A whole Monday at home with nothing on the calendar.  I've been into my beading kit, made a batch of lamb stew, did laundry, read some... lots of things that I haven't gotten to in a long time.  Same as opening up this box and typing in it.  But I had to write about today's lamb stew.  I've made lamb stew many times but never with a recipe.  Then after I make it I write down the recipe.  It's getting simpler, I think.  This time I made it in my biggest cast iron skillet, which I fried bacon in yesterday for a BLT.  I'd poured off most of the bacon grease so I added a little olive oil.  Half of a giant yellow onion warm from the garden and 1.5 lbs of lamb stew meat go in the pan and cook until the lamb is done.  Add a chopped celery heart, cover and simmer.  Look at the canned goods in the cabinet--tomato paste?  No.  Coconut milk?  No.  Chop 2 carrots and add along with some hot water and a beef bouillon cube, cover and leave on medium low.  Next time I check it's getting thick and it's very fatty.  Mix in curry and ginger powder along with enough cayenne to make it warm/hot.  Throw in 7 peeled whole cloves of garlic and three medium garden tomatoes, chopped.  Cover and leave on low for a long time.   Start the rice.  Leave stew on lowest heat for a while more, then turn off.  Chop raw bok choy and red pepper.  Serve on a bed of rice, bok choy and red pepper.  Coarse grain salt on top.  Perfect heat.  Glad the rice is plain and the bok choy and red peppers are raw.

Will is gone backpacking for the next 4 days, after having been gone boating at the McKenzie for a long weekend.  This is good.  I really need time alone.  Every time I get some I get happy again.  I'm just too crowded living closely with someone who is retired.  I don't want to hear his every thought.  The silence IS golden.  Yesterday I went kayaking with friends.  I had some work last week and another day of work coming up.  Underemployed.  I'm not spending any money, not buying things on the internet or going to the store.  In about a week I'll be packing up to head for the Middle Fork Salmon, a 100 mile 7 day self-support river trip. 

Anyway now I'm in the middle of watching the first episode of the new Netflix series (of 4) about Trump.  It's paused.  The first episode is entitled Manhattan, and it's about New York in the mid-70's as much as it is about Trump.  The city was nearly bankrupted, lays off its cops and garbage guys, and the murder rate climbs.  Trump secures a 40 year tax break from the city so that he can restore a historic hotel.  Trump sounds the same talking about that hotel in the 70's as he sounds now when he speaks.  His words are superlatives--fantastic, terrific, the biggest, the greatest.  He meets a defense lawyer who knows how to bully and bluff.  It becomes clear immediately that this program is setting the stage for us to actually understand him, instead of demonizing or idolizing.  I appreciate that.  A little nuance is due on all sides.  On All Sides.

Tomorrow I may go paddle up to Willamette Falls with Kevin and Sue.  Hoping to hear back from Mindy.  I have a few friends here but seem to see them too rarely.  I mean to fix that.

More later, I'm going back to see the rest about Trump and Manhattan.

I found an awesome tree key online. Here: http://bioimages.vanderbilt.edu/tree-key/simple-leaf-trees.htm This one is only good for trees with "simple" leaves, meaning that they are not compound, or rather, that only one leaflet is on the leaf stem. Some trees like walnuts and ashes have many leaves extending from the leaf stem.

More than you wanted to know--unless you are into knowing about trees. =-]

Lately I've been doing a lot of weeding. I can recall a few yoga classes after which my hamstrings were longer than ever before. That was before my hamstrings knew about gardening.

Now they know. Daily, they get that if you can't bend over, or squat, it's a real problem.

Just because
you can eat it,
doesn't mean it's food
--Paul Bergner

Pesticides, etc.
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Pretty interesting overview of the newest attack here on Natural News: FDA's scheme to outlaw nearly all nutritional supplements created after 1994 would destroy millions of jobs and devastate economy. In the new proposed rules synthetic nutrients are exempted. The target of administrative control appears to be animal and plant-derived supplements. Botanicals. There are many health practitioners who prefer to use natural products as opposed to chemically synthesized ones. But the FDA wants to put us under. It's too dangerous to eat plants and animals; the content is not standardizable. We don't really know what's in there.

More here. You can make noise there too by signing the petition if you care.

And I did not know this, but the FDA has already banned the P5P form of vitamin B6---which some people cannot manufacture on their own and must get from their diet. They're basically trying to trap us into purchasing pharmaceuticals when relatively inexpensive natural alternatives exist. Because some people need to take top quality B6 for life (because of inherited metabolic handicaps), they see a market, just like any drug they can get you to buy for life. It's much more profitable for pharmaceutical corporations to make drugs that you need forever more.

It's time to start gardening, folks. They can't keep us from eating the weeds that grow by our house.

Materials:
1 large plastic bucket with lid
some rope or chain for hanging the bucket
a knife or saw that will cut the bucket
a sheet of heavy plastic
scissors
five tomato plants well started (she likes Bonnie's Best, a foot tall or more)
enough good soil to fill the bucket
a hook or nail from a rafter on the sunny south side of a building

( How to grow 5 tomato plants in one hanging bucket.Collapse )

A schoolmate just dropped off 17 potted plants that are to stay with me for the summer. He is going to Minnesota to stay with his girlfriend and then to a Buddhist retreat, and returning to Portland in time for school in September. I volunteered for plant duty; I love plants and did not especially want to go buy anymore...though I did buy a basil plant for a dollar at the coop the other day. I think he was happy to find a good summer home for his babies. They have just been drenched in cold water and are rejoicing in the bright sun of my porch.
( D's plants, a list:Collapse )

is a wreck. It has gone completely wild. All those plants that I left in there, months ago when nothing was growing fast, have taken off. The one that looked like a carrot plant may be queen anne's lace. The three lettuce plants have gone to seed. Those leaves are very bitter. The lavendar plant is useless there, when there is yards of lavendar along the front of the neighbor's yard. I'm going to pull this one. And kill the queen anne's lace as soon as the flowers open a little more.
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SPOROTRICHOSIS

These notes are with regard to a case I know of a woman who was bitten in her hands by a cat and 8 years later still has inflammation in the bitten knuckles. Most people acquire this infection via a small wound from a single thorn stick (rose gardeners), not direct innoculation into a joint. But this is what I think is going on, and why.
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