I just came across some videos of my son, Caleb, playing his mandolin. I believe this was a bluegrass band competition in Southern Pines last month. He has moved on from this band, but you can bet he's still picking whenever he gets a chance.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8W70VJSHtwI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULI9R3WTqo8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLpTO5TlwEA
Monday, November 9, 2015
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Ways with carrots
I see part of my duty as "household nutritionist" to figure out a way to get my husband to eat his carrots, which he claims "ain't got much flavor." My most successful strategy is to grate them into slaw with the cabbage. Probably the next most successful strategy is to grate them and add them to soups. (I especially like them grated in split pea soup or navy bean soup.) I have had a little success with a couple of other ways recently. I sliced them and microwaved them in a little water. I used two different seasoning groups, and both were eaten.
Group I
Group II
Do you like carrots?
Group I
- paprika
- chili powder
- cumin
- butter
- salt
- pepper
- brown sugar
Group II
- sage
- butter
- elephant garlic (just a little; I started to say "a little elephant garlic," but that made it sound like a small elephant rather than a small amount of garlic)
- salt
- pepper
- extra sharp white cheddar cheese
Do you like carrots?
Thursday, November 5, 2015
Time change and less daylight
Switching back and forth to Daylight Saving Time used to bother me in the spring when we would "lose" an hour. But now, both the spring and the fall change seem to get me a bit off kilter. The daylight hours are getting shorter anyway, so when I hang clothes on the line, I have to tell myself that even though the clock says 9:00, it's just like last week's 10:00, so they will not have as long to dry. Not that I've been able to dry any clothes on the line this week. I hang them on the line only to bring them in wet when they get drizzled on. It didn't drizzle today, but it was cloudy and the clothes were still damp at sundown. Some people not far west of here were getting sunshine this afternoon, so hopefully we'll see some here by tomorrow. At first the forecast was for rain Monday and drizzle Tuesday, and then partly cloudy Wednesday. It seemed that every time I looked, the drizzle was extended another day. Hopefully, we're done with that for a few days.
Here's what's been going on in the backyard.
I transplanted some elephant garlic from my Mom's garlic bed. (I don't know what caused the crater. It doesn't quite look like a dog track. It just looks like a miniature sinkhole.)
Here's what's been going on in the backyard.
I transplanted some elephant garlic from my Mom's garlic bed. (I don't know what caused the crater. It doesn't quite look like a dog track. It just looks like a miniature sinkhole.)
I added more leaves to the compost pile.
I have a small patch of turnips and collards.
And the one volunteer zinnia which I covered when we had our frost has been rewarding me with lovely pink blooms.
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
Oriental persimmons
Growing up, I knew persimmons as the fall fruit that was used in one way--persimmon pudding. Persimmon pudding is a syrupy sweet, dark, dense, baked pudding. If you think about fluffy puddings such as banana pudding or instant puddings, you are in the wrong category for persimmon pudding.
Persimmon trees, in my experience, just grew on their own but were guarded as diligently as was a planted tree if they yielded a good quality fruit. The fruit could vary quite a bit from one tree to another. Mom happens to have one that has an excellent fruit.
The fruits are good fresh, provided you let them fully ripen, and a light frost is thought to sweeten them. That was the other thing about persimmons. They are renowned for their astringency and everyone knew if you ate them green it would "turn your mouth inside out." The persimmon I was most familiar with was the small persimmon that is native here (in the eastern US). However, I knew of one Oriental persimmon, though I didn't really know what the fruit was at the time. On the route to my school, there was a lovely little house whose brick walls were painted a light green color. Random bricks were turned to protrude beyond the wall surface, which gave the house a unique look. Between the little semi-circle drive and the street, there was a bush which held lovely orange fruits. I thought the whole scene was wonderful. (Amazingly, all these years later the house is still there and is still a light green, though the little persimmon bush is gone and the property is not as well maintained. Perhaps the tree that is there now is what started out as the little bush. I don't think I ever see fruit on it now, though. Another thoroughly amazing thing is that I can look up the street view on Google Maps and see that little house at any time--technology I wouldn't even have imagined back then.)
