--
G'day Terry,
Yes, cats have a lot to answer for.... :-) .
Several times I have let the lettuce run their natural course, and after
seeding, lettuce start coming up all over the place, some times so thick
that they look like lawn, the value of fresh seed I suppose. The weather we
have had on the east coast lately, ( rain one day, record temps the next and
then more rain etc), is probably causing crop failure all over the place.
I've noticed that prices in the shops have risen, the leaves taste quite
bitter (another sign of stress), look pretty average, and much of it
without any proper heart, making me suspect they picked it quickly because
they knew it was going to bolt . I've yet to taste a hydro lettuce that was
not bitter, by the way.
I love lettuce, ('I'll have a lettuce sandwich please,
with extra lettuce and maybe some lettuce, and if you can, see if you can
sneak in some lettuce.), but due to the vagaries of the crop, I have
started to compensate with raw cabbage types (traditional and Asian). Not
everyone agrees with me of course, but I reckon a raw onion is a wasted
onion and cooking cabbage is just silly.... :-). Several years ago I had
the privilege of cooking for some Asian backpackers, and while they hung
around the kitchen looking for snacks after a long hard day in paradise, I
could not help but notice they kept stealing the sweet potato pieces that I
had ready for the stir-fry, ( what else could a boy brought up with state of
the art English cooking make for our visitors?). I had always presumed that
raw sweet potato would taste as starchy as does the conventional 'spud' when
raw, silly me. To keep a long story long, my point is that lettuce is such a
pain in the proverbial to grow, keep your options open because one can't
boast about the crop 'till it's on the plate. On the other hand of course, a
lettuce plant deliberately grown to flower, can be a very spectacular
feature plant that many won't recognise, quite a good looking plant in fact.
A bit of a barbecue stopper, as our sad collection of politicians are now
fond of calling things, (is nothing sacred?).

China
Wingham
NSW


p.s. Amateurs built the Ark.
It took professionals to build the Titanic!