My husband is an avid gardener. He converted part of our basement* into a heated plant nursery, where he starts growing tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, etc., from seeds in February and then plants them when he thinks we won’t get another hard cold snap. Sometimes he bets wrong, but this year it worked out.
I love homegrown tomatoes, and each year I look forward to the first one, which I consume on white bread with a little mayo, salt and pepper. (Don’t judge.) This year’s crop was especially delish because we have an abundance of purple tomatoes, of which I am most fond.
But after a while, goddamn! The tomatoes just keep coming relentlessly, and after we’ve eaten fresh tomatoes in every configuration known to humankind and pressed bags of tomatoes on every family member, friend, acquaintance and passerby, I just don’t know what to do with the damned things.
Every year at Tomatogeddon time, my husband says he’ll plant fewer tomatoes next year. And each year, he plants more.
This year, I thought I’d try something new to deal with the influx: canning tomatoes. It did not go well, though I managed to salvage the thousands** of tomatoes used in the experiment by making a sauce and freezing portions of it. I did not enjoy the canning process and will probably never do it again, even though I figured out what went wrong and would probably have better results.
The thing is, there are plenty of fiddly tasks I enjoy, but gardening isn’t one of them. And it turns out, neither is canning.
I had a thought while canning that occurred to me many years prior when the mister tried to interest me in gardening by recruiting me to help plant string beans. That thought was this: one of the benefits of living in a non-agrarian society is that you can focus on remunerative tasks that you personally find more pleasant than growing or putting up food and obtain those necessaries by other means.
I’m going to lug around bags of cow shit and labor over a patch of dirt with a hoe — while being feasted upon by mosquitoes — when I can buy beans dirt cheap at Publix? I don’t fucking think so! Ditto canning tomatoes, not when 28-oz cans of peeled San Marzanos are available at the grocery store.
Homegrown stuff is better, and I am grateful to have a partner who enjoys gardening so I can get the fresh produce without dealing with the bugs, cow shit and the hassle. But I’ve learned some things about myself over the past decades, and one of those things is that I am not cut out for anything that remotely smacks of farm life, not even as a hobby.
Open thread.
*It’s the enclosed first floor of our stilt house. There are very few real basements in Florida (I’ve only personally seen one) because if you dig a hole, it fills up with water.
**Might be a slight exaggeration.
Almost Retired
I’m with you. I can’t even handle the most routine, fool-proof gardening. I killed impatiens, which ordinarily would survive nuclear war.
Kent
Since this is an open thread, how about a thread or discussion about Harris’ visit to Guatemala today? I have a lot of thoughts on the subject.
Today Vice President Harris is in Guatemala looking for ways to reduce immigration pressure from Guatemala and what they call the Northern Triangle (Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras). This is a topic that is near and dear to me. And much of the coverage just wants to make me scream. Yes, corruption is an issue, but there are larger public health, religion, and economic issues at play as well, not to mention climate change.
By way of background, I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Guatemala for 2.5 years in the late 1980s when the Guatemalan Civil War was winding down. After that I worked from time to time on other development projects in Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica in the early 1990s and have been back to the region many times since then and still maintain a lot of friends and acquaintances there.
I was sent to Guatemala to work as a beekeeping extensionist as part of a USDA funded program to control and mitigate the spread of the Africanized (killer) bees and was assigned to a fairly large work area, the entire department of Sacatepequez which my Guatemalan counterpart and I covered daily by motorcycle. We had perhaps 25 different villages in our work region.
At that time Guatemala had a population of about 9 million and population pressure was the most obvious social problem that was undermining economic prosperity. I would encounter rural families with 10, 12, or 14 kids and would ask them how many kids they had, and how many they wanted. “As many as God wills” was the common answer. There were public health programs and public health workers in rural Guatemala who were promoting family planning at that time. I knew many of them. Some were Peace Corps volunteers working in public health, but more often it was Guatemalan health workers doing it on their own. For example, all Guatemalan med students need to do rural residencies as part of their training so there were a constant stream of educated middle class Guatemalan med students being sent out to the rural towns where I worked and we would often socialize along with the school teachers. A lot of people were working on family planning efforts.
But these efforts were undermined at every step by a toxic alliance of conservative Catholic and US-based evangelical groups who pressured in both DC and within the Guatemalan Congress to put a stop to all family planning efforts in Guatemala. This was the end of the Reagan era and start of the Bush I era and they were largely successful. This was part of Reagan’s 1985 “Mexico City Policy” described the 1960’s and 1970’s as a time of ”demographic overreaction” in which too many governments plunged into population control without adopting economic policies that would raise living standards and lead to voluntary decisions to limit family size. The effect was to strangle family planning efforts across Central America in an effort to limit abortions, which were never common in the region anyway. The squelching of family planning programs was ultimately successful. Clinton and Obama did little to fight to reverse these policies.
Fast forward to today and the Guatemala of 9 million people that I knew in the late 1980s has ballooned to a country of 19 million today even AFTER millions have migrated to the US. Guatemala was overcrowded at 9 million in the late 1980s. Guatemala is a country of 42,000 square miles which makes it the same size as Virginia or Tennessee. But it is extremely mountainous and rugged. Imagine Tennessee with 3x the population, much of it rural, and much less arable land and you get the picture.
During the 1990s the Clinton Administration took up the mantle of free trade under the notion that trade deals with Central America would open up US markets and lead to prosperity. Along with NAFTA, they negotiated the Central American version called CAFTA which was signed into law during the Bush Administration in 2005 but was years in the making and originated in the Clinton administration. How did that work out for rural Guatemalans? I will give just one personal anecdote. In the late 1980s one of the big rural development efforts was to push for modern chicken production. My counterpart’s family was part of a chicken cooperative that built a set of seven chicken barns so they could raise chickens for local markets on a 6-week rotation and they had quite a successful little business that was mostly run by the women while the men worked in the coffee fields. Other development agencies were prompting the same thing. There were Spanish volunteers building chicken farming cooperatives in the neighboring town.
