Semi-Local Dinner

There's a good probability of frost tonight, so I went out and collected tomatoes (2 lb 9 oz worth!), lettuce, radishes, and lima beans tonight by the light of the full moon, and the neighbor's motion sensors.

We had a completely backyard salad of radishes, lettuce, and a window-sill-ripened tomato. The grocery-store baked potato was topped with onion, mushrooms, and greens from the radishes sauteed in butter. The sweet-potato-pear salad contained our sweet potatoes and home-canned pears from a neighbor's yard, and pecans from the farmer's market (recipe: Peel and cube a few cups of sweet potatoes. Microwave in the sugar syrup from the canned pears until soft. Add the pears (cubed) and cook 2 more minutes. Add chopped pecans and dried cranberries or golden raisins. Pour off the syrup and sauce with unsweetened plain yogurt. MMM). The catfish was American, and probably from Mississippi, where much of it is grown in ponds near the river. The corn was from a grocery-store frozen bag. So dinner was as semi-local as I could make it.

It is fun to try and figure out how much you can do with what you have. I'm really glad I do not have to live on what I can grow, but it is fun to grow it.

Hypercompe scribonia

While I was digging up the sweet potatoes I found this little wooly caterpillar in the leaves and carefully set it aside for further study. It will hopefully grow up into a Giant Leopard Moth!

God had fun making insects, undeniably. The larva has long, fur-like shiny bristles and red rings on its skin. The adult is white with black leopard spots, iridescent blue, white, and black legs, and an orange, blue, and black body. What a magnificent creature! It is worth the loss of a few marigolds to find one of these.

Sweet Potatoes, Baby!

Here is last year's crop of sweet potatoes. I was pleased to find that planting the slips sprouting from a store-bought sweet potato gone too long in the pantry actually produced potatoes in our clay soil!

Here is this year's crop (plus a few more dug this afternoon). It is now

drying/curing in the attic. This is a little over 10 pounds of sweet potatoes. Why so many more? I dug 2 or 3 bags of store-bought "garden soil" into the main bed this year, along with compost and lots of leaves. Also and more critically, I buried the roots of each slip in a large clump of potting soil, so the roots could push through. Even so, I found some larger narrow ones growing in the clay, so the soil is gradually improving. It would take years of patient soil amendment to really get this right. I planted these in the shade, in the wettest part of the bed in a very wet year, and it has been quite cool, so I did not expect much. I only dug up 2 rotten ones! God blesses us in many ways.

Quiet Days

We've had our first frost, but it was light here in the city and hit very few of my plants. It seemed to knock back the cabbage worms a little, though. We actually had a full week of sun this past week for the first time in ages! Gorgeous weather. I've only harvested a few ounces of tomatoes so far this month. I wanted to bring in the sweet potatoes today, but it probably will not happen.

Husband and I are both sick. No, it is not the over-hyped swine flu, though I'm sure every sniffle at the doctors' offices is being reported as swine flu. This is a sinus infection, without fever or GI involvement. We're sleeping it off, and using lots of tissues, and hoping to get back out in the sun soon.

Kids These Days

Imagine! November first, and the jack o'lanterns escaped unscathed! Gorgeous day. We went to the park again to watch happy dogs chase balls and humans chase frisbees. People were reading and napping in the warm sunshine. Costumed percussionists grooved up at the edge of the war memorial. A fire breather was there, spitting fire for the masses. The ice cream truck was available in case of emergency. What fun!