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Arugula Nyquil smoothies

 The Very Best of Harry Belafonte https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O98x7Zpjx4M is actually striking a good note to plink a few notes on the keyboard. We'll have to see if the rest of my choices for music blend or are distractions.
  Last week's sinuses weeping from the smoke devolved quickly into an ugly little cold. Besides making the owners of Kleenex and NyQuil wealthy I've accomplished very little. I can best describe it without getting gross as feeling like someone shoved a large pizza up my nose. Oddly, there are moments within a cold when you feel wildly manic and think "jeez let's just get caught up right now".  Two minutes later your swaying and thinking "ooow going down". Certainly not conducive to running that heavy equipment they always warn you about - but that wasn't really on the agenda anyway so.
  The garden has kindly provided this week without demanding too much.  The recently planted arugula is going great guns and gave Deb and me a couple of nice salads.  I've heard of grilling it but I'll have to look up what is meant by that as it seems improbable being little more than a lettuce in texture.  An ear of corn was plucked and the kernels added to one of those salads.  The corn wasn't supposed to be a sweet corn only a semi sweet that was about where my impaired palate would put it.  It was also supposed to be blue and this was a pale white so more will have to be picked and tried before I can give it a good or bad review. 
  Cooper just barked to go out and chased a squirrel from the garden.  Good boy! I feel a bit bad for the squirrels as to beat Cooper to the fence they have to jump from the top of the sunflowers and hit the ground running. The sunflowers are two lovely 6 foot tall stalks with dinner plate size flowers. Thus the jump is Olympic quality - but they do it and keep coming back.  Oddly, the object of their desire the seeds are - (in searching for a proper size reference all I can offer is the dayquil tablets on my desk - hmmm!) - let's say fairly large but the actual kernel within is tiny. In a delusional/manic attempt this week I cut one head, brined and roasted the seeds. Neither brining nor roasting makes the kernel larger thus I have a bowl of salty sunflower shells. Not actually worse than pretzels but...
  The butternut squash won't go as far into winter as I had thought but that is actually a good thing. See I was walking the dogs the other day in my Nyquil-haze. (And yes the dogs take full advantage of my haze by cleaning up all those tasty tidbits and dead mice I normally steer them away from - I think Callie is gaining weight this week!) My haze was broken by a neighbor pulling his truck over and shouting he had a melon for me. Huh! what? I finally recognized the guy as one of the new couples in the neighborhood with a garden. Last year they grew these great big white honeydews that were the type of sweet that you can only get from a garden. The one the wife had given me last year was so wonderful I saved the seeds and actually planned to try grow 'em.  A little investigating showed that the melon was a hybrid thus the seeds wouldn't likely give me the same melon. But the flavor! Ah, it broke my avoidance of growing melons due to past poor performance. It was the reason I tried to get watermelons to be part of a three sisters combo with the corn this year.  I actually have a small watermelon vine out there in the corn patch but unless global warming continues through this December, I'm not eating watermelon from  my garden.
  But I digress - let's blame the haze. The fellow in the truck's garden had suffered as much as every other garden in the neighborhood and I knew it but here he was telling me to come by for "my melon". Social capital is a weird and wonderful thing. I gave him somethings from my garden last year.  I can't recall what and certainly nothing brilliant and here he was excited to make sure I came by to get a delicious melon. But wait there's more - nope not 2 Ginsu knives, better. After dropping off the dogs I headed over to get my melon and Tom on the next block yells, "Hey wait I got tomatoes for you". Tom doesn't really have a garden per se and I wouldn't have ever met him except for his apple tree. He has a golden delicious apple tree that struggles to exist under the other trees in his backyard.  He has no use for it but the apples are easily the best in the neighborhood. I started picking them a couple of years back and trying to reciprocate with odds and ends from the garden again nothing brilliant. While here he is calling me over to give me a small bag of tomatoes. Then he says "do you like poblanos?" - "No - "I love them!" I realize that between the Mums and the other well manicured flowers edging his lawn he's got tomatoes, peppers, and a few other veggies. Still waters run deep.
  In a week when both my garden and my energy were ebbing low my social capital took up the slack. The melon made a couple of nice breakfasts for Deb and me mixed with some strawberries from our garden. (The strawberry plants were a kindness from Nathan at the Mennonite garden - to extend the path of the kindnesses!) The tomatoes hit the arugula salad at a perfect time when my own plants were without ripe fruit. Ah and the poblanos they're going into some tacos tonight.  Good neighbors will get you through tough times, make sure and grow lots of 'em!
 I never in all of that managed to explain why the butternut squash won't go as far. Simply it's one of the few things the garden has for sharing right now. I've got to bring a couple to my kind neighbors who made an other wise unpleasant week a little brighter.
 Dixie Chicks is on and playing Travelin Soldier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3b1AQFsPcc . I think the Dixie Chicks got a raw deal when Iheart radio and a number of Country radio stations boycotted their music https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixie_Chicks#Boycott . Their music is great, Travelin Soldier is deeply poignant, and I think they were right in their opposition to the Iraq war.
 I received a notice yesterday that Senator Rand Paul has been able to get an amendment repealing authorization of the use of force in Afghanistan and Iraq up for a vote.  If you are like me and think 16 years of bombing every rock in Afghanistan and wasting our youth in Iraq is enough please call your Senator. 202-224-3121 will get you right through. I'm proud of my nephew and all who served there, our politicians - not so much!  16 years, our longest war for oil and opium, tribal and sectarian bigots, corrupt politicians - not for me thanks!
  Debs off to the dentist (or maybe she just really wants to get away from her very needy patient/husband!) it might just be the dayquil talking but maybe I can surprise her by showering and cleaning the house. I think I might just be able to get caught up. Doug A.

 

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