A Post From a Ghost of Bloggers Past

The best thing about okra...

You may have noticed the dearth of blogging in this little corner. It was not intentional. When I'm out in the garden, pursuing my personal vendetta against stink vine for instance, drunk on sunshine and great ideas, I'll promise myself that as soon as I go inside and wash the grime off, I'll sit down and wow you with my brilliance. Maybe exhaustion has a withering effect on great ideas because there's been nothing for weeks months now.

April...Getting started

With the OC retired and back in residence, all the little things that I let slide in his absence are being taken care of. Stuff grows in Florida. And how! Especially weeds. Stink vine is a pretty little creeping weed that crawls across the ground, knitting itself in every couple of feet, until it covers a huge area with it's ingratiating web. When you pull it up it lets off an odor that would choke a horse. Sneaky, because the leaves are very pretty,but in no time flat it can take over and choke out the good stuff unless you let it know who's boss. We usually dump garden debris at the back, on or near the compost pile. But stink vine goes straight into a bag for the garden waste collection. Let it take over the world at the landfill, not here!

And in the usual way of one thing leading to another, gardening has led to more experiments in the kitchen. For one thing, there's a man in the house who needs regular feeding so meals once again are a daily occurrence. They were spotty, at best, when it was just me. Now, with an appreciative eater in the house (who also does dishes) meals are fun again.  In addition to fools, there's another thing the OC does not suffer gladly: dull tools. Ergo, my kitchen, since his return, is full of lethal weapons. I've been thinking I should buy stock in the company that manufactures bandaids. The occasional sprinkle of blood here, small piece of finger there notwithstanding, we've been having some delicious fare. Slicing the cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and eggplant that the garden has produced is also a lot easier with a sharp knife.with regular healthy eating the OC has lost some weight. Unfortunately, it didn't go far. It settled on me.

The biggest hit from the garden has been kale. My favorite salad of the summer is made with kale, garlic, pecorino Romano, raisins and walnuts. When beets were in season I found a beet and carrot salad recipe that was out of this world. I'll put them on Molly and Lily in the Kitchen, where, even though there's been scant evidence of me in recent times, there's been even less of Lily.

At the other end of the scale we had okra, which is not even on my cooking radar, but beggars can't be choosers and The Bean, who did all the donkey work in getting the garden started for us, thought we should have okra. It grew beautifully but when I added it to a salad (it oozes a mucous-y sticky substance that does nothing to whet your appetite,) the OC bluntly told me that if he wanted snot in his food he had his own supply, thank you very much. In the interests of waste not, want not, I had to choke down the rest of that salad myself! Okra does have one redeeming quality --- the most beautiful flower!

And here's another beautiful flower who, sadly, isn't growing in our garden.......but we're grateful for regular updates!

Now that I've broken the long silence, maybe I'll get back to more regular blogging. Meanwhile, "Happy (recent) Birthday" to Isabelle and greetings to the other die-hards who have doggedly hung in there during the drought!