stumbling along

 

 stumbling along, several days of work, truck needing to be repaired again, we stopped by the library today and I got another world cuisine book, lots to learn about new ingredients and preparations.  Esme and I made another good salad today, scrambled eggs with fried peppers, and cantaloupe.  She said it was good.    We've been trying the cotija crumbling cheese on salads, and she likes that.  She really hates several kinds of cheese, other than fresh mozzarella, and only recently has she decided to try more new things.

I got some parsnip seeds at the library as well (diolch yn fawr!) and started preparing again the new bed I made earlier this year for planting.  When I was poking around in another bed that had potatoes in it earlier this year I found two more purple potatoes!  Then it decided to rain very hard and have strong winds, so we came inside and made bacon, eggs and fried apples for dinner.

The new bed had hot fertilizer in it and needed to rest a while - but I saw pigweed growing in it now, so it's definitely ready.  It had sat for months with nothing growing in it at all, besides the occasional dog laying in it.  And that was another reason I had not planted in it, was that I needed to put a fence around it and just had not gotten to doing it.  I pulled a twelve foot length of fence out of the 'back forty' (tangled mess of weeds) of the garden and maneuvered it into place around that bed and the one next to it.  It will need more tying down but it was a monumental job for one person to do 'on the fly' - but I've been half-meaning to do it for months and would not buy more fence because of it.  I had intended that bed to be for carrots, but carrots and parsnips will do just as well. 

 I've been getting peppers, tomatoes, green beans and strawberries out of my gardens, as well as the occasional kale, mustard leaf and nasturtiums still. I got those radish pods out of the garden and had eaten the radish leaves but no radish roots.  The next round will hopefully be crowder peas and basil, beet greens and more mustard and then the carrots and parsnips later in the fall or next Spring.

 

We had a bit of a power outage during the storm - and instead of turning my computer back on I began (and finished, an hour later) this little 'japanese knot bag' market bag.  They are great for carrying produce, books and other not-too-small things.  I made several large ones a few years ago to carry beach towels and such - and have sold a few at shows and the gallery.  But this was just 'use some time' and I love the geometry of how the net comes together, as well.

 

 

 little sketches in Denoxii script

 

languages : been doing French, Japanese, Chinese and Spanish, with a little Czech