What you did Today: The Story of you

[Guard Dog]

My back porch is my happy place. It's a gray composite deck. Not large. 2m x 4m facing southwest. I bought an oversize wood rocking chair at the Covington flea market a few years ago. I'm sitting in it now watching the sun sink. The back yard falls off pretty quickly. A two meter grade give or take to the garden. The garden is big. Almost five acres. Fallow now but would be in full growth otherwise. Beyond that is a treeline where cold creek ambles it's way to the Hatchee River. The Hatchee twists and turns through the woods to the mighty Mississippi just a two hour walk west of here. I love the dusk. The sounds of the birds changes from day to night. I swear to God I will never tire of listening to them. I was planning on listening to the Braves/Marlins game tonight but the sounds of the late afternoon are just so much more compelling. The world is a beautiful place if you can just turn off the modern conveniences and listen. 

[BruceVC]

Today is National Women's Day in South Africa where we celebrate the important role women  play in society

Its a day of reflection and where we recognize the women in our lives, its a good day for many reasons ....but also because its a public holiday, yaaaaaaaaaaay 

Thanks ladies for the holiday, you rock 

[ManifestedISO]

interesting civic duty venture, on-call all month for federal jury service, downtown, 36 miles away, literally across the street from the Hall of Justice, which I can't help but imagine Superman or Martian Manhunter ground-pounding a superhero-landing right on the sidewalk there on Broadway

 

couple dozen prospective jurors in a federal courtroom, plus FBI, prosecutors, defense attorneys, a judge more affable than most, and a microphone ... I am not a public speaker but managed to enunciate relevant details without stumbling, as is our wont

 

was not selected, ultimately, but it was an exceptional and affirming experience (still on-call 'til the 25th) ... in spite of everything, I still have faith in our system and rule of law

[BruceVC]

Today I went with some friends and family to the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, it was my first time and it was amazing. We had a picnic with wine, cheese and other delicious snacks 

The weather in CPT during winter is traditionally bad but today it was sunny and perfect, these gardens are about 2.1 square miles in size and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It has hundreds of species of birds, small animals and thousands of types of indigenous plants. There are also many walks and hiking trails you can go if you just want to explore the sites and beauty. I will be definitely coming back to participate in the hiking aspects. Here is good site that also highlights the tree canopy walks you can go on

https://www.capetown.travel/relax-on-the-lawns-of-cape-towns-prettiest-garden/  

[LadyCrimson]

One of those times where the flowers end up making a double-fruit. The tomatoes themselves are maybe 1.5 to 2 inches wide. Larger than cherry in stores, but still pretty small.

 

They  grow this way. Apparently a lot of peppers do, but it's the first time I've seen one. I laughed pretty hard when I first saw it. Not sure of the variety name. I kept asking hubby but then I forget so I stopped asking.  

There are three hot pepper plants. The oldest one survived a winter and has barely any leaves ( a few on top) but determinedly keeps producing tons of large peppers anyway. Hubby tried pickling some in mostly a salt brine or something. They stunk and I didn't touch them. I'll stick to the store bought pickled jalapenos until/unless he does something similar. He grew up with relatives who did lots of canning/jarring so he wants to try it I guess. There's baby cucumbers growing too. He's just experimenting at this point, mostly. But a year or two from now I expect him to till up and take over half the lawn space or something. Hah.

Edited August 14, 2019 by LadyCrimson

[Blarghagh]

Wife pregnancy update: My wife accidentally dropped her diamond pickaxe in lava in Minecraft and proceeded to sob uncontrollably for hours.

[majestic]

On 8/14/2019 at 10:50 PM, LadyCrimson said:

There are three hot pepper plants. The oldest one survived a winter and has barely any leaves ( a few on top) but determinedly keeps producing tons of large peppers anyway. Hubby tried pickling some in mostly a salt brine or something. They stunk and I didn't touch them. I'll stick to the store bought pickled jalapenos until/unless he does something similar. He grew up with relatives who did lots of canning/jarring so he wants to try it I guess. There's baby cucumbers growing too. He's just experimenting at this point, mostly. But a year or two from now I expect him to till up and take over half the lawn space or something. Hah.

