...tomatoes, violets and avocados, oh my !

I've been watching these blooms through the heat wave and I think at least one of them has set a tomato. This is a hopeful sign...

because now that it's cooled off, there are several clusters of buds blooming...

but there are only 2 tomatoes left on the vines, which have yet to be harvested and enjoyed...

At this point, most of the branches have only the stems left where I've gathered the sweet summer bounty...

The volunteer asparagus fern has a sibling...so if I thought one was amazing given the heat wave and the frilly look of the fern, 2 are quite remarkable...

Inside, the new Af. Violets are settling in quite well...

they are enjoying their new home and view of the changing creeper leaves, along with the avocado pits I've been attempting to grow into plants for a while now...

The avocado pits are all showing some kind of root growth...

with this one showing multiple roots, where the others tend to show only one big one...

This one is the oldest, a couple of months now, it has a large central root and long ago had the beginnings of a sprout that never came out from inside the pit...so I thought it was dead...

that is, until I moved it to place the new violets the other day and look at what I found... a sprout, reaching to the late summer sun. Maybe there's hope for them after all this time...

Perhaps for me too, "in old age, I bloom again..." Only God knows and He is good.

I have always loved African Violets and have kept a few, flourishing for the most part, on the shelf just below my kitchen windows where they get filtered southern light, decent humidity and I generally remember to water them. They are also safe there from most marauding kitties, though the late Gracie found a way to get up there and wreak a few.

My financial shortfalls have cut back on my plant purchases though and I was down to only 4,[there is ample room for 8-10], 2 of which hadn't bloomed in a long time, but at $3-4 a plant most of the time, I had to pass by the Af. violet displays in the grocery, because as much as I love them, they were just too expensive.

So as I sorted through the survivors, a thought came to me that if I could find a few distressed ones for $1 or so, perhaps I could feed my desire for beauty without being financially irresponsible.

So yesterday, after making sure that my SS check had arrived in my bank account, I filled my car with gas,[$43.01 for 10.8 gals...], and went to SMart, on my way to get my hair cut. I had a hard budget and a list of needs, but I also had about a $5 cushion since the gas had been less than I had budgeted for and I could use the $8 change from the $20 I was using for my hair cut for some of my groceries.

As I walked into the store, I saw a stock cart sitting in the middle of the floral section with 7 plants on it, 6 being distressed looking African Violets. I picked up one and saw this sign...

...so I asked the clerk who was puttering around the plants if they were really $.99. He said they were. As I was choosing, another lady came over to look at them. We had a conversation about the care and nurturing of AVs. She took 2, I took 4. I have seen "distressed" AVs before, but never this nice at this low a price. I was thrilled.

This frilly mauve one,[it's darker when in normal light], was probably the nicest with the most buds yet to bloom of the 4 I took.

This one is the nicest of the purple ones...

the color is a bit better in this shot...

This one is really more red than mauve...

this shot is a bit blurry, but the color is more true...

This purple one is more "leggy", has less blooms and leaves...

it looks better here, though the color is a deep purple rather than a blue...

Here it is in its new home... watered, fed and enjoying the light...

and doesn't the shelf look happy to have residents again. Four lovely plants for the price of 1.

Now if only some of the avocado pits that have roots would actually sprout a stem with leaves...

and to cheer them on, the creeper is starting its Fall show a bit early.

...meat loafing around

I found myself craving meatloaf the other day... not Mom's, which I have made for years, mainly, as a vehicle for consuming ketchup and to use in sandwiches. I think that it was the memory of a juicy,crumbly, bell pepper studded meal from my elementary school cafeteria days,[it was a country school and the cooks made everything from scratch...], that got me searching for a recipe that would go beyond the dense, pate-esque creation I'd always made.

just look at all those yummy bits of fresh veggies...

I wanted flavor and texture...so I began to search recipes online, looking for ones that would use a mix of different meats, as well as fresh veggies. I found my model recipe... and was stunned to see Martha Stewart's name on the recipe. But it had almost all of my desires, so I began to cook, using her recipe more as a template than as directions.

you have to imagine the carrots and celery grated, the onions, peppers and garlic minced... and the cilantro as not there at all...

I set the oven to preheat at 375˚ and proceeded to grate a young carrot and a leafy stalk of celery, after peeling them, [I also grated my finger, but that's NOT an essential ingredient in this recipe, so you can leave yours unmangled...] After rough-chopping half a yellow onion, half a green pepper and 2 large cloves of garlic, I minced them. MS suggested using a food processor for 30 seconds for all the veggies, I didn't want to go to all that trouble...

ground chuck

I used 8 oz[half pound] of ground chuck,[just the perfect beefy flavor, pour off the fat...], as well as 8 oz each of lean ground pork, lamb and turkey. I have left out the lamb when I couldn't get it, but the pork is essential for flavor, especially with the turkey.

ground turkey

ground pork

ground lamb

I lightly beat 2 eggs and mixed into the meat mixture than I had broken with my fingers and loosely stirred along with the veggies...

then I sprinkled about a cup of Progresso Garlic Herb bread crumbs over the loose mixture...along with a good shake of Pappy's 50% less salt seasoning...

a good cup, mixed with about a quarter cup of...

my all-time favorite mild mustard...

and lightly mixed-in with my fingers, being careful not to squeeze the mix...
then I gently put the mix into my loaf pan, making sure it had no voids but also watching the pressure that I was applying... I placed in the oven, at 375˚ for 1 1/2 hours. When I took it out, I poured off the fat from the chuck,[it was about a quarter cup...] and then flipped it out onto a plate to set-up.

even good cold...

