It be Talkin’ Like a Buccaneer Day. Be referrin’ to me by me pirate moniker, savvy?

My pirate name is:

Iron Bess Bonney

A pirate’s life isn’t easy; it takes a tough person. That’s okay with you, though, since you a tough person. You can be a little bit unpredictable, but a pirate’s life is far from full of certainties, so that fits in pretty well. Arr!

Get your own pirate name from piratequiz.com.
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We won! WE WON!!!

Yes, we won! It was very exciting and the first time in a long time. And we won!!!!!

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The bluest skies are in Seattle? Not today— it’s kind of resembling LA

As I type it is 97 degrees in my house. 97 flippin’ degrees!!! It’s even hotter outside, still, at 7:25 pm. The internet states it’s about 95 degrees, but I am sure the internet is wrong because it is 97 FLIPPIN’ DEGREES IN MY HOUSE!!!!!!!! And it’s a bit smoggy outside. And humid. And hot. And I am getting a bit cranky. And I have to take Rosie to pick up some flip-flops so I better go.

Ooohhhh, the car has AC. Yummy!

MIA: Blame the knitting

Well, a few other things have been occupying my time, too, but when I’ve been online I’ve been hanging out at Ravelry. Do you knit? Do you hang out at Ravelry? Drop me a line (email address in left side bar).

I taught myself to pick up stitches yesterday! Wooo Whoo!

On the economic front, we’ve done about 30% less business in 2009 than we did in 2008, to date. Huge, huge bummer. But at least we’re still hanging on by a finger or three. Some other print shops in the area haven’t been so fortunate. Keep us and our client base in your good thoughts, please.

Something is eating all of our lovely squash flowers as soon as they open and show us their lovely peach colored complexion. Bah! We’ve harvested a handful of yellow pear tomatoes and 6 jalapenos. My fennel hasn’t grown much. I want a good amount of fennel seed, so I hope the plants get a little bigger.

How’s summer splashing going in your swimming pool?

Are we too often mired in absolute stasis?

Yin and Yang, dark and light, female and male, wetness and dry air, cool and heat.

Until Sunni brought up the exploration of yin and yang, I honestly hadn’t given it much thought. Not in those particular terms. The symbol was, in my mind, associated with badly drawn ink, stickers from gum ball machines and a vague sense of “good versus bad.” Thinking of yin and yang within the thought of complementary opposites is an interesting exercise.

Yin and yang are complementary opposites within a greater whole. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, which constantly interact, never existing in absolute stasis.

Lew and I, our relationship, is an interesting study of yin and yang. He moves forward and learns by doing, at times by wild trial and error. This includes some button pushing =). I move forward with an air of caution, wanting to study the situation, read a little about it and maybe talk to someone who’s dealt with the particulars of the deal in question before. Yet, I’d say that we both learn better by doing. He leans toward the quickest route that provides spot on accuracy. I lean toward memorization and habitual repetition; once I’ve mastered that, I’m ready to learn the quicker route. He seeks finite accuracy and I seek good enough. What’s 1/16″? Both groups of thought are necessary to complete the task, ironically.

Musically, we both are drawn to complex, hard-driving, dynamic music. On the surface, it appears that we both listen to genres that are musically connected. The more I listen to Lew’s music favorites, it’s fast paced, driving, aggressive, yet complexly controlled. Metallica, Yngmie Malmsteen, Gary Hoey, Jerry Cantrell, Steve Vai. You’d noticed if the guitarist flubbed it. Punkishness is my first musical love— the raw emotion, the chaos, the percussion, the anti-establishment appeal . X, Nina Hagen, the Ramones, Oingo-Boingo, the Violent Femmes. Errors are not hidden but embraced, made the focal point sometimes. My musical feel good meter morphed over the years to include PUSA, Primus, the Beatles and Tom Petty’s whole discography. Lately, I’m drawn to instrumental pieces, from the jam sessions of Galactic, to the new-age electronica of Ratatat, to the instrumentals of Apocalypticia, Vitamin C Quartets and The Section Quartet. And flamenco guitar styling. This new musical yumminess of mine, along with our mutual affinity for Buckethead, shouts never existing in absolute stasis in my opinion.

I could go on and on. I read books, Lew reads magazines. I read for pleasure mostly, he reads for information mostly. He’s drawn to fun, fast cars. I’m drawn to fun, functional cars. His favorite colors are red, black and white. Mine is green. His timing in the kitchen is stronger. More of the food ends up on the table, warm, at the same time. I’m better at orchestrating the chopping, mixing and clean-as-you-go. He’s the cat whisperer and I’m still getting used to sharing my home with a cat. I promoted heavily for sharing our home with pups– he wasn’t so sure. We’re both head-over-heels in love with our canines.

Think about any relationship you’ve had that’s deep, refreshing, frustrating, emotional, fulfilling and continually evolving. I’m not referring specifically to people you’ve been romantically involved with, either. Do you see the qualities of yin and yang within the perimeters of the relationship? I bet if you mulled it over for awhile, you’d see a bunch of yin and yang spill out of your memories. Is this perhaps where the cliche opposites attract may have found its beginning? Opposites may attract, but without the yin and yang, or the open-mindedness to look for it in both the good and the bad times, what may have the potential to become complementary opposites may devolve into polar opposites. Complementary opposites complete each other. Polar opposites repel each other. In the yin and yang of life, both modes have the same humble beginnings; yet through the exercise of free will, stumble down the lanes they decide to navigate.

