Weekend Fun!

Here were the main activities of the weekend for our household.

1. A virus, how annoying.  Not TPP, his trusty PC.  It has been a good long time since it has contracted an infection, and you get rather complacent, but fortunately most software has automatic updates although no anti-viral or anti-malware installed saw this one coming.  And from where?  It was the usual scanning for science news and recipes type of morning.  Should you be ever suspicious of squash soup recipes?  And for all my years on the internet, and it is many, what is the creator of such malicious software gets out of it.  It’s like breaking windows.  Other than a delight in sheer destruction of something not so difficult to break, a feeble victory at best, and annoying people you don’t even know, where is the payoff? 

2. Leaves.  Just as the fall color really begins to appear a 24-hr windy front moves through the area and reduces tree crowns by 50%.  On the good news side, a newly planted tupelo is showing real potential for outstanding fall color.  On the other hand, drought damage has greatly reduced the fall color of the witchhazels.  And of course, all the leaves in the world seem to end up in the lily pond.

3. Rain.  After a brief effort, maybe about 150 bulbs got planted.  Probably 1.5-2 inches in total. So the default activity was house cleaning, an activity largely ignored during gardening season.  Why clean a house if you’re only going to be in it to sleep?  Somehow quite a layer of dust and cat fuzzies had managed to accumulate, and we do expect a foreign house guest later this week.

4. Garden cleanup.  Time to ditch the summer garden plants; nothing more to come from tomatoes (3 cherry tomatoes eaten on the spot), peppers, beans, eggplant, okra.  At least when your garden is close to a total flop you don’t have much to clean up.  Only the cold frame greens remain.  Made a totally dynamite spicy pork and bok choi stir fry, and it was fairly easy and delivered a Thai flavor.  Definitely a keeper recipe, one of those sleeper recipes that you turn past in a cookbook because it never quite captures your imagination until you have a bunch of bok choi and some frozen coconut milk to use and  your pragmatism turns to discovery. 

5. Bonsai trees.  Several of TPP’s bonsai trees are pretty tough and seem to do better is given some fall cool weather, but there is a limit so the indoor migration began.  The Pittosporum needed repotting, and that was completed just before the next big squall came through and TPP had to help the neighbors secure their garden shed (plastic on tubular framework) that had gotten blown over by a sudden gust.  The limb cleanup will result in a substantial pile for composting as it always does.