On one of my trips back to my old village in the late 1990s I noticed that all the cooperative chicken farms were abandoned. I asked my counterpart what happened and he said “let me show you”. It was market day so we walked up to the market and there was a refrigerated semi truck parked at the edge of the market selling boxes of frozen chicken thighs and legs labeled “Tyson”. “Take a look” he said. They are selling gringo chicken at less than it costs for us to raise chickens here. It is impossible to compete. And what is wrong with you gringos that you don’t eat the chicken legs and thighs?” This was the time period when chicken nuggets, chicken fingers, and chicken breast sandwiches were exploding in popularity in the US which meant that US poultry producers were swimming in a sea of unwanted chicken thighs and legs. They only really had US markets for breasts and wings. So under CAFTA they were legally entitled to dump vast quantities of surplus chicken thighs into the Central American market with no restrictions or tariffs. The local Guatemalan poultry industry, (which was largely an artesanal rural industry) was wiped out overnight. At that time around 2000, my counterpart’s son Emilio took off for Los Angeles because there was no longer any functional work to do locally.
At the same time, and under the same free trade agreements, big textile mills were going up in that part of Guatemala. Might those provide economic opportunities? Most of them were Korean and due to lax labor laws they largely and intentionally hired only girls between the ages of say 14 and 20. Why just girls? Because they are the easiest to control and least likely to organize or advocate for better wages and working conditions. It really disrupted family life and dynamics in many rural towns because girls were forced to drop out of school to work in the maquiladoras as the only breadwinner for the family while their fathers and other brothers couldn’t find work.
The other thing that happened at that time was the winding down of the Civil War and its replacement with the drug war. During the 1980s the Reagan Administration poured millions of dollars of military aid and training into Guatemala and El Salvador (and later Honduras as part of the Nicaraguan Contra war). When those wars reached peace agreements in the 1990s a lot of unemployed former soldiers found employment with the drug cartels which started using Guatemala as a transhipment point to the US. They were often paid in drugs rather than money, which jump-started a whole wave of drug addictions and drug crimes in Guatemala and fueled an explosive growth of drug mafias in both rural and urban Guatemala. While the US eyes were turned elsewhere. It is basically the same criminal reign of terror that Mexico is experiencing. And, of course, 9-11 completely turned US focus away from Central America and towards the middle east for two decades.
Ad climate change to the mix which has made much of rural Guatemala far less productive, and a Guatemalan aristocracy that is both incredibly venal and racist, and pours its fortunes into politicians and parties dedicated to minimizing taxes and regulation on Guatemalan business and keeping social and labor rights at bay. And we end up with what we have today. Countries that are overpopulated as a direct result of US policy, whose economies are strangled as a direct result of US trade policy, and whose corruption and violence are also a direct result of US policy and neglect.
What are the answers? There are no easy answers. Certainly nothing that will affect conditions in Guatemala or its neighboring countries in the short term. We are talking about a generational effort that will need to combine: (1) health care and family planning, (2) education, (3) favorable economic policies that direct investment to the region, (4) anti-corruption and anti-crime efforts to eliminate the current “impunity” and (5) democratic reforms to empower poor and rural folks.
I often contrast Guatemala to my wife’s home country of Chile. Which has the same population as Guatemala but is far more prosperous and stable and really much more like a mid-level European country than Central America. Or even Costa Rica which is somewhere in the middle. Like the US, Chile also sucks immigrants from surrounding poorer countries and even from as far away as places like Haiti. Chileans who travel and study overseas rarely stay but almost always return to Chile where there are opportunities. My wife’s large extended family has lots of younger cousins who have studied abroad in the US and Europe but every single one has returned to Chile because they have opportunities there. Guatemala could have a different fate if we had the will to make the investment and effort. Immigration is largely a symptom of the problem, not the problem itself.
Jeffro
Same! And I finally got Mrs. Fro to admit that she’s not up for maintaining multiple garden boxes, given her propensity to plant things and then forget to weed them for most of the spring/summer. A couple tomato plants on the deck and we’re a happy couple. =)
And since this is an OT, here’s a great ending to this piece by Kim Stanley Robinson: A Declining World Population Isn’t a Looming Catastrophe
LOL
featheredsprite
Donate your abundant produce. Some food banks will accept such offerings and lots of churches are happy to see such foodstuff.
And yes, canning is labor and more technically involved than one would imagine.
Jerzy Russian
I thought you lived in a hot and humid swamp. I am surprised your husband needs a heated nursery to start seeds.
TaMara (HFG)
I’m a lazy gardener. I prep the raised beds and give everyone the best start in life possible, then they are on their own until harvest, except for waterings.
I’m not big on flower gardens, either, but I inherited a stunning yard and have done my best to reduce it to a level I can maintain and still retain its beauty. Plus I’m very fond of bees, butterflies and hummingbirds.
Butch
Well, just to be contrary, I look forward to gardening and canning every year – 65 pints of salsa alone last year, not to mention the other stuff.
Roger Moore
Fresh, home-grown produce is usually better than what you get from the supermarket, though not necessarily better than what you can get from a good farmer’s market. But once you’ve started to can it, it’s not at all obvious that home canned is any better than commercially canned, especially when the commercially canned stuff can be from a region renowned for specializing in that particular crop.
PsiFighter37
@Kent: Population control is one of those things that should be highest priority. Aside from it being tough economically, as a parent nowadays, I cannot fathom how a pair of adults could handle that many children on their own without taking material shortcuts on development or going a little crazy themselves.
eclare
@Kent: Thank you for your insight.
Major Major Major Major
Man, I miss having a garden so much sometimes.
Roger Moore
@PsiFighter37:
What you see as a shortcut, they see as the normal way of raising children. These include A) having older children help raise their younger siblings and B) putting the kids to work from a young age. There’s a reason it’s traditional for farm families to be big.
Catherine D.
I tray-freeze tomatoes, peppers, and tomatillos, then vacuum-seal them. But I do have a large standalone freezer.
ETA I don’t garden but have a great CSA.
Ukai
I can relate. Was part of a community garden once. It’s a lot of work, even if everyone in the community is pulling their weight. Which was definitely not the case, in this instance.
Barbara
This year we planted four things: strawberries, tomatoes, basil and peas. These are things that are either expensive to buy in the quantities I want to eat them (tomatoes, basil), have a limited growing season (peas) or just way, way better when you get them fresh from the ground (strawberries). But growing beans or carrots or broccoli when it is so cheap and plentiful and I don’t want to eat it every day of the week — no, I can’t get into that.
trollhattan
“Heated plant nursery”? Why Florida need heated nursery?
