Tony is sick, which is always a joy. Every ten minutes he wants me to verify that he is running a temperature. I didn't get much done this weekend, too much time spent watching the French Open. I'm still stunned at Rafa's loss. Just goes to show, we all have our off days! I've been meaning to start a whole bunch of seed blocks for the last several weekends and did not get around to it AGAIN! My goal of best vegetable year ever is slipping away. The tomatoes, beans and peas are doing great, but I've used up all my radishes and have not replanted those. My carrots and beets did not take at all. The komatsuna mom gave me grew like gangbusters - I've used a lot of it in salads and stir fries and even made a pesto sauce for Saturday night's halibut, but it just grew faster than I could use it and I had to pull it all out yesterday because it was bolting. The green chard is doing well. I must seed block this weekend!!!!!
I made Tyler Florence's Ultimate Teriyaki Chicken last night and it was delicious. Also made a vegan Southern Style Smothered Cabbage recipe that I pulled out of the chronicle a few weeks ago and it was fabulous. I've really been into sauteed cabbage lately. Cheap, plentiful, easy and tasty!
I always love the way the house looks from the back. You'd never guess from back here that this was in the Oakland neighborhood that it's in. So peaceful back there, especially in the early evening.
The tomatoes are over three feet in three weeks. I think mom's new method is really working!
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I pulled my first veggies from this year's garden, the radishes. They had incredible radish flavor but were a bit on the dry side. I'll up the watering of the remaining rows. I used them to make a chopped salad (white onion, tomatoes, radishes, jalapeno, cilantro and lime juice) to put in last night's fish tacos. Very tasty.
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email from my brother tate:
Thanks man!!! Ya, sorry to hear about your back. Hopefully you can recover quickly and get back out on the courts. No worries about the shoes. They are actually an early round test pair hence the all white stealth coloring. The next round is much better so I will make sure to get you a pair. I’m off to Europe on Saturday for a couple of weeks ending in Paris to catch a couple of first round matches at the french open. Rough job, but someone’s got to do it. Wish you could check out a slam someday. Pretty amazing to see them in person. Maybe wimbledon or US open.....
Take it easy and thanks for thinking of me.
All expenses paid by Nike plus they pay him a pretty nice salary!!!! Where did I go wrong.
This is my home court, where I take my clinic every Saturday, where I share my lesson with Holly every week and where I play the majority of my tennis. I have never been away from it for more than two weeks in a row, and that was always due to rain or to having to pick up someone at SFO flying in from Mexico. Now that I've already been off the courts for two weeks and am looking at three or four more at least, it is difficult. Especially when the weather is beautiful like this. I miss you beautiful blue tennis court! The good news is that my back is feeling tons better, the physical therapy is really helping, and dad returned from a weekend in Portland with a new pair of Nike tennis shoes (still in testing phasse) for me. So when I hit the courts sometime in mid June, I will be ready to go!
I was feeling very anxious about this year's tomatoes. After many years of mixed results starting my tomatoes from seeds, in recent years I started purchasing tomato seedlings at Berkeley Horticultural up by my beloved tennis courts. I usually have them in the ground by the second week in April, at the latest. This year my mom told me she was starting seedlings for the two of us and not to buy any. But the weeks have been ticking by and I check with mom every week to see if the seedlings are ready and every week she says she wants to give them another week. Then we hit May and I am starting to get worried. Well, Saturday night mom called to say I could come over and pick up my seedlings! They are huge! They look great. She had transplanted them to 1 gallon pots, so they have great roots developed. I'm hoping this is going to be a successful tomato year. I also followed a new "technique" mom had read about. I dug each tomato hole very deep and put several big handfuls of stinky kitchen vegetable and fruit scraps my mom had been saving. She had a big bucket of them for me. A big stinky, decomposing bucket. So I took a bit of compost out of my composter and mixed it in with the scraps. Then I put handfuls of the mixture in the bottom of the holes, covered it with a thin layer of soil, then planted the tomotoes on top of that. The theory is, as the scrpas compost beneath the tomato roots, they generate a lot of heat that heats the tomato plant from below ground, in addition to the heat from the sun above ground, making the plant grow faster and stronger and making for sweeter and fuller tomatoes. It seems to make sense and I'll let you know what happens. You can see my Scarlet Runner Beans coming in behind the tomatoes. They are thriving this year. Beans are amazing. They grow somewhat slowly until the point where they start wrapping themselves around the trellis, then I swear from that point on they grow at least 6 inches a day.
I don't know why I'm so into videos and photos of Tokyo buildings at night. I really like this video.
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Well, now I have back issues at the top end - in my lower neck, specifically. I woke up about two weeks ago with a bad pain in my lower neck and shoulder. It go worse each day, to the point over that weekend where I was in unbearable pain, unable to sleep. So last monday I went to the chiropractor. I love my new chiropractor, Dr. Greene. Not only is he HOT HOT HOT, but he is very good at what he does and very good at explaining why and how I am feeling pain. He also sent me for an MRI as he suspected some issues with the discs in my neck. Turns out I have a moderate protrusion" between C5-C6 and C6-C7 (if you count down five vertabrae from the top of your spine, that's where it is). If it was a mild protrusion, the pain would be a lot less. If it were a severe protrusion, I'd need surgery. With a moderate protrusion, Dr. Greene is hopeful that with physical therapy for a number of weeks we can mitigate the pain without surgery. So I am hoping for that. I am still in constant pain, though it is much milder than it was at its peak, when Dr. Greene began working on me. The bad news is I can't play tennis for 4-6 weeks. That's what sucks the most.
