Somnolence

Fay and I are very tired.  I, for one, am stupid.

I couldn't wake up today.  Again.  I'm starting to wonder if I have Lyme Disease or anemia or something.

A good thing I have right now is an excellent view of a juvenile robin.  It's sitting on a branch outside my window.  Its mom came and give it some lunch a couple of minutes ago.  Now it's taking a nap with its little beak tucked into its wing.

Oh - there - it woke up and did a little stretch.  And settled back in to nap position.  Now a motorcycle went by and woke it up again.  Oh - and here comes Mom with some  more lunch.  Yay Mom!

This Is Ready Though

Rhubarb!

Rhubarb Crisp!

At least, what's left of it.

Not So Far Along

I'm a bit cheesed-off at my garden right now because I think it should be farther along than it is.

When I look at the garden I tend to see the things that shouldn't be there first.  Then the things that should be there aren't far enough along for me.  The things I think of as big aren't big yet.  There are some pretty big weeds though.  There aren't strawberries yet.

I have to keep reminding myself that it's still spring.

Just Checking

Just checking my blog to see if I posted anything new...

Nope.  Oh well.

Silly Person

In other news (which nobody but me cares about) I was feeling a bit over-padded so I'm doing the South Beach Diet.

I WANT BAKED GOODS!  COOKIES!  CINNAMON ROLLS!  PIZZA!  CUPCAKES!  I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT I WANT IT!!!!!!!!!!

A Cool Thing In The Garden

Look at what my cherry tree is doing:

Naturally I googled "red nodules on cherry leaves" and I found out what it is, courtesy of "Ant Man" (page down in the comments):


"Cherries generally have glands on their petioles. They secret nectar that attracts ants. Studies on various plants that have similar glands (like passionflower vines) indicate that the ants help the plant by killing and otherwise interfering with insects that would otherwise eat the plant. Sort of like the plant paying "protection" money to the ants.

Also, as another poster indicates, ants often farm aphids as well for honeydew. The cherry tree's strategy is to provide nectar directly to the ants, removing the "incentive" for ants to farm aphids, This way the cherry tree avoids the damage by the aphids that ants would otherwise protect."

It's working!  I think that is so cool.

Garden Adventure, 2010 Continues

Back on April 30th I finally got a chance to deal with some of the butterfly bushes I ordered in March.

I rarely do before and after pictures of anything because I'm so embarrassed by the state of the before in the picture that I don't want to show anybody what it was like, I just want to fix it.  It is nice, though, to have evidence of how far you've come I guess.  So this time I thought I'd go for it.

Unfortunately all the batteries in all the cameras were dead.  Fortunately my Flip camera was all charged up.  So below you can view digital evidence of half-assed gardening in action:

If I were a fully-assed gardener I would have planned ahead and prepared this bed a year ago.  Since that's now how I roll - I'm all about impulse plant purchases - I have to make it up as I go along.  The landscaping fabric plus mulch might smother the weeds beneath them but it might not.  If not, then the weeds could all make a beeline for the holes in the fabric around the plants and be even more competition for the poor little nursery-grown darlings.  So this is an experiment.

Weather Report

I just want to point out that four days ago it was snowing.  Yesterday and today it's in the eighties out and really humid.

I think the weather is trying to kill us.

Fay refuses to go outside just like she does when it's pouring rain.  She's not stupid.

Wherein I Become A Shill

I knew 120 million people were not waking up every morning and making dashi fresh with kombu and fish flakes.  It's not like it's super hard to make - though it is hard to make well.  Even so, I knew there had to be an instant powder that comes in a jar somewhere.

Enter Amazon.com.

This "Amazon Associates" thing I'm doing now has definitely increased traffic to their site.  I'm going there daily now.

If you've been reading this blog for a while you will know I'm interested in Japanese cooking.  All of the cookbooks I have contain a recipe for tamago, the Japanese rolled omelette often sliced and made into sushi.  While I enjoy eating tamago it's the skill I'm after - I want to learn how to make it well!  So I searched Amazon (because you can find anything on Amazon and read the reviews before you buy) and I bought this pan:



I haven't used it yet but it's very well made and has a non-stick coating.  It's also tiny and cute as hell.  Kawaii!!!  A recipe for tamago came with it in the box.  The number two ingredient was "Hondashi (Japanese instant soup base)"!

There it was!  I knew it!  Instant dashi!  Thank you again, Amazon!  Well, thank you, House of Rice who included the recipe with the pan.  But I wouldn't have known about The House of Rice without Amazon.

So back to Amazon I went and ordered some:


I think this discovery will open up a whole, new world of Japanese culinary success for me.

April Snow

This is what yesterday morning looked like.



The water in the bird bath is frozen solid.  The pear tree is not just fluffy white with snow, it's fluffy white with snow-covered blossoms.  I have other videos from the same morning in which you can hear the frogs croaking.

Everything is back to normal today - in my neighborhood, at least.  The frogs seem fine, the pear blossoms are fine.  Some areas of Vermont got over twenty inches of snow.  Can you imagine the snow load a leafy tree could hold?  Lots of power-outages north of here.

My Food Groups

Chocolate
Caramel
Bacon
Cheese
Potatoes
Agedashi Tofu

Drink Groups:
Coffee
Pellegrino
Hard Liquor

I've probably left something out.

Garden Report For 4/25/10, Etc.

Today's gardening was done in street clothes and flip flops because my entire body ached and I didn't want to get too serious.  I pruned the roses, cut back the physocarpus and planted the new viburnum.

Of course the area in which I planted the new viburnum will need to be thoroughly weeded in the next coming weeks.  I thought it and I could wait until after the mulch arrives.

I'm still a little scared about the butterfly bushes.  I'm also afraid that the place I've chosen for the irises will be too wet or too weedy for them.  I will do my best.  If it starts looking bad I'll just move them.

In other making news, I got fed-up and started a new Noro sock.  Just one at a time this time.

I'm still working on these knee socks.  They live in Cambridge and are what I knit when I'm there.  I'm making good progress on this - the back and sleeves are done and I'm just starting on the right front.  I just wanted to add a little, fun project so I started a simple sock.  The plan is to eventually finish a pair.