I decided I might have room on my property for an Oriental persimmon tree since they are supposed to take up less space than the native persimmons. I planted one and it has borne fruit, but in my estimation it doesn't hold a patch on the native persimmon. The mockingbird seems to like it, and one year I let the bird have them. One blogger I know said he considered it a more "delicate" flavor. Okay, I tried to think of it as delicate rather than watery or anemic. I'm still not convinced that it's quite worth the effort I've put in to caring for it, but I did decide to pick the few that I had this year before the birds got them. I only had a few. I don't know if the hailstorm affected the number of blooms or whether the blooms dropped for some other reason. Sometimes they tend to drop off in a dry spell. I ate one and it had a stringy texture and watery consistency (but a "delicate" flavor!). Then I came across a blog that had a "Quinoa Pudding with Orange Blossom Water, Persimmon and Pistachios." That looked interesting. Maybe I will have to rethink the Oriental persimmon.
Here are the fruits along with a very small green tomato.
Persimmon trees, in my experience, just grew on their own but were guarded as diligently as was a planted tree if they yielded a good quality fruit. The fruit could vary quite a bit from one tree to another. Mom happens to have one that has an excellent fruit.
The fruits are good fresh, provided you let them fully ripen, and a light frost is thought to sweeten them. That was the other thing about persimmons. They are renowned for their astringency and everyone knew if you ate them green it would "turn your mouth inside out." The persimmon I was most familiar with was the small persimmon that is native here (in the eastern US). However, I knew of one Oriental persimmon, though I didn't really know what the fruit was at the time. On the route to my school, there was a lovely little house whose brick walls were painted a light green color. Random bricks were turned to protrude beyond the wall surface, which gave the house a unique look. Between the little semi-circle drive and the street, there was a bush which held lovely orange fruits. I thought the whole scene was wonderful. (Amazingly, all these years later the house is still there and is still a light green, though the little persimmon bush is gone and the property is not as well maintained. Perhaps the tree that is there now is what started out as the little bush. I don't think I ever see fruit on it now, though. Another thoroughly amazing thing is that I can look up the street view on Google Maps and see that little house at any time--technology I wouldn't even have imagined back then.)
I decided I might have room on my property for an Oriental persimmon tree since they are supposed to take up less space than the native persimmons. I planted one and it has borne fruit, but in my estimation it doesn't hold a patch on the native persimmon. The mockingbird seems to like it, and one year I let the bird have them. One blogger I know said he considered it a more "delicate" flavor. Okay, I tried to think of it as delicate rather than watery or anemic. I'm still not convinced that it's quite worth the effort I've put in to caring for it, but I did decide to pick the few that I had this year before the birds got them. I only had a few. I don't know if the hailstorm affected the number of blooms or whether the blooms dropped for some other reason. Sometimes they tend to drop off in a dry spell. I ate one and it had a stringy texture and watery consistency (but a "delicate" flavor!). Then I came across a blog that had a "Quinoa Pudding with Orange Blossom Water, Persimmon and Pistachios." That looked interesting. Maybe I will have to rethink the Oriental persimmon.
Here are the fruits along with a very small green tomato.
I picked those two before the first frost, but left this one till this week. It had split a little, maybe from the rain we've had recently.
The leaves turn a nice yellow in the fall. When I took this picture this evening, I noticed a fourth fruit still in the tree. I started to pick it, but since it was split, too, I decided to leave it for the birds.
Thursday, October 29, 2015
Effect of weather on leaf color
Somewhere I read that cooler weather earlier will bring out the red in the leaves. I noticed that this year with my red maple. We had a few really cool days earlier in the season and I got some red and burgundy color in the maple whereas last year, the same maple had a lot of yellow. Here are 2 pictures--the first picture is this year and the second picture is last year. Quite a difference.
