Happy Autumn!

And so another season begins. The last evening of Summer found me at the Uniontown picnic. Still trying to get over that excitement! Hah. I'm happy to report that my peach pie brought $15 in the dessert auction, the second highest of any of the desserts.

While I'm patting myself on the back, let me say, it must be working. The other day, daughter unit said she had a hard time recognizing me from across the field hockey field — I looked tall, and thin, and well-defined. Aw, shucks! The proof will be in the cholesterol test, though, which I am going to schedule for about 4 weeks from now. If this program has not worked, there's really nothing else I can do...well, one more thing, maybe, short of going on meds. We'll see.

Need to pick some greens for Mom. She liked them, which surprised me, because my mix is heavy on arugula among other things, and packs a bit of a kick. They're all growing so well now; I guess the weather has been perfect for it. I wonder if I'll have time to do the makeshift cloche I've been thinking about, to extend the season into November? Come pick some!

Hope your Summer was a good one, gentle readers, and that your Autumn is beautifully exciting.

(Garden) Note To Self

Turnips and salad greens do not good companions make; the turnips attract bugs that eat holes in their leaves, and they're happy to sample the lettuces as well. No big problem this time; there's plenty of greens on the other side of the aisle, and it was mostly arugula (Roquette) next to the turnips, and there's still plenty of that, if somewhat perforated. I took five bags of greens to the family Sunday.

Sunday (sigh)

I think I need a new strategy. It’s always been hard for me to be alone on Sunday afternoons, probably because they were such a special family time when I was growing up. Lunch was always (and still is) a big home-cooked meal, more like dinner. And afterwards, a drive out to the country to visit my uncles (country then, suburbs now), or to Dundalk to see Aunt Mary and Uncle George, who would give us Cokes (!). Sometimes my Dad and I would just drive down to the waterfront in Baltimore and look at the big ships; once I remember we walked all around the deck of an old abandoned freighter, God knows how we got onto it. Of course, they were safer, less barbed-wire times then. And sometimes we’d make the long drive out to Finksburg to visit Detzinka and Streetchek, on their real farm, at the end of a long dirt road that wound past a tiny cemetery plot. It had cold running water and a wood-fired stove and a nice flower garden and apple orchard and black walnut trees. Detzinka, who then must have been in her 70s and smelled of earth and fire and sweat, would kill copperheads with a spade. (Odd that I ended up living in Finksburg for a time; I remember house-hunting there, and feeling the spot where that farm used to be, a hint of the stream and ridge and a grassy road I remembered, but more than that, a spirit, probably Detzinka herself tapping me on the shoulder.) The road, 140, to that farm was the same we would sometimes take to Gettysburg, and in either case there was a stop at Twin Kiss for soft ice cream and homemade root beer in frosted glass mugs. And Sunday night was always pizza from Gil’s, except when it was corned beef sandwiches if Dad and I were downtown and stopped on Lombard Street; he had his favorites, this deli for bread, that for pickles, and another for the corned beef.

Nowadays, it’s as often as not a long, lonesome ride home from the old house in Overlea after lunch on Sundays. But I’m happy to still have that tradition, that sense of family, if only for a short hour each week. And I’m sure glad the dogs are here when I get home.

Got Them No Blueberry Blues

Darn. I tried to order some new blueberry bushes to replace the ones that were lost to the drought, and everyone was sold out for the season. Next spring, I guess.

On a brighter (greener) note, I enjoyed some delicious turnip greens from the garden with my dinner. And this weekend will be enjoying salads with fresh baby greens and tomatoes and peppers. The fall planting is doing very well. I'll be packaging up lots of greens — lettuces, arugula ("the rocket plant"), European greens, kale — to take to la famille on Sunday. Sometimes it's nice to have a gardener in the family, when the crop is good!

Officially...

5:51 a.m. EDT/9:51GMT, Sunday, September 23rd.

Although it's surely in the air already. Looks, feels, and smells like it. But I will sit by as the opening of archery season comes and goes this Saturday, with no place to hunt in Maryland. And no time anyway.

Oh, well, 9/22 should be a good night to burn that brush pile that's been accumulating, a nice official send-off to summer, and welcoming of autumn. Think I'll do that.

As If We Didn't Know...

Organic Tomatoes are Healthier

A 10-year study by the University of California at Davis found that organic tomatoes have higher levels of key nutrients than their conventionally grown counterparts.

The study, published in the Journal of Agriculture and Food Chemistry on June 23, 2007, found higher levels of flavonoids - substances that stimulate health-protective antioxidant activity in the body - in tomatoes grown organically. The study found that the flavonoids quecetin and kaempferol were on average 79 and 97 percent higher, respectively.

from DrWeil.com