack (phone): OOOOOOOOooooooOOOOOOO!!!!! <:-O
arrieve
@Elizabelle: I followed up with the travel medicine people during my stopover in Brussels. They think it could have been either viral or bacterial, but probably not a parasite, and that as long as I’m recovering I don’t have to worry. The Rwandans were amazingly kind to me, and they have a very good health care system — universal health care, paid for by tourism. I did have to pay $200, being a foreigner, and there was a less than hilarious scramble the morning I was released from the hospital to find an ATM that would accept my debit card. The next stop on the itinerary was Uganda, where they don’t have a great health care system — our guides said the hospitals require you to bring your own medicine, so going home seemed like the best idea. Plus I felt like crap.
SWMBO
@Steeplejack: Do you take the cat with you to Las Vegas? Or do you have a pet sitter?
Steeplejack
@SWMBO:
I have a great cat wrangler who will be visiting the housecat every day. I have used her in the past, and she also used to walk the dogs at Sighthound Hall when there were two of them and before there were kids. (Now, with the kids, someone is always home to let the one remaining dog out into the fenced back yard.)
Traveling would be very stressful for the cat—I don’t think cats adapt to new, strange places nearly as quickly as dogs do—and she would be in a house with a rescue greyhound, with who knows what residual prey drive. Better for her to stay here and get her solid 18-20 hours of sleep a day in her secure, trusted environment.
I also have a friend—the one from whom I got the housecat, in fact—who is going to stop by occasionally as her schedule permits.
The housecat, née Sketcher, belonged to my friend’s aged mother-in-law and was looking at going to a shelter when the MIL went into assisted living. I said hell no and took her in just as I was moving from a studio to an apartment big enough to have a cat. Synchronicity. That was six years ago. The housecat now prefers to be addressed as Stella. She is 18 and gets premier concierge service here at the Threadkill Platinum Tower Club.
SWMBO
@Steeplejack: A friend of mine was on a business trip to China when Katrina hit here in South Florida. Part of the back roof and kitchen window was damaged and he had water incoming. His feckless pet sitter wouldn’t come back to the house to take care of his cat and she was unattended for a couple of days until he could get through to a friend to go take care of her. As I recall, she was removed from the house and taken to her vet for boarding until he got home. Just make sure you have a backup if something happens and the cat needs removing. Make sure your vet will take her and keep her without payment up front. (The shit I worry about….)
Steeplejack
@SWMBO:
All that is covered, believe me.
In fact, the main reason I got Stella in the first place was because 2012 was the year we had the bad derecho on the East Coast, which severely damaged my friend’s MIL’s house on the Maryland side of the DMV. It was going to take a long time to repair, so that seemed a convenient time to transition the MIL into assisted living. (She was well over 90 and had been getting home care for a while.)
Stella (then Sketcher) was left in the house alone for several weeks with someone (allegedly) coming by daily to feed her. It took a while for my friend and her husband to get on top of the situation, and Sketcher/Stella was not at the top of the priorities. I think my friend intended all along for me to get Stella and tried to maneuver me into it—although no maneuvering was needed!
In the end it was a happy match, and I have tried to make her as happy and secure as I can.
Steeplejack
@SWMBO, @Steeplejack:
P.S. I’m meeting with the cat wrangler, whom I trust completely, on Tuesday to go over final details, and one of the items will be hurricane “what-ifs.”
And, worst-case scenario, Bro’ Man and the brother-in-law can come take her to Sighthound Hall, where they’ve got plenty of room to segregate her in her own suite. (My brother claims to have allergies, but I think he just doesn’t like cats. The BIL loves cats and has occasionally agitated for one.)
SWMBO
@Steeplejack: Ok I’ll stop worrying now. Thanks. I’m allergic to cats but my friend didn’t tell me what had happened to his cat until after he was back and she was safe and taken care of. I know you were leaving about the same time as Flo was coming for a visit and I just wanted to make sure you had gamed out what to do if Threadkill took a hit. I’ll stop bugging you now.
Steeplejack
@SWMBO:
I appreciate your concern. So many people are way too casual about their pets. I joke a lot, but I take my responsibility seriously. The housecat won’t lack for anything as long as I’m on the case.
I have ridden out hurricanes in Mobile and Biloxi, and I don’t think this will be as bad. (Easy for me to say, since I won’t be here!) Threadkill Lane is in Falls Church, a few miles west of the Potomac (and so well inland from Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic) and, as I said, not prone to flooding. Torrential rain and the power going out won’t affect the housecat, as she doesn’t eat anything from the refrigerator and doesn’t need electric lights to conduct her business. And the temps are so mild now that she doesn’t need the air conditioning either. As long as the cat wrangler can get here, she’ll be fine. And I’ve got Bro’ Man and the original donor friend for backup. Everything is prepped as much as it can be.