(no subject)

Ivan has chosen to disintegrate right on top of us, which means the weather is gorgeous: 64F, cloudy, rainy, and windy (17mpg, gusting to 29mph).

Either the ground is super-sodden, or the wind was really strong last night. Some of my *heavy* pots have moved and the arbor trellis has tipped.

soon, I'll go take care of that stuff. If boy doesn't wake up oh, say, NOW, I shall go to market without him and leave him home to eat MONKEYS!

(no subject)

So, I delicately washed male squash blossoms (have I mentioned how much I love the farmer's market?) in ice water. I blindly removed the stamens and sliced off the stem and let the blossoms dry a bit on some paper towels. Then I put a small stick of halloumi cheese inside each blossom, twisted shut, dredged the blossom in buckwheat flour, dipped it in egg, and then rolled it in rice bread crumbs. Fried in a bit of palm shortening.

Oh, yum. Would be quite nice with a fresh salsa or some tamarind chutney, but it was an experiment, so I just wolfed 'em down (with boy's help). I also made a few cheese sticks. The halloumi held their shape, the mozzarella couldn't get a thick enough coating. I'll have to investigate gf fried mozzarella stick recipes.

There were very few vendors at the market today, but there was *one* with squash blossoms and that's all I need. ;)

Also, pulled tons of weeds out of my garden, to take advantage of the tropical depression drenched soil. It was fairly easy going, but someone who is severely allergic to ragweed will break out in pinprick hives all over. That someone should probably go take a shower. At least I discovered the ground cherries have some fruit on 'em. Yummy pineapple tomatillos.

My moonflowers have been blooming this week. They're huge and beautiful. I've got lots of tiny cypress vine blooms, too: scarlet, orange, white, pink. And the blue salvia is going crazy, though the red and purple have lost their blooms.

And mulberry trees? They can sprout up to a height of 10' and a trunk diamter of over 1" in no more than two months. o_O

languor

I know I promised I'd go out tonight, but . . .

(of course there's a but)

I'm exhausted. My pain levels have been up. Today was gorgeous, so I worked in the yard doing a lot of stuff that would completely devastate me on a normal day. And I didn't sleep well last night. So, with the allergies on top of it all, I just don't think standing around in a smoky, noisy club is going to do me any good. I mean, I need to take a shower, but I'm fearing that the water will be too overstimulating. I'm getting old, all I want to do is get clean, get a foot rub, and go to bed. It's not even 10pm.

In other news, I ordered shampoo this week from Heritage. True to form, they tried to kill me again, by including large samples of stuff I'm deathly allergic to. So, local people (no shipping/mailing) can have these, preferably people who will not use them around me or touch me:

So:
Aura Glow, almond scent
ingredients: top quality peanut oil, olive oil, lanolin, mixed tocopherols (vitamin e oils as a natural preservative), and almond fragrance.

There is exactly *one* ingredient in there that I'm not horrifically allergic to. I doubt any of of them would kill me, but it's not staying in my house. It's meant to be used as a massage oil or lotion. 8oz bottle. Natural almond scent means it smells vaguely like cherries. If you like to make your lovers wonder about whether you're trying to poison them, go for it.

An air freshener. I have a feeling it's lavender, but I'm not opening it up to find out, especially since I'm severely allergic to lavender. It's the impregnated cardstock/paperfoam kind.

This is almost as good as the time they sent me the *lavender* scented aura glow. *rolls eyes*

Edit: Heritage wants its customers to buy *more* stuff, so they try to hook us onto things with generous free samples. Sometimes, it's cool. I like it when the free sample is a 2oz bottle of my shampoo, because I can use that for travelling or give it to friends who want to try it. But sending me rose extract, peanut oil, lavender essence, aloe juice, etc, just makes me want to stop ordering (shampoo) full stop. Thing is, their Olive Oil Shampoo, unscented, is the *only* shampoo I can use right now. There might be another somewhere out there, but I'd have to look long and hard. And I do check every new-to-me shampoo and conditioner bottle when I hit a new HFS.