I enjoy gardens but don’t like gardening, creating eternal cognitive dissonance WRT the dirt areas surrounding the house. I garden in spurts while weeds are at work 24/7-365, giving them a certain advantage.
Benw
@TaMara (HFG): same here. We plant two small cherry tomato plants and the herbs in the raised bed with mulch and soil each year. After that it’s sink or swim for those guys (I do water them).
My wife eats the tomatoes right off the plant. I like to chop them up with cucumber, fresh mozz, olive oil and a bit of lemon pepper. Yum
Another Scott
@Kent: Thanks very much for this post.
I’m also very interested in what Harris is able to do on her visits. Obviously, she can’t solve the problems there, but maybe she can get the process rolling toward a plan for implementing some of your answers.
Your chicken stories remind me of something I heard on the radio a while ago. Someone from a chicken producer was being interviewed. He said his pie-in-the-sky dream was for someone to come up with a six-legged chicken because there’s sky-high demand for chicken feet in China.
BangkokPost:
You just know that if they were able to come up with such a thing, then the producers would be dumping the legs and other “unwanted” parts in Guatemala and similarly situated countries and making the situation there worse.
:-/
The world is getting smaller. There needs to be more controls on these giant corporations that can destroy small-country economies in the blink of an eye and without a second thought.
Thanks.
Cheers,
Scott.
Cameron
Food banks could sure use excess produce. Have you tried pickling them (tomatoes, not food banks)? The younger of my sisters is a mad pickler. Not as much hassle as canning, if I understand rightly.
Auntie Beak
It doesn’t have to be such a trial. The way I deal with Tomatogeddon [love this—stealing] is I have a food grinder attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. Run them through the food grinder. Put the resulting puree in a giant crockpot. Cook it the F down. Then, because it’s me and I *like* canning, I can the resulting puree, but you don’t have to if you have a freezer. Bag it up, freeze it flat, and use it as a base for tomato sauce. Homegrown heirlooms make the BEST sauce. And frankly, all the gardening is, for me, about the food.
Auntie Beak
@Cameron:
This. Yes. Always.
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: Thank you for pointing out that column. I’ve read several articles recently related to declining birthrates and had a similar thought: this is exactly the “problem” we need! JFC!
Ken
There’s a natural division of labor in these situations. Some people are better suited to turning the soil, planting the seeds, weeding and watering every day, mulching, putting up the trellises, dealing with pests and fungus, and so forth. Others have skills more suited to picking and eating.
schrodingers_cat
I just got a call from my vet about my boss cat. He is 19. He seemed healthy until this Thursday. But there was a sudden onset of incontinence and things just got bad. Doctor wants to know whether he should be euthanized. His readings are off the chart bad.
The other option is to catheterize him. But the doctor doesn’t promise anything
ETA: Urea, nitrogen and creatinine (sp?) and phosphorous.
quakerinabasement
I grew up in Florida, but moved away long ago. I had forgotten this. Non-Floridians might think you’re exaggerating, but it’s true.
When we were kids, it was a fun experiment to dig a hole until we hit water. We usually only had to dig down about 2 feet before we came up with handfuls of soggy mud.
fancycwabs
People who know know that a BLT is a tomato sandwich with bacon.
Betty Cracker
@Jerzy Russian: & @trollhattan: We get hard freezes sometimes. It doesn’t stay that way long, but it happens and can wipe out young plants, so a heated space for nurturing seedlings comes in handy. It’s either that or he takes over the dining room table and kitchen counters…
sab
@Catherine D.: I do that also. I put the tomatoes in a pot or pan. I pour boiling water over them. I fish them out immediately. The skins slip right off. Then I freeze them separated on a cookie sheet or in muffin tins. Once frozen, I dump them together in a plastic bag in the freezer and cook with them all winter.
Unlike canning, it is easy to do just a few at a time.
Betty Cracker
@schrodingers_cat: OMG, that’s terrible. :(
Ejoiner
@Kent: thank you – both for your service and for your great write up…very helpful!
mrmoshpotato
LOL!
Gretchen
@trollhattan: probably because once it gets too hot sometimes tomatoes and such stop producing, so you want to give them a head start to produce before that happens.
mali muso
@Kent: From one RPCV to another, thanks for this detailed analysis and for your service.
Steeplejack
@Kent:
Excellent piece. Thank you.
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: I’m very sorry. 19 years is a great run, but the end is always disconcerting.
Best of luck with making the best choice for him.
Hang in there.
Best wishes,
Scott.
WaterGirl
@Kent: I would be happy to put this up as a guest post in the next week or so, if you would like.
Delk
Do you get allergic smelling hay?
Kent
@Another Scott: Yep. I don’t have any easy answers because there aren’t any. This is a complex generations-long problem with multiple interlocking causes. It will take a multi-generational effort across a lot of fronts to reverse.
I’m also not optimistic that anything much will change for the better. At least certainly not from US policy. I have more hope that the Guatemalan expat community in the US might be the spark that helps turn things around. That is the wildcard.
schrodingers_cat
@Another Scott: I am leaning towards getting the procedure. This morning too he wanted to sit with us when we were eating breakfast. I am not ready to give up on him yet. He is my jaan (life)
Cameron
For example, one way to pickle tomatoes:
https://happykitchen.rocks/russian-grandmas-pickled-tomatoes/
Kent
@WaterGirl: Sure if you think there is interest. Let me know when so I can participate in the discussion. I have a life and don’t lurk here 24/7
Catherine D.
@sab: It’s even easier to pour hot water over the frozen tomatoes to skin them. And I don’t have to deal with hot water in the summer.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: Did the vet say what he thinks the cause might be? Diagnosis?
Maybe get a second opinion?
WaterGirl
@Kent: Tuesday evening? Thursday evening? 7 or 8 pm?
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: He doesn’t know. Could be kidney stones, could be something far worse.
Benw
@schrodingers_cat: oh no! Sorry that sucks
dnfree
If you haven’t made pasta with raw tomatoes, try this recipe. It’s become my go-to when tomatoes are at their ripest and juiciest, and it’s so simple.
https://www.bonappetit.com/recipe/pasta-with-no-cook-tomato-sauce
Jeffery
Don’t know how far back you are from the road but a curb alert on Craigslist with a photo should get rid of a lot of tomatoes. Knew someone who lived in Florida and waited for mango season every year. People with trees would put them out on the curb for anyone who wanted them. She gorged on them every year.
