Another heat wave

We're hot.

Really, really hot.

Seattle is almost setting records this week - very close to 100 degrees. And none of us are equipped for it, as local 'conventional wisdom' has it that such things as air conditioning are just not needed in our northwest climate.

In this kind of heat our usual 'coolness retention' methods just don't work. Open windows and fans can't really get the house cooled down at night and every morning we start out a little warmer than the previous one - and of course end the day more than a little warmer.

So - time for a crop report, I think:

Tomatoes - hundreds are ripening, it seems, between our two Stupice tomato plants. They are delicious and sweet.

Peas - maybe even thousands. We can't use them up enough, particularly since I'm really not cooking dinner this week (Mark is working late and it would just be too hot in the house to turn on the stove or oven!) We will have to harvest some for the freezer today though - don't want them to go to waste. Once I figured out how long to cook them, they were wonderful!

Beans - the plants are still small so I didn't realize how big the beans were already - or how many could hide on a foot tall plant! Amazing and wonderful. Some of them will have to be frozen too.

Pumpkins - lots of big leaves and lots of flowers with fruit setting regularly under them. The big plant can't retain enough water to get it through the day so every afternoon the leaves are drooping like big deflated umbrellas. Very sad.

Roses - while not crops, of course, they should be included in the report - they are on their second major bloom cycle but seem to be also struggling in the heat.

Dahlias - full of buds already! Sunflowers? Already over 10 feet tall, buds developing into what will surely be huge flowers.

And while we didn't plant corn, our squirrels did - and it is coming up nicely... though in the oddest places. (The Critter Food mix has dried corn kernels and the squirrels plant them - to soften them maybe, but likely just for 'later.') For a while there I was pulling it up with the weeds but I couldn't escape the feeling of beady eyes on the back of my head every time, outrage and disbelief that she who gives would also take away sort of thing, so I gave up on that and just let them grow. Interesting, it is. Not exactly the garden design of the professional gardener though, I must admit.

We are headed to the mountain this weekend - I hope it all survives 3 days without us!

Post #702, in which...

... I have a problem.

I have too many berries. I got carried away at the farmer's market over the weekend and bought a flat of blueberries AND a flat of raspberries. My dear husband pitched in valiantly as we tried to make the best use of them, but there is only so much 2 people can do in the short time that fresh berries stay fresh. It's been the source of much free-floating anxiety for me this week. We had raspberry shakes, raspberry pudding and blueberry pie. We had fruit in salads, fruit in barbecue, fruit in snack bowls. There are still 2 slices of blueberry pie left and two ramekins of pudding, but there are also enough fresh blueberries to make 2 more pies! Berries are only around for a short season. One wants to 'make hay while the sun shines' right? To waste them is worse than passing them by! (Isn't it?)

Anyway, the fact that this is disturbing me so much brought back a memory. (I hope I haven't shared this before but in 700 postings over 3 years I might have. Sorry if I did!) Some years ago I listened to a conference presenter talk about equity issues and the way the media treated women - particularly advertising media. The presenter was showing slides of ads in which women were presented as either idiots, doormats or playthings. One memorable print ad showed a woman standing in a kitchen, surrounded by her obviously disapproving husband and three children, looking at leftover cake. Her problem? She had too much cake. She should have used a 'Jiffy' cake mix which would have made a smaller cake so that she wouldn't earn the total disgust of her family for having, yes, Too Much Cake.

Mark would say that the media has gone full circle and now presents men - especially white men - in the same light: idiots, dolts, slobs, inconsiderate boobs; creepy, irresponsible and generally without the intelligence God gave a small soap dish. I think advertisers just present everyone that way now, but...

It strikes me that there are an infinite number of ways in which we can make ourselves feel bad. Something we did, something we said, something we didn't do, should have done, couldn't manage or forgot... there is much in life that can derail a good day for us. I wish I could make it otherwise. And to make matters worse, I can't help but wonder if I'm not just sweating the small stuff in order to sidetrack the major stuff.


But right now, it seems very important to me to use up all those berries.


