Sorry for the late reply. I don't think your plant is any fruit bearing tree in Rosaceae, floral? The petioles don't look right for those. It could help if you take a photo of the side of the plant that shows the leaf arrangement and other details. Were you taking cuttings from a mother plant? I had fun growing Cannabis, and I really got into it. I made a supercropping net and was getting into the mathmatics of pruning for higher yield. If I had more area to garden with, I would definately have a few Cannabis trees. I'd get in trouble growing it in my front lawn, but I have an Illinois Bundleflower next to the street that produces DMT. I haven't used it for that purpose. I grow it for it's ferny foliage and powderpuff flowers. Illinois has some of the best mmj, but when I grew a hybrid of Malawi Gold and Highland Thai outdoors it rivaled the stuff from the dispensary. A true shame that the powers that be still haven't reclassified Cannabis and still outlaw Psilocybe and Salvia divinorum. Ethnobotany is so interesting! Fascinating that the human brain has chemical recepters that exist to bind with THC.

I love those common names. I just learned that Stachys species are woundworts. But you probably call them hedgenettles too. Isn't Garlic Mustard also Jack By The Hedge?

Yes, it is. But, sadly few people know the names of many wild plants . Those common names were often regional and they evolved when most of the population lived rural lives and were intimately familiar with what grew around them. You might enjoy 'The Englishmans Flora' by Geoffrey Grigson. Obviously the name is outdated but it is good on common names and plant uses.

Lucky Teddy — Congrats!

Lynn, I am so happy for you! Teddy is so cute and perfect! He is a beauty. I am so sorry for your loss. I am thrilled you found him and that he found YOU! ❤️

Lynn, I'm sorry you lost your dear Sasha, but glad you are ready for a new love. Teddy looks like a lovable furball. Enjoy!

Hi, remember me? I dropped off the face of the CF, or so said the kind forum member who sent me an email asking, not exactly, but kind of, if I were dead or in prison or what?

I haven’t posted in a while because, well, I’ve had nothing much to report. I haven’t been cooking and I haven’t lost any more weight. Getting into the “why” takes us into all manner of topics irrelevant to CF. Still, you have tolerated digression transgressions in the past, so I’ll offend once again.

(If only cooking content is desired, skip ahead to the end of this post.)

So, back in March, DD and I were happily sticking to our 1700 cal/day regimen and losing weight at a reasonable rate.

Then I got even deeper into the obsession that is skiing. I skiied a lot when I was young, light, strong, and fearless. Upon resuming this season, 30+ years later, I felt old, heavy, weak, and timid. My technique was obsolete, a relic of straight skis and stretch pants. I did drills on green and blue runs, watched lots of videos, took a private lesson. There were setbacks. I bought a pair of racy skis, named by DD “The Homicidal Skis”, which twice body-slammed me, broke my helmet, injured first my right shoulder then my left. But by now I’m able to command the Homicidal Skis and attack the hill, even the easier sort of black diamonds. All that occupied two months of every weekend and some hooky weekdays on the mountain.

The Homicidal Skis are on the left. My ski shop said, encouragingly, ” these edges are ridiculously sharp”, ”these skis aren’t meant for just skiing around“, and ”they’ll either teach you, or break you”.

SWMBO and I have agreed to disagree on how decorative skis are in one’s foyer. ”I can’t wait until ski season is over “ has been grumbled.

Another distraction in recent months was a curvaceous, vivacious lady, older than me, and bright blue. I met her at my neighbor’s, had to have her, and after a brief dalliance, she was mine. SWMBO even approves and looks forward to our threesomes this summer.

Here she is, a 1958 Austin Healey Bugeye Sprite. For a 66 year old lady, she’s tight and fast, restored for autocross. When I replace my expired racing helmet, we’re going to go kill some cones!

I also got a lift installed in the shop that SWMBO and I share - pottery studio on one side, car work on the other. It was expensive, but this is my last stab at retaining what’s been an important part of my identity all my life - a “car guy”. It’s hard to be a car guy when you’re 61 and no longer down for crawling under cars on an oily concrete floor. Many of my friends have given up working on cars; I’m trying to hold on.

