Basque Day

Every year in July, the Basque block in Boise hosts a Basque festival, the San Inazio Festival to honor St. Ignatius of Loyola, the patron saint of the Basques. St. Ignatius of Loyola was the Spanish founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). He was canonized in 1622 and declared patron of spiritual exercises and retreats by Pius XI. His feast day is July 31.

Late this morning, I decided to check out the Basque festival before it got too hot. Then I came home and watched the film, The Way. I knew The Way was about a pilgrimage, but I had no idea it was a pilgrimage through the Basque country. That was weird.

As intended, I got there in time to watch the kids dance,

The two girls in blue that were closest to me were having a great time, despite wearing all those clothes, hats, stockings, and petticoats in the 90 degree heat. Here are some of the littlest ones taking a water break,

You have to love the hats. The cooks had just finished adding the shrimp to the paella and were now adding mussels,

They said it was about 15 minutes away from being ready and it smelled awesome, but it was too hot to imagine eating any of it. Those Basques seem to know how to cook for a crowd.

Here is last Monday and Friday's harvest,

I had a heck of a time trying to learn about my broccoli, so I think I will save my pictures and write a review. My broccoli is a sprouting broccoli, you mostly see a purple variety, but mine is green. It does not grow compact like the broccoli you see in the store, and the sprouts are big. I found hardly anything to tell me when it is ready to pick. I found something that said I can pick when the outside sprouts are loose, but the center is still compact, which some of mine were, so I decided to just pick a few branches. Maybe once I pick the center sprouts some side ones will grow, otherwise there really is not much to eat on this big plant.

Broccoli is a perfect food, as are tomatoes, but I am not a huge fan. I steamed the broccoli I picked and it really was the best I ever had. So were the bush beans, which look like snap beans to me.

The strawberry plants sprouted the sorriest group of pea sized mangled strawberries in June and I was going to throw out the plant. Then it got another round of flowers, so decided to let it live. Now it has a new collection of berries, much bigger and better than the first round.

The tassel top on my corn seemed to be struggling to be a proper top. My neighbors have shorter corn, but their tassels have been proud tops for weeks. I tried to help mine, which I can barely reach, and all these seeds came down. Hey, corn isn't grown from seeds, corn grows from kernels off the ears. Did you know that one corn stalk is both the male and female plant? The male seeds from the top tassel sprinkle down to the female silk waiting at the base of the leaves, where they meet the stalk. If the tassel springs up and the seeds sprinkle down too soon, no corn. Mine had good timing, I can see at least three ears ready to grow. The female silk must be that same stringy stuff around the outside of the ear after you husk it, the stuff no one likes to have to clean off. Once the tassel sprinkles it's seeds, then it straightens up like a proud father.

Proper farm girls cannot be afraid of bees. They are all over the raspberry, the strawberry, all the vegetable flowers, and I've learned to water, prune, and harvest in harmony with the bees. I've been stung recently enough to remember how much it hurt, but I also know I would not have the bounty of my garden without them. Except maybe corn, corn doesn't need bees.

Garden Status

These are the bush bean flowers, which are pretty, especially against the green, green bush bean leaves. Next is the bush bean,

This is the sage after I cut off the tops, you can see that it then sprouted many more new leaves,

The corn is now taller than the fence, and that is its tassel top trying to peak out,

Mom told me about her friend's potato bag and I think I will get one. There are several kinds, but here is an example,

http://www.amazon.com/Island-Grow-Container-Tomatoes-Potatoes/dp/B0055EQ0E6/ref=wl_mb_hu_m_1_dp

Potatoes do better because they get more air circulation, the ready potatoes are more accessible, and they do not take up space in the garden.

After you bake your own bread for a while, you remember why they invented french toast and croutons. I rarely get through a whole loaf before it starts getting a bit stale. This week, since I am now eating so much salad, I made my own croutons. They are really easy to make and once I figure out the right spices they will be better than the ones in the store.

