Today had definitely turned out to be a hot one. Tomorrow is supposed to be even hotter. It should also be our first stock up shopping trip to the city, so I’ll want to head out quite early, before things get too hot.
Knowing the heat was coming, I made sure to water the garden this morning, though I’ll have to ask the girls to do it tonight.
I was able to get a nice harvest this morning!
I decided to gather some potatoes this time, expecting to dig up a few smaller potatoes, since it’ll be a while before the potatoes mature and the plants start dying back.
I was wrong!
In the first image, you can see what I uncovered when pulling the mulch aside. Some nice, big potatoes growing, right at the surface! Thanks to the mulch, there was no exposure to the sun, so this just made it easier to get them.
In the second image, you can see the potatoes I got from under two plants. The single carrot is the Uzbek Golden Carrot that seeded itself in the purple cabbage bed.
Then there were the bush beans. There were so many pods! Especially with the yellow beans, but I got quite a few green and purple ones, too. I also grabbed a few more little carrots from the Rainbow Carrots Mix row.
While I was outside, my sister called my cell phone. She had gotten the text I’d sent her about my mother and had called to ask what the heck was going on between us. I explained a bit about what happened during my last visit. I had mentioned in my text the conversation I’d had with my mother, telling her about going to the hospital, so she asked about that, too. After making sure to tell her to NOT say anything to my mother, I gave her the Cole’s Notes of it. She asked for more detail about my mother saying she was sick, and I told her I had none. She went straight from saying “I’m sick. Very sick” to “come visit me.” My sister also thinks my mother is just wanting more visits so she’s pulling the sick card. Which doesn’t work very well, since she is in exactly the right place to be if she really were sick. From the strength of my mother’s voice, I don’t think she’s actually sick.
So my sister is somewhat caught up on things. She knew that we had health issues, but she had no idea things were as bad as they are (I mentioned both my daughters need very different surgeries, too) and, if my mother asks, that’s all she plans to say. My mother already knows this, but doesn’t care.
I did get the watering done while we talked. I told her about watering the garden twice a day when it gets hot like this. She told me, they haven’t had to water their garden at all this year! They live near a creek and their soil, as my sister describes it, is gumbo. Wildly different from what we have! After a while, I had to end the call because I needed two hands to be able to harvest the beans. 😁
Once inside, I covered the colander with the harvest in it and left it, as I needed to sit for a while and have breakfast. My daughters were sweet and brought something for me, as they were going to be using the kitchen for a while. After eating, I sorted through the harvest, plus got what we left in the fridge from before, and organized the vegetables into several bowls, based on what would take the longest to cook, then scrubbed all the potatoes. They are too fresh to bother with trying to peel them.
By the time I was done scrubbing the potatoes, though, I was needing to at least sit down for a while. My younger daughter had come down and I told her what I meant to do next. She was a sweetheart and did the rest of the cleaning, peeling, trimming and prepping for me. I tried sitting at my computer, but the pain kept getting worse. I was preparing to take the new painkillers and lie down when the phone rang.
It was a follow up from my ER visit and CT scan. The gyno wanted me to come in, and she was wondering if Thursday was okay.
As in, the day after tomorrow.
!!!!!
Obviously, I said yes. If I’d had anything booked that day, it would have been cancelled. As it is, it will be in between our regular city stock up trips, so that worked out perfectly.
Then I was able to lie down for a while. I wasn’t laying down to try and sleep. I just needed to not be upright. My SIL started messaging me and we chatted for a while about things. She was very happy to hear I got an appointment so quickly! So am I. I’m getting hit with this pain daily. It’s oddly predictable, too. Very strange.
My husband offered me a muscle relaxant after seeing my face when I walked past to the washroom. It’s one of his “take as needed” meds – and it was bad enough that I actually said yes, since the tramadol was doing nothing. In the end, the muscle relaxant didn’t make a difference, either. The pain just got worse, then started to subside again on its own.
So frustrating.
Once I was able to get up, though, I started on the Hodge Podge after getting the remaining marinated pork belly into the oven.
It’s been a long time since I’ve made Hodge Podge! It’s a great way to use up a lot of different vegetables at one. Of course, I had to modify the basic recipe to match my ingredients, but that’s what Hodge Podge is all about.
So for mine, I had the:
fresh new potatoes
bush beans
Spring Blush peas I’d picked before the plants started producing
the remaining garlic scapes we had that didn’t fit on the pan for dehydrating
the little carrots
the few turnips I’d picked previously (most of which my daughter had to toss because they were worm damaged)
a bunch of Golden Boy celery
couple of onions from the grocery store we had left.
salt, pepper and a bit of powdered beef soup stock mix.
chive blossom oil and butter
butter
salt and pepper to taste
sour cream
I started it off by cutting the onions into big chunks and started to cook them down in a half and half mix of butter and chive blossom oil. Then I added the carrots, turnip, celery and garlic scapes to the pot. Once they had about 5 minutes to soften, I added the potatoes, chopped large, then added just barely enough water to cover the potatoes.. Once the potatoes were almost done, I added the peas then, after a minute or so for them to cook, added the bush beans.
The bush beans are easy to know when they are done. I have the tri-colour mix, and the purple pods turn green when they are cooked through.
Once that was all cooked, I drained some of the water away before going to the next step. I added in a big chunk of butter – about 1/3-1/2 cups. After stirring that in, I added the 250ml container of sour cream.
I’m quite happy with how it turned out!
That done, I had to sit down, as the pain had gotten worse again. I am currently fighting myself. I want to go straight back to bed and pass out, but it’s way too early. I’ll been to take my evening meds. I haven’t even eaten the supper I’d made, yet!
I am so looking forward to the appointment coming up. Hopefully, I’ll actually get something useful out of it!
The Re-Farmer
The Re-Farmer 