01.18.12
Posted in Anything goes, Playing the Tourist, family stuff, gardening at 1:09 am by Administrator
Apparently, my previous post of the rice terraces was a bit confusing as to how rice grows. To clear the confusion, I thought I’d post a few more rice pictures. Here’s a picture of rice at the terraces before harvesting.
Here’s a closer picture with Brian reaching out to touch the rice.
This woman was harvesting the rice and tying them into bundles for drying.
After bundling, the rice is laid out all over the place–along side the roads, the walls, etc. This is what the bundles looked like while they are laid out to dry.
These bundles were all over the place. Here’s another example.
I believe each family did their own harvesting, so these piles would be all over. They don’t sell this rice commercially. It’s only grown for the community and sold in small quantities to visitors. We were able to taste some of this rice in the local restaurants and also by purchasing a small amount that we were able to take back to Manila with us and cook at the condo. This is the type of bundle Brian was holding in the picture in my previous post on the rice terraces.
While I’m sharing this pictures, I thought I’d throw in a couple more that I liked. Here’s pic of some cute little girls passing through the terraces. These kids are used to walking up and down the terraces to go to school. They must be in great shape because boy, I was pooped walking only a short distance of steep steps.
Brian just loved this closeup.
Isn’t she cute?
Hope this clears up the rice thing!
Marlakins 
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01.12.12
Posted in Historical Trivia, Playing the Tourist, family stuff, food and restaurants, gardening at 4:23 pm by Administrator
Last week I got an email from my sister asking if I would forward her a copy of some family pictures with some Ifugao and/or pictures of the rice terraces. Being the compliant sister that I am, I dutifully forwarded her a few pictures no questions asked (after all we took a ton of them during our visit last August). She gave me no explanation why she wanted them, just a “thank you” when she received it. So I asked her what that was all about. It turns out some good friends of hers had given her an old book that was published in the 50’s. It was a Hardy Boy type of book called The Skull. Apparently, it was a sort of joke as they weren’t familiar with the Rice Terraces or the Ifugao. The story is of some guys who leave from Manila to the Philippine Rice Terraces in search of treasure. My sister’s friends thought it was all made up, but my sister informed them that there are real Ifugao and real Philippine rice terraces. She had forwarded my family pictures to back up her claim, heheh.
My sister’s request got me rummaging through my pictures, so I figured while I was at it, I might as well share some of those pictures on my blog. I know we’ve already started the new year, but there’s still a lot of things left over from last year. Here’s one of the pictures we took last August with my family and mom at the rice terraces with some Ifugao.
Okay so we’re blocking the view of the rice terraces, so here’s a better picture of one of the spectacular views there.
Looks like a postcard, huh? There were so many scenic shots like this. It reminded me of pictures we took while in the Yucatan Peninsula years ago where many of our photographs looked like postcards.
These terraces are in the Banaue area. When we visited, we stayed at the Banaue Hotel, which was actually commissioned by Imelda Marcos from what we were told. When we arrived, we found that they had a welcome sign with all the guests’ names arriving that day.
I guess they listed the guests in alphabetical order, so our name was on top. Gosh we saw so many things there and took so many pictures, it’s hard to know which ones to share as there is only a small space on the blog. I’ll just share a few more that I liked like this one of Brian walking through the rice terrace. He really wanted to walk right in there and touch the rice. . .
The man behind him was our tour guide. He was very nice and accommodating. Luckily for us, there was still a lot of rice to harvest. Other times during the time we visited, the rice would have been harvested already and we would have only seen brown terraces. But fortunately, it was still quite green.
We visited a few museums, and also a small village called Taam Village, IIRC. It’s customary for them to keep the bones of their ancestors in their home, so here’s a pic of a young gal showing us the bones of her grandfather.
The structure we were in was actually one of the homes, which is basically a hut. I don’t think they all had wood floors like this one.
As we were winding up our tour of the village, my boys got ambushed by a bunch of Filipino gals taking a tour there, too. It’s interesting how they can spot outsiders easily and asked if they could take some pictures with my boys. Since they were all taking pictures, I joined in and grabbed a snap. Ah, to be young again. . .
And finally, before we left Banaue, we had lunch at the People’s Inn, which had another nice view of the terraces. There’s actually many, many views as the terraces are very extensive in size. While we felt surrounded by terraces, we actually only saw a small portion of it’s entirety.
