No Need to go to the Farmer's Market

It is so easy to grow things in the South. Seriously. You just stick seeds or tiny plants in the ground and wait. We got a lot of water this month, so there was little need to water anything on my own. I harvested today's bounty because I'm leaving very soon for my trip. In the picture you can see fancy beets, cucumbers, rainbow swiss chard, and two Stupice tomatoes, all picked about half an hour ago. Below, more Stupice and the larger Early Girl.

When I get back, at the end of July, the heirloom tomatoes should be bountiful. That's when I'll become a gazpacho-making madwoman. I'll have to update the recipe I posted a couple of years ago, since I've made improvements (like the addition of smoked paprika).

Early Modern Literary Pastiche

I'm thinking about web-editions of early modern literary pastiche. Because it's fun, and I may or may not have just written one.

Here are a few, in recent memory:

Hieronimo's (hilarious) Shakespearean History cycle based on the Bushes: 2 George II- I. i and III. ii

Which perhaps inspired this one: The Lamentable Historie of Zelda

Anyone know of any others?

Domestic Goddess

I've been stuck here at home working on various writing projects, some old, some new, some just for fun. And I'm shocked to say that I'm kind of enjoying being a homebody at the moment. Yesterday I made a lovely, cold and tangy Chlodný Borscht- I am a Russian Jew, after all -with some of the cucumbers I harvested. It is a beautiful, shocking pink.


I picked a tangle of wildflowers from the garden, which Saffron has already started sampling:


And I've taken up knitting. I'm not very technically advanced to do anything other than garter stitch (I can't even purl), so I don't know what I can produce. Maybe this will end up as a scarf, or a cell-phone case, or fittingly, a garter. But it's a very peaceful activity, and it gives my hands something to do when my mind is suddenly beset by thoughts of doubt and insecurity. Before I know it, I will have become a little old lady who knits and has cats. Somebody, please, rescue me before it's Too Late.

In the Garden

It is such a thrill to grow one's own food. Today I dug up about 25 icicle radishes. I had initially thought they were spinach, until I saw their little round root tops poking up out of the soil. I also harvested a few baby chioggia beets. The tomatoes and cucumbers are growing nicely.



"Sometimes a cucumber is just a cucumber."

Delay

So I was originally planning on going to Turkey and Israel and maybe Paris this month. Was supposed to leave yesterday. But due to family illness (nothing life-threatening, thank goodness), my trip has been delayed for one month. I'll be visiting Istanbul and Tel Aviv in July, instead of in June.

Although I was all ready to go, tickets purchased, armed with histories of Istanbul and glossaries of Turkish and Hebrew, my suitcase packed with lightweight, summery linen dresses, and a perpetually scowling Freud doll, I'm actually relieved and elated that I won't be going for another month. This way, my father can get healthy and my mother can attempt to stop worrying (well, maybe only a little). And we had trip insurance, though apparently once you use it to cancel a trip, it expires, kind of like when you insure your tires and have to replace them- you need to take out a whole new policy on the new tires.

I intend to spend the next four weeks trying to jog my memory of the child's Hebrew that has somehow slid down deep into my unconscious, so that I won't seem like a complete idiot when I meet up with a friend in Israel (reason no. 1 why I'm glad to wait until July). Yes, I'm suddenly very self-conscious about this. Why did I choose to learn French, a language that can only be spoken in Northern Europe, parts of Africa, and in an utterly unrecognizable form in Canada? And why did I choose to learn Latin and ancient Greek, languages that cannot be spoken at all? Oh, right: Renaissance scholarship. Very useful for scholarship and teaching; much less useful for travel- at least until we figure out a way to travel back in time. And as soon as that happens, I'll immediately travel back to age 12 and get my mediocre command of Hebrew back.