Saturday morning coffee pot post

Just starting my second cup.

I have a lot planned for this weekend. Today Sandy and I are going to start our special project for the back of the Back Forty, since the weather is supposed to be beautiful all weekend. Actually, I’d prefer rain and lots of it, but we’ll take advantage of the lower temps and sun. It’s really dry again, at least here in downtown Greensboro. We missed all the rain last weekend – the storms went right around us. I had been trying to get by without watering so much, but late yesterday I watered from the rain barrel and the hose.

I also have a Slow Food board of directors meeting at Riva’s Trattoria at 4 p.m., which I am pretty excited about now that Renee of Sweet Basil’s has agreed to be our event coordinator for Greensboro, and the folks at Riva’s are really interested in getting involved as well. Slow restaurants are getting a “slow” start in Greensboro, but a few have opened in the past year, including Sticks and Stones on Walker and Elam Ave. Even though they don’t know that they are slow! God knows that the niche needs filling around here. If we could get a breakfast place that uses local free-range eggs, local fruit and pastured pork, I would be in heaven. I’m pretty excited about eating at Riva’s tonight too, since we haven’t gotten a chance to do that yet.

I’m feeling much better these days. This summer has been a little rough physically and emotionally. I’m going through menopause, I miss my cats, and I went through a time of very low energy, sleep disruption, and anxiety. However, I finally found a family practice doctor that I like very much; although the meds she prescribed for me didn’t work out, she treated my decision to stop taking them with respect. I started taking a big multivitamin every morning and I don’t hesitate to sleep in the “Happy Room” when I need to. I’m still taking citalopram (generic Celexa) and it has had no bad side effects and seems to have helped a lot. I have accepted the fact that I’m probably one of those folks who need their chemicals straightened out through the “miracle of modern medicine,” although I do it with much research and a very healthy dose of skepticism.

The papermaking is still going on, just on a slightly less obsessed level. I’m trying to do a variety of colors just using recycled papers. It’s been fun to embed seeds and feathers and thrums (little pieces of yarn left over from warping the loom) in the paper.

I’ve wanted to do some kind of artwork that was nearly 100% recycled free stuff, and the book and paper making is serving that goal very nicely!

Oh, the mystery yellow tomatoes from Fedco? I don’t know why the first ones didn’t have the fuzz, but they now appear to be Garden Peach, the variety I grew in a pot last year that I loved. I had meant to order some seeds and realized that I had way too many tomato seeds as it was, so I put it off this year. And fate brought me some anyway. Isn’t that great?

It turns out that my seckel pear is self-pollinating, so I won’t buy another tree to replace the dying Korean Giant. I’m interested in the rootstock that sent out a shoot, though. I wonder if it is quince? I think that I’ll contact Edible Landscaping and ask. The NDN’s quince tree seems to have only one or two fruits this year, after a banner year last year when I didn’t take advantage of it.

By the way, the NDN’s car is back on the street. Don’t know the story yet. I have to say that life here is interesting.