Gravenstone
Can you ship interstate … ?
glory b
@schrodingers_cat: I had to put my beloved to sleep about a year ago, I know how you feel. The main question, of course, is if there is any pain or suffering. Good thoughts, hoping against hope for the best!
dnfree
And of course the mandatory home-grown tomato song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-QzLIjL1u4
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m so sorry.
Anoniminous
Peasant life isn’t very much fun which is why people fled rural areas for the bright city lights since cities were invented.
Some people enjoy gardening and I’m willing to pay them to keep doing it.
dnfree
@Kent: thank you for sharing this. I appreciate the personal detail.
WaterGirl
I think one way I coped in the last year was to think about gardening in the spring.
Sunday Morning Garden Chats can be dangerous.
Someone posted a link to Laurel’s Heirloom Tomatoes. So many varieties on her site, with photos. I normally have 2 tomato plants. I ordered 8. I don’t even have room for 8! They are all planted, but I have no idea what I will do with all those tomatoes.
Someone posted a link to some really interesting coleus. I ordered 3.
Someone posted a link to Summer Dreams Farm, with amazing photos of dahlias. I ordered 6 varieties.
Someone posted a picture of a peruvian lily. What is that? Wow, cool photo. Ordered 3 sets of 3.
It was totally ridiculous, but looking ahead to spring was apparently how I coped.
Butch
@dnfree: My version is simply tomatoes chopped roughly with a little garlic, salt, basil, and olive oil, served over homemade pasta with a grind of good parmesan.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: Has the vet offered any ideas about how to determine the cause? Can they do an ultrasound?
I would definitely get a second opinion. Today.
Albatrossity
Here’s a good easy trick to deal with excess tomatoes, if you have a freezer with space. We put them directly in the freezer on trays or racks to accelerate the freezing rate. When frozen they go into ziploc bags. When needed later in the winter or fall, the appropriate weight can be thawed in a bowl. After thawing, the skins come right off, easy peasy. Then the tomatoes can be used to making sauce, soup, gumbo or whatever.
No canning, no extra labor. But you do need some freezer space.
Mike in NC
@schrodingers_cat: Best wishes for your senior kitty. They are family.
dnfree
@Butch: that’s a good version too. The red pepper flakes (to personal taste) add a nice zing. I also make versions with green peppers and red onions. I think the only essentials are ripe tomatoes, fresh basil, and olive oil. And I don’t skin my tomatoes.
sab
@WaterGirl: Coleus! I love them. My college roommate was born in Cleveland and lived her whole life in Ohio, but her parents were Chinese whose parents moved to the Phillipines. Her mother used to laugh that her family weeded coleus out of the garden and her daughter bought the weeds for good money at garden stores.
mrmoshpotato
@Catherine D.: I take it you deseed everything before freezing. Do you keep any of the tomatoes’ insides or just freeze the outer part?
Ken
Careful that the fine print doesn’t say for each bag of tomatoes you also agree to take one
bagbushelpalletintermodal freight container of zucchini.WaterGirl
@dnfree: I saved the recipe. I’ll have to try that.
schrodingers_cat
@WaterGirl: They did an ultrasound, and there is an obstruction and his kidneys are enlarged.
I took a decision to catheterize him
Keep your fingers crossed for him.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I’m with you, Betty – cannot stand gardening and hate everything about it. Wife is on a flowers and raised beds kick and it makes me feel dead inside to go to garden stores, observing excited women and their sullen husbands with a thousand yard stare, their internal dialogue obviously screaming “I was once a vital, energetic, happy young man with interests in sport, socializing, the arts, fine dining, but I’m now reduced to pretending I’m excited over working hard while planting things that neither I nor anybody who looks at them feels that excited about.” Add the expense, the countless hours of really tedious labor, and that sort of thing, and you realize “what’s the point?”.
Steve in the ATL
@Kent: it’s amazing how many ways the US can screw up a country. And you didn’t even mention the CIA directly!
Catherine D.
@mrmoshpotato: No, I leave the seeds. They don’t bother me.
Anoniminous
@Kent:
Between US imperialism, locally grown kleptocrats, and various foreign and domestic religious whack-a-doodles Latin and South America are f****d and it’s not going to get better anytime soon.
Although there are moments of humor. The “Cocaine Coup” in US-backed Honduras that replaced a democratically elected government for a Narco-state whose leaders who protect and provide intelligence to drug suppliers, vowing to flood the US with cocaine and other addictive drugs, e.g., Mexican Black Tar heroin. Black Tar, aka “Hillbilly” heroin, is mostly consumed in rural America – the very bedrock support for the Evangelical suppression of abortions and birth control in Latin America.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat: Fingers crossed here.
CaseyL
@schrodingers_cat: At his age, my guess is total or near-total renal failure. Dialysis helps; regularly getting subcut fluids also helps. But if it’s his kidneys, unless the dialysis helps him come out of it, palliative therapy is about all you can do.
I had an elderly kitty who developed renal failure at 17. She had dialysis (at the vet) and round-the-clock care for 3 days (from me) and recovered to live another 2 years. So miracles can happen.
ETA: Just saw your updated comment. Depending on what’s causing the obstruction, that can be very good and hopeful news! Obstructions can be removed, hopefully. Is it FUS?
WaterGirl
@sab: Ha!
Ruckus
I’ve noticed over my lifetime, that the number of people who grow food seems to have gotten fewer, even as the population has grown rather a lot. I’m sure growing food is a great way to pass the time, but it seems that few people in life actually agree. Maybe it’s the necessity of doing it that renders it less than enjoyable. Maybe it’s the effort and the reward that challenges some. Maybe it’s that it pays so well to do in small bits. It doesn’t? Shocking! Maybe it’s the work to store it because you can’t eat all of it yourself. We had a huge avocado tree in our front yard that was, freaking productive. And someone had to use the picker to harvest the damn things so they didn’t fall and hit you in the head as you walked by, the size of the avocados in most stores don’t even come close to these. One could feed a family of 5 for a couple of days. We gave away shopping bags full of them every year. For the lucky person tending to the picker and bagging I’m amazed that he didn’t lose the taste for avocado. He did however lose the joy of gardening fruit or vegetables.