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
A "sensitive plant" mystery
A few days ago, I was standing near my weedy and overgrown mixed border. I could hear little clicking sounds all about. Just as I looked in the direction of one click, I would hear one in the opposite direction. I first assumed I was hearing grasshoppers or crickets or some sort of insect making a clicking noise. I kept observing and listening. I think my first clue was not seeing any insects, and maybe I actually heard the miniscule shower of seeds hitting surrounding plants. I was amazed to realize the clicking sound was made as the seed pods of the weed known as partridge pea or sensitive plant (chamaecrista genus, possibly chamaecrista nictitans?) burst open and spewed their seeds about. I was amused and in awe.
If you've ever walked through a patch of these plants in the summer, you might have noticed how the foliage kind of withers in response to being touched or brushed against. Some species are more dramatic than others. I remember working in a youth program in the Uwharrie Forest and noticing some plants with larger blooms and a much more immediate and dramatic movement (possibly chamaecrista fasciculate?) than the ones that grew around our house. If you stop and think about it, most movement done by a plant is so slow you can't actually watch it happen--the budding of leaves, the adding of another year's growth. It's fascinating to see a plant that can make a quick movement.
It's also interesting to me that there were particular plants that I "liked" as a child. The sensitive plant was one of them. I think I might have thought the leaves looked a little like miniature palm branches (I could reenact Palm Sunday on a miniature scale) or mini mimosa branches. I think my older siblings or my mother showed me how the leaves withered in response to being handled. I'm pretty sure I thought that was cool. I also liked the tiny yellow flowers that grew underneath the foliage. I had favorite colors, but I also had favorite "shades" of colors and favorite combinations of colors. That shade of yellow was particularly gratifying to me, especially against the green foliage. I think we also liked any plant that formed pods, too, because we could use them as pretend food in our imaginative play. It's a nice plant that I liked then and I like now, though I do treat it as a weed for my compost pile now.
Here is a close-up from my border of the dried pods--some closed, some curled after spewing their seeds. Clicking mystery solved.
If you've ever walked through a patch of these plants in the summer, you might have noticed how the foliage kind of withers in response to being touched or brushed against. Some species are more dramatic than others. I remember working in a youth program in the Uwharrie Forest and noticing some plants with larger blooms and a much more immediate and dramatic movement (possibly chamaecrista fasciculate?) than the ones that grew around our house. If you stop and think about it, most movement done by a plant is so slow you can't actually watch it happen--the budding of leaves, the adding of another year's growth. It's fascinating to see a plant that can make a quick movement.
It's also interesting to me that there were particular plants that I "liked" as a child. The sensitive plant was one of them. I think I might have thought the leaves looked a little like miniature palm branches (I could reenact Palm Sunday on a miniature scale) or mini mimosa branches. I think my older siblings or my mother showed me how the leaves withered in response to being handled. I'm pretty sure I thought that was cool. I also liked the tiny yellow flowers that grew underneath the foliage. I had favorite colors, but I also had favorite "shades" of colors and favorite combinations of colors. That shade of yellow was particularly gratifying to me, especially against the green foliage. I think we also liked any plant that formed pods, too, because we could use them as pretend food in our imaginative play. It's a nice plant that I liked then and I like now, though I do treat it as a weed for my compost pile now.
Here is a close-up from my border of the dried pods--some closed, some curled after spewing their seeds. Clicking mystery solved.
Tuesday, October 27, 2015
Volunteer cilantro
The other day when I added some sugar maple leaves and meal-moth-infested rice to my garden compost pile, I noticed some little seedlings around the edge of the pile. It was cilantro that sprouted from the seeds of the old cilantro stalks that I had put on the pile in spring.
I decided that was better than planting them myself, and I moved the compost pile over to another spot to give the area to the cilantro.
(Here's the newly moved pile (that has an addition of sugar maple leaves, infested rice, infested peanuts, kitchen scraps, weeds, and out-of-date powdered sugar underneath the layers of old pile with its briars and golden bell branches.))
I stuck some sticks from the compost pile upright to sort of mark some of the cilantro, and a day or two later I noticed some worm or snail had nipped off the marked ones. Maybe some of the others will make it. I will just have to weed out the hen bit that is also germinating like crazy.
Cilantro will over winter here in central NC.
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