One victory out in the garden

Look at those luscious little gems! The photo is of my fourth harvest of our strawberry patches, and the biggest harvest to date.

The biggest berries came from the plants I gave up for dead last year. They didn’t like the place I planted them previously so I moved them to a nicer, sunnier spot in the yard. They promptly turned brown and looked devastatingly deceased. And then this miraculous thing happened. One by one, new, fresh, richly green leaves emerged from the brown crumbles to form the kick-ass strawberry patch it is today.

The little berries are the sweetest ones. I think they are small due to the amount of shade they are bathed in daily. I’m thinking of moving those plants to a sunnier lo-cal in the fall…. but will the berries remain as sweet? Don’t let their diminutive stature fool you. Those berries are incredible!

Best of all, I didn’t have much to do with these plants’ success. They just needed some time and water to do what they do best— grow amazing strawberries for my family to consume.

Exchanging G’day Mate for Howdy Y’All

Here we thought Mr. Skeeter was a regular pup of mainly Australian Cattle Dog origin. The last three weeks have been interesting, as Mr. Skeeter made the decision he’s an Australian Cattle Hound Dog. He’s been baying like our hound doggie, Miss Virginia, but in the cattle dog’s higher pitched voice.

While we find the auditory spectacle hilarious, having both dogs bay is loud. I’m sure in this warm summer, open window weather that the baying is quite annoying to our neighbors. One of the many downfalls to suburban living.

While the saying goes, “You can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” it states nothing about the old dog teaching the younger one new stuff. Our hound dog has passed on her deep south, hound-y legacy to a younger, more southerly, generation.

Dehydration saves the day

For dinner, we had this amazing lentil dish a good friend gave me the recipe for. There was one hitch, I discovered mid-stream. We were all out of fresh garlic and garlic powder. Yipes! I was prepared, however. Back in October after I penned this, I followed some advice from Linda Gabris’ article and sliced up several garlic cloves. The slices dried nicely on a cookie rack within a few days and I put them in a glass jar for one of those days. And today was one of those days, to my surprise.

I took 6-7 slices and whirled them in an extra coffee grinder I keep around to grind herbs and seeds in. A few seconds later, ta-da, I had my own home made garlic powder. It had a terrific flavor and complimented the dish nicely.

There were only three of us at the dinner table this evening, Zander, Rosie and myself. Rosie gave dinner a 6 out of 10, so she liked the dish well enough but it won’t make her favorite list. Zander said, “It’s not bad,” and subsequently ate two good sized portions and cleaned his plate, a rare occasion for him. I loved it myself. I especially liked the thyme the recipe called for. That is an herb I’m now exploring after relegating it to holiday turkey dinners for far too long.

I picked up a dehydrator from a craigslister on Monday. I’m drying fruit in it right now, but after I get some more garlic cloves, garlic is high on my list of things to dry. I only filled a little jar less than a quarter full on my first foray into dehydrating.

Getting my garden groove on

I put some plants in the ground yesterday. Lew and I visited a master hobby gardener and bought some of her organic tomato plants (they’re gi-normous and most have some fruit on them already). We brought home a yellow pear, roma, two beefsteak and a brandywine. They all needed to be staked in some way, although the roma and yellow pear had small stakes already. I used tomato cages to stake up the beefsteaks and brandywine. I hope the cages will help give extra support as the fruit grows; those varieties tend to grown large fruit.

I also picked up from a local farm stand three different types of squash (hubbard, acorn and zucchini), three pepper plants (jalepeno, sweet italian and one other red pepper, the name escapes me now), another thyme, two fennel plants, and 4 creeping rosemary plants. When I watered tonight, they all look happy. I hope they all are bountiful. My next task is to get some compost out and about, to help keep the garden gang happy.

Our strawberries are amazing! Lew and I picked a bunch more yesterday, filling a good sized container, plus giving some to our neighbors as a thank you for the incredible black bean salsa they brought over to us a week ago. At the farm stand I also picked up some fresh rhubarb, so we’ve been rolling out the rhubarb/strawberry crisps.

Here’s the recipe we use, with some twists. We add a cup or so of fresh strawberries with the rhubarb and cook the fruit in the sugar and water mixture, so it’s softer. Sometimes rhubarb is woody and stringy, like celery; we like it softer. When I made the crisp this evening, I subbed 1/2 cup honey for the cup of sugar in the fruit mixture and I cut the crust’s brown sugar to 3/4 of a cup. Lew made last night’s crisp, following the measurements laid out and it was awesome but on the sweet side. We also made it wheat free by using garbanzo bean flour and spelt flour (1/2 a cup each).

Tell me about your gardening and farm finding adventures! I’d love to hear your stories.

New blog in the blog roll; it’s hip with gardening, pets, biology, self-sufficiency. Go take a look now…

….The Quill . I’ll wait.
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