Salt brine and hot peppers sounds like something that doesn't mesh very well. Have you tried making pepper infused honey? That's easy to do and gives great results - works best with honeydew honey. There's two ways you can go about this, either simmer the peppers in honey for a bit and then strain through a sieve or just chop up the peppers and pour the honey over them.

The latter can't be stored for extended periods of time and should be consumed within a few months. Adding water to the honey makes it perishable, however you still get the actual peppers with a bit of honey instead of just honey that's hot and sweet, and you don't feel dirty afterwards, I mean... boiling honey should be a criminal offense.

[ShadySands]

Yeah, I've never had salt brined peppers but other garden veggies can be quite good prepared like that. My grandma and great uncle would do that quite a bit but they almost always pickled hot peppers in vinegar. They either pickled them or they'd make a jam with strawberries, or with mulberries, or whatever else we had available, and even occasionally just the peppers on their own.

[majestic]

Small cucumbers are by far and large the most popular choice for salt brining here. Everything else gets pickled in (spiced) vinegar. Most of our home grown vegetables are used fresh. Mom makes jam from whatever berries or fruits are currently available: apricots, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, sometimes gooseberries and most of all red and white currant.

Red currant jam in particular makes for a wonderful ingredient in sweets. It retains a slightly sour flavour and works to create a fine balance.

Great, now I'm hungry.

[Guard Dog]

7 hours ago, majestic said:

Small cucumbers are by far and large the most popular choice for salt brining here. Everything else gets pickled in (spiced) vinegar. Most of our home grown vegetables are used fresh. Mom makes jam from whatever berries or fruits are currently available: apricots, blackberries, strawberries, raspberries, sometimes gooseberries and most of all red and white currant.

Red currant jam in particular makes for a wonderful ingredient in sweets. It retains a slightly sour flavour and works to create a fine balance.

Great, now I'm hungry.

Blackberry jam... now THAT is the good stuff!

[ShadySands]

I think my all time favorite will always be prickly pear jam or prickly pear jalapeno but that might just be because it was a very popular flavor that I grew up with.

My in-laws make a red berry jam that's pretty good too. I think it has strawberries, red currants, and something else from their garden I can't remember at the moment. 

Sad thing is that I can't eat any of it anymore because I find it all way too sweet.

[Guard Dog]

Jalapenos are hard to grow. You have to start them in seed trays and carefully control their conditions. Then transplant the seedlings once they are growing. Soil chemistry has to be just so. 

I've thought about building a greenhouse as I get more and more into this gardening thing. They sell kits on Wayfair for small self supporting greenhouses.  

[ShadySands]

The green thumb skipped me but my mom could grow anything in her gardens and we had so many indoor plants that I felt like I lived in the Amazon. I'm only good at growing weeds apparently. Figures that I went into tech and the rest of my family went into things like farming and landscaping or at least kept gardening as a hobby but still generally work with their hands. 

 

TN, hopefully your wife is getting some enjoyment out of her pregnancy. My wife had no really bad issues, no morning sickness and no weird cravings, but referred to the experience as body horror of the highest order.

[Blarghagh]

She's had no such experience so far, but the first trimester was essentially all-vomit-all-the-time and she's not allowed to play stressful competitive games anymore because the baby will kick her until she stops.

 

#GamerWife

[ShadySands]

That sucks, TN

 

For some reason my mother-in-law decided that the best place for all our grilling utensils was in the oven and that it was for the best to not tell us. Yeah, the whole house smells like burnt rubber now.

My wife is livid and this isn't even the first brain scratcher that she's done in her 3 months here.

[Azdeus]

Played some ten hours of Mutant Chronicles with the mates, and it was guuud.

Before that I spent the day measuring my Volvo 240 for a heart transplant. Going from a 110hp B230 (8 valve Inline 4-cyl, naturally aspirated) to a 300hp b6284T (3.0L 24 Valve engine with Turbo). Honestly, I'm already a little bit scared, the car weighs 1300kgs and with a 300hp engine the car is going to go... very fast.

[LadyCrimson]

13 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

Jalapenos are hard to grow. You have to start them in seed trays and carefully control their conditions. Then transplant the seedlings once they are growing. Soil chemistry has to be just so. 

Perhaps it's because we're in California, but that hasn't been the case for us at all. Hubby bought seedlings at the hardware store and just tossed them in the ground and hasn't touched them outside of watering. They're not very large plants but they produce a lot of peppers/seem hardy.

Tomatoes were troublesome tho. For some reason at this house they kept getting that stem-rot disease, where the top of the tomato starts to rot late in the game (brown circle where the stem connects). Hubby started them from seeds this time (vs. buying storebought seedlings), just tossing seeds in the ground, among other minor changes, and no stem-rot or other major issues, but still seem not quite right to me. 

[Guard Dog]

8 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

Perhaps it's because we're in California, but that hasn't been the case for us at all. Hubby bought seedlings at the hardware store and just tossed them in the ground and hasn't touched them outside of watering. They're not very large plants but they produce a lot of peppers/seem hardy.

Tomatoes were troublesome tho. For some reason at this house they kept getting that stem-rot disease, where the top of the tomato starts to rot late in the game (brown circle where the stem connects). Hubby started them from seeds this time (vs. buying storebought seedlings), just tossing seeds in the ground, among other minor changes, and no stem-rot or other major issues, but still seem not quite right to me. 

Ironically tomatoes grow effortlessly here. Just keep the vines tied. Of course the soil & climate here compared to CA could not be more different.  

[teknoman2]

the sea is far from where i live so i don't go often and today i got a bit more sun than i should. now my shoulders are so hot from that, you can fry an egg on them because i didn't have enough melanin in my skin to avoid a sunburn. and yes, i used sunblock but it has barely a fraction of the advertised effectiveness.

Edited August 18, 2019 by teknoman2

[majestic]

7 hours ago, Guard Dog said:

Ironically tomatoes grow effortlessly here. Just keep the vines tied. Of course the soil & climate here compared to CA could not be more different.  

All that talk about growing vegetables made me remember a fun little tidbit that happened to my partents last year. They're renting a patch of land near my grandmother's former home, roughly 20,000 square feet wedged between the street and a small river.

Anyhow, last year mom planted some corn which was growing fine until they went on vacation. When they came back her uncle called and said that all of it was gone. You know, usually when people steal corn they only take a few ears. This time, well, everything was gone - neatly cut off right above the ground. All the corn. Vanished - quite literally over night.

Some days later he called and said he found the missing corn while fishing. In... yeah, right. A beaver dam. Cheeky little bastards.

 

Edited August 18, 2019 by majestic

[Azdeus]

Bought a 1tb Samsung 970 evo, there was a reduced price offer, someone returned an opened box so got 35$ off. 

... Being bored at work is dangerous.

[LittleArmadillo0]

There has been a storm brewing and my dog has been under my desk keeping me company for the last few hours. Also prepping for an interview tomorrow.

[Azdeus]

That is something that never happens here, sadly for me, it seems like storms tend to skirt my area. At best. I can't even remember the last time I had a decent thunderstorm here ._.

[ShadySands]

Tire was flat so I got a new car

Now I'm eating sushi

[Gromnir]

15 minutes ago, ShadySands said:

Tire was flat so I got a new car

Now I'm eating sushi

am suspecting you are joking, at least in part. 

'course we spent today figuring how to unload one o' our cars. am genuine getting rid o' our x5 in part 'cause o' a flat tire. front tire went flat and we now need two new tires. decent tires would cost us ~$1k. we also got a recurring self-leveling suspension issue, which is endurable but would cost ~$3k to fix. 

is time to throw in the towel.

am not current in need o' a replacement, but will likely get one o' the new ford ranger pickups, and then make it more dog-friendly. am down to two dogs, but history suggests we will have more sooner rather than later.

HA! Good Fun!