Steve in the ATL
@schrodingers_cat: we had an issue like that with our 11-year old cat last month. I decided that spending $3,000 on kidney treatment was cheaper than the Rey cost of therapy for my daughter if we’d have put the cat down.
WaterGirl
@schrodingers_cat: I will hope for the best. What is their treatment plan beyond catheterization?
I think I would still try to get a second opinion. Do you have a vet school in the area?
kindness
I grow tomatoes every year just so I can make extra delicious BLTs. I cut back my tomatoes by two plants this year because I just had too many in the past as well.
schrodingers_cat
@CaseyL: FUS?
narya
I do not want to grow vegetables–I have a very good CSA share, and I get a much larger share than you’d think I’d need. That said, I also have a chest freezer. I leave the farming to the people who want to do it, and I pay them well to bring it to me. I have done very little canning; my CSA even offers canned tomatoes (though boy howdy are they expensive) and good salsas. I will freeze damn near anything, though, and often do.
H.E.Wolf
Sending good thoughts to schrodingers cat and the boss kitteh.
Baud
@schrodingers_cat: I’m sorry to hear Boss Kitty is not doing well. ?
Mary G
@Kent: My housemate just got home from Guatemala yesterday. Her dream plan was always to work in America and retire in Livingston where she was born, but she is sadly rethinking that. She and her mom each took two suitcases weighing 50 pounds each (and the logistics of choosing and prioritizing what goes in are lengthy) and a backpack/carryon. Everything in the suitcases is for family members and a charity for seniors her mother runs, and they cram what they can into the carryon for themselves.
This year it was obvious that it was a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed. The town gets a lot of its income from tourists and that was completely lost last year. Everyone in her family except her grandfather had covid last year and still has at least a dry cough for long term effects. No one went to the hospital because they were convinced it would kill them. The “Christian” right wing propaganda is still strong.
Climate change is making things worse. Two major hurricanes last year caused a lot of damage, and now this summer they have severe water shortages.
You mentioned the villages. There are something like 24 official languages there, most of them native “Indians” going back to before the Spanish showed up. Lots of them live in the mountains and fight ancient feuds with the next tribe over.
That’s going to make national change hard.
So this is just anecdotal from one immigrant family’s perspective, but they are not hopeful.
Eunicecycle
@kindness: my husband used to plant more tomatoes than we needed, thinking some of the plants might fail. But they never did, so we have too many tomatoes. Our church has a produce table where you could leave extra produce or take some, so we usually get rid of extra that way. He loves gardening and I dislike it, so I guess we’re like the Crackers.
Anoniminous
And in some good news:
Fe-S cofactors in the SARS-CoV-2 RNA-dependent RNA polymerase are potential antiviral targets
Another potential therapy has been found. Maybe
“ABSTRACT
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the causal agent of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), uses an RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) for the replication of its genome and the transcription of its genes. We found that the catalytic subunit of the RdRp, nsp12, ligates two iron-sulfur metal cofactors in sites that were modeled as zinc centers in the available cryo-electron microscopy structures of the RdRp complex. These metal binding sites are essential for replication and for interaction with the viral helicase. Oxidation of the clusters by the stable nitroxide TEMPOL caused their disassembly, potently inhibited the RdRp, and blocked SARS-CoV-2 replication in cell culture. These iron-sulfur clusters thus serve as cofactors for the SARS-CoV-2 RdRp and are targets for therapy of COVID-19.”
Needs work and many a slip ‘tween lab and stick
schrodingers_cat
@Baud: Thanks. I am a mess. And can’t stop crying. Here he is modeling swag from Biden and Harris
@H.E.Wolf: @eclare: thanks.
Zanamu
I will never can produce, but we have two large freezers so I just wash the tomatoes, chop them up a bit, and bags them. They are a great substitute for commercial canned tomatoes, and you can just empty the bag into your soup pot. My crazy grandmother used to buy peaches for the questionable pleasure of canning them.
Betty Cracker
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: There are some people who just really enjoy it and look forward to it with great anticipation each year. And good for them — I’m glad it makes them happy and brings some beauty and excellent produce into the world!
But then there are people like you and me, who experience the work involved as pure drudgery. We should not feel compelled to join in!
H.E.Wolf
E.B. White, in a New Yorker editorial* in August 1945, wrote, “We were in the kitchen putting up string beans when the news came that Japan was trying to surrender….”
* E.B. White’s WWII-era political editorials are collected in “The Wild Flag”, which I first found on my grandfather’s bookshelves. It’s my favorite of White’s essay collections.
ETA: The string-bean-canning essay includes a pithy quote from “a small female relative of ours who was born during the Civil War”.
Jeffery
@sab: you might like this site
https://rosydawngardens.com
Mary G
@Kent: My housemate just got home from Guatemala yesterday. Her dream plan was always to work in America and retire in Livingston where she was born, but she is sadly rethinking that. She and her mom each took two suitcases weighing 50 pounds each (and the logistics of choosing and prioritizing what goes in are lengthy) and a backpack/carryon. Everything in the suitcases is for family members and a charity for seniors her mother runs, and they cram what they can into the carryon for themselves.
This year it was obvious that it was a drop in the bucket compared to what’s needed. The town gets a lot of its income from tourists and that was completely lost last year. Everyone in her family except her grandfather had covid last year and still has at least a dry cough for long term effects. No one went to the hospital because they were convinced it would kill them. The “Christian” right wing propaganda is still strong.
Climate change is making things worse. Two major hurricanes last year caused a lot of damage, and now this summer they have severe water shortages.
You mentioned the villages. There are something like 24 official languages there, most of them native “Indians” going back to before the Spanish showed up. Lots of them live in the mountains and fight ancient feuds with the next tribe over.
That’s going to make national change hard.
So this is just anecdotal from one immigrant family’s perspective, but they are not hopeful.
@schrodingers_cat: My last cat Sophie was at death’s door at 19 and I took her to the vet expecting to have to let her go and he said no, we can try some things and she lived another two years of her usual routine, sleeping and eating.
Betty Cracker
Sounds like I need to invest in a freezer.
Steve in the ATL
@Mary G:
Isn’t this essentially why the romans built Hadrian’s wall rather than bother trying to civilize the Scots?
Another Scott
@schrodingers_cat: I’m sure he’ll feel much better and thanks you.
Fingers crossed and best of luck!
