One of the good things we brought back to Texas from our twenty odd
years in Louisiana is gumbo. Basically for the folks out there that
don't know about it is pretty much a stew or soup. This one is link
sausage and chicken, many gumbos are made that way routinely.

The beauty of it for us is we grew the onions and garlic and made the
rue from scratch, you might have to look up rue, basically cooked flour
with spices in a skillet, some call it roux but most don't where we learned.

She had a bowl for her lunch but I'm holding off until the evening meal
as I'm trying to get below 200 lbs again. I'm not that fat but the 9 lbs
over 200 annoys me a lot. With the disabilities I have with my legs and
arms I do need to get some weight off. I can remember when I weighed 145
lbs in the Navy, and weighed 160 when I had to climb chemical towers and
prefer to get as low as I can.

It is starting to be a wee cooler here than mid-summer, when we had
temps over 100F frequently. Still hitting some days up to 90 or 91 but
we have had some nice cooling winds.

The fall garden is all planted, the kumquats won't turn yellow for a few
months more but they are getting bigger. The fig tree is done for the
year as is the pear tree. Pear tree still has some small fruit on the
limbs but I don't expect them to mature.

The attempt to grow blue berries didn't work, they died. I am going to
take out the soil, etc. in the one foot high container and mix it up
again and am thinking, come spring, of planting blackberries and have
them climb a lattice. As blackberries are native to this area they
should do okay. This time I think I am going to get thorn less berries
as I don't like to be pricked that much.

George