On the home front, DD has plunged our family deep into vegetable gardening. We have dug up our front yard, covered it with raised planter boxes, and we have trays of starts all over the house and some brave little seedlings coming up in the planters, eagerly awaiting the start of Portland’s summer. We are not proven gardeners and, so far, it looks like the only crop we can count on this summer will be radishes, but we are hoping for more than that.

As a result of all this distraction, I’ve temporarily gone off my diet - although my weight loss is holding so far - and have cooked very little. I did, tonight, make salmon in garlic butter garnished with fried salmon skin, which DD paired with kale salad, pasta with a Marcella Hazan sage-butter sauce, and prosciutto-wrapped asparagus.

Seriously, this is the most cooking I’ve done in two months.

But normally I’m just eating salad and Costco rotisserie chicken.

My cabinet maker expects to deliver our kitchen cabinets in a couple weeks. The progress photos I’ve seen look great. They are of free-standing furniture construction, mortise-and-tenon joinery, floating panels, and chunky legs. In June I’ll finish and install the pantry cabinets and find someone to build the farm sinks and counters for the lower cabinets. Sinks will be soapstone and SWMBO wants commercial-style stainless steel counters, while I’m lobbying for soapstone. In July I’ll tear out the existing lower cabinets, move plumbing, and set the new lower cabinets in place, held to the wall with French cleats.

Here is one of the lower cabinets. I looked long for a furniture maker who would build custom freestanding kitchen cabinets with the construction of a dresser or credenza. I’m planning to paint them with brush marks, dents, and runs, as if they’ve been in the house since 1911 and repainted over and over.

In August I have a week-long ski camp high on Mt Hood, where there is skiing year-round. Shhh, don’t tell SWMBO about that! We’re going to an ”arts camp” where I’ve signed up for a drawing class (something else I haven’t done in decades), and we’ll go to Tahoe again this year. Sometime in there, we’ll then tackle the floors (thinking hardwood with floor outlet) and commission the cabinet maker to build an island with casters, undercounter baker racks and an undercounter refrigerator. It’s going to be a process but by winter, the kitchen should be finished, and rather cheaply as kitchen remodels go. It is genuinely daunting how much it costs to have a kitchen remodeling company “do” your kitchen; I want to do it for half price, or less.

Islay, it is like a four-wheeled motorcycle! With a motorcycle, you actively move around in the lane to maximize the distance from other cars, stay out of blind spots, and to get drivers’ attention. This little Sprite is like that. The controls are amusingly sparse. The windshield ”washer” is a manual pump you operate with your thumb, and the windshield ”wipers” are less effective than simply reaching over the windshield with a towel. There is no radio, the heater and defroster are theoretical, and the turn signal switch is a toggle on the dash that you manually turn off after the turn. The motor is the same displacement as a large motorcycle but at 70 hp, far less powerful. This is a hot rod Sprite: the stock ones had 43 hp! 50 mph feels like 100 mph and she turns like a go-kart.

She is a fun car for sunny days only. I wanted an Austin Healey badly when I was young, and I paid little enough for ”Bugs Bunny” that I should be able to scratch my childhood British roadster itch for a few years at essentially no net cost.

My immediate concern was addressed in a couple videos I found onlinr: Seal it between aluminum foil so that the plastic doesn't melt all over your iron. Looks like it takes a pretty low setting, about ten seconds. Might require some trial and error to get just right. Saw someone else use a hair straightening iron.

You can use parchment paper when ironing plastic as well - I've done so when recycling plastic grocery bags - using a very low setting - too much heat and the plastic bubbles and makes holes.

😄

I really like that Milling Road chair!!! It looks small and I prefer a small chair. Great project chairs too! I'm a sucker for wingback chairs, so it's a good thing I don't live near there or I'd need to grab the two you passed by. :)

That fabric is delicious! love the combination and the side table as well.

Thanks, K! I’ve never used this upholstery business before, I sure hope they’re good.