Aritcle

This is an article about the recent killing of the two armored guards in Philly. I know the article is in the Daily News but the officer writing it touches on some of the problems with Philly's criminal justice system and the sarcastic title seems to be a feeling of the City.


http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion/20071009_A_prior_felony__Im_shocked.html

Getting ready for autumn

and ultimately the next spring and summer. I have spent the last couple of nights out in my garden cleaning out the weeds. My biggest road block have been the bees that are enjoying some of my biggest plants. I don't feel like upsetting 30 some odd bees. Last night I decided to start moving around some of my plants. I moved one of the lavender plants to the front of the garden; there were other plants that were basically growing on top of it and it no longer had the sunlight or air circulation it needed. Although it is now one day later and the lavender, anise, lemon balm and rudbekia I moved all look very sad and I am very sad because I don't want to move plants to kill them. So the rest of the plants I want to move I'll move in the spring. Most of those plants are in their prime now and the bees are going nutty enjoying all of the flowers on them. Hopefully those I have moved will bounce back, I am crossing my fingers but not entirely hopeful.

End of Summer Garden

So along with the close of the summer comes the close of my vegetable garden. The veggies and my sunflowers and a few weeds, who snuck their way in, just totally took over and became overgrown and looked raggedy. I loved the abundance and the sheer shock of how well everything grew from seed, but it's time to clear all that out to let my other plants to breathe and have time to shine for the fall. I have two, what were small plants when I bought them last year, that are now 4 ft x 4 ft and have bloomed these tiny, pretty, bright, purple flowers that were totally over taken by my gourds and other plants and now after my purging they are the show stoppers in the garden.

My sunflowers got so tall and the heads so heavy that the heads would fall down and they just looked so sad. So I finally cut most of them down but I cannot get all of the stalks out of the ground. The stalks are massive.



I have SOOOOOO many gourds. So some interesting facts about gourds: 1) the plants are spiky as hell, 2) their vines have little tendrils that shoot out and grab onto anything, 3) They got some horrible powdery mildew going on, and 4) the vines get long.

A couple of my bell pepper plants survived and I've got a couple of small peppers. My cukes are still coming in. Right now my zucchini are coming in like crazy. I am getting huge zucchini's. I have baked 4 loaves of 2 different types of zucchini bread, made two zucchini bakes (kind of like a quiche) and pasta with zucchini for four days lunch, all this week. I still have another zucchini in the fridge and it too is massive.




I've learned a lot about vegetable gardening. About what grows well here and what I grow well. I've also learned that I need to tone down how much I plant. I also have some major moving of some of my large perennials to do. They've grown bigger than I eve expected and they are crowding each other out. Many of these are my fall plants, so think I may wait until Spring to move the plants. I also need to move a bunch of my herbs and I think I am going to test the limits of many of my different mint plants and see if they can survive in pots over the winter. The regular mint plant is super invasive, and the other type of mint plants I have aren't far behind. I bought seed mix for a cover crop in my vegetable section and will start that next week and continue until all of my vegetables are done. Even with what seems like half of the foliage gone, my mosquitoes are not. I was out there for five minutes today and have about 8 bites on one forearm alone.

Venting

So I had a very peaceful lunch. Got a great sandwich of mozzarella, artichokes and roasted red peppers on a good sesame hoagie from Mezze and then hit the Beer Garden at Reading Terminal Market and had a glass of crappy white wine. It's during work, so a glass of crappy wine is still ok (I'll find better). Then some asshole who was turning left almost hit me in the crosswalk (I had the walk signal) and acted like it was my fault. I yelled at him, but didn't curse, but I should have, Fucking asshole. So my peaceful lunch was ruined by some dick who doesