THURSDAY WORD DEBATE

   Thursday special!

On Fridays in the past, we have done a "Friday Food Debate" where we tackled some burning questions of the culinary world, ha.  We have expanded it now to other fun and different regional uses of words in addition to food related words. We haven't done one in awhile so for Thursday, we'll bring it back.  We know everyone enjoys it so...

This week, the burning question is:

Recently at work, I was speaking to a customer on the phone and she mentioned the "icebox".  Both of my grandmothers called it that.  Then I was talking a few days later with a friend on the phone and noticed they said "refrigerator" and after I thought about it, I realized I rarely said the whole word.  More often than not, 2nd Man and I both just say "fridge".

So that got me to thinking, what is most common?  Seems like icebox can be more age related and/or up North/Northeast.  I know it's related to how they started, literally a box with a block of ice that cooled things as it melted.  The most common term is the shortened version, fridge.  Heck, there may be other names out there we've never heard of.  I remember a person on a TV show used to say "fidgerator" every single time (not even sure how to spell that).

So what do YOU call this essential kitchen appliance?

MYSTERY HOLES IN YARD

 When we got to the farm a month or so ago (before the mower incident, ha), we saw these holes in one part of the yard.  I mowed and in this spot I mowed really short because we wanted to figure out what they were.

Our first thought was hoof prints, but we looked closer and they were too deep and random for that.  It seemed to be holes that were dug by some animal... 

We're in Texas so of course feral hogs are a possibility but none have been seen in the area and certainly 2nd Family would have had some damage since feral hogs are crazy destructive.  We're guessing it could be something else common to Texas, an armadillo.

Armadillo, image via Wikicommons.com

For those unfamiliar with this prehistoric looking animal, they are prolific across the Southern US.  They are harmless but, as you can see in our pictures, if that is what did it, they can mess up yards and flowerbeds.

There haven't been any holes since these.  I was going to put the trail cam in the spot where they were and see if I could catch it but the holes stopped.

Still not sure that's what did it though...

FEELING MUCH BETTER WITH GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY / MONDAY

 Much much better today.  Well, I was way better yesterday and now today I feel like I'm almost back to normal.  2nd Man and Hobart took care of me.

2nd Man made lasagna, because he knew I'd be hungry.  And I was.  And it was so good, ha!  A new recipe, béchamel and meat sauce.  He's still perfecting it, though I think it's pretty perfect, but recipe next time he makes it and I'll get some step by step pictures.

Hobart did his best but apparently, it was all just so exhausting that he had to sleep in the sunshine.

We hope you all had a good weekend!

MONDAY UPDATE:

Still feeling fine but totally forgot to create a post for today.  So, I'm editing this one to include this update and for those who might have missed it, check out Saturday's post.

ALLERGIES SUMMER COLD OR COVID

Well, I'm sick...

...got sick on Thursday.  Scratchy sore throat, stuffed up nose, sneezing.  I never lost sense of smell or taste but last night I had a fever and chills.  I took medicine/vitamins and slept from 8:30pm last night to 9:00am this morning and today I feel much better.  I wore my mask at home and 2nd Man slept on the couch most of the night.  We also ran the air purifier and sprayed Microban on everything.  So far he's feeling OK.  We also have one those finger monitors that checks your oxygen level and mine rarely dropped below 95.  Pretty sure it wouldn't be COVID this is exactly how I usually get a sinus infection in the Summer.

Remember the carefree days before 2020 when we got sick and thought "oh crap I have a cold" instead of worrying about a deadly pandemic?  I guess we still get colds and we still have allergies and sinus infections from time to time, that hasn't changed.

I checked the forecast this morning and it's hot...

...right now as this posts the "feels like" is 105 at 11:30am.  So, rather than push myself at the farm in this heat, I've decided to stay in town.  I'm trying not to think about the grass and how tall it must be but really I have no choice.  I have to put my health over that and stay in and rest this weekend.

Hope you're having a good weekend!

TEAK STOOL FOR THE GARDEN TRASH TO TREASURE

 Regular readers know that I have a favorite place to look for bargains...our downstairs trash area!  Our building has trash chutes on every floor and they feed into a separate room, but for boxes and other things that people can't put in the chute, there is an area (indoor) near the loading dock where people can put the things they don't want.  I've found quite a few cool items over the last few years.

Here is one of the latest!

Found this!  A teak (perhaps?) stool.  We were thinking it was one of those shower stools though most of those have slots in the top so that water flows through and this doesn't.  We also saw some Asian style stools for use either on a patio or indoors as a furniture item.  

This doesn't show signs of ever having water on it.  Not even 100% sure it's teak but whatever it is, it is heavy.

It's got a great design to it.  2nd Man said "what are we going to do with that?  It doesn't match our furniture or style inside."  My immediate thought was a stool in the garden.  I am always looking for something to use that is small and can let me sit beside a raised bed (even in the orchard) and pull weeds or work in the soil.  It's a bit heavy to carry from the garden to the orchard so maybe I'll just leave it in one place.  If it is teak, it will be fine to be outside though I probably need to coat it with something.  

Best of all, this is one of those finds that we can put to use right away...and here it is, being used when I was pulling weeds in the garden.  It's actually pretty comfortable and very sturdy.  Doesn't feel like it will fall apart and it's not rickety.  It worked perfectly!

Someone else was throwing it away, it will have a long life now at the farm.

FINAL HARVEST OF THE SEASON

The last harvest from this past weekend...

...things are definitely done for the season.  Our rains were a challenge as we had to turn off the automated watering which caused the garden to get uneven watering.  However, even with those challenges, the few plants and specific varieties we had did well for us.  We got small harvests every weekend and we're ok with it.  Things don't go bad before we can use them and it's fun to just eat something that we grew.

Now it's time to clear out their beds and put them to sleep for the Winter.  Well, maybe for the rest of the Summer, if we decide to do something for Fall.  We're going to have the garlic of course but we might do some collards (those were great the last time we grew them) and then some Napa cabbages (also great).  

Every time we do this, we have a little more data on what works best for us.  

ANOTHER ONE DOWN AND THREE TO GO

Well, to my surprise, when I got to the farm, there was standing water everywhere.  Turns out a "pop up" line of thunderstorms Friday afternoon/evening dropped almost an inch of rain!  Of course being late in the day/early evening meant it hadn't had time to dry up in the heat of the day.

SO...there was no mowing this weekend.  Sigh.

On to plan B.

Item two on my list of course was the garden.  So I tackled another raised bed that was literally taken over by grass.  The weird thing is the first bed I cleaned out last weekend was no grass and tall weeds while this one was crazy tall grass.  Much harder to pull up.  I took some scissors and after pulling up what I could, I cut them down to soil level.

Here's the pile about halfway through it.

What a mess...

...but when it was done, it looked SO much better.  All I had left to do was turn the soil with the shovel, smoothed it out and then cover it up.

Regular readers know we have an area downstairs in the building where we find cool items but that's not all it's good for.  As a building of several hundred units, there are ALWAYS boxes and packing material of all shapes and sizes available.  Literally, we've been able to find any size box we could ever need.  In this case I needed something that would cover up one of the beds and I snagged this one.  I cut it in half and...

...voila!  It covered it up perfectly.  We always have some bricks laying around and so I covered this bed and called the garden a day as the heat was just getting to be too much...

...here it is when I finished and decided to call it a day.  97 with a feels like of 110.  It didn't help that the sky looked like this...

...and indeed, when I got to the highway to head back into town, it started pouring rain.

At least I got another raised bed cleaned up.  Hopefully next weekend I can knock out two more (the rest aren't nearly as bad as the first two were).  It will also mean pulling up the veggies because they are done (the next post will show our final harvest of the season).

That's Summer in these parts.

Hot.  Humid.  Chance of thunderstorms.

That's why we do as little as possible outside.

GOOD FOOD AND HOBART SUNDAY

When I got back into town yesterday, 2nd Man had made a large dutch oven kind of hybrid pot roast/stew.  He cut up the beef with potatoes, carrots, celery, onions, and mushrooms in a beef gravy.

It's always so good.  We had some for dinner last night, we'll have some more tonight and I put some in the freezer for a future meal.

And of course, Sunday wouldn't be complete without a Hobart picture.  2nd Man had his laptop charging, and Hobart found it to be a perfect backrest for his own recharging...via solar energy, ha!

THE GOAL FOR TODAY

Well it's off to the farm...typical Summer "Dog Days of August" forecast for us:

High upper 90's, low upper 70's, 20% chance of rain.

 My goal for today is to mow, though we had a few of those pop up 20% rains yesterday so I will have to see how wet it is.

The other goal is another raised bed cleaned out in the garden.  I'm bringing cardboard to cover it up.  I might shoot for two of them but we'll see how it goes.

I'd like to borrow 2nd Fam's lawnmower to use around the fruit trees but I think I'll do that on an "off weekend" when I don't have to mow or work the garden beds.  I mean, who's gonna see it other than us?

On the pantry replenishing, since our city/county is back to "SEVERE THREAT LEVEL" for covid, I picked a few things I know we need and added them to the list and I'll stop at a rural grocery out there that doesn't have a lot of people.  I will do a deeper dive into the fridge, freezer and pantry tomorrow and then pick one day next week to head to the store on my lunch break to stock up.  Seems like we're back to that now.

