Getting Close

I am nearly done with the quilting on the Delectable Pathways quilt. There was no personal inspiration in this project except for my fabric choices but I do like the quilt. I estimate another week of quilting to complete that and then a few days to trim, bind, label, etc.

Another home "project" that is really coming together is the vegetable garden that we put in this year. The soil in our neighborhood is very heavy clay so not that good for vegetable gardening. But we had a fenced in garden made, complete with slate pathways and topsoil from Kennett Square--used to be the mushroom grower for the US before Canadian mushrooms took over and now that the Canada-US border is more or less closed to human traffic and Trump has tariffs on all sorts of Canadian goods, perhaps Kennett Square will emerge as the leader again.

We don't grow our own mushrooms. Some people do but that seems like a waste of time to me. I don't know how different fresh mushrooms from your basement taste compared to fresh mushrooms from five miles away. But we do grow all sorts of other plants. We have been eating a variety of fresh lettuces along with collard greens for a while now. Even though I am sort of from the south, I never had collard greens before moving back to Pennsylvania. Then we went to the library one day and the librarian pointed out small packets of collard seeds put together by another patron. We have been eating collards for several months now and giving away bags full to some or our new neighbors--a good way to meet people, even during a pandemic.

Today we picked our first tomato of the season. Since we were forced to grow our own seedlings this year we didn't have any Early Girls at all which is typically our first tomato. We buy the plants from a local garden store but that business was shut down as non-essential so we started all of our plants from seeds in the basement this year. The new garden is doing great, perhaps even too well since everything has grown so fast that it is like a jungle. I planted potatoes outside of the new garden in three different places, experimenting to see what produces the most. The plants are all thriving but the potato harvest won't happen for a while.

In the meantime we have tiny green beans, two different varieties; tiny Fordhook lima beans, tiny peppers (Anaheims and shishitos).

We also gave away a quart of rendered duck fat to a neighbor today. We have talked with this fellow regularly since we moved here, primarily because he has a lovable dog. We still maintain social distancing but he said that his daughter, who went to culinary school, was visiting and they didn't have any duck fat and I have a ton because I make duck bolognese often so I have to buy a whole duck. Anyway, I end up with bucket loads of rendered duck fat and even though it keeps well, I have way more than I need and I plan to make duck bolognese again this week.

Trump achieved another milestone of the US being first. We lead the world in Covid19 deaths. We are not even close to the world's biggest population but we have 1/4 of the world's deaths. Will he put that on a campaign banner--WE ARE STILL NUMBER ONE--just imitating the don con's habit of all caps.