I made a wonderful meal of a couple of pieces, accompanied by mashed potatoes, green beans, cooked red cabbage and cooked carrots. It was everything that I had hoped for! Tender and juicy, with great flavor! Best meatloaf ever!
You could even say, "It was a VERY good thing!"

HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY, MOM !

Cecil Brunner rose from my bush, taken from a cutting of Mom's on the ranch.
Her favorite rose bush.

Today, June 29, 2012, would have been Mom's 100th birthday. Until she fell and sustained a hairline fracture in her spine just after turning 91, she was aiming at reaching this day.

The fall changed all that...

 It took the Drs weeks to finally figure out that she was in so much pain because of the fracture they only found after an MRI. They never figured out a way for her to get real relief, because she was so sensitive to any kind of pain meds. They tried several over a period of 2 weeks, all of which sent her off into another world where she didn't know who or where she was and didn't know me at all. It didn't help that her personal physician went on vacation just before she was hospitalized. Her Dr. knew how sensitive she was to all drugs, but the attending Drs at the Med Center refused to listen to me when I told them she was sensitive and when they gave her morphine just before the MRI that found the fracture, she went on a trip that would last several days, and since the attending changed all her meds, we had to wait for her personal Dr to return from vacation to change anything back.

In the meantime, she was discharged from the Med Center, [they had diagnosed the problem...], and was sent to the Skilled Nursing at the Selma hospital, where she had to continue on too much of all the wrong things. She was so out of it that she kept climbing out of bed and falling so they arranged to transfer her to a facility for dementia patients about 10 miles away.

Through all this, I kept telling the nurse at Skilled Nursing that she had been fine until they gave her morphine and changed her blood pressure meds. I kept insisting that she had NO history of even confusion, much less the total trip she was on now, [she was mimicking folding laundry and didn't know me at all, as well as being nasty to the nurses...]and that the change in meds had created the loss of her mind.

Finally, the morning she was to be transferred, her nurse came to me and said that she had been late in giving Mom her meds the night before and when she finally got them to her, Mom was lucid. She had to administer the drugs, but she remembered what I had said and had put in a call to Mom's Dr., who had just returned from vacation. Mom's Dr. promptly changed the med order back to normal, so they were hoping for the best. I went on to the dementia facility to meet Mom's transport and I knew that she would be OK when she waved at me from her wheelchair.

She spent about 10 weeks there, doing physical therapy, determined to get back "home", which she did on my birthday, October 22, 2004. She stayed at the ranch, with a 24 hour live-in caregiver for the next 6 months; organizing, selling, giving away and packing the accumulation of several generations and a hundred years on the property, she was born on the ranch in 1912 and had lived there since. Her father built the house in 1907.

On April 1, 2005, I drove her out the driveway for the last time, on her way to her new home. A terrible, keening cry arose from her very soul and marked her farewell to the place she was so bound to. She was never quite the same. Her new home was good. She had chosen it. But the ranch was her heart and soul. She never got over having to leave it.

She had hoped for a while, right after the fall, that perhaps I would move back "home" and care for her, but we both knew that wouldn't have been good for either of us and, when a freak windstorm in early December, 2006, blew a spark from the road that ignited a major, rapid-moving fire that consumed the house and trees surrounding it in a matter of minutes, leaving nothing but some charred bricks and cement steps, I knew that if she'd been still living there, she probably wouldn't have gotten out.

She continued to have pain issues and became less and less mobile, eventually getting blood clots in her right leg that impaired the circulation. She also was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer around Christmas, 2006. When she developed a blockage in her leg in January, 2007, the Dr. told her that if she did nothing, nature would take it's course and she would die of gangrene in about a week... or they would have to amputate her leg, which would probably kill her. Then there was the cancer...

She chose the natural exit. She had lots of visitors from her church, friends and family. For a couple of days, her room was filled with smiles, laughter and joyful remembering. She didn't want a "death watch", so my brother went back to Seattle and I traveled back and forth, the 300 mile round trip, from Mudville to Selma, daily.

On her last day, January 17, 2007, they had upped the dosage of morphine so she wasn't talking, but she knew we were there. She smiled when her pastor prayed with her and when I kissed her feverish forehead and told her that I was going back home but I'd be back and that she could "go" whenever she was ready.

I hadn't been back home in Mudville 20 minutes when I got the call that she had slipped away.

I wasn't surprised.

Whenever I visited her, I always had to call as soon as I got home, so she could, "rest easy", knowing that I was home safe and once I was, this last time, then she finally,"went home" too.

I miss her every day, but I know that some of the hard things that I've had to deal with since her death, would have been very hurtful for her to have to see. One again, God's timing was perfect. She had a good life, some hard times along the way, but she got to dispose of all her property as she wished and her last week was just perfect for her. She got to say a real good-bye to those she loved. No many get to do that.

Happy Birthday, Mom... I know where ever you are, you're celebrating.