Best wishes,
Scott.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I live in a “tree city, USA” which means direct sunlight is in short supply. I have dedicated the areas of my yard that get the most sunlight to growing herbs. I’m about to put some dill seeds in the ground this weekend (I tried transplanting a couple small plants bought at a lawn and garden center and it promptly died and I guess that’s a thing with dill).
What I have at present is: rosemary, thyme, oregano, lavender (which I don’t really use for cooking though some people do) mint, sage and basil. The great thing about herbs is they add A LOT of flavor – especially fresh cut from the garden – and the grow like weeds and need next to no care. Most are drought tolerant and hence don’t need watering unless you live in a desert. This year I’ve discovered that a pesto made from oregano and feta cheese is good on, well, a lot of things.
Flanders Other Neighbor
Sound like very inexpensive therapy. I’m on a kick of rebuilding old motorcycles as mine. Probably end up spending $1k more than they are worth not counting my labor, but it sure is fun and it keeps me out of trouble.
Martin
@Ruckus: Over your lifetime, the number of people living in cities has gone up quite a bit, so it could just be opportunity. But I’ve also noticed it’s harder to find things like canning equipment, seeds, etc. When I was a kid, childhood mal/undernutrition, food security was still a big problem. We had a vegetable garden, as did my grandparents. Food was expensive still. But that’s all changed. By the time I had kids, childhood obesity was the problem. Food was cheap. The garden my parents had to save a few bucks we didn’t need. We grew food for our own enjoyment. Backyard tomatoes have no equal despite all of the advances in ag.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: I have had big dogs for most of my adult life. They have a short life expectancy so mortality is part of the package.
My cat now is my soulmate. He is the first cat I have had that isn’t allowed outside (he is a semiferal rescue so he does not want outside at all ever again) so he is the first cat I have had that wasn’t killed by a car early in his life.
I know I will have to face it eventually, but I cannot imagine life without this guy. He is about 12, early middle age for a cat but very old for a big dog.
I have mutliple fingers crossed for you and your cat.
Anomalous Cowherd
@Zanamu:
I’m so lazy that I just rinse the whole tomatoes and stick them in the chest freezer on a cookie sheet. Later I bag the frozen tomatoes. Works fine for stews and soups.
Catherine D.
@Betty Cracker: I love having one. Not only do I keep lots of veg in it, I can buy meat from local farmers in larger quantities.
sab
@Martin: Move to Ohio.That stuff is everywhere, even in urban grocery stores.
rikyrah
@schrodingers_cat:
So sorry for your furbaby :(
sab
@Steve in the ATL: Jeez. You sound like my father laughing at my mother descended from Highland Scots and Irish people. Dad’s people were respectable Southern slaveholders from good solid English stock.
Kent
Tuesday evening is great. Better than Thursday. I’m in Pacific Time Zone.
zhena gogolia
@schrodingers_cat:
Oh, what a sweetie. I hope the catheterization does the trick.
schrodingers_cat
@zhena gogolia: Thanks I have had him since he was a sprightly 6 month old kitten!
CaseyL
@schrodingers_cat: Feline Urinary Syndrome. Horrible stuff, and male cats are more likely to develop it. Ureic acid crystals form in the urinary tract, blocking it. It’s treatable.
sab
@schrodingers_cat: What a lucky cat, to have had so many years in a safe loving home. I hope he has more years.
Geminid
My friend Joan is mostly retired, and has a large yard with a lot of planting beds. Besides flowers and peonies, etc., she grows vegetables. She used to sell carrots and chard to local restaurents, but now she just grows for herself: leafy greens for salad, various field peas, potatoes, and tomatos for canning and fresh.
Joan has really gotten into radishes: french breakfast, black radishes and other types. Radishes grow well in the cool and cold months. She will sometimes use radish seeds to mark rows of slower sprouters like carrots and chard. And she will let some grow up, and these end up 4-5′ tall, with nice yellow flowers.
She also grows a lot of onions and leeks.
schrodingers_cat
@sab: I am the lucky one.
Kent
@Mary G: Yes there are a lot of indigenous languages spoken in Guatemalan…all various Mayan dialects.
Feuds between different villages is not something I ever saw or experienced. Western Guatemala is mostly the Mayan highlands where indigenous languages are spoken. There are “Ladinos” (non-indigenous Hispanic folks) living there who are mostly landowners and merchants and such. Lots of cooperation and solidary between villages in my experience.
Eastern Guatemala which they call the “Oriente” is less indigenous and more Ladino. That is where Isabel is. A lot of the rural population is still of Mayan or mixed descent but has mostly lost the Mayan culture and live more like ordinary Hispanics. That is the part of Guatemala that is much more famous for violence and hot blooded feuds and that sort of thing. It is the land of things like cockfights and drunken gun or machete fights over women. That sort of thing. But it is also the Spanish speaking and non-Mayan part of Guatemala.
Brachiator
@schrodingers_cat:
Very sad news.
Hoping that things turn out well.
cain
@Kent:
This is a great post and should be front paged. It never ceases to amaze me how much we end up doing things that has the gun pointed back at our heads.
It comes to no surprise that white evangelicals are some of the main causes for all the shit things that happen in this world. The U.S. is the true inheritor of the U.K. and watching it all boomerang back on us..
I have no idea how you fix what is clearly a multi-generational issue – but it does start with good leadership in those countries who are willing to do the hard labor of protecting themselves. Booting the evangelicals out, and re-negotiating free trade agreements seems to be the first step.
Cowgirl in the Sandi
We have a great farmers market nearby that specializes in heirloom tomatoes. They have boxes available that are just a tad past their prime for lower price that I buy. I cut them in quarters, shower them with salt and pepper and sliced garlic and olive oil and then put them into a 250 degree oven until they are nicely caramelized. When cool, I scoop them up into a quart freezer bag and freeze them flat.
When I’m ready for sauce, I unfreeze a bag, zap them with an immersion blender and viola – fresh tomato sauce!
cain
@schrodingers_cat:
I’m so sorry – it’s the sudden turn without any chance to adjust to the new circumstances that hurts most of all. My cat yellow died within 24 hours after I had returned from a trip. It was like she waited till I had come back before crossing the rainbow bridge.
I hope that by some miracle boss-cat manages to get numbers back to normal.
Villago Delenda Est
Betty’s hubby: “The chores!”
