Spring Volunteers

My friend Cherie composes wonderful stories about her yard with the Kodak photo album. Inspired by her, I thought I'd share what's popping up in our yard.

A neighbor gave Larry a small Bird of Paradise. He planted it in one of the many terracotta pots left by the previous owner. I saw some sprouts starting and rather than assume they were weeds and pluck them out, I let them mature to see what they were. Apparently, at one time, the soil must have had some annuals. Here's some sweet Alyssum and some other sweet plant with a red violet flower.

We're keeping the squash hills watered because they dry out quickly. The tomatoes are in little wells, so they hold the water better. The tomatoes have flowers; we'll see if it's not too soon for them to develop into something. Maybe we'll have a little tomato before June, when we'd be thinking about planting that more tropical plant in Connecticut.

I'll couch for that

Cappuccino approved of the "new" couch our friend gave us. His look seems to say "I own this couch." It's a sleeper couch which my friend says we can use for when guests come (chuckle). It's micro suede which is a very durable fabric against cat scratching. Oh, there will be and has been cat scratching, Mr. Ccino. I bought a new cardboard scratcher and primed it with catnip and brought it out the day the couch arrived. It was sort of a distraction. Another deterrent against scratching is to attach double-stick tape. Cats don't like the sticky feeling on their paws. Cappuccino, however, loves tape. We have to hide the packing tape, gnaw, gnaw, gnaw. Quite an amusing cat.

Vegan Shrimp Helix

At the 2007 Natural Products Expo in Los Angeles, VegeUSA had a large booth with samples of their product. We sampled all their products and I liked a few even though I don't crave meat analogs and certainly don't crave any animal flesh.

Our local market, Windmill Farms, had these products on sale and I picked up a few packages. I made a cajun rice dish last night which calls for soysage. I substituted the vegan shrimp. It was interesting and fine in the dish. There is a firm texture to the product, somewhat how I remember shrimp to feel in your mouth.

I thought I'd look up the main ingredient after water, Curdlan Gum. Chemistry-wise, "Curdlan gum is a microbial fermentation extracellular polymer prepared commercially from a mutant strain of Alcaligenes faecalis var. myxogenes." If you then look up Alcaligenes faecalis, it's a mutant of soil bacteria and produced some inhibitory activity against Sarcoma and carcinoma in a cancer study in 1978.

Still, I think I'll stick to whole foods that I can pronounce and not the highly-processed glucans. Many studies have also linked the vegetarian and vegan diets to health benefits. [smile]

Make the best of it

Here's a picture of my parents when I last went back to visit 2 years ago. They're going through a difficult time right now with my dad's health failing and my mom as caregiver. It's a very difficult time as you can imagine, both physically and emotionally. I thank my aunt for being there to relieve my mom (for grocery shopping) and I thank both her and Allen for visiting with my dad. Thank you.

"Make the best of it. When you make the best of whatever you're focused upon, your future will be better than your now. If each moment you're making the best of what-is, no matter what it is, you make the best of it; make the best of it; make the best of it—your future just gets better and better and better, and better. "

Excerpted from a workshop in Boulder, CO on Saturday, June 7th, 2003
©1997-2007 Abraham-Hicks Publications.