It Takes a Farmer...

to feed a village. Don't look to a vandy, it will be a lean winter!

So, the 'harvest' is in. And it's a slim one.

I've never pretended to have a green thumb, not in the least. For me, a happy garden is one that survives in spite of me. Plants that grow regardless of conditions or care. But every year I seem to make the attempt to nurture something. (Not to mention the nudges from friends about just how much grocery money I could save by 'growing my own'.)

Well, this year was a sadder year than some.
My initial plans for another raised bed fell afoul of repurposement of materials. (I thought it was going to be scrap, he thought he'd re-use it to rebuild the stairs.)
And my old garden at the foot of the deck stairs got slated for re-zoning as he planned the new deck.
And we had a heat wave, and no rain at all, so I had to be judicious in how I distributed the water from our rain barrels.
Then the bugs came. A plot of newly sprouting salad greens disappeared OVERNIGHT! Flea beatles got my mustard greens, and just when I thought they might be sprouting again, raccoons came and dug up the entire planter in curiosity. (I'm assuming curiosity, but raccoons are a bewildering species. They also ATE one of the styrofoam wig heads I'd been building masks on. Okay, not the whole thing, but enough that it's not so handy for humanoid masks anymore...)

So, anyway.... We won't be eating long and heartily on what I've managed to harvest: some barbie-doll potatoes, beet greens without any beets, and a few scrawny allium family plants, where they're so scrawny I'm not sure what they wanted to grow up to be.

The Harvest:

Pickle Day in Paradise

Okay, not really Paradise, and only a small batch of pickles, so not really pickle day, but there’s more alliteration in that than anything else I can think of.

Yup. As I was suddenly in the last chaotic stretch of getting ready to open One Moment by Norm Foster, someone came by to thank Darrell for web help with a bag of garden goods, including some cukes. Then he went to the store and came home with another bag of cucumbers. And some mark down dill seed. And I could see the writing on the wall.
(He claims he had no such organized thoughts, but…)

Anyway, the show has opened. I had a recovery day. I had a start of housecleaning day. I had a day of thinking about food because we were having surprise (to me) dinner guests. (Okay, not a total surprise, I did find out on the weekend.)
I had a useless day. And then I had a day back down to the city to turn in all my expense paperwork, do an alteration, and have a look at the new-to-be wardrobe space, and help unload some stuff into it.

So, today was pickle day. Just my usual small batch of dill pickles. Though I will do another batch later, in modern jars, so I have some giftie pickles. It really is such an amazingly simple (and usually) successful recipe. [Posted back on September 21, 2005] And yes, it did turn out that was the version of recipe I’d been trying to locate. I now store it here in my recipe files on the computer so I can find it again and again.

The nice thing is, that being so simple, it’s easy enough to make them up any time some cucumbers cross your path. And I’ve found that I can reheat the brine when I finish a jar and add another cuke’s worth of slices, and turn them into a refrigerator pickle that tastes almost as good. So a small batch goes fairly far.

This year I’m also experimenting with using “Pickle Crisp”, which is a calcium carbonate additive that theoretically keeps the pickles crisp. And I’m only trying it because (I think) I had one jar last year where the cuke slices got a bit soft, and often tore when getting them out of the jar. But maybe it wasn’t even those pickles. I don’t remember. Anyway, let’s try it once and see.
Oh, and this year, the leftover brine is going to some carrots, but I think we’re just going to eat them with dinner.

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Blogger Blockage

Or, if you will, a 'communications constipation'.

Yes, this summer has been a bit end-to-end. There was a leisurely start to Alice in Wonderland for the Young Company. The official job dates were late July to late August. In fact, we started way back in June with some production meetings, and get- togethers to muck about with mask-making techniques. (There are pictures, but having just been moving from one HD to another, I'm not sure if I resized anything, or labelled it so I'd know what it was....)
The mask-making turned into a fairly constant project, and then once the program actually started, things got very crazy. 40 masks we ended up needing, and being a fantasy, a lot of the costuming had to be created.
Essentially things just started going faster and faster and faster!

When that was done, I theoretically had some of the next week to start clean up and laundry, as well as prepare for a shortened and lighter version of our very favourite re-enactor's event, up at Bonfield. Consequently, neither of us were quite sure what we needed to take, or what we did take, but still it was a lovely trip.

Then the very day afterwards, I started the opening show of the 2007/2008 season, a brand new Norm Foster musical, One Moment. That seemed like it might be straightforward, at first glance. Six people. Two days in their lives. Twelve costumes. Except for one character who goes home at lunch to change for a date. Still, thirteen costumes. How tricky can that be?

yah. You're right. Never fails, things get a bit insane. Towards the end, I'd have what looked like a little list. Hours later I'd still be flailing away trying to get done.

And in the midst of all this, we made the jump to light speed. Well, we finally gave up on dratted sad dial up, which barely works for phone service, and invested large sums of money in satellite internet. And I couldn't make it work!!! Even with two techno-gurus trying to advise me, it just wasn't doing what it was supposed to. So, finally I grabbed a Sunday when I could have, should have been working, and cleared my second HD, and loaded Win2000, (which I'd been planning to get around to for ages) and at least I have a connection. Somewhat fragile. Perhaps the cable needs replacing....
Of course, I still have to finish reloading all my programs and figuring out where all my life is scattered...
But I'm on the wee break between shows. Next round is props.
So maybe I'll find all my backed up blog thoughts, and spill a few of them this way!

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