Betty: “The stores!”
Betty’s hubby: “Fresh air!”
Betty: “Times Square!”
NotMax
Obliquely obligatory.
;)
cain
Working on a remodel of the yard – want to do some raised beds and get some good plants in there and just generally make things nice in terms of a garden.
We live in a mostly shade place with the front being more sunny than the back – wish I could find a better way to grow my herbs and what not there. I have one raised bed that I built. I got $10k saved to do this thing.
artem1s
I grew up rural and my Dad loved tomatoes and sweet corn. He wasn’t really that adventuresome with other vegetables. Some lettuce and green onions. When there were lots of us to feed and my grandparents were alive, we did a lot of canning. Beets, green beans and pickles mostly. But my mom opted out of the canning as soon as she could. Occasionally my dad would try a new dill pickle recipe but only rarely would he do all the work himself. I personally couldn’t abide canning season because we didn’t have air conditioning and the house was already to hot for humans without the added heat. So I’ve never been interested in canning. I do like keeping a plot in the community garden. Cleveland has lots of old Summer Sprout program gardens still around and there is a renewed interest in turning vacant land into new community gardens all over the city. Urban gardens are popular with the first, second and third generation immigrants here. I think if you don’t have a big yard to take care of it’s a little easier to have a vegetable garden – especially if the ‘community’ provides all the equipment and you don’t have to take care of all that as well.
But you need space for sweet corn and I can’t abide eating anything store or even market bought. Sweet corn isn’t right unless you eat it within minutes of picking it. Most people over cook their corn, but that understandable given store corn is inedible unless you boil the hell out of it. So I’ve taken up my father’s love of tomatoes and enjoy growing different heirloom and new varieties. I always have more than enough to freeze and share. They are easy and satisfying to grow.
Kent
Oh, I agree. Unfortunately that is tough. They get assassinated or marginalized by the power structure which operates more or less like our own GOP but on steroids in terms of the corruption and sucking up to business interests. But there are many Guatemalans who still bravely fight the good fight.
Trump abandoning the country didn’t help and to the extent that Biden and Harris have the backs of reformers and anti-corruption candidates, that helps. But it is a tough long haul to reform a political culture that is so utterly corrupt and venal.
And there are a lot of US business interests who benefit from the current system and have no desire to see things like labor or anti-corruption reforms. And it’s not just the fruit companies.
As for white evangelicals. Rios Montt who was the president convicted of genocide from his war of terror in the 1980s was a favorite puppet of US evangelicals. He was tight with both Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. That was nearly 40 years ago. This isn’t a new thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efra%C3%ADn_R%C3%ADos_Montt
Villago Delenda Est
@Kent: Thank you for this. I served in Honduras in 1985, and visited El Salvador then. The contrasts between the rich and the poor are something our wealthy envy, which helps explain the policies of Reagan and the Bushes. They enjoy seeing people in poverty.
WaterGirl
@Jeffery: You bastard! :-)
That’s the site I bought mine from. Are you the person who would have linked in the garden chat? Not sure whether to thank you or curse you.
Villago Delenda Est
@schrodingers_cat:
This is distressing news to say the least. Here’s hoping for a peaceful passage for your senior Tom. 19 years is a good run.
Mary G
WaPo has an excellent story up about one of the things Californians fight with each other about instead of politics. The Great Peacock Wars of the San Gabriel Valley have been going on since at least the 70s when I moved there, and the latest flareup is strong.
The catch-and-release-far-away program that usually kept the population of feral peacocks low was suspended due to the pandemic and a scary new bird virus. Bored WFHers took up feeding them and have named their favorites.
Some have had enough:
The poor guy who has resumed the job of “moving” them is stressed:
It’s not an easy job in the best of times:
Anyway, rich white people problems, but really well reported and written. Unusual for an East Coast paper, especially the FTFNYT, whose California stories are often terrible.
Another Scott
ObOpenThread – I think I see the reason why S&M are having trouble getting to 10 GQPers…
Hmm…
(via nycsouthpaw)
Cheers,
Scott.
Kent
@Another Scott: Mitch McConnell or Rand Paul is the 10th most liberal GOP Senator depending on how you count. McConnell in terms of recent votes related to Biden agenda issues but some of which were strategic parliamentary votes in favor so he could vote to reconsider later. Only Senators who voted for a winning resolution can later request reconsideration. Rand Paul if you are talking about the extent to which GOP Senators defy their party and go “maverick” Either way it’s an obvious problem.
JPL
@schrodingers_cat: What a beautiful cat and I hope that you are able to have more time with him. hugs.
NotMax
@artem1s
Fresh corn? Microwave, baby.
Note the hefty gloves (or use a thick towel, suckers are HOT). Also, time might need to be stepped down with more robust microwave ovens.
CaseyL
@Mary G: Feral peacocks are also a problem where my friend Sherri lives, in Coconut Grove Florida (near Miami). Just like the flocks in California, they strike poses on rooflines, deposit their (corrosive) poop on decks, and scream at all hours.
I’m not sure how much effort there is to remove/relocate them from her neighborhood. But I think the local animal control crews would welcome the change from having to wrangle alligators, pythons, and iguanas.
Mary G
@Kent: Livingston was founded by runaway slaves from Caribbean islands and still has some African culture in the mix; not so much Ladino. For example, no one in housemate’s family is or has ever been Catholic. They are all evangelicals who believe in ghost and voodoo. So it’s complicated.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: Fingers crossed your kitteh still has a few more lives left. Best to boss kitty.
catclub
@Kent: Tony Jay is now Tony Che?
The wordiness invites the conclusion.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Betty Cracker:
“But I’m doing this for US, why aren’t you enthusiastic about helping me” turns into an ugly moment for a potential level of sarcasm from me that is destined for some awful direction were I to give full freedom to my mouth to say what it wants.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kent:
It’s the world’s stupidest deliberative body.
When the Revolution comes, hopefully the Senate roasts from a pyre of every existing copy of Robert’s Rules of Order.
Id like people to start running on a platform of “everything gets subjected to a substantive, nonprocedural vote within two weeks of introduction”.
Timill
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The Senate doesn’t use Robert’s – that’s part of the problem.