Another reason for making my own croutons is that the brand I like disappeared from the local grocery store. They now only have one brand of most things, usually their store brand and nothing is ever on sale. Prices seemed to have jumped even more lately. I checked at Target for another Pyrex dish with a lid to take my lunch and it was $10, twice as much as I paid for the last one a few years ago. I didn't buy one. Is anyone buying anything right now except food? I heard a guy on the radio interviewing people about what they've done lately to cut back on their expenses. Cut back lately? I was surprised more people, like me, did not call in telling him they started cutting back years ago and now there was nothing left to cut.

My garden and my training class keep my mind active and keep me learning, but it is the baking that I do when I am scared. The last few weeks of news scared me and I now have home-style bread, cheese bread, and pita in the freezer. I was going to make some walnut raisin bread this weekend, but thought I was getting carried away.

People can say that we've had times as bad as these before, but then we did not have chemical weapons or see militants destroying sacred temples. It was Malian Islamists destroying the door to the Sidi Yahya mosque in Timbuktu that set me off. This door was not to be opened until the end of the world. The militants wanted to prove that it was really not the end of the world, but it seems to me that it proved that it was, at least the end of the world as we know it.

Not many understand that these times are about character. At the end of Orwell's 1984, the main character faces his worst fear and betrays love, and therefore, his soul. We see this over and over again now, people are confronted with fear and they crack, they shoot their entire family and then themselves, or they open fire on a movie theater and kill 12 strangers. The anti-gun lobby immediately moves in and promotes their cause, further emphasizing that we can no longer hold individuals accountable for their actions, we need to blame a piece of hardware. The ability to face fear starts with the ability to take personal responsibility and the ability to take personal responsibility is something most people no longer have.

If people are unable to face losing their job, or their house, or failing in school, how in the world are they going to deal with the economic collapse right around the corner?

Refereeing Cats

In A New Earth, Eckhart Tolle says he's lived with many Zen Masters, all of them cats. Spit is a Zen Master, Cruiser is more of a Zen student. Cruiser is on a diet and very unhappy. Both cats used to share a small can of wet food for breakfast and dinner, but Cruiser was gobbling most of his half and then muscling his way through Spit's food and then going back and finishing his own. This means Spit eats more dry food and stays trim, while Cruiser stays really chubby. This week I reduced the canned food and stood between the cats keeping Cruiser from muscling Spit. Between the heat and the reduced canned food, Cruiser has been a whiney brat, howling as if he is starving to death, and I am tempted to let him prowl the neighborhood again, but that was unsuccessful last year. Instead, I try to model Spit, who just looks patiently at him or finds a quiet place to sleep.

It has been a week of temperatures over 100 degrees. Thursday's high was 108. Last weekend's thunderstorms set off fires all around Boise and this week's inversion layer kept the smoke trapped in the valley. Wednesday night I got up to open my bedroom window and was hit by a blast of smoke as strong as if I was camping and sitting next to a bonfire. After a hot hazy day yesterday, we finally got thunderstorms with rain late in the day and a double rainbow,

The broccoli is just showing it's ruffly crown and I am hoping that it hurries up and grows enough for me to harvest soon, since it is taking over my small planter. It is also getting aphids, which I washed off with soapy water a few times this week, until yesterday when I bought a marigold. I put the marigold in a pot and set it next to the broccoli. Marigolds are supposed to repel aphids, we will see how they work.

The tomato I did not mean to plant is taking over the other half of the planter. I am pruning it so that it will grow more up than out and so far I am rewarded with two plants covered with small green tomatoes. People here use these wire frames to hold in their tomatoes, but you have to place these when the plants are small, so I am reusing the tall bamboo stakes I used for the snow pea trellis. The broccoli is crowding the bush beans, but they still have flowers and budding beans. The tomato is also crowding the pod peas, so I am thinking of moving them to the broccoli spot when the broccoli is done.

