elainegrey

From Wednesday morning:

I think this is the first day at my desk this week that i wasn't in urgent mode. Can i work on the important-with-looming-urgency? Ugh.

--== ∞ ==--

Figs are doing well, although i've resigned myself to leaving some on the tree for wasps and spiders. I will need to ponder my pruning strategy this winter. I'm dehydrating at a lower temperature and the color is much nicer. I'm also not going to rock hard. Raisins aren't rocks and last "forever" at shelf temperatures, so why make the figs completely desiccated. The fruit jerky/leather is also working nicely. The ability to cook the fruit and then keep it in the fridge a while before dehydrating allows "stalling" dealing with very ripe figs.

Meanwhile, i've given away fresh ripe figs and eat them every day, myself.

--== ∞ ==--

Replacement dehumidifier didn't drain into its bucket but leaked on the floor. Now on yet another replacement cycle.

Left string trimmer and other tools in the rain. Battery definitely dead. Trimmer seems OK. Getting new battery AND a pole saw. Very very excited about the pole saw. I had a manual pole saw and lopper and need to figure out how to restring the cord that pulled the lopper bit. It wasn't satisfactory. Maybe someday.

In balance, i have done things with things i have ordered: pink shoes are polished, boots are dyed navy blue (LOVE!), and i have properly installed the curtain pull back hooks. Now i want to fix the curtain rod the previous owners left. (Metal fixtures are completely inconsistent in the house. The curtain rod is shiny brass, but i'm trying to move to oiled bronze in that room. I can't count the different door handle finishes.)

--== ∞ ==--

I managed to get outside and fight stilt grass yesterday. Will also skip the usual grocery run and do the same tonight. I'm frustrated about going to a conference just as the weather finally begins to moderate. Will cope with humidity. At least it's not hot. [And i *did* get outside and make more progress. Hoping i can get into a habit that i can keep and make good progress.]

--== ∞ ==--

I've just made some notes about things to do near and nearish to the Hilton Minneapolis. I'm pondering the Swedish Museum on Friday, between conference ending at noon and flight leaving at 5 pm. The Foshay building observation deck seems like it might be nice, too.

I want to panic about clothes but i am trying to tell myself it is going to be OK.

Made an absolute disaster of a loaf of soda bread. Don't ask, not worth recounting the horror, but one part of the failure involved mistakenly adding a cup of melted butter. I ate some and was both attracted and repulsed. I think one of the flours was stale. I dumped the loaf in the compost.

I also made a "Mexican sweet corn cake" which actually called for a cup of melted butter. That seems to have turned out better, but i'm turned off and won't have any. I had a headache before the disaster loaf, so it may not just be the disaster.

The fig tree is producing SO MANY FIGS. Figs were involved with the disaster loaf. I don't know what i am going to do about the figs, particularly the ones so hard to reach. Ants and wasps are going to have fun feasting. Is this bad? I suppose i should get a jar out for fruit vinegar making.

( Read more... )

--== ∞ ==--

Tuesday morning: i feel a little better. I spent time with a colleague at work who was a little triggered about new requirements. I hope she felt i was on her side, but i fear i am ... oh, Gandalf arriving at Rohan, what was he called? Stormcrow and Láthspell -- nothing but complexity and more work and a blizzard of new concepts and ideas.

Good news: our long term HVAC folks came by (not making Christine irritated by some miracle, as she had waved them off wanting to get input from another company) and fixed the condensation drainage issue. Christine is happy with the solution.

Bad news: dishwasher isn't washing any more, no water getting in. Probably could be fixed, maybe, by a willing to fix fix it person, but it is a very old dishwasher. I am pleased someone jiggled the right things to fix it after the house inspection found it not working, but i will be happy to get a very modern dishwasher now.

Depending on how quickly that can happen.

--== MORE NOTES FROM THE LONG WEEKEND ==--

Did cook the last giant butternut squash. Waiting for the air conditioning to be stable before roasting the seeds. Think making the butternut-mac-and-cheese for dinner both put moisture and heat in the house, that meant the air conditioning ran out of condensation storage early last night.

* butternut-mac-and-cheese: YES!
* roasted butternut and cucumber salad: interesting. (Also, bell pepper, a hard cheese, toasted pecans, a few craisins, ancho, sumac, black pepper) Maybe with more salt and some sort of acid

Next - maybe dehydrate the rest of the mashed squash?

