Rewind.

Behold, my beautiful, lush garden.

The green sugar snap peas, purple moon cauliflowers, and bush green beans are well underway. The green lettuce, kale and butter lettuce are ready to be harvested. The Hungarian peppers are struggling, and the cherry tomatoes are taking their sweet time. The arugula has already bolted and were ripped out this morning, as were the radishes. In the previous two years, we grew the Cherriette variety of radishes, but this year we planted the Easter Egg II blend, named for its range of colours from white to burgundy. They went from seed to R.O.U.S. (radishes of unusual size) in just six weeks:

This is the largest intact radish from this morning’s harvest. There were larger ones, but they’d cracked, and bugs had worked their way into the crannies, so I discarded them in the compost bin. Even after getting rid of all those fissured radishes, the bounty is too large to be divided among two people, especially when just one radish is the size of an apple.

I’ve tried my hand at pickling:

Shredded on the left and thin slices on the right. Supermarket-purchased dill in both jars.

With new seeds in the soil, I’ll have three weeks to discover new ways to prepare radishes. Candied radishes? Caramel radish? Radish ice cream?*

Continue reading “Rewind.”

All the hearts.

Let’s get right into it:

On Tuesday, I received a text from my uncle telling me Opa was in the hospital with heart problems. I was told not to come and that he was doing ok.

My 99-year-old opa is in the hospital? How was I supposed to stay optimistic? I only had about 30 minutes left on the clock, so I told myself I could finish the bike I was working on.

I couldn’t do it. With 15 minutes to go, I bailed and walked my bike home as I was too distressed to ride. Upon arriving home, I crashed on the couch, exhausted from all my emotions. I woke up from my nap around 8pm and checked my phone.

Opa had a heart attack.

Continue reading “All the hearts.”

Catching and releasing ZZZs.

Sleeping is my latest hobby: after all, sleep is where I am a Viking. Rather than conquer territories far and wide, I had the not-so-difficult task of eliminating one letter from the alphabet. The answer was evident to me: Z. The English language can do without this letter. My alarm went off as soon as I declared the elimination of the letter Z. How fitting: it interrupted my ZZZs. This was okay, as it was already 9am.

The drugs I’ve been on for two months now list “insomnia” as a possible side effect. Contrary to this, I have been extra-groggy. I had two naps following my alphabet-culling dream. I slept in until 9 again this morning, and the preceding dream was about packing up for a move. I was in an unfamiliar house: everything was a mess, and people were starting to move boxes even though I hadn’t finished packing up. It was a stressful dream that I was glad to wake up from.

I was surprised to find my roomie was still home. When I settled on the couch with my breakfast, he informed me he was heading out to work soon for a packing program for an upcoming kayak trip. This was an odd coincidence.

An online analysis of this dream says:

Continue reading “Catching and releasing ZZZs.”