Where I Ask the Internet to Help My Sister

This is a brief message from one of my sisters. This is butterfly gardening sister(BGS) and she has a fennel problem.

BGS asks "Hey, I have a question for you and all your gardening buddies. My bronze fennel is croaking. Why? It's wilting and dying within a day, one after another. They aren't trying to go to seed or anything. In the past they have been fine with being wet or dry and never wilted. Is there something in my soil?"

Aunt Debbi here, I know that regular fennel sets seed and dies back in hot weather. I've not grown bronze fennel, but thought it was a perennial in zone 8a. Any ideas what could be going on?

Hey, I think I can just nickname my sister BUGS. Now that's fun. Bet she thinks twice about visiting this blog again, teeheee.

The hardy hibiscus have begun to bloom. This first picture is of Texas Star. Earlier this year, I discovered that these plants can grow in wet or dry conditions. In my yard they only get rain water. At the Outdoor Education Center in Kaufman, they are planted in the bog and are wet all of the time. Both sets of plants are doing just fine, but mine bloomed earlier. In defense of the Education Center plants, they were just planted last fall.


This is Moy Grande. I wish there was a kid handy to show you the size of that flower. When they say as big as a dinner plate, they are not kidding.

Finally, these are my volunteer zinnias. They come up on their own every year. I do save seeds from the yellow blooms because they don't seem to reseed as well as the others. The rest just get tossed in the compost pile and come up where ever they want.

Another Great Cook Joins In

Silence Dogood over at Poor Richards Almanac responded to my little interview, answering my questions and giving us a lovely summer recipe. Go on over and check it out.

There is still time to join in. Here are the questions one last time.

At what age did you begin cooking?
Who taught you?
What type of food is your favorite?
Where to you get your best ingredients?
Do you know any cooking tricks?
Will you share a recipe?

Now I have to figure out what I want to ask Our Friend Ben. Do you think we should finally get to the bottom of his sock aversion?

An Interview or Two

Remember the manicotti. Remember the questions at the bottom of that post. Well, the lovely Linda of Meadowview Thymes responded with a post for us. She has answered the questions and shared some recipes that sound really good. Go on over and check it out.

Just after I hit the publish post on this, I discovered that Miss Nola of Alamo North also responded to my interview questions with her own post. Thanks Nola.

Now here is what we had for lunch

French bread topped with butter, garlic, chopped heirloom tomatoes (Avivvvi again) and mozzarella cheese toasted.

This was Teenage Monkey approved.

If you like to cook and would like to play along with my interview game, here are the questions.

At what age did you begin cooking?
Who taught you?
What type of food is your favorite?
Where to you get your best ingredients?
Do you know any cooking tricks?
Will you share a recipe?

Got to go now, Teenage Monkey is begging for more french bread lunch toast.

Pain in the Neck

I have kept this pretty much to myself, on the Internet anyway. Those of you who twitter might know that I went to seen an acupuncturist yesterday.

I have had severe neck pain for the past five or six weeks. There was no accident. It just started out as uncomfortable, like I had slept wrong. Over time, it progressively became worse. It finally got so bad that I couldn't sleep, do laundry, or garden. For several days the monkeys had to water the garden for me.

I didn't not go to our M.D. because all they want to do is throw narcotics at it. I hate taking those types of medications. They don't really do me any good and seriously make me feel stupid.

My coworkers at the library suggested their acupuncture lady. They raved about their results of this treatment for hip pain, neck pain, even big toe issues. When we returned from vacation I made an appointment. This is the same group of ladies that fixed my eye twitch with aroma therapy and a head rub. I sort of trust them.

Little Jan, the acupuncture lady was a joy. She was sweet and gentle and really took her time finding out what was going on with my neck and shoulder. She thinks it has something to do with a fall I took about three years ago. Gardening, library lady duties and monkey wrangling probably exacerbated this old injury.

The treatment took about 90 minutes and about a million needles. She even hooked me up to an electric stimulation thingy. I did feel better immediately after the treatment, but the difference today is spectacular. I slept last night. I woke up feeling good and was able to get some housework, including laundry done. I can move my neck. It still has a sore spot, so I don't claim that this was a miracle or anything, but it certainly helped and I am not drugged.

She left four acupuncture staples in my neck and says that I should continue to improve over time. As for accupuncture, I approve it.

Mock Manicotti

I am getting really tired of the blogger mess. I wrote a post in Word to try to deal with the spacing issue and now blogger will not let me copy and paste. I am sure the spacing will be messed up on this post too.

That picture is of mock manicotti. I parboiled collard leave to wrap around a mixture of ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, and egg. Placed them in the casserole dish, add mushrooms, cover with marinara sauce and a little more mozzarella. Bake for 30 minutes at 350.

Now, remember when I said I wanted to interview some of you. Well, here we go. This is to all the cooks. If you make a blog post from this, I will link it. If you email the answers to me instead, I will make create a post from your response on this blog.

Here are the questions.

At what age did you begin cooking?
Who taught you?
What type of food is your favorite?
Where to you get your best ingredients?
Do you know any cooking tricks?
Will you share a recipe?

First Bowl of Tomatoes

Here is my first bowl of tomatoes along with a few peppers. The peppers were supposed to be Serrano. The nursery put the wrong tags on plants again. They look exactly like Cayenne peppers to me.

The tomato plants are having a really hard time this year. First there was a fungus. Michael of Tomato Casual helped me solve that problem. We communicated by tweets. Don't let anyone tell you twitter is useless.

Anyway, after that we had too much wet weather, followed by too much dry weather, followed by a flood. The tomatoes gave up and quit growing. Yesterday, I discovered spider mites. I gave them a bath with dissolved Zote soap and rinsed them well. Tonight, I will fertilize and add compost and mulch. Hopefully, they will snap back. As insurance, I am already getting my fall plants started. I took cuttings of yellow pear and Celebrity. I also started some Avivvi from seeds. Monica shared this wonderful tomato with me during her progressive seed exchange. Avivvi is my new favorite tomato. There are two of them in the bowl. They are not quite ripe, but you can see that they are a little stripey.

How are your tomatoes doing?