Storms, zinnias don't care, Misfits

Wednesday's late day storms saved me from watering in the heat, and there are new daisies and zinnias, also another, probably final, bud on the hibiscus.

I am really liking the morning glories tending to business and getting along with no assistance from the gardener.

The curry leaf plant is doing well.  

If you've never used curry leaves in cooking, you might want to try them. If you can't get a plant, the leaves are sold in  Indian groceries. Anywhere you'd use a bay leaf, try curry leaves. They're not hot despite the ill-fitting name, but they're deeply flavory. 

I've given them to American friends who like cooking, and they're well received. They freeze fine.

Thursday is Misfits day 

The tracking map appears about an hour ahead and shows you the route any time you access it. There's a final it's here! announcement then it goes away.

Nice Ronald taking the returns after leaving the box. 

Plenty of greens this week, thinking about a spinach quiche, can of pineapple chunks for the food pantry, plums to make a Marian Burros plum torte, August specialty around here. She used to get wildly annoyed with nyt readers asking for the recipe every year, instead of just cutting it out and keeping it.

There's apples for mid mornings, pasta because I'm out, blue hake because I need a white fish meal or two, maybe fish cakes too. Graham crackers for pretend key lime yogurt, yogurt likewise, blueberries for breakfasts with granola. Chocolate salty things just for the halibut.

Nice array this week. Look at this beauty, after washing 

That beautiful oversized spinach, too big for the supermarket, apples too small, I ask you. But I get the benefit, great food at discount prices.

Then, full disclosure, after all this posh food talk, Thursday's supper was a fried egg on toast with lemon tea.

It was not only hot but massively humid Thursday, so I didn't walk out. Between heat, humidity and antihistamines for the season, I've been a bit inactive for a couple of days, getting around but not exercising. 

However Thursday morning I got back with A and A

This was a fifteen minute series of moves, no repeats, for thirty seconds each with 15 seconds steps between. It's more strenuous than you might think, and very good. It worked out a good bit of ache from inactivity.

Steve, of Shadows and Light,  and husband Dave, just achieved their British citizenship after living in London many years. Now they're basking in the end of the paperwork and waiting. Congratulations to them. 

Don't ask me to go swearing allegiance to any English monarch after Wednesday's blog, there's a history there..but it's seriously very nice for them, feeling they belong and can now vote against Farage.

When Handsome partner and I got American citizenship, six year old Handsome Son, born American, was so disappointed that we went on talking the same way as before. He complained you said you'd be American like me! 

We hadn't realized he expected an accent transplant. But he was only small.  No such excuse for grown people with education who seriously ask why I don't drop the accent. 

I ask them what accent they think I should imitate to replace it. That's baffling to people who think they have no accent and everyone else is "just putting it on!".  After a certain rather young age it's pretty much hardwired.

Since a day without resistance and sand in the gears is a day without r and sitg, I called the Texas snitchline the gummint put in place. It's for people to snitch on the brave Texas Democrats who left the state to break quorum and stop the gerrymandering from yielding several House seats to the GOP.

I chose the "other suspicious and criminal activity" function and a cheery lady answered.  I said I wanted to report criminal activity in DC, in the White-  and before I could finish, she broke in to say that would be federal, call the FBI. And hung up. So that was my bit of (federal) fun for the day.

Happy day everyone, on any level, however you pronounce it.

 

Misfits, curry leaf plant and new fiber work

Misfits arrived promptly this morning, and I just had time to put out the returnable packaging.

Limes for a limey, long time since I had any, but I love the flavor. It's a citrus fruit I'm not allergic to, unlike all the orange family.

The cauliflower is for an upcoming cheese cauliflower, plenty of cheeses available for the sauce, and a sturdy Western meal, contrasting to the Asian type of cooking I've been doing. 

Carrots to be steamed and added to the black bean rice dish, and as salad makings. Orzo because I haven't had any for ages and they're fast for quick meals and in soup.  Cannellini beans because I use them all the time, versatile things. 

High end pop tarts, all organic ingredients because it's soon going to be my birthday.  I've made these from scratch in the past. Home baked junk food!

Speaking of birthdays, in the Gratitude book by Oliver Sacks, he talks about, in his eighties, feeling detached from the world. He still cared, but was ready to leave everything to the next generation. 

I'm far from detached, in fact still very actively involved in political action, so we differ greatly there. Soon I'll be in the second half of my eighties, an age Oliver didn't reach. But he was writing after a terminal diagnosis, and I'm in a very different position there.

Anyway I think pop tarts are in order.

The other present I'm giving myself is a set of Tunisian crochet hooks, because I've been making everything on the one big hook available, which is a bit hard on my hands, also limiting. Anyway it belongs to the library, so I can return it to their collection. 

In regular crochet, I'm doing the occasional granny squares in a range of blues and greens, maybe ending as a throw.

Just a handy thing to pick up at odd times.

In celebratory Sag mode, I'll ask Handsome Son to come over on whatever day we are both free, and make me lunch, our usual procedure. It's a visit and a present in one. Then he'll bring down the box of Christmas stuff and we'll set it up. Not much, just a gesture to the festive season.

Meanwhile life goes on in the plant world, see the curry leaf plant has started two groups of baby plants. 

It's so satisfying to grow your own flavoring ingredients. I use curry leaves quite a bit.