(You thought I was going to launch into a discussion of the Supreme Court nominee who thinks that because she is a "Latina" she can make better decisions than white males, didn't you? Well, yes, that was in the back of my mind in the whole discussion about cake, but I just didn't go there. It was a stupid thing for her to say. I say stupid things all the time and regret them afterwards - though not, perhaps, as much as she probably regrets that comment now, or the many that followed in a similar vein. We don't know, yet, the extent that the comment reflects her own belief system or the way she will decide on court cases that will affect all of us for many years to come - although her decision in the reverse discrimination case should give us a hint... But that her testimony today is so at odds with her speeches of the past is very disturbing to me. (Also disturbing is the fact that MSNBC was running a reader poll to see if people were buying her story today - as a sidebar to their reporting - but it disappeared from their page mid-way through the day. The overwhelming sentiment, when it last was available, was that people didn't believe her.) Most disturbing, however, is the 'white male bashing' that seems to be the new acceptable prejudice. If she thinks it should be OK to do that, she missed the whole point of the conversation. And that shouldn't have to be pointed out to someone who is about to sit on the Supreme Court of the United States of America. Totally unacceptable.

Just to be clear, the reason we honored and revered all those 'dead white guys' all these years is because they did incredible, heroic, brilliant, groundbreaking, astonishing, life-changing things. For us. All of us.)

Playtime!

Mini-Vacation Pictures

We just got back from a long weekend away - a little mini-vacation - and I am looking through photos to see what might print well, and what I could post here for a little re-creation of our experience.

So far I'm having a little trouble.

We had a great time - it's not that at all - but we did have more photography 'misses' than 'hits' this time. We went out to the Olympic Peninsula (certainly a photogenic spot) but it was very foggy on the coast when we were at the beach, and then a little too sunny in the interior when we were at the lake. And I kept getting sidetracked by odd stuff, just being a little too lazy to look for that perfect shot. (I realize this now after looking back at the Lodge's own website, with their perfect views of things. Alas. I need a redo!)

So - you'll just have to imagine a foggy coast, sea stacks barely visible through the mist. Or a beautiful blue lake with brightly colored canoes overturned on its banks - just waiting for the next ambitious boater. And sailboats drifting by. And an old stately lodge sitting on the hillside, a beautiful lawn laid out between it and the lake - Adirondack chairs spread out and people playing cards, sipping wine, tossing horseshoes, walking dogs, getting tans. Hydrangeas blooming. Beach umbrellas shading lazy vacationers sitting around reading. (As opposed to, for example, getting good photos to bring home. Ahem.)

Honestly, we felt like we were in the Poconos. Or the Catskills. Like they were going to be giving dance lessons after dinner. Like in the movie.*

We did hike though - a wonderful hike through the rain forest with berries and waterfalls and ancient ferns, and a walk along the lake and another one down the road to see the cottages, camp grounds, little stores and such. We hiked to the biggest-unless-you-count-the-one-in-Oregon Spruce Tree in the world. We sat on our balcony and watched the sunset. We sat under the beach umbrellas down at the lake and read our books. We sat on the lawn and watched people... OK - we did a lot of sitting around on this trip. What can I say?

I will admit that the people-watching was spectacular. And that is sort of what got the picture-taking off track. You see, we were sitting on the beach at the lake when a 'nanny' and her two charges came down to swim. The two boys went right in the water but the nanny - in an appropriately prim beach dress of some sort - had a little trouble getting settled. She had a puppy with her on a leash, and another dog was having a bit of a fuss about the puppy. The 'owners' all decided that the dogs should just get acquainted, and once they sorted out the ensuing dog fight the nanny seemed to feel that her puppy should also have the chance to maul all the little children on the beach and in the water as well.

(Since this was all happening within reach of our toes, we were sort of paying attention. We started attending to things a little closer when one of the boys yelled out to the nanny "I don't suppose you were smart enough to bring a towel for the dog?" The whole "I don't suppose you were smart enough to..." gig is one of Mark's favorites.)

Anyway, shortly after most of the children were done shrieking about the puppy, the nanny decided to shed her prim beach dress and get down to the business of tanning - and again, not to put too fine a point on it, but really to pre-establish our defense for poor conduct, she was just right in front of us. And I'm sorry - but we almost didn't manage to keep our 'gasps' to an inaudible level when the dress came off and displayed a very inadequate swimsuit 'bottom' which was almost-but-not-really covering the most spectacularly huge set of 'saddlebags' I'd ever seen up close - complete with a rash on the 'upper-inside of the leg area' (as a sportscaster would describe a portion of athlete anatomy which needed some indelicate discussion.) We know this because the whole time she was getting settled, she was also slowly backing up toward us, bent all the way over at the waist - I don't make this stuff up - to disentangle the dress from her sandals.

We were afraid.

I know what you're thinking. We should have concentrated on our books. Averted our eyes. Pretended she wasn't about to fall backwards into our laps...

… we certainly shouldn't have been taking pictures, I know, but...

Oh well. It was that sort of weekend.


* "Dirty Dancing" if you don't already know...

A few of the 'better sort' of pictures anyway: