Our new neighbor is turning out to be an interesting character. Gretchen is a serious Vegan and baker. In Jersey she owned a vegan bakery for 10 years and has a fairly strong on-line presence on the subject now. You can check it out at http://www.gretchensveganbaker.com. On Utube it’s wwwutube.com/c/GretchensBakery. Her last entry was for an apple upside down cake which is incredible. The other night she knocked on the door with 2 pieces. She explained that she makes stuff for her shows and needs somebody to eat up the left overs. Would we please mind? and if it get’s too much just tell her we’re being overloaded. So far that’s not a problem. Although she’s a dessert specialist, can’t wait to see what she does with the garden veggies. She picked some turnips this week and commented on how tender and delicious they were. We’re always had way too much coming out of the garden but I’m thinking maybe that problem is solved.
I think I’m mostly over the last kidney stone attack. It totally plugged me up which led me to an emergency visit to the urologist for a catheter. My day to day rhythm was totally messed up as I tried to keep my system flushed. The doc prescribed a med which caused me to lose stability and nearly pass out several times. I quit taking that and have had no problems since. Bad week though.
Got some good stuff popping in the garden now. The weather has cooled so my winter stuff is now surviving. The Swiss chard is looking great with over a dozen healthy looking seedlings in the garden. Also I tried a row of spinach and it looks like that seed is germinating just fine. It’s always marginal with spinach seed which doesn’t have much of a shelf life. I soaked the seeds overnight before planting and that seems to have done the job. Also put in the first fennel plants. Never grown them before so really don’t know what to expect. I read a caution that they may deplete the soil around them of nutrients causing other plants to have problems. I’ll keep an eye on them. Cabbage coming along fine and expect we’ll be eating some before the end of November. Tomato and pepper plants looking mostly good with plenty of blossoms. It’s always nip and tuck to bring in a crop before we get any frost. I keep hoping for global warming to kick in but so far, looks like Pierson is out of the loop.