Happy day everyone, try not to detach before you need to.

Bougie sweatshirts, and other marvels including curry leaf plants

 Yesterday's knitting group was a lovely big meeting, well, big for this group --  eight people. And here are a couple of marvels

Bougie sweatshirt is Serena's pattern, and there's all that's left of the yarn on the right there. I think there should be a Yarn Chicken Award for this.

and look at this amazing yarnover pattern, looping back and forward over the surface, Sandy at it again. She makes wonderful stitch patterning in solid colors.

Note that all knits I show are works in progress, not yet finished nor blocked. Even so, you can see the skills. There was an embroiderer there at work, too, but no pic, also other projects you've seen before. And my inevitable sock.

It's always a great discussion ranging this week from Long Covid to groundhogs, birth order, grandchildren, complete with latest pictures, book club choices, Misfits market, passports, Italy, underage children's id issues, public gardens in NJ. And more.

Speaking of gardens, following on Jeanie's comment about my new curry leaf plant, she mentioned her one-time curry plant which looked different, more like rosemary. So I checked and found this.

Here's her curry plant, I think 

And here's my curry leaf plant 

They're different, but both aromatic and good for flavor in cooking. 

And they're herbs, not spices. They're not related to curry powder, which is a mixture of ground spices, not herbs. 

I've been there a number of times with people who say oh, but I don't like curry when I talk about how good the curry leaf is for flavor. I don't know how the names came about but i don't use curry leaves in making curry!

Jeanie, thank you for raising an interesting little byway for me to wander down.

Then today the ever patient Dove Parent

Buried deeper and deeper, probably hoping the chicks will soon peep.

Coming back in to report on the home-made laundry detergent, which I used yesterday. It's great, cleaned very well and colors came up bright, clearly residue of earlier detergents had been removed, too. And I made a gallon, which will last ages, at one cup per load. So I can recommend it.

Happy day everyone, happy mother's day tomorrow, if it's celebrated where you are. Handsome Son is working, as usual on a Sunday, but I expect I'll hear from him.

Enjoy your day and remember you don't have to have your own human children to be a Mom! There's honorary Moms, too, to people and pets and wildlife. Here's Billy the Grandpup.

 

Textiles and Tea, jigsaw puzzle, and garden arrival

Yesterday's Textiles and Tea featured Scottish weaver Cally Booker and her joyful approach to weaving patterns. There were technical hitches, she being in Aberdeen and the signal sometimes breaking down, but here's the slides we saw

This is two views of the River Tay, one its silvery water, the other a view from the Tay Bridge coming across to the city, with sunset reflections.

Here's a five year daily study on Arctic ice melting, the melt being the blue area, the rest the ice, taken from scientific reporting of the measurements. Left the piece, right a detail.

 

This work, a scarf, describes her local shoreline at the mouth of the River Tay.

She's a narrative weaver.

This is a collaborative work created with a Canadian architect, about identity.

And here's double huck, which I don't know anything about except she loves it.

And yesterday I went to the local library, to donate that jigsaw puzzle about canned vegetables, which they were happy to receive. 

While there I looked at the collection and see Rose's donations in the lineup. They're often out, so I'd say that's a good destination for them.

And, seems I can't get away from yarn, here's my borrowed current puzzle

Neighbor Aditha came to see the dove on the nest very cautiously, 

and give me a curry leaf plant

I love cooking with curry leaves, anywhere you might use a bay leaf. It's a deep lovely flavor. Indian vegetarian cooks like to use for rich flavor, and they're right.

Great discussion group this afternoon, mostly to the right of me, but it's kept impersonal, so it's quite enlightening. 

The men don't interrupt, quite a novelty  in my experience. We had a substitute moderator, who did okay, though not as prepared as the regular one.

The Haggard Hawks puzzle answer is:

OYSTER

which I think quite a few people not only got, but created great clues about, thank you. 

Happy day everyone, speak up, you're entitled. Don't be a clam!

White rabbits, happy St Brigid, Happy New Lunar Year

 A lot going on today. Let's go.

Here's my calendar on the new month. Singing and dancing, song writing.

I missed out on this because my first words were hello, Doctor, as my lovely doc called me personally at 7am to postpone today's appointment on account of the building having a water main break during the night. 

Two hours later the practice management called, same message.

Gladstone and Larry are the Twitter accounts of real cats, adopted from the Battersea dogs and cats home, to work on the endless mouse problems at the various buildings on Downing street, including the currently infamous Number Ten. They're much more popular than their human occupants right now.

And Emmy is a fearless campaigner to restore some kind of  order to her country under siege from the fallout of Brexit.

Best wishes on all this from your blogwriter, an Earth Tiger. For St Brigid, I defer to SheWhoSeeks' blogpost tomorrow.

Just an afterword about the curry leaf plant. Native to Asia, it grows as a tree. So I live in hope that my little  specimen will continue to flourish.

Here's more than you wanted to know

Hard to believe it's the start of spring, but the days are lengthening, the sun is lighting a different part of the living room.

And here's a van Gogh to help the mood

Meanwhile it's still feeling like winter, temps this morning in single digits f., so soup is on the menu. Potato, cauliflower today, cream of home made vegetable stock.

Happy everything from the cosy place Chez Boud.