Hope you are off to a good weekend start!

NOT GOOD

 The county that we are in here in Houston, has raised the threat level to RED as of last night...

...in the 24 hours preceding yesterday, more than 300 people were admitted to the Texas Medical Center (one of the largest in the world) with COVID illnesses.  The ICU bed capacity of all hospitals in the Houston area is at 92% and increasing.  The CEO of the medical center group said that if you don't have a life threatening emergency, please stay away from the emergency rooms because they are too full.

Some smaller hospitals are turning patients away and the numbers in the Houston area are now eclipsing where we were at the peak last Summer.

They are also telling people that if you are unvaccinated, do not leave your house unless it's essential.  We can't have mandatory stay at home again due to the Governor's order.  We are both fully vaccinated and have been for a few months now so we're grateful for that.  Sure the vaccine means we'd most likely be OK if we got it, but let's be honest, who wants it at all?  Even if symptoms are minimal (that's a chance you take), once you get it, you have the potential for the "long-haul symptoms" affecting so many and that could wreak havoc for years to come.

No thank you.

2nd Man gets to work at home 100% of the time so he's good there and I'm still going in but we're a small office and all but one of us is vaccinated (and I would assume that person will work from home for their own safety).  I have been masking when going to the store since vaccination but now I'm going back to using double masks and limiting my grocery store trips to once a week.  We can always make a quick stop at the rural grocery store near the farm to avoid crowds.

I will be doing an inventory of our pantry and other supplies this weekend and will make a trip to the store next week at lunch and fill us up on what we need.  

Please get vaccinated and/or at least wear your mask, even if your community doesn't require it.  This delta variant is many times worse than the original and I remember my basic biology:  A virus' goal is to keep living so it adapts as it moves from host to host.  Now that most older people are vaccinated, the virus has mutated to affect younger and younger people.  Once that's exhausted it might mutate into something that we can't control.

Be safe people.

Back to fun farm stuff this weekend.  Mowing, maybe another raised bed cleaning, we'll see how it goes when I get out there (and see what the temp is, ha).

THE GARDEN KEPT ON GOING

Even though we're in the dog days of Summer, we had enough water to get what might be one last harvest and as harvests go, this one is not too bad.

Four eggplants, six small cucumbers, six tomatoes and one more jalapeño.  Of course the garden vegetable beds are getting overrun by the weeds but as you saw on the other posts, we're just letting whatever happens, happen and I'll slowly clean out each bed, starting with the non vegetable ones.

When I brought them back, 2nd Man said "ratatouille" it is.  He made these two small casseroles using slices of tomatoes and eggplants.  He even popped in the sliced jalapeño then it was just a few seasonings, a little olive oil and pouring over some homemade marinara type sauce and roasted it all in the oven.

We ate vegetarian that night and it was good.  Very good.  We also had some crusty homemade bread for dipping in the tomato sauce.

It was nice to have a dish made up entirely of produce from the garden.  As we always say, it's proof of concept at this point so we know what works and then eventually we can just plant LOTS of these vegetable and get LOTS of produce for wonderful meals.

ONE DOWN FOUR TO GO

I went to the farm Saturday.  Got there about 9am, stayed until 2:00ish.  I did not mow, it really didn't need it and really it was just so hot, I had to pick my battles.  The choices were mow, clean up the orchard area, edge, or start cleaning up the garden.

Of course I watered everything first but the heat was so overwhelming, I had to pick one and I chose garden.

This was one of the raised beds where the weeds just took over.  There are four of these 4x4 beds that are overgrown and part of the larger 4x8.  The beds that have the veggies are still producing (more on that tomorrow).   I started with this one.

I could only work in about 20 minute increments with 10 minute breaks on the porch in the shade.  Unfortunately, no machine to help (a weed eater would throw it all around the place) so it all had to be done by hand.  This was the weed pile about halfway through it.  

But when it was done, it looked great.  It's definitely back to the way it should be.  I raked it out and turned the soil and then...

...I covered it up with cardboard.  This was before I finished, I did cover up the other corner and put more bricks on it.  When I was done, I started on the bed next to it.  I got it about half done but by then I was exhausted.  There was a lot of back and forth and then the watering and back to the shed a few times...

Saturday...

Sunday...

...and I just called it quits for the day.  You can see the weekend temps.  This is just about 24 hours apart, Saturday and Sunday around 3pm but temps out there were "feels like" of 108 to 110 degrees both days.  This coming weekend will definitely be mowing and I'll see if I can get the other raised bed finished too and that will feel like an accomplishment.

August is what we like to call "the month of doing as little as possible" because it's just so hot.

Hope you had a good weekend and stayed cool!

HOT SATURDAY

As this posts, I'll be driving to the farm.  2nd Man is staying in town to work.

I may mow again, I'm really going to see how it looks since Tuesday.  I would like to focus on the garden today and pull weeds to get that cleaned up.  It's so "visually" overwhelming when I see it, it makes me nervous when I'm out there.  There are still some vegetables producing so I'll have a small harvest to bring back for us.  

Also needing work is the area around the fruit trees.  Because of the deer fencing, I can't get the mower in there like I used to.  2nd Family has a new lawnmower they said I could borrow anytime so that would work perfectly in there.  That area also gives me a nervous twitch, ha.  We'll just have to see how the heat goes.

It is almost August 1st.  The hottest month of the year for us and the time when we always post that we try to do as little as possible outside.

Hope your weekend is off to a great start!

 

X MARKS THE SPOT

When I was mowing the other day, I realized I came across the spot where I got the mower stuck in the mud a few months ago:

This is what it looked like back then.  I was trying to clear some new areas because it's much easier to do in the Winter.  It's how I have been able to clear so much of the property and make trails and cleared areas.  On this day however, it was too muddy in this spot and I pushed my luck.  My fault.  This shows what would have been cleared if I had been able to finish.

Since I didn't get to clear it then and I stopped mowing in that spot for fear of getting stuck again...

...here is what it looks like now.  The "X" is where I was stuck in the first photo.  Amazing how quickly it all comes back.  I just stopped here on the trail, took a photo, turned around and went back in the safety of the OTHER direction, ha.

This weekend I plan to mow again over the same areas where I mowed the other day.  Or not.  If it looks good, it's so hot I may just focus on the garden cleanup.

Nature finds a way!

MOWING PHASE ONE

It's the little things in life, LOL.  

First of all, check this out:

The guy at the shop said he'd put some of the debris that was in the fuel tank into a little baggie for us and here it is.  WHAT THE HECK?  We have NO idea how this got INTO the fuel tank. The only thing we can think is over the years perhaps debris from the fuel can fell in.  Now one time, I DID mow with the gas cap off after filling it, but only for a few feet.  It's possible something got in then.  Otherwise it's a sealed system.

When I started it, it was definitely smoother and seemed not as loud as it has been.

I decided to do it a bit differently this time because it was so high in places.  I turned on the blades but raised the mowing deck all the way up.  This cut the grass but wasn't close to the ground.  It also didn't mulch it all up but overall, it did a great job.  My plan is to go over it again this weekend like "normal" and hopefully that will get it back to the way it normally is and in this hot Summer, not much more mowing.

Here is the area off the porch, before...

...and the same area after.  Still some tidying up to do, but not too bad. 

Here are the numbers...about normal for most mowing weekends that I've done.

Another before and after:

The front yard from the porch before...looks OK but the grass is REALLY tall...

...and here it is after.  Heck, I might keep mowing with the deck up for awhile, it's easier and doesn't look bad.

Look at this from the mowing app:

The last full mowing of everything was on June 12th.  Yesterday was July 27th.  That's six weeks!  The mowing on June 19th was when it started acting up and I didn't finish.  Then I tried again on the 26th and only got the driveway done.  On the 3rd, it only went a few minutes before it died and they picked it up after that.

It was hot but there was a slight breeze and all was good.  This weekend is supposed to be really hot.  I hope to get some edging done and pull up those weeds in the garden but we'll see how everything else goes.

Now it's back to work after a day in the country.

OFF TO MOW

Well as this posts, I'll already be at the farm.  Got up early this morning with the regular alarm for getting up to get ready for work, took my shower and headed out.

It'll just be a different kind of work, ha.

I'm hoping that the day will go well but it's weird to be typing this and not knowing how it will go with the mowing.  Heck, we don't even know how it looks out there after a couple more weeks of no mowing.  The good news is that 2nd Family told us it's bone dry, so that's a good thing.  No mud to worry about!

I'm going out with the plan to do about half of it.  However, once on the mower, if I have a breeze to my back and things are going well, I could end up doing most or all of it.  Well, I won't do the REALLY high spots, I will have to wait for those this weekend when I'll knock it down with the trimmer first and then mow whatever is left over.  I just have to remind myself it doesn't all have to be done today...

Yesterday, we made it to 98. The "feels like" was approaching 110.  I have sunscreen, a big hat, a long sleeve shirt, fully charged headphones, lots of cold water in the fridge and I'll take plenty of breaks.

Update tomorrow.

Wish me luck!