George Shirley wrote:
....
I have a lot of eggplant recipes if you need some. Lived five years in
Saudi Arabia and learned to really like the eggplant recipes there. Wife
makes a lot of zucchini and/or eggplant fritters using rice as a base.
We make big batches during the growing season then let them cool and
vacuum pack them for the freezer

heh, that's ok, can't get Ma to eat it and so don't
ever buy it any more.

....
Only got to about 40F early this morning and the eggplant leaves are
curling. Suspect they will be gone by tomorrow as the temps for tonight
are going to be in the freezing range.

it's been below freezing here overnight and into
today. i did get the drive shovelled (about 30
minutes worth so not a whole lot by the time i got
out there most of it was melted by the sun and
residual heat in the cement).

tracked the mouse trail from the car to off
where i was hoping it was a food store that i
could root out, but the trail actually went
much further and i could not follow it to any
place notable. so the mystery continues as
the mouse traps inside the car had no new mice
in them.


....i wrote...:
made up two new worm buckets today which are
going to be sent to a friend's garden for the
spring planting. a bit late, but whatever can
be done for their garden soil will help as it's
so poor and sandy. too bad they won't keep
their own worm bins as they cook a lot of their
meals and could use those scraps for worm food.

We put earthworms in some of our beds but haven't seen any of them
lately. May have to get a new start from our daughter's worm pit. I'm
wearing long pants and a long sleeved shirt for the first time this
year. Feels strange not to be wearing shorts and a tee.

the worms tend to hide from heat and cold
extremes as well as any dry spells. so if your
garden raised beds are not very thick then the
worms will often wander off to other places...

it has taken me years to get some worm
populations established in the few raised beds
here and they are not nearly as many as what
the regular gardens support. we have a lot of
clay in our soil here too, so i always bury
plenty of organic matter down deep so the worms
have places to hide and stuff to feed on during
the hot and cold parts of the season.

in putting the gardens up this fall i've seen
plenty of good signs that what i'm doing is
working. worm life and soil diversity of
critters is doing better and only one garden
showed signs of needing more TLC by being a
little sour smelling. it was next on my list
of major amendment gardens anyways so i've now
put down quite a bit of organic matter fairly
deep to help with the drainage, airation and
of course worm food.

we had shorts and tee shirt weather a few
weeks ago... gives us something to look
forwards too for the next season. haha!
my eyes! my eyes!


songbird