--== ∞ ==--

Currently in gladiolus madness. They keep being beaten down by rain so i'm picking them and bringing them in. And the deer haven't been eating the ones outside the fences! The pink and yellow (Priscilla, maybe?) are nearing the end of their bloom. There are a few of the salmon pink glads coming into bloom ("Rose supreme" maybe). Beginning blooming in between is a magenta glad (possibly "Plum tart"). I'd planted them outside the fence and haven't seen many of the flowers (thank you deer) but the glad happy deer have moved on (or i just got to the flowers first). I also dug up some of the bulbs to move in the fence to the no-food for dodder bed, so some have bloomed there.

--== ∞ ==--

* Flour had bugs but cornstarch worked for roux.

Tuesday:

So, yes, i will pony up $5 a month so maybe i won't miss aurora IN MY BACKYARD.

Aurora in MEXICO???!! https://spaceweather.com/archive.php?view=1&day=24&month=04&year=2023

And my pepper seedlings have been tortured by the low temps. I don't expect 40°F last night so i didn't think to bring in the seedlings, much less follow the advice at https://www.sandiaseed.com/blogs/news/can-peppers-survive-40-degree-weather . I don't think i've ruined the plants. I hope. I've got to start bringing the seedlings in at night and i'll cover the peppers and tomato plant i set out. Hopefully by the time i can't carry things, the seed dome will be sufficient. I should have thought to get that out already.

On itching notes, i have a long red welt along my clavicle. I've no idea what caused it. My ankles and feet are achy. Am i in some flare? Ugh.

Wednesday am:

The plants finally arrived late afternoon, worse for wear. I wrote the vendor, and he wants me to see if they bounce back. Which, OK. It's not clear he can get FedEx to cover the loss, and it's REALLY CLEAR who screwed up here. My sister said that it sounded like the FedEx people were willing to say anything to excuse their screwups, like a teenager testing lies with their parents to see what sticks.

Early Monday morning was a frost, 32° for an hour plus. It just hit 32° again. So glad I am not banking on my berries for any cash.

Sunday late afternoon i moved gladiolus and allium bulbs from where the glads were grazed on by deer into what i am calling the dodder triangle, a section inside the orchard where dodder, a creepy parasitic plant, has established. I've seen a time lapse video of a dodder seedling seeking out its prey. This - https://youtu.be/NDMXvwa0D9E - isn't the video i had in mind, as the series i saw showed the dodder selecting the tomato plant from other plants. Well, allium and glads are NOT plants the dodder can parisitize, so the little orange seedlings can hunt all they want, but no complete life cycle with seed set for them this year.

I will eventually dig up all the bulbs from the arc that delimits the border of the mossy glade and replace with a bed of... something. I have planned various collections of azaleas, viburnums, baptista, or monarda. Blueberries! Surely i can get them established enough to be able to tolerate deer. Although with all the cages around the mayhaws, plums, and hazelnuts i think i want to wait for some of those plants to be ready to face the deer and then reuse those cages on the arc.

Meanwhile, UHC has TWO "prior authorizations" in progress, and i did not get news from the nurse last night. The ear that i would like to be the cartilage donor has a bad psoriasis flare. Everything is under control at work, which feels superstitiously bad. I'm ready and prepared (except for my ear). Superstition says, "Yep, this ain't happening this week." (That is, that UHC will NOT grant a "prior approval" in time.) When did i become so superstitious?? I'll admit that the issue with my ear does weigh towards having surgery and them choosing the other ear, leaving me with two messed up ears. My superstition leans towards, yes, i can be more miserable.

So, if the prior authorization doesn't come through ... should i take time off work, anyhow? Wednesday and Thursday look like great yard work days. (Superstition: if i can come up with attractive alternatives....)

Wow. Hmm. That is a long gap between writing.

We've gone from the crescent waning moon to the first quarter waxing moon. I've spent some lovely early evenings watching bats flit in the twilight sky across the waxing crescent. And, oh, the mesmerizing dance of the Spring Tree-Top Flasher (Pyractomena borealis) a firefly that seems to delight in our tall trees on the weekend evenings that were over 50°F. Just delightful to watch.

All the plants in pots are in the ground. I have transplants i would like to do before the surgery -- gladiolas, daffodils, and alliums from various places to a little bed that had the parasite dodder in it last year. Apparently, starving the dodder is a reasonable form of control. I assume i got it in that patch last year when i scattered a collection of random seed to see what would take; the dodder seemed to like the zinnias that came up. Moving poorly sited bulbs seems like a reasonable approach.