You wouldn’t know if from looking at the above picture, but not more than two minutes passed after this shot that it got cloudy and started to rain. The sudden change of climate reminded me of Kauai. It would rain for a short while and clear up quickly as well.
Well, that’s it for now. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for my first post of the year, but I’m already behind, ha! I’ll likely post a few more stuffs from last year before I get on with this year.
Marlakins
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10.30.11
Posted in Anything goes, Historical Trivia, Playing the Tourist, gardening, hobbies, museums at 9:16 am by Administrator
On Friday my boys and I visited the Getty Villa Museum in Malibu.
Wow, I would love to have a courtyard like that! But alas, only in my dreams, heheheh. Actually, this was my first time back at the Getty Villa since it’s reconstruction. The first time I had gone to the Getty Villa was during my high school days way before the Getty Center opened in Los Angeles. For anyone visiting Los Angeles, this is definitely one of the museums that should be on your list to visit. The Getty Villa was constructed as a replica of the Villa Dei Papiri for the purpose of housing J. Paul Getty’s art collection. The Villa was also intended to give the visitor the feeling of what it was like to walk in the villas back in it’s day and get a feeling of what it must have felt like to be in ancient Italy. It’s really a lovely place to visit full of history and art. Not only is the art collection engaging, but so is the architecture. Our docent told us that the Romans were obsessed with math and right angels and such, so a lot of that is seen in their architecture. This picture is an example.
According to our docent, the Romans were very practical, so all of their construction had dual function. That is, nothing was created solely for aesthetics, but also for functionality or special meaning. The gardens were also designed to grow plenty of herbs as was believed was done back in ancient Italy. The garden is impeccable. I even saw the most perfect pomegranate tree there. Other pomegranate trees I’ve seen have usually been unkempt and wild looking. The one in the Getty garden looked perfectly pruned. The picture doesn’t seem to do it justice. I found it to be very striking in person.
As with all museums, there is even a nice little gift shop. I always get sucked into those, heheheh. I found that the Getty Villa also has live stage performances. I’ll have to look into those and see when they do them and how to get in. I’m not sure, but I was under the impression some were performed in the amphitheater just in front of the villa. For anyone who loves art and architecture, you can easily spend the whole day there. Not only are there art works that you’d normally expect like pottery and sculptures, they had other things like this mummy.
I didn’t realize that the Italians did this back as early as the 1400’s (I think that’s about the date of this). I’ve been to Italy years ago and even visited some of their catacombs, but maybe I wasn’t paying attention if they mentioned these. The ritual was changed from the Egyptians, but there are some similarities, but also some differences like the face painting on the head of the mummy. Apparently, that painting was supposed to be what the deceased looked like.
I’m a sucker for art or most any craft, so I love to get ideas in places like this. For instance, one of my interests have been to learn to tole paint, so these murals caught my eye as I would love to learn how to paint these floral curly cues.
I love the floral vines along the column, pedestal, and below the window. Just before I went to the Philippines, I picked up some paint and paint brushes to try to learn how to do these as well as flowers. Have not gotten back to it since I’ve returned, wah. The other hobby that I’ve wanted to dabble in is mosaics. I purchase a book on this as well as checked some out from the library, so the Getty mosaics were also a great interest to me.
I like the idea of the shells as well. I’m thinking maybe I can try a small scale project like a flower pot for starters. The Getty mosaics definitely serve as a source of inspiration if not only for admiration of Italian creativity and skill, but for aspiring artists. We took a lot more pictures (I just love museums that allow picture taking), but there is just too much to share on a small blog like this. Suffice it to say that I highly recommend visiting the Getty Villa. For art lovers, it would definitely make for a very nice day.
Marlakins
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09.24.11
Posted in Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, Treatment Decisions, gardening at 12:56 am by Administrator
Recently Brian signed us up for a couple Chumash Healing classes. The classes were held at the Theodore Payne Foundation for two Saturdays, each class being three hours long. The teachers of the classes were Cecilia Garcia, a bonafide Chumash Indian Healer, and James D. Adams, Jr., Associate Professor of Pharmacology at the University of Southern California. The classes were very good! The herbs discussed were primarily California native plants, although a few were plants from other areas that were later introduced to California but made their way into Chumash herbal treatments. We were introduced to the various herbs used by the Chumash Indians as explained by Cecilia, and then the pharmacology side of the plants were explained to us by James. For anyone interested in herbs, I recommend this Chumash Herb class.
