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Any botanists, amateur or professional?  What is it in Southern California that has been making my nights miserable for the last month or so (early June to early July) when the windows are left open?  Is there something releasing pollen late at night?  Is there some reason I have to megadose on Benadryl to make it through the night?  Something in San Gabriel / Pasadena to set one’s allergies on full alert?  Note I’m allergic to most weeds, trees, and grasses.

Why do I want to know?  Simple curiosity?  No.  “Find it and kill it”. 

All winter squashes are edible as summer squashes (shell and all) if they are picked young enough.  This squash

had turned green but had stopped growing, so I harvested it this morning at the size of a lemon and steamed it for 10 to 12 minutes. Here’s a picture:

It was delicious.

There are five new baby pictures, at the bottom of the list.

The new garden page isn’t ready yet, but I wanted to share with you the absurdity that is the kabocha squash plant. It now has seven squashes growing on it. Keep in mind that all the pictures are from a single plant, started outdoors from a single seed.

I had another nice microharvest today: four daikon radishes. Pictures will follow. The largest was over 30 cm long, and had a circumference larger than my wrist! I know they can get to almost 50 kg, but this is still much larger than I had expected for my little garden patch. From the four daikon I composted more than 2 kilos of foliage! The plants were massive, and I realized I planted them much to closely, as the greens splay out in all directions.

As soon as I have a harvest, I start looking for people to give it to. I enjoy eating it, but love the look on recipients’ faces even more when I hand them home-grown produce. I gave three of the four away; I’ll keep one for misoshiru. I need to pick up some bonito to make dashi. I’m trying to decide which of my misos to use (store-bought, I don’t make my own.) My stomach’s rumbling.

I had my first non-radish harvest from the garden today!  Here it is:

And the same thing, in the kitchen:

I just ate the baby carrot. But I stir-fried the greens in olive oil, with fresh lemon juice and garlic, black pepper, and a dash of cayenne, and served them sprinkled with some fleur de sel:

I boiled the beetroots in salted water and ate them:

I had them with a glass of inexpensive white Cotes-du-Rhône.

I’m working on a gardening page, and with any luck will have in running in a few days.

A nice thing about PVC pipe is that while it does not break straight (i.e., the break is not a planar cut of the pipe), it breaks cleanly, as opposed to shattering, in that the two pieces will usually meet without major chips missing. Another nice thing is that PVC cement is unbelievably strong stuff. I broke a complicated loop of 1/2 in. PVC pipe off of a larger fixture in two places. In one case, the break occurred inside another piece into which it was fitted:

|
|============
|        -----------
|        _/________
|=========^==
|         |
|         |location of break

Pulling it apart, adding PVC cement liberally to both mating surfaces, applying pressure, and liberally painting the outside of the joints with cement fixed the problem. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s stronger than it was before.