State of the garden report

After a week without its mommy...

Sad.  Very little spinach came up--it was planted too late and didn't get misted.  There are a good number of beets but they're patchy.  I replanted some of them.  Likewise lettuce and radishes.  Less than half of the cucumbers managed to make it out of the ground.  The sunflowers are a little better--more than half but definitely not all. 



And the peas--well, just see for yourself.  One in twenty?  Maybe.

The onions appear to be doing okay.  They're not all dead.






I planted the tomato and pepper plants that survived my absence--only about ten.  And planted a whole row of squash--delicatta, yellow, and pattypan.  Come on, squash borers--I'll fighting back this time!





Where'd this come from?

Overdue book report

Where's Billie?
by Judith Yates Borger

Very good reading for airplane travel and stuck in a hotel for five nights.  The crimes and criminals were a bit confusing and I never really understood why some of the stuff happened--the explosion, for example--but that's not really a criticism.  It's a real life story, not a tidily plotted mystery.  Not an Agatha Christie.  Human behavior can be messy at times, and she lets it stay that way.

Especially enjoyable are the details on Minneapolis living.  I like a little bit of travel story tucked in my mystery.  And the detective (a newspaper reporter) was so human I wanted to talk to her.  And sometimes, scream at her.

Still in Boise. One more day.

Meanwhile...


This is one long mirror.  I guess if I were a professional men's basketball player, it would just fit.

It rained today down in the valley, and something miraculous happened in the mountains to the norh east. 

 Snow!

Still off

Miss my kiddies.

Uh...Kitties.
And doggies, but I don't have any good pictures.

Work travel sucks.  Leaf litter, on the other hand, is cat heaven!

Off in Boise. Very off.

No posts for a week, as you will (not) see.  Off in Boise.



To the North, the airport.  Those colorful things in the distance, are the tails of airplanes.






And those white things off in the distance, are, I think mountains.

 

But I shan't see them any closer.

An actual paper book

  
   45 pounds (more or less)
            by K.A. Barson

Started off as the usual teenage angst plus fat.  But this book matured into something a lot more...girls and friends and enemies and parents and little siblings....and growing up and taking responsibility for how you live your life and what you do to others.  When we're teenagers, we tend to blame Mom and Dad for how we are--I did, that's for sure.  My narrow-set eyes; abysmal shyness; pimply complexion and greasy, thin hair...what could I do about it?  It was all their fault!

Eventually, I hope, everyone grows up to discover that they are at last responsible for who they become.  And your parents become people.  And then you lose them...but that's a different story.

Good book, especially for teens with body image issues.  Oh, stop me--that's an oxymoron.
Good book, especially for teens.

The good and the not so good

Recipe #15 from The China Study Cookbook was

Raisin Walnut Bread

It was surprisingly not bad.  I added 1/4 tsp salt to the recipe and might could have gone a little higher.  It had good texture and made a decent breakfast.  Too bad I'd just decided to cut back the wheat in my diet--it was all wheat flour.  I should try again and substitute some oat flour for part of the wheat.

Then recipe #16,
Pumpkin Gnocchi With Italian Vegetable Sauce

Fail!   The gnocchi were dry and hard as rocks despite my following the recipe to the letter.  If I'd made them half-inch size instead of the inch the recipe suggested, I might have liked them better.  The idea was good, though--maybe I could find a better vegan pumpkin gnocchi recipe on the web.

The Italian Vegetable Sauce?  Nope--it was Mexican, not Italian.  There's really no way to ruin zucchini and onions and diced tomatoes, but the recipe called for tomatoes with jalapeno peppers, so I used Rotel.   And that'sa not Italian.   Italian would have called for garlic and a little thyme with the basil and oregano; maybe a little flat-leaf parsley; and perhaps a dose of sliced mushrooms and a sprinkle of olives.  would have been yummy.


That