Although each class was three hours long, the time went by really fast. Not only were we told about how each plant was/is used, but there was a lot of hands-on experience as well. They brought it freshly harvested plants which they passed around to each of us and we all made a sash filled with mixed herbs to wear. We were taught about using the mixed herbs in pillows and as bedding to enhance health, including mental health. Here’s a picture of an animal skin (IIRC, it’s rabbit) filled with mixed herbs.
These herb-filled skins are used like pillows during sleep. It’s believed to enhance mood and mental well-being.
Foot soaks and steam treatments were also discussed for various ailments like colds, lung problems, mood problems, etc. Here’s a pic of a couple gourds filled withhot water and herbs. We were encouraged to try them out. They smelled really nice.
Those were the teacher’s feet by the gourds, heh. Below is a close up of one of the herb mixtures. The water was very warm, and smelled really nice. It felt good, and I could see how it could help with relaxation.
Most of the herbs they passed around for us to look at, smell, and feel were fresh out of the ground, while a few were dried and in small baskets like this one. This herb is used for females (regulate cycles, IIRC) and is called “California everlasting.” I think it’s also used for lung issues and colds.
Amongst the fresh herbs were Elderberries. Apparently there are bluish ones and white ones. I knew of the bluish ones, but didn’t know about the whitish ones. They can be dried and used like currants. We tried them and they were actually tasty. Here’s a pic of the white variety.
Acorns were another California native plant used by the Chumash. James made up a sort of acorn jello or gruel for us to try.
Eh, I can’t say it tasted too good, heheheh, but it was considered a very important food source and helped sick people feel stronger. I think it’s kind of the equivalent to Chinese congee.
Here’s a pic of some acorns. They’re supposed to be ripe when they’ve fallen off the tree naturally.
Amongst the plants being passed around were also items like turtle shells. The small turtle shells were supposed to help with pain. Just rub them along the painful areas. I have to admit that those little turtle shells did feel good in the hands. I didn’t have any painful parts to test it out on, but I did rub the shells a bit because it really did feel nice. I neglected to take a pic of those, tho. . . But I did take a pic of this little hawk that Cecilia happened to see fall out of the sky on her way to the class. Apparently, an owl attacked it in mid air, and it fell where Cecilia was able to see it and pick it up.
I didn’t know this, but it’s illegal for people to own these birds, except for the American Indians. So Cecilia went ahead and took this bird since as a Chumash Indian she had the right to keep it. It was actually quite beautiful and peaceful lying on her bed of herbs. The feathers were very soft, too.
With all the stories, slides, hands-on items, etc. the time flew by and we headed out to do a short herb trek. Here’s a pic of the pathway.
Along the trail we were allowed and encouraged to pick fresh herbs for our use. That’s why Brian is carrying a big woven bag.
Along the trail was a lot of California buckwheat. We’ve eaten plenty of buckwheat in our household and I realized that day that I didn’t even know what the plant looked like. Well, this is what it looks like. . .
It was a really nice day to pick herbs. I’d like to go back out there again another time and spend more time exploring and picking, heh. I’m particularly encouraged to try to make my own fresh sashays. The ones Cecilia had us make smell really nice. Here’s a pic of Brian and me on the trail with our red sashays that we made with mixed herbs rolled up inside.
Our class ended with the completion of the herb trail. We learned a lot of nice and useful things in that class. For anyone interested in more information regarding California medicinal plants, Cecilia and James have a book available called Healing with Medicinal Plants of the West; cultural and scientific basis for their use. Thanks Cecilia and James for all your hard work and sharing it with us!
Marlakins
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07.25.10
Posted in family stuff, gardening, hobbies at 11:32 am by Administrator
Aaron recently found an interest in planting cotton. He found some green and brown cotton seeds and planted them a few weeks ago.
Each morning he would check his pots and call me to see the progress. He was so happy when they first poked out of the soil, and we all got a kick at how fast they sprouted up once the sprout broke through the soil.
So it was particularly timely that the LA Spinner’s Guild meeting this month turned out to feature cotton. The guest speaker shared lots of information from the cotton plants to the harvesting of the cotton, and then the preparation of the cotton for spinning, and then down to the spinning. Here’s a pic comparing the boles of cotton. The white ones are the largest. Next come the green, and then the brown. Aaron planted both the green and the brown at home.
The speaker showed us how to use a manual cotton gin and prepare the cotton into punis ready for spinning.
She also brought along a bunch of cotton spinning supplies such as these tahklis, which she let a bunch of the group try.
And here she is demonstrating how to spin the cotton.
The procedure is very much like spinning wool, only much finer.
The other fun things the guild had in store this weekend was a show and tell of stuff the women made during the “Tour de fleece,” and the “Dye Fest.” Here’s one of the ladies showing what she made.
Here’s a close up of some of the lovely yarn another woman spun up and dyed.
Very nice! Maybe one day I’ll get to this point, but for now. . . must practice!
Marlakins
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07.20.10
Posted in Health-related--Natural Alternative Treatments, gardening at 10:03 am by Administrator
Oftentimes I have a few words to say about a topic. Maybe it’s too early in the morning, or these subjects emotionally wear me out because this time I only have three words. . . Good for them.
“(NaturalNews) In an attempt to backdoor GMO seeds into a new market, Monsanto has taken the opportunity to donate hundreds of tons of GMO seeds to Haiti and is calling it an effort to help the people in Haiti with earthquake relief. However, Monsanto’s “generosity” is being met with skepticism and outright rejection.
Recently, a large group of small farmers burned a symbolic quantity of Monsanto’s donated hybrid corn seed in the central square of the agricultural town of Hinche. A 200,000-member national coalition is encouraging Haiti farmers to burn all Monsanto seeds that have already been distributed, and has called on the government to reject additional shipments.”
The full article can be read here.
Marlakins
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07.06.10
Posted in gardening, hobbies, knitting and crocheting at 12:57 pm by Administrator
Today marks nine years since my last blood transfusion. Despite the gloomy weather outside, this is a wonderful day for me! I’m just taking it easy, working on my favorite things–crafts. . . Like any other craft addict, I have a few projects going on at the same time. Some are “years” old, sigh. But, my resolution is to finish up my old projects and plug along on any new projects so they don’t last for years. Here’s a new project I started a couple weeks ago.
It’s called “Grapevine Wreath with Floral” by Donna Dewberry. The completed stitched size should be 14″x11″. Here’s how far I got about a week ago.
Here’s how far I am on it today.
And did I say that it’s hard to just work on one project at a time? Well, I started on something this Sunday. This might end up as a small bathroom curtain if it turns out decent. I’m thinking of adding beads on the bottom.
The pink ball, I’m thinking of using to make another curtain for my back door. Not sure yet. I’ll have to work up a swatch to see if I like how it drapes.
Another project that has been hanging around here for “years” is this cross stitch mermaid by Mirabilia. I LOVE her designs! I’ve finished all the cross stitching, but just need to add the beads now. I’ve got the beads off to the side.
Uh, yeah, got lots of wrinkles. . . hope it irons out okay once I’m done.
And as if I don’t have enough projects to work on, I picked up a few more patterns that I found too irresistible to pass up. I’ve long admired P Buckley Moss, and couldn’t pass up a few of her cross stitch patterns.
Then my girlfriend found out that I love Mirabilia patterns and she picked up several patterns for me that I just adore!!! I told her a few of them that I liked, and had no idea she would pick them up for me! Oye. . .
I thought I already had a craft stash big enough to last me my lifetime. However, somehow my stash keeps growing! I’m trying to get a grip, but it’s hard being that I’m such a craft addict. . . Well, at least I’m keeping my hands busy and staying out of trouble. And the icing on the cake is that I’ve been able to indulge in these things hardly ever giving a thought to my once obsessive occupation of trying to heal my aplastic anemia. Life has been good. God is great.
I’m off to the Theodore Payne Foundation to hunt for some drought resistant plants. Happy 6th of July everyone!
Marlakins
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06.12.10
Posted in Playing the Tourist, gardening, hobbies, knitting and crocheting, museums at 8:34 pm by Administrator
Today I was able to make a quick trip down to the Huntington Library in San Marino. I really love that place, so it was a shame that I was only able to spend a couple hours there. Usually whenever I go there I have to visit their cactus garden (they have the best collection that I know of here), but today I didn’t have time. Instead I bee-lined it to the herb garden because they were having a special exhibit which featured natural dyes for yarns. Oh yeah! But first. . . I had to wend my way through their rose garden.
The only other rose garden that I know of that is comparable to this one is the one Brian and I visited during our trip to London. I forget the name right now, but I sure took a lot of pictures there! Maybe some time I’ll upload some of my rose shots.
So not far from here was my intended destination–the herb garden. Towards the back perimeter they had tables and charts set up with dying information, including some samples and a small demonstration.
This woman was very nice and helpful (actually all the women there were!) Not only did she give me lots of information, but I learned something that really made me happy–one doesn’t have to use mordants to dye yarns! Woo hoo! Mordants have been one of the things that have kept me from taking the dying plunge. I didn’t want to use any toxic chemicals, and now learning that I don’t even need to use a mordant and that I can use herbs right from my garden or even kitchen I can feel another hobby coming on. Granted, using a mordant is supposed to help the colors hold fast and fix more brightly, but I’m not that picky. Here’s a chart with samples this woman had on display that her son made back in 1977. The colors, while faded a bit, still held well enough for my taste.
There were also other fiber addicts there demonstrating their talents like this woman spinning yarn.
Another woman was sorting through some fleece. Again, I was able to learn more information about fleece from her, which is good to know since I still have my fleece to work on that I got from my trip to the Isle of Man.
There were also women working on different types of looms. This is a small rectangular loom by which one can make small woven pieces to sew together.
Apparently there are quite a few different shapes used for weaving. I was shown one that I’ve never seen before–a triangular loom.
I do have a more complicated loom that Brian bought me years ago, which I have still never used. . . I guess I just look at all that threading that needs to be done before weaving, and I just can’t seem to get myself to do it. Or maybe it’s really that I’ve been too lazy to figure it all out. But when I saw this knitter’s loom, it looked very simple and something that might be a good starting point for me.
Oh yeah, now that I could see myself dabbling in. This particular loom is called the knitter’s loom by Ashford. The woman explained to me that Japanese kimonos were originally made in strips 14″ wide and then sewn together, thus explaining some of their striped patterns. I could see trying this! Look like fun to me, and yes, I have plenty of scrap yarns to test it all out, too.
By this time I had already spent about 1 1/2 hours here, and still wanted to visit the Chinese garden Matty told me he wanted to see. So off we zoomed back through the garden.
This path lead down to the Japanese garden first.
Then we veered off to the Chinese garden.
And another shot.
Gorgeous! I really love the Huntington Library gardens! I could easily spend the whole day there, but alas I didn’t have time. So not long after strolling through this garden, we had to head back without even a peek at the library museum, bookstore, or cactus garden, wah. . . maybe next time. I thank God that there are some really creative and talented people out there who can create such beautiful, peaceful environments, not to mention the amazing variety of nature that God has given us to tend and cultivate.
Marlakins
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04.06.10
Posted in gardening, hobbies, knitting and crocheting at 5:45 pm by Administrator
Hope everyone had a nice Resurrection Sunday. Ours was quiet except for a short-lived excitement created by a little rocking and rolling from the Baja earthquake. Thank God it was mild for us considering it was a 7.2 in Baja. It was a rolling kind of earthquake rather than the jolting shaking kind. And it was kinda long in duration as far as earthquakes go. Then today I just read that there was another earthquake in Sumatra. Oye, Haiti, Chile,Taiwan, Baja, now Sumatra. . . what is going on?
Other than that, things have been business as usual here in the Brown household. I continue to read books. I’m still reading Dark Sun: the Making of the Hydrogen Bomb. Still want to blog about The Day We Lost the H-Bomb, but just haven’t gotten around to it, yet. Just picked up Sugar Fix at the library today. I also bought another book that I haven’t started reading yet called Nuclear Showdown, North Korea Takes on the World. Then some of the nice ladies in my knit group have been knitting scarves for a charity. The organization is called “Handmade Especially for You.” They supply handmade comfort scarves for these abused women. One of the ladies in my group has been knitting up a storm for this charity and has recruited a few of us by giving us yarn to knit, too, heheh. Apparently, Handmade Especially for You has donors who supply them with all sorts of yarn. They wind them up and make little kits, so that all you have to do is just knit up the ball of yarn until it’s all gone. And it goes really super fast, too, because the scarves are knit on “large” needles such as 15s or 17s. I didn’t pick out the yarns or colors. They do that for you, including the fluffy parts on both ends. I still need to tuck in the loose ends. Here are how the scarves turned out.
While I’m on the knit subject, I also finally learned how to do entrelac, so I can now tick that off of my list of things to learn. I’ve only made a small swatch as I’m not sure what to do with this stitch as of yet. I was originally gonna make a scarf with this stitch, but decided that I didn’t like how the back is not as presentable as the front, and I tend to like my scarves reversible. Plus the yarn I was using is self-striping, and I didn’t like how the colors were pooling. But here’s the swatch I made.
I think I’ll reserve this stitch for something that’s not reversible, or try to figure out how to alter the pattern so that it is somewhat reversible.
We also got a little more rain the other day! Yay! That always is good for the plants, which by the way, we have our first produce. . . artichokes!
We planted this artichoke plant last year, but didn’t get anything until this year. Plus during our winding spell this plant fell over on it’s side, and I was concerned that we had lost it. Brian just propped it right back up with some rope and viola! We now have artichoke!
My seeds were pathetic. . . and before I could replant, Brian came home with these!
I feel like I’m cheating getting them all started up like this, but oh well! If all goes well, they’re gonna be organic string beans!
Then something Matty ordered in the mail a while ago finally came. . . His paulownia tree.
We didn’t expect it to be so small! Ha ha! But Matty likes it just the same. I like how he and his dad have been working in the yard this year. When it gets cleaned up a bit more I’ll try to share some pictures of our herb garden. I’m hoping that we’ll get some fish back there, too, but we’ll see. It got kinda wild while we were away in the Philippines and it rained like cats and dogs. Boy, did the weeds grow up like they owned the place. We’re still trying to catch up with that between my regular house chores and hobbies. Hopefully soon we’ll have a handle on it.
As another nice garden surprise this year, it appears that one of our random seed planting bloomed into this.
I love poppies! Flowers do make me happy. This reminds me that once upon a time I wanted to try to plant edible flowers. Hmmm. Another thing to add on my list. . .
Okay, well I think I’ve rambled on long enough, so will start working on dinner now. Oh! Speaking of dinner, I should share some pics of Aaron’s lumpia wrappers. That little guy is such fun in the kitchen. He definitely encourages me to try new things. But I’ll have to share those pics later.
Marlakins
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10.14.09
Posted in food and restaurants, gardening at 3:26 pm by Administrator
We have RAIN! I can’t remember if it was last February or March since we last saw rain this year. Since then things here have been dry, dry, dry. Because of the drought, we have only been allowed to water the yards on Mondays and Thursdays after 4PM for 10 minutes. In addition to the dryness, So Cal has been weathering fires while other parts of the country have been cold and rainy. Even the Philippines was deluged with water while things dried up here. But yesterday morning a glorious thing happened here. Rain fell from the sky. . . Aaron and I even went out and walked in the rain. In the evening, I laid in bed and listened to the pitter patter of the rain. This morning it was still raining, and as I type this afternoon, I can hear the water continuing to fall.
Rain doesn’t show up so well in pictures, so I took a shot of the welcomed water on my rose vine. No roses this time of year, so the leaf will have to do. . .
No, that water is “not” from the hose, but from the sky! I am thankful for the rain, but also awed at its power. It can give life as well as death. The last I read there were about 600 deaths in the Philippines as a result of the storms that passed through there this past few weeks. Fortunately none of my family members living there were hurt. Yes, some experienced property damage, but at least they are all safe.
Days like these make me reflect on my life and how blessed I have been. For the most part of my life I have lived rather comfortably. While the floods in the Philippines got so high that people had to stand on their rooftops to get out of the water, this is the minor commotion we have here with the rain.
Part of our neighbor’s tree fell during the rain. It just happened this morning and already there are workers outside ready to clean it up. And I think of those in other parts of the world and how long it takes for assistance to get to them. It’s as if our lives are a luck of the draw. We don’t choose where we are born, but where we are born (and who our parents, family, and friends are) can greatly affect how comfortable our lives will be.
Even amidst our drought, we still have access to a lovely variety of organic produce. Here’s part of the nice produce I got at the farmer’s market. They had a much larger variety than I needed.
And interestingly, during the heavy fires when our weather got kinda hot and muggy the fruit in my parents’ backyard ripened quickly and we got to taste their first harvest of their sapodilla tree. My parents call it custard apple, which is a very fitting name because it tastes just like custard.
Also during this drought we managed to grow a little produce in our yard. Here are a few old pics I found in my camera, which were taken a few months ago when our first fruits were starting to come in. The first fruits are always a small batch. Here’s the first batch of crookneck squash. . .
A couple varieties of string beans.
A few varieties of chili peppers.
Our Mandarin orange tree is loading up with fruit. We also managed to grow a bunch of herbs this time around, but I’m too lazy to upload all those pictures. . .
The bottom line for me on this day of contemplation is that God continues to bless us and care for us. There’s so much more to be thankful for. Today it’s the rain as well as many other things. I think I’ll go and see what my boys are up to and enjoy their company for now.
Marlakins
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