The original: Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.
If you water it, rain will come.
If you plant it, something else will grow.
An appointment with a specialist guarantees the problem will heal on its own – one day before the appointment.
If the store in which you’re shopping has a loyalty card, you will have a different store card in your wallet when you reach the checkout.
So, readers, what do you think? Can you add to the list? Add your example in the comments.
If I use a strawberry dump cake recipe but replace the strawberries with blueberries, cherries, and a diced peach, what should I call it?
When the rain barrels are full and there’s more rain coming, should I put out buckets to save even more rain water?
If I water a strawberry plant with the leftover liquid in my coffee cup, will the strawberries have caffeine? Is there such a thing as a decaf berry?
Why is the city-planted grass in the terrace playing host to more weeds than grasses?
How much of the terrace should I actually weed, given that we’re going to have our service sidewalk replaced and a new baby tree planted and more people digging in the terrace dirt?
Health and circumstances have cut into my time and energy. Does anyone really mind the weeds?
Will the city crews avoid the water and gas lines this time? Don’t. Even. Think. About it.
Why does Krumpet the bunny get so worked up when I’m grinding herbs in my mortar and pestle?
Why is Sadie the bunny shedding – in July?
When should I schedule our garage sale? We have plenty of good things to sell, and the little collectible junk will make people happy, too.
And why has Grandma Daisy been so quiet lately? There’s plenty going on, and I’m sure she has opinions on just about everything coming out of Madison and Washington, among other places.
I’m blaming a colder than usual winter. That’s one possible excuse for the compost not fully composting, which is an excuse for the random tomato seedlings turning up in random places.
Tomato and Dill
tomato and grass
Tomato and – mums?
It’ll all be irrelevant if we get an early frost, so I’ll just nurture these little strays of mine and maybe I’ll get an extra salad or two.
I’ve brought herbs inside for the last few winters. They don’t always do well indoors in this cold climate. This year’s herb collection is doing well on the deck – so well that I’m attempting the process of drying and crushing and storing herbs. I’ve tried two different locations in the house for drying. So far, the attic is winning out. The basil didn’t fully dry, though, even after hanging for about a week and a half. I ended up putting the basil (and its friends oregano and cilantro) in the oven on a low heat setting for about 20 minutes. At that point, I could pick up a leaf and crumble it.
The fun part was playing with my new kitchen toy: a ceramic mortar and pestle set. The set is rather pretty, and it grinds nicely. See how it works!
Oregano!
Basil! Purple basil!
The poor rabbit, though. Little Krumpet, the tiny and very furry lion head rabbit, was upset when I tried to grind herbs in “her” room, the den. Maybe she didn’t like the overwhelming odor. Maybe the grinding sound was hard on her fuzzy bunny ears. Whatever it was, she kept thumping when I tried to grind.
You know me, readers. I relented and finished prepping herbs in the kitchen.
We Packer fans are serious about our team. These biker was serious enough to broadcast it to the world, or at least everywhere the bike goes!
Is there a Packer bar in Sturgis, South Dakota?
I repurposed a few containers to make room for the volunteer tomatoes and mystery plants. I think one of the mysteries is basil; they other might be peppers. But anyway, back to the repurposing.
These are reaching for the sky. That’s La Petite’s old laundry hamper.
Not far away, on the other side of the rock garden, lies another repurposed container holding tomatoes.
Much smaller, slower growing.
This batch is growing much more slowly, but the carrot seeds are starting to germinate. Carrots love tomatoes, right? Maybe they’ll both put in a good effort and produce some produce.
The crate gets a lot of sun.
This picture reminds me that I must water the chives. The tomatoes and the mystery (basil?) are coming up quickly now that they have space.
So readers, gardeners, eco-scientists, what do you think? Is it as simple as the sunlight, or does the basket have some other reason not to grow as fast as the others? Leave a comment. Let me know your thoughts.
Last time I reviewed a table full of Farm Market purchases, I told you what I didn’t buy. This time I’ll point out the unique, the not-quite-typical fun finds that made it into our bags.
Home from Downtown!
We’ll start on the left. The large plastic bag contains ice and two fresh, cleaned trout, ready for cooking. Chuck cooked them on the grill.
Directly to the right of the trout you’ll see two, no, three packages of pasta made in town. We enjoy their unique flavors. Last year Chuck came home with a package of fettuccine with squid ink. The noodles were black, and the taste was, well, unusual but tasty. In this picture you see two kinds of fettuccine: roasted beet, spinach/garlic and finally, a mix suitable for soup or salad.
Peas, corn, carrots, and then wine. There’s an upscale deli in City Center Plaza, right next to the ramp where we like to park. Chuck picked out a Spanish wine to bring home and serve with the spinach-garlic pasta and grilled trout.
So there you have it, folks. And if you’re wondering just how fresh those trout were, see below. They were still flopping on the scale. For a small fee, the vendor prepped them and cleaned them.
Fresh trout for supper! And I didn’t have to bait a hook.
Long ago, a wise leader spoke these words as the Continental Congress adopted the first draft of a courageous document, the Declaration of Independence.
“I am apt to believe that it (Independence Day) will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival…It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, and sports, guns, bells, bonfires, illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward, forevermore.”
— John Adams, in a letter to his wife, Abigail
Amigo and I are home today. Our plan:
Watch Brewers Baseball in the morning (games and sports)
Patriotic Sing along at noon (shows, bells)
Grill burgers for supper (bonfires, perhaps?)
In general, relax.
Have a great holiday!
Top row: Chuck, Daisy
Front: Amigo, La Petite
Photo, of course, by La Petite.
Photo by La Petite originally posted in July of 2009 – worth a repeat
The short story: Our deck umbrella was impossible to close. The wind picked it up and threw it – tucked it in behind the herbs and the lilac bush.
The much more complete story —
The deck umbrella was uprooted by a gust of wind. It would no longer stay open all the way. Chuck took a roll of black duct tape and repaired the broken piece. That’s good. But now, the umbrella could not be closed. That’s not so good.
A major storm came through town. That’s bad. The wind picked up the umbrella and tossed it. That’s also kind of bad – but only kinda. I like to think the new placement of the large umbrella protected the herbs in their pots from the hail as the second part of the storm raged through the neighborhood.
Umbrella, umbrella.
You can decide. Good or bad?
Note: Chuck made a few adjustments to his repair job, and now we can close the umbrella. We wrap a bungee cord around it so the wind can’t blow up its, er, skirt and take it away. This umbrella’s traveling days are done.
I stumbled upon a suggestion one day – rhubarb BBQ sauce. I looked over the ingredients and said to myself, “Self, we have all of these ingredients in the house, including plenty of rhubarb.” Chuck was skeptical at first, but I made some anyway. He tasted it before I went to the trouble of canning, and he pronounced it good.
This recipe uses a lot of rhubarb. I took a look outside to see how much rhubarb we might have, and if I might have enough to make another batch.
Will there be enough?
I needed at least 8 cups of diced rhubarb. Did I get it? Here’s the after shot.
After picking
I have about 6 and a half cups of diced rhubarb now. The dilemma: do I go back outside to pick right now? Or do I set aside the current harvest, maybe freeze it, until the remainder fills out a bit more? Or – cue the ominous music – do I buy a few large stalks of rhubarb at the Farmers’ Market?
Decisions, decisions.