What's neat about this greenhouse is the wall of rocks. To hold the sun's heat and reflect it into the room's volume all night or on long cold days. My "greenhouse" right now is a shelf with lights for small tomato seedlings and a huge tray of Red Morpheous Marigolds I grew from seeds in one of the milk jugs. And on that subject, all but 3 out of the 25 jugs germinated. Big success. Everything else is in tidy rows on the north facing front porch. Flats have been divided and repotted into bigger 4 inch pots. Sunday I may finally have a day at home to start planting things.
Today at Whole Foods I bought 4 pounds of big fat carrots from California. And 5 gigantic red beets to roast in the oven and eat ice cold with vinegar and oil. Plus a small bag of French shallots to plant in my garden. To grow into bunches of shallots. I plan to roast a big cast iron pan of carrots in the oven with butter. Mark Bittman recipe. Lunches this week have been cold rice with peas and big salads with lots of sliced carrots.
Today G and I had lunch in a fine restaurant down in Portland. While we ate and chatted, I watched almost all the others using their phones. No talking. What has happened to people??? When is a phone message more relevant than the person(s) sitting with you at the table?
G had Rare Seared Tuna with a salad of red bliss potatoes, French green beans, radish slices and fresh made mayo with grated hard boiled egg yolk. I had panko chicken gyro with Greek yogurt sauce (needed more cucumber) the bread was too well crisped (difficult to bite and chew) and the homemade potato chips missed the mark. But the majority of the food was fresh and good tasting.
We had an appointment with our Trust Attorney. He had to run off copies so we took a walk over to South Street Linen (owned by three artists who paint) and I tried on clothing I have been admiring online for years. Then back to the law office and then over to Walter's for lunch. Then to Trader Joe's for cans of marinara and then Whole Foods for veggies. I asked for Aveeno soap and the clerk at Whole Foods said "Walmart....you do know how to get there don't you?" In such a sneering voice. I actually wished I had had my phone so I could record her and report her to the manager. Why on Earth would a person be like that???
The regular Joe at Rite Aid walked all over the store to try and find my soap. Polite and not the least bit of attitude. Guess where I'll go next time I need soap?
Work tomorrow and I have a load of laundry to do. We've had a week of heat, too much sun plus humidity. Work was awful (for me) on Thursday--80 plus and still. I thought I had heat stroke for awhile there. A cooling breeze is blowing through the house right now--moving all the drywall dust and paint fumes around. No workers for the next two days.
All of my crab apple trees are in complete flower. Very, very pretty. Things are sending up shoots in the flower beds and I seem to be having a very good Lily of the Valley year. Wo Peng my Tree Peony is standing taller than he has in the 10 or more years he has lived here with me. Perhaps he'll make his first flower this year? Wouldn't that be amazing?
So, get out there and dig in the dirt. Okay?
Yup, I've been digging in the dirt the past couple of days, have my annual flower gardens set up. Now I'm lame from the getting up and down and carrying heavy water buckets to one of the gardens where the hose doesn't reach. Time to rest now, sure do miss the days of being agile!
ReplyDeleteI cannot believe the clerk that answered you in such a manner, grrrr!