boxofdelights

There are some black and red currant bushes along the bike path near my house. The fruit is almost over. They are so tedious to top and tail, but so good! Flavors intense and varied. The first time I walked past with my husband I picked one and ate it then picked one and tried to give it to him.
He winced. "Pesticides!"
"They don't even water these poor bushes, why would they be out here spraying pesticides on the fruit?"
He hesitated, maybe thinking of the other things that could be on roadside bushes, then ate it and pronounced it delicious. He is willing to eat purslane from my garden, but probably not from the side of a bike path. We will not mention the fact that feral cats hang out in my garden.
There are some other bushes near the bike path, less than waist-high, with fruit that looks and tastes like a marble-sized plum. Any guesses?

I approve of edible landscaping. Very much. But there are places it is not appropriate. To make a large parking lot less hellish, what you want is shade. In the Foothills Mall parking lot, someone once planted dwarf apple trees. No shade to speak of, but the spaces around them are filled with apple smush in autumn.

I never eat the pickled ginger that comes with takeout sushi. I like pickled ginger, I just can't understand wanting to remove the taste of sushi. If Neal is around I give it to him; otherwise, I've been putting it in the freezer. For Neal's birthday, I decided to try candying it. One cup frozen pickled ginger, one cup sugar, one cup water, simmer until the water is mostly gone. It's good. I made him some more to take on his hiking trip with Mungo, but he wanted to leave it at home. He didn't want it to spoil in his backpack. "How do we preserve food without refrigeration?" I said. "We dry it, smoke it, salt it, pickle it, candy it. Candied pickled ginger is not going to go bad in ten days!" It didn't last ten days because he and Mungo ate it all in three.

I am really really pleased that my picky eater turned into an adventurous eater even though I never coerced him to eat anything he didn't want.

Oddly, Aiko is Sir Not-appearing-in-this-post.

Mungo won the Patrick Gilmore award, which his high school gives to its outstanding freshman music student. It's kind of a big deal.

I can't decide whether to tell my mother. Naches are a gift, you know? And people who look gifts in the mouth shouldn't necessarily be expecting to receive more. And in my last phone call I mentioned that Nixie has planned out her entire three remaining years at Reed, because she wants to take all fifteen Psych classes Reed offers and enough other things to fill an extra major or two, so she had to get permission from a prof to take a senior-level class next semester, but that was easy because it was the same prof who wants her to TA for the class she just finished.

And my mother said in this oh-dear voice, "Do you think she'll go on to grad school?"

And I said that although I thought it was silly to expect a college freshman to have chosen a career, Nixie was planning to be a neurobiologist, as she has since tenth grade, so there were necessarily going to be lots more years of school after Reed.

And I tried to keep my irritation out of my voice, but I must have failed, because my mother said, "Well, I'm just concerned for her. I don't know what she can do with a bachelor's degree in psychology."[*]


And this is a common occurrence in my conversations with my mother. About this time last year, I remember, my mother asked how Nixie's graduation went. I said it was fine. She said, "Didn't she graduate?" as if that were a natural followup to what I said. Yes, she graduated, with honors, from her honors IB program, with a National Honor Society tassel on her graduation cap, which she wore to her graduation. Which you would know if the cognitive dissonance you experience at anything good being produced by me had not erased that information from your brain.

It turned out that what she wanted to talk about was my awesome nephew's graduation, which she got to attend because my sister invited her. Still. "Didn't she graduate?"

[*]Recognizing this as concern-trolling makes me grateful to you, and you, and everyone who has made up my online social life. Vocal conversations are too quick and too ephemeral for me to understand much about what just happened there. I've learned so much about human interaction from written conversation, which sticks around to be studied, and especially from other people's comments on written conversation, which names concepts like "concern-trolling" and pins them up for study.

So, that dog I mentioned last time: it turned out that he does need me.

He's terribly skittish. Afraid of noises. Not just loud noises. Afraid of doors. Afraid of stern looks from Kitsu, which is a rational fear since she thinks he needs a deal of home training.

He's very beautiful, playful, affectionate, and submissive. Doesn't lift his leg to pee. Terribly thin. His first night here he was too anxious to eat, but since then he has been eating like a 14-year-old boy.[*] He paces a lot. He has ear mites, and testicles; I must take him to the vet.

He lived two years at a puppy mill, and then two months with a very kind woman who couldn't keep him. She thinks he spent way too much time in a kennel. He's happy with other dogs. I brought my dogs to meet him: his ears and tail came all the way up while he was romping with Tai.

We didn't like -- and he didn't know -- the name his puppy-mill breeder gave him, so we have named him Aiko.

The woman who gave him to me warned me that he escapes at any chance, and runs himself to exhaustion. This would be a problem if I still lived at the dacha, but here, I have a big more-or-less fenced backyard, where Aiko romps happily with Tai.


[*]Speaking of 14-year-old boys, Mungo played in Tuba Christmas today. He plays the euphonium.