Steve in the ATL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I like that almost as much as my platform of “everyone receives intensive education on the proper use of, and the severe penalties for improper use of, the left lane”
Betty Cracker
@CaseyL: People in the Grove tend to love them or hate them; no one is indifferent.
Personally, I don’t mind screaming birds. My swamp is populated by Limpkins who are as loud as any peacock, and when they’re all screaming simultaneously during mating season, it drowns out the stereo. But they’re natives, so no one suggests they should be evicted.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Steve in the ATL:
I’m a turn signal absolutist. This is very important to me.
Steve in the ATL
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I can respect that. How do you feel about leaf blowers?
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker: you’re welcome! Just had to share KSR’s great perspective on the non-problem. =)
Jeffro
@fancycwabs: that’s what mine are, most times. And not just a couple slices of tomato, either.
For folks’ consideration: BLTAs (BLTs with avocado) are just amazing, too.
Kent
@Mary G: Right. I’ve been to Livingston and it is completely different from the rest of Guatemala. More like Jamaica or something. It is Garfuna and not Latino: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garifuna
I was conflating Livingston and Isabel in your post.
Betty
@Kent: Excellent summary of the situation. There is no reason US officials should not have the same understanding. What are the obstacles to adopting your suggestions?
WaterGirl
@Kent: You haven’t replied to my day and time questions. Wondering whether you saw them?
cope
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Hey, that’s what I was going to say.
Yesterday I suffered a severe humiliation when I was outside with my wife. She gets around with a walker so doesn’t do as much yard work as she used to (she loves and misses it). She pulled up two dead azaleas she asked me to plant a couple of months ago. It had been my charge to nurture them and help them thrive. I had failed miserably and had no defense. It was also painfully obvious that I had not broken up the root balls sufficiently when I planted them. Literally, my bad.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Steve in the ATL:
Leaf blowers are abominations before God and Man. Use of them outside the permitted time slot (designated to be at such times and places where I am not) should be a capital offense.
Chief Oshkosh
@Kent: Thank you for that great essay. I learned a lot. You should publish that somewhere.
gbbalto
@Kent: Thanks for this! On top of it all, Guatemala got hit by two powerful hurricanes last year…
lowtechcyclist
This. And it keeps on going – I have zero interest in learning how to work on my car. And as a reasonably well-paid statistician, I don’t have to. My wife and I have good jobs that we do well, and on account of that, we can pay other people to do the crap that we derive no pleasure from doing.
And every Saturday morning, there’s a farmers’ market less than ten minutes from my house. Their tomatoes and green beans and whatever else is in season are just as good as, and usually better than, whatever I could grow.
I think I’d actually enjoy doing some vegetable gardening if I had a reasonably sunny spot in our yard. But we’ve got lots of trees, plenty of shade, and that’s one of the things I really like about this house. I’d rather have the shade than a veggie garden if I had to choose.
WaterGirl
@cope: Now you will know better what to do next year, and what not to do!
Kent
Sorry. Tuesday evening would be perfect! I’ll be home then. I’m in Pacific time.
Kent
I’m sure they do. At least the area experts who know the region. The devil is always in the details. And it takes concerted long-term pressure to accomplish anything in Latin America. Corruption is so endemic.
But foreign policy is also like domestic policy. There are lots of big business interests who operate in Central America who are constantly pulling on the levers of power and policy here in the US in the arena of foreign policy as well as in Guatemala, just like they do in the arena of domestic policy in Congress. So you are fighting against entrenched interests on both sides of the border.
PST
@schrodingers_cat: I’m very sorry to hear about your boss cat’s medical problems. A few years ago my 19-year-old orange cat required daily administration of subcutaneous fluids due to chronic kidney failure. At first I couldn’t imagine doing that every day, but it turned out to be comfortable enough for him that he didn’t fight it, and I was surprised at how quickly it became easy and routine for me. It extended his life by a couple of good years. It sounds like your cat has something acute and serious with the need for catheterization, but if that is successful and the underlying problem is the common one of kidneys gradually losing function in old cats, many of them don’t mind a few minutes a day of fluid loading.
Ksmiami
@Ruckus: we own an agro ranch in Cali- so much of farming today is run on machines and computers that you don’t need a lot of permanent staff
dnfree
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
It’s fine that you don’t appreciate gardening, and too bad that you feel obliged to participate, but are you sure that when you visit a gardening center it’s always the women who are enthusiastic and their accompanying men who are reluctant? My husband loves to garden, and plan landscaping, and prune bushes. When we could have a garden, he was mostly in charge of that also. He’s always found it relaxing. We know other families too where the husband is the gardener and the wife perhaps the reluctant weeder. So it’s the gendering I’m objecting to, not your attitude toward gardening.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Praying for you and your kitty.
Kathleen
@schrodingers_cat: Sending you hugs!!!
WaterGirl
@Kent: Tuesday at 8pm, then. (blog time)
SpongeBobtheBuilder
Pro-tip: Freeze the sauce in the canning jars. Then you can thaw in a hot water bath or in the microwave. They also stack nicely in the chest freezer or on the shelves in the upright freezer.
Gvg
@WaterGirl: I know I linked to it once, but I think others did also.
I ordered 4. Florida gets warm sooner and I had to wait and wait for mine. They seem to be doing great now. Coleus root easily. Make more of the ones you like and save a few inside over winter.
would you like some links to hydrangea stores? Salvias? Phlox? Caladiums? Antique roses (my weakness)
WaterGirl
@Gvg: Mine arrived just a week to 10 days ago. Tiny, but in really good shape!
edit: I have 5 hydrageas, and I still lust after more. But I have no room for any more, so I won’t take you up on your offer.
texasdoc
@schrodingers_cat: If both kidneys are enlarged, he may have bladder outlet obstruction. It’s not uncommon for male cats to develop urethral blockage from crystals in the urine. If that’s the case, and the problem hasn’t been going on too long, he may do quite well after catheterization. (With more expensive cat food going on in the future, of course!)
Olivia
I am a day late and I haven’t read through all the posts yet so it’s possible someone already said this, but you can wash the tomatoes and then just freeze them whole with their skins on. Put them in a bag or a container and put them in the freezer. When you need to use them, take them out of the freezer and just a few minutes thawing allows their skins to slip right off and you can chop them and use them just like canned tomatoes. You can also chop them before freezing, after removing the skins with boiling water but it is so much easier just washing the tomato and freezing it whole.