The thunderstorm wind blew around the corn and I had to stake it. It seems to me no one usually has to stake corn, I see fields of it with no supports, so I wonder if corn does better in a large group, where the plants protect each other and create their own windbreak.

The basil, thyme, and oregano are doing so well that I am harvesting leaves and drying them. You do not want to let these shoot up and flower, like I let my cilantro do last year, cut off the flowing tops and you will get fuller plants with more leaves. Did you know that coriander comes from the flowers of the cilantro plant? I never did get the parsley or the dill to grow. I don't know if that is due to the seeds or due to the growing conditions in Idaho. I bought a parsley, but it is indoors and staying really small.

The lawn is recovering well from it's fungus treatment and I started to cut back on my watering. I am a bit nervous about the cost of all of this water, in addition to the cost of all of the air conditioning this week. I usually keep the house pretty warm with the windows open, but this last week it was still hot at 10 pm and I just couldn't sleep without air conditioning.

My training got much more intense this week and between that and the heat, I have been lazy and unmotivated. For the first time, I miss cable TV. I finally joined Netflix instead and am catching up on Mad Men. Might as well enjoy electronics while I can.

The Joys of Summer

This is my harvest from yesterday,

That is the last of the snow peas. I pulled out the plants after I harvested the last few peas. I've eaten just about all of the lettuce and the carrots, just in time for the broccoli to start taking over,

The broccoli was staked for a while because we had more big wind. This is Mr. Dragonfly on the stake admiring the broccoli,

How does broccoli grow? Does it get one head of green florets on one plant? Or several bunches? It seems like a lot of plant for one bunch, but it also seems like if I get several bunches I am going to be eating an awful lot of broccoli.

The heat wave hit Boise today, and the TV was flashing red flag warnings. They neglect to tell you on TV what red flag means, so I had to look it up on-line. It is a lightning warning. With everything so dry here already, lightning can be very bad and start fires all over the place. Yahoo! Weather right now shows thunderstorms for Boise with an ominous black sky. The cats and I have been indoors almost all day along with the rest of the neighborhood and after a noisy 4th I am glad the heat drove everyone indoors.

This is the first 4th of July I truly disliked. Someone with bombs started Tuesday night circling the neighborhood until 3 am Wednesday morning. Everyone in the neighborhood had their own fireworks, and my newer neighbor two doors down was lighting fireworks in the street for her 5 year old with her baby on her hip like a tragedy waiting to happen. After the fireworks ended at the park down the street, the bomber came back. I felt like I was living in a war zone. I don't remember it being anything like this last year. I did get a break and the Harley rider and the Karaoke singer have been gone all week.

Yesterday was the end of my third week of training for my new job and yesterday I decided that I am really going to like it. Four of the six people in the training class are new to the agency and I cannot imagine trying to learn this job without the year I spent at the agency in a clerical job. As painful as it was, I learned who does what, how work flows, how to navigate around in the software, and today I am grateful for it. Last week I got a better picture of what the job will be. It is like law, it is forming an educated opinion based on certain steps, gathering evidence to support your opinion, and then writing your decision, citing your reasons, and listing your evidence. My favorite class in my Master's program was Administrative Law. I always find it interesting that personality tests that recommend jobs always list lawyer with the creative jobs, like artist and writer.

I may have a green thumb with the garden, but I do not with the lawn. After some research, I decided my lawn has a fungus and I bought some fungus treatment. I do not like chemicals in the yard, I don't use weed killer anymore, but I don't like wasting money watering a half dead looking lawn either. The lawn treatment is toxic to animals, so I let Sarah know what I was doing. I also had brown water suddenly coming out of the hot water tap, I figured I would ask her how her hot water was doing and if maybe this was occasionally normal.

After talking about fungus and brown water and our raspberry and blueberry harvests, Sarah remarked, ah, the joys of summer, but it is so short here, in a few months when it is cold and dark we will be looking back saying, remember just a few months ago when we were treating for fungus and worrying about brown water? Those were the good old days.