Garden 2014

May, June, July...
My plot is a 300+ square feet area that I share with a ghost.

My garden area this year is... complicated.

Instead of the two single edge plots from last year, I joined forces for what I hoped would be more fertile ground.

Fertile, yes. Grass loves it.

In the picture above on the right you can see a square of dirt. That was where I first planted beets and greens in late spring. After several hot and humid thunderstorms, this area was a plush carpet of grassy weeds. Recently a friend wanted to plant something and didn't have space, so I let him rip it up and start over.

Two-thirds of the plot has plants and weeds waist high and higher. The back is lined with wild amaranth. Morning glory and bean vines dance through corn stalks, amaranth, sunflowers, tomatillos, cilantro and weeds. All wild. All going wild.

I'm feeling pretty zen about it.

Despite the disarray I should have tomatoes, tomatillos, and jalapenos from this plot, along with the many herbs I've been enjoying for a while now -- heavenly. And nasturtiums! Elsewhere in a small plot I have red cabbage, brussels sprouts, and more tomatoes.

But no significant harvesting yet. So to the farmer's market, tomorrow, I go...

Returning from vacation

The Philadelphia airport is sometimes such a hellish place to be.

I’m there 2 hours before departure, so I know I’ll be okay. I have patience for this clusterfuck, yet feel sad for those around me in panic. The cumulative stress in the security area and disbelief that it can be this bad, I wish I could lift it off, ball up, and kick it to the curb. But there’s nothing I can do.

I get home.

It’s 10:56 am. In the 6 hours I’ve been up I’ve had a breakfast torta and a cup of coffee. I open my fridge – it’s packed with such various, odd things – and in the front-middle of the bottom shelf stands a lone bottle of dark ale beer. There’s a 2 inch empty border on the shelf floor around it, like a halo magnifying the invitation.

I accept.

One cat is back to sitting in the flower pot. The room fans are turned back on to “low”.

We resume our positions.

Live to tell

The Homemade Pantry is a great idea. When striving to eat wholesome foods and to eat well, making one's own pantry staples is just wise.

First up, crème fraîche:

the venerable starting ingredients

(left) my over-thickened homemade version, and (right) TJ's storebought

on eggs, with sriracha

The recipe for homemade crème fraîche was too stupidly simple not to try. So try I did, and I live to tell! If you like yourself some crème fraîche, or sour cream for that matter, learn this!

Next, a recipe that uses up buttermilk...

Think I'm an idiot?

The other day, minding my business while a friend used the washroom at a Barnes and Nobles, I spied a toy that made me angry. SHOCKER, I know, yours truly gets angry with inanimate toys.

Bear with me...

Do you see it?

Let me show you what I see.

This toy is essentially Honey I Shrunk the Legos. With your bony and arthritic or fat, sausage-like fingers you can assemble itsy bitsy Lego pieces... sorry... nanoblock pieces, into things that no one cares about. But the rip-off nature isn't the real problem. Heck, maybe Lego ripped off something else to become the Lego we know and love. No, what gets me is the "nano". 

Nano is a range in a scale of measure, and so is micro. Not to be overly pedantic, but if these blocks were nano in the meter size scale (and clearly that's the angle here), we wouldn't be able to build anything with them with our fingers. But the appropriation of "nano" to sell a toy doesn't really bother me either. It's the tag line - nanoblocks are "micro-sized building blocks". 

Hawhatnow?

Just. No.

Something that's nano is a fraction of what is micro. Sure, things can be described in a bunch of different length scales, but this is like saying a pint is also a 5 gallon keg. It's like saying a church house is also a cathedral. It's treating us like we're idiots by throwing sciencey (mathy) buzzwords at us in the hopes we find it cool to play with something that should be called, "tiny things you will lose all over the house," or "petroleum by-products made in China for your toddler to choke on," or "672 new crevices your dust can go".

And when I think of all the marketing meetings that they must have had over this, subconsciously thinking that basic math was something no one else cares about either. Or they thought we'd never notice.

Well I'm onto you, toy marketers. This idiot is gonna go dust off her Legos.