.Nancy’s operation went fine. The procedure is done with just a strong, valium like sedative so the patient is awake for the whole thing but feels nothing like pain – a bit of pressure but no hurting. It took a grand total of 15 minutes from the time I left her to when they called me from the waiting room to get her. Within a couple of hours, she said things were much brighter. They provided a series of eye drops which are used a few times a day and a clear patch to use for protection when sleeping. Other than that, nothing special. No bending over. We went back to the doc this AM for a followup and he confirmed that everything is progressing as expected. She has to go back again next week but the big surprise was when he said he’d do the other eye next month. Turns out that you usually get cataracts in both eyes and that you usually have them taken care of consecutively and then get a new prescription for eye glasses after both are done. That explains why whenever we told somebody that Nancy was getting the surgery they asked if this was the first eye or the second eye.
Took the covers off the garden and we didn’t escape without damage. Most of the young stuff got nailed. Mature plants survived just fine but stuff planted since mid January and, in some cases, even further back was hammered. I’m not really upset about that because we’re quickly approaching time to plant warm weather stuff so the space won’t sit idle for long. The pics are the cauliflowers I picked today. We’ll get 8-10 meal size packages for freezing from these. I set the napkin holder in to give you some scale. Combined they weigh just over 10 pounds. You might recall several months back I focused on a new cross between brussels and kale called FlowerSprouts. They didn’t make it. They were growing nicely but I could tell they would be much slower than anticipated and likely to run into trouble in the hot weather so we’ll just have to wait until next fall to try these.
The neighbor with the chickens (2) asked if I wanted the chicken poop he raked out of the pen. You bet I do! So maybe the eggs for lettuce trade I had envisioned is going to be a poop for lettuce deal instead. I’m ok with that. Should heat up the compost pile a bit but you wouldn’t think you’d get much volume from two chickens. We’ll see.
Made a nice batch of calcium chips for the tomatoes. A couple years back Nancy chucked her old Cuisinart because it was just too hard to change blades and remove the container from the base. I rescued it to use for chopping potting soil into the finer grade I prefer and it turns out it’s perfect for chopping up eggshells. Why would I want chopped eggshells? Anybody who’s grown tomatoes is aware that sometimes the fruit rots on the bottom or blossom end. It’s a condition called blossom rot. What causes it is a lack of calcium in the soil – enter the eggshells. I learned that sprinkling or crushing an eggshell in the same hole where I plant the tomato cures the problem. It works, no kidding. A little trick is to bake or nuke the shells for a couple of minutes before chopping to kill off the bacteria and make them a bit more brittle.
Nancy cashed in her second cacciatore coupon – doesn’t look like she’s going to forget about them. This time I made parsley instead of spinach pasta. I put it in the cuisinart dry instead of blanching it. The end result was good but the dough was much drier and harder to work with. That made the noodles less tender, which I liked a little better.
Sports: Just watched my first ever Rugby game. It was two teams that I have close ties to – Samoa and New Zealand. The guys that poured our driveway in Utah were from Samoa or Tonga (whatever) and I did a report on New Zealand in the fifth grade. I didn’t like it quite as much as regular football but way, way more than soccer. If you’ve ever watched a soccer game you understand why the fans can get really violent – run, run, run and score nothing. I think if there was a regular Sunday afternoon rugby game, I wouldn’t hate it so much when football season is over.
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