Wednesday, July 23, 2014

The Ten Days in July Photo Dump

Or was it two weeks? It all blends together...






Oscar's Chair's pyre on Saturday night...

Sunday was pull the red onions, wax the car, and bring Cooper home after he spent a week at Camp Kivela.






Came home on Thursday and the buck had eaten my Daylilly blooms!

Squash, onion, and pepperoni pizza anyone?

So Saturday I start working in the garden and I'm whiny, cranky, and emotional -- I figured I either had PMS or was dehydrated, and decided to go with the dehydration. Since I was worthless at home, decided to go fro a drive. Drank half a gallon of coffee and water on the hour plus long back way drive to Quonochataug and I still hadn't had the urge to pee, so that diagnosis seemed accurate, and by this point felt much better.

On the way home I came across a Daylilly garden that was open to the public (as a fundraiser for the Trust for Public Gardens or some such thing), and I bought some more! I may have a problem.

The house was a cool 18th century Cape set way off the road.

Some pics from Grindstone Hill Road / Chester Main Road neighborhood of North Stonington. One of the more picturesque back roads I've found, I guess the neighborhood culture has maintained a tradition of keeping fields cleared right up to the stone walls. As pastoral as it is, over grown stone walls provide a lot of wildlife habitat (as long as every few years they're cut back so they remain reasonable size corridors).





Before I left Saturday, I had pulled the onions. Now I needed to move them so I could dig in grass clippings from the dump. Moved all the white onions up to the deck to cure in the sun for a couple days before I brought them inside.


As I was wondering what to do as I wound down from garden work, April texted that they were going to the Rhode Island Balloon festival. It was every thing I could do to resist joining these kids in mobbing the Dalmatian puppy...








On my way to work at Baker's Dozen drive thru...kind of liked the composition of the sun going across my face.








Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Stress & Brain Scarcity

NPR has been having a good series the last couple weeks on stress, and I particularly liked a story a couple days ago (http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2014/07/14/330434597/this-is-your-stressed-out-brain-on-scarcity)

"When you're very lonely, or when you're hungry, or when you're poor, a large portion of the day is spent entertaining thoughts related to the source of your scarcity. If you're lonely, you spend a big part of the day worrying about how to make social connections, which is actually distracting you from other things." And if you're poor, you worry about money. Constantly.



And they referenced this older story (http://www.npr.org/2014/01/02/259082836/how-scarcity-mentaly-affects-our-thinking-behavior)

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Let's hear now about a new book that explores a major source of stress. The book is called "Scarcity," and it's a look at what happens to us when we're pressured with too little time or too little money. The authors say scarcity actually changes how we think. NPR's social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam explains.

SHANKAR VEDANTAM, BYLINE: Each September, the state of Massachusetts asks one thing from "Scarcity" author and Harvard economist Sendhil Mullainathan: to renew his car inspection sticker. And each year, this recipient of the MacArthur Genius Award does the same thing. He's really busy so on each day leading up to the expiration of the sticker, he tells himself he'll attend to it the next day.

SENDHIL MULLAINATHAN: One more day of delay - I mean, what's the big deal?

VEDANTAM: Pretty soon, Mullainathan finds himself driving around Boston with an expired sticker.

MULLAINATHAN: The sticker is three months expired and now, you're doing all sorts of stuff; like, you're driving down the street - oh, look, there's a cop. I'd better make a right turn so he doesn't see my expired sticker.

VEDANTAM: Turning the wrong way makes Mullainathan late for a meeting, or late for class. Now, he has to spend time fixing the mistake, rescheduling meetings with students, playing catch-up. His next day gets even busier. Now, he definitely doesn't have time to fix that sticker.

MULLAINATHAN: I do this constantly. Right now, I've got a meeting to get to. I don't have the time to replace the sticker whereas the truth is, the enormous amount of distortions I've now made for the last three months because of the stupid sticker, add up to five times as much time as I would've spent just going and having it fixed.

Saturday, July 12, 2014

Perfect Man...


They forgot to include if he can cook :D

Yukon Golds, carrots, and Red Onion with olive oil and basil, oregano, and thyme put in for 25 minutes @ 450.
Then added the summer squash and sweet pepper in oil with salt and pepper, along with the chicken thighs with oil, same seasonings as above, plus salt and paprika, for another 30 minutes.
All veggies and herbs except the carrots and paprika were from the garden.
They forgot to add, "If he gardens" too.

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Garden Updates

Maybe photos if I get around to it...

I am still (barely) picking "Summer Bib" lettuce. Definitely need at least two six packs of that next year! I have enough for tomorrow's lunch, we'll see how it's doing after a weekend to recover from picking. All the other varieties have bolted, though the Red Romaine just yesterday so that's another excellent variety!

Picked two small strawberries today (first I've had in years, snuck a six pack of an everbearing in), and had the first red cherry & early girl toms but slugs or something had already sampled them.

Been picking small summer squash since Monday.

Not bad at all for July 10th!

Sunday, July 6, 2014

Daylillies and Garden and Stuff

Daylilllies seem a few days late this year, which doesn't surprise me with the late spring and cool June. July 5th for the first Daylilly! (I didn't even put in the A/C until July 1st).





Two bins of grass clippings from the dump this weekend:

Dug them into the east pea bed that didn't really do well this spring.
This is about as close to a "show garden" as I get :)




Had poison ivy getting into a few of the red cabbages, better safe than sorry so I tore them out when I weeded:

Work continues on building rows:

I will be harvesting zukes & yellow squash this week.

Photo Dump from last week...
One nice lunch:

Tiger lillies by the driveway!

And grilled chicken salad for lunch...


July 4th morning harvest...before the rain moved in! 1/10th of an inch over the previous three weeks, 1/4" the night before, smidge over 1.5" on the 4th!

Breakfast:

Then I hung up herbs before going to Nadine's party:

And made a potato pizza that night: