We had gypsy soup and apple muffins for dinner last night. Gypsy
soup is one of those soups, like minestrone or mulligatawny, that
one makes when there is no time to go to the store and the last
tomatoes need to be picked and the fridge yields a little of this
and a little of that. It is a resourceful, hopeful soup.
We had gypsy soup and apple muffins for dinner last night. Gypsy soup is one of those soups, like minestrone or mulligatawny, that one makes when there is no time to go to the store and the last tomatoes need to be picked and the fridge yields a little of this and a little of that. It is a resourceful, hopeful soup.
This column is like gypsy soup. It contains a little of this and a little of that, left over in the cold storage of my mind, all the things I had no space to write about over the past few months.
n Item one: try Garlic City Cafe, 7461 Monterey Street, for breakfast or lunch. Last week, I had the best omelet I have ever eaten in my life, and the potatoes were to die for. Owner Socrates Diego is a culinary genius. Support the downtown, support private enterprise, and enjoy California cuisine at its finest simultaneously.
n Item two: gardening tool recommendations. One day last summer, I went out into the back yard, and found that a big branch of the loquat tree had snapped. The branch was swinging gently, hanging upside down, suspended by some baling twine. The twine is left over from one of the kids’ more desultory and free-form tree houses, abandoned now that the kids are grown. This branch was big. I quickly moved my glass-topped table out from under, then the chairs. Then I got out the loppers, the yard waste tote, and an extra garbage can, and began lopping and filling. I filled both containers, reducing the branch’s verdure and fruit by about three-quarters in the process. I tried to lift the branch, intending to see if I could slip it out of the loop of baling twine. No dice: even in its reduced state it was too heavy to lift. I contemplated the tangle. It was looking like a job for a ladder and a knife or scissors. Sigh. I have often had to saw through the last bit of a branch while perched high on a ladder or in a tree, and it is never a comfortable procedure. Sometimes the branch falls neatly away. Sometimes it falls toward me, or onto the ladder. I’ve never been seriously injured by falling timber… not yet. Too bad, I thought, gazing at the triangle of baling twine, that I don’t own a long handled pruning saw. It would take a while to saw through the twine, but at least I would be on the ground, ready to dodge when the bough broke. A knife tied to the end of a pole would work, or a … or a… boar spear. Now, most people don’t happen to have a boar spear propped up in the corner of their bedrooms behind the laundry basket, but we do. It belongs to my husband. I got it for him for Christmas, because it was what he really, really wanted. So I fetched the boar spear. I cleared away the yard waste tote and garbage can, so as to have room to dodge falling timber. I reached up with the boar spear, sliding the point into the triangle of twine, sliced gently forward and back. The twine parted, I stepped back, and the branch fell meekly to the ground. Boar spears can be purchased from coldsteel.com for the gardener or sword enthusiast in your life.
n Item three: definition of weeds. Last summer, I noticed that my lawn was being overtaken by these little round-leafed weeds. I kept mowing them down, but they were very resilient and invasive. Then a couple of them blossomed and I realized that they were violets: volunteer violets. The curious thing is that I have not seen violets at neighboring properties for at least six years. My ex-neighbor Jennie Velasco used to have some. The last neighbors, Clemente and Urbina, eradicated them when they reseeded the lawn. I started mowing around the biggest patch and they grew about six inches tall, sturdy and thick. On Halloween I moved the biggest patch to a partly shady place under the apricot tree. Three days of showers have watered them into place. I have great hopes for them.