Dogwoods are opening their flowers. A few branches are offering the white bracted flowers to view from across the yard. The redbuds are fading. On Sunday i picked a bunch of redbud blooms from the one tree that has any in my reach. I assume deer nibble anything lower. The redbud blooms with violets and dandelions garnished the mixed green salad with smoked salad: a pretty dinner, but maybe there's some antioxidants of some sort in those petals that make them attractive to me to eat. Or maybe it's all in my eyes.

I've a kilogram of onion greens fermenting in two quart jars, since i like the first batch so much. It smells strong, and i ran across https://foragerchef.com/cheremsha-siberian-style-fermented-ramp-leaves-%D1%87%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%88%D0%B0/ describing fermenting ramps as "weaponized garlic". If i understand correctly, ramps are far more garlicy than my walking onion greens. My first batch went straight to the dehydrator, with no rinse, so the result after grinding to a powder, is a salty savory seasoning. It has an addictive quality i associate with processed foods, which is probably the salt. This next batch i will rinse before dehydrating in order to reduce the salt. I may try some freshly fermented in sour cream as a spread: adding the powder to sour cream has been decadently lovely. On top of a baked potato, on top of roasted sweet potato and brocollini (both from the garden)

Onion scapes are appearing and i know this year that i can pick them before they become woody and quick pickle them for a pleasurable treat. I've had the onion scape pickles in my packed travel lunches next to boiled eggs with delight. There's a jar in the kitchen acting as a vase to the first batch i picked on Saturday, the green curling tops lovely. If i don't pickle them, i will have enjoyed them visually. Another cooking project is doing SOMETHING with all the chicory that has made it. I saw a dandelion-cabbage sauerkraut i might try.

I am pondering the reading i do lately. I read a long list of comics and the New York Times, and yet i wonder where what i read goes in my head. Admittedly, when i slurp up novels they also go into my head and get forgotten very quickly. I would guess i am reading this short form because they are like a bag of potato chips and maybe i can just have one or two for a pleasurable distraction, and next thing i know i am reading the crumb articles about things i will never really care about.

I had a flare of cankers that are still causing discomfort, but after days of bland soft meals i'm craving more flavor. I did make a "cream sauce" with pureed cauliflower and nutritional yeast. Carrie and Luigi both thought it was yummy.

Christine is having another round of migraines. Work is being intense.

I was digging out sochan (aka cut leaf cone flower) for my sister Saturday, and so grubbing out all the dandelions i could find was fairly close to the same work.

https://foragerchef.com/dandelion-hearts-crowns/

Saturday night I sauteed 1/4 sweet onion in olive oil, sauteed the blanched crowns, dressed with vinegar and chile flakes (Urfa biber). Tossed with pasta, parma, and toasted pecans. Not bad.

Sunday's garden greens were a slaw-like mix of brassica leaves and flowers (very broccoli tasting! maybe those plants are broccoli? not cabbage or kale?) and onion greens, then the "mixed clippings" -- violets and violet leaves, dandelion flowers, Indian strawberry flowers, beet and turnip thinnings -- tossed on top. Very good. Will do again. The leaves are still on the sweet side.

Monday for lunch i picked some goldenrod shoots, some sochan greens, and some less-wild chicory. I blanched then sauteed, dressing with vinegar and served with sauteed shredded purple sweet potato and more of the "mixed clippings." This was the best by far. I think the sweetness in the sweet potatoes was a good offset to the bitter of the Asteraceae plants.

I sure hope the chicory plants grow back from the root. In theory they should. Apparently if they're not where you want them they will! (Much detail about how hard they are to kill as weeds.) Mine are growing somewhat too close together so i'd like to transplant some from the sunny end of the row and to thin them.

Another weekend project was putting saucer magnolia (Magnolia x soulangeana) flowers in preserves. I have some in a 1:1 simple syrup, and another in a vinegar brine. I used up all my fig vinegar, but added too much salt, and so had to also add apple cider vinegar. The resulting vinegar has been fairly pleasant to use. After refrigerator-pickling green tomatoes with straight vinegar and finding them too tart, i made the brine with 1:1 vinegar to water, which i see in recipes. Then i see other recipes with all vinegar of 5% acidity. Oh internet. This is where the food science extension folks tell you the absolute safest thing to do and other people tell you what their mama and their mama's mama did and you choose your own risk.

Someone asked about cedar apple rust on honeycrisp apples on a mailing list. A CSA farm to the west of here replied:

"There are other species of fruit (the wild serviceberries in my area, mayhaws...) for which [cedar apple] rust seems to completely ruin pretty much all of the fruit,..."

Well BLEEP. I sure hope the mayhaw flowers are pretty. Because i do have cedar apple rust. Lots of cedars. I also planted two wild type service berries in the woods in the gap the pine made when it fell during Hurricane Storm Ian. The crown of the pine had smashed branches off the one wild serviceberry i had identified. The tree is tall enough that, while i can see the white flowers in the spring, i've never seen berries. I assumed birds took care of them.

Hrmph.

Yesterday i managed to hit all the self care commitments. I asked Christine to put up the groceries so i could go out in the dusk and finish shoveling clay into the new hugelkulture bed: the "top soil" i'd scraped off before digging in. I might actually have enough soil, i'll see today in day light. Proof will be after Sunday's rain.

Trees from Ty Ty arrived, a vendor i've always worried about. When the shipments were delayed all January my distrust increased. But the plants looked fine, or as fine as bare root young trees can look.

I'm feeling pretty good, and loving the pale apricot sky of dawn.

Christine is still having migraines, which is a continuation from before the new year. Most start in the wee hours of the morning, so we look at her CPAP, only a year and a half old, with suspicion.

Her other migraine she got after cutting back some brush. When she came in and proclaimed what she had done, i was trying to figure out what she had cut down and was somewhat ungracious when i imagined she had cut down all the wild blackberries. I quickly noted it wouldn't have killed them and would have made them more manageable. Working cutting things down is hard for her because she is very aware they are alive and she had framed it as rescuing a redbud tree, but instead she was rescuing a sweetgum.

Anyhow.

Last week was hard to get through, but i did. Part of the hard is mental wrestling i have been having since October, struggling to get everything done -- "everything" is hygiene plus medication plus skin voodoo (retinol! vitamin C! H-something acid but not HCl) plus stretch-balance-walk. I'd been blaming a combination of asthma and illness and seasonal affective disorder but really -- has it ever been THIS bad while i was treating it?

Ah, late last week it occurred to me, i had never held any expectation that i would do anything other than take my antidepressant and antihistamine regularly. I tried to do other things, but didn't note when i missed them and didn't have any intentionality and certainly wasn't trying to regularly exercise. And then i learned of ADHD, realized my mother and sibs and i were all in the same challenging space when it came to habits, realized i needed to start small, and started with flossing and brushing my teeth. Woo! Magic dental experience in June!!

But i've never tried this when also dealing with the shortening of days.

So maybe there was nothing particularly bad this year -- just normal seasonal affective disorder and i'd never had a background against which to measure its impact. The absolutely critical things get done: i go to work, the cats and Carrie are fed, i make some effort for the holidays.

Welp.

Realization helped with my mental framing, and it's always impressive how much energy it takes to both give yourself lots of negative messages and to receive them.

So, i've cut back on some of the expectations in the stretch-balance-walk space, been more gentle with myself, gotten over the respiratory infection!! and mostly gotten over the asthmatic cough.

I did look at some sleep measures, since i have all this data: my watch was reporting sleep efficiencies in the low 90s over the summer, but that's become the high 80s. Edward's changed his sleeping to be close - because he's cold? Maybe that's a small disruption as well. And I'm still having more respiratory events this week than in December, despite the cough being mostly gone. So hrm.

Yesterday i did the basic walk, plus the balance and stretches, and ended up with the 8k steps and the hour of standing during meetings (partly because the meeting ran over 30 min at the end of the day.) I am delighted at my physical tone: i've been digging clay -- lots and lots on Saturday, some yesterday in the dusk -- and no (new, distinct) aches! I've some balance to get back, but it's not terribly different from October. I am back to holding on to things while dressing, but i can imagine getting better balance in a few months.

Anyhow, i SHOULD (qv RFC 2119)be stopping here, but i'll note that i have travel coming up. I was near tears trying to make the decision, because somehow air travel across time zones just seems horrible and -- but i have to do the travel for business so why would i be so distressed about leaving earlier for myself? I don't really know why it seemed so hard to make the decision to leave a day plus a handful of hours earlier.

I'll be landing at SFO around 9:45 am the last Sunday in February. I think i will be able to have coffee with friends as soon as car is rented and i can get to Palo Alto. Other than that, plans still to be made. I'll take the Monday off. Tuesday and Wednesday will be super intense work to help W3C browser folks understand authentication and authorization practices. (Hrm, maybe some of Monday will be visual aid development - i don't know that i want to carry on the plane posters of sequence diagrams, but big posters of sequence diagrams on the walls might be helpful.) Then i take a redeye on Wednesday night to arrive home after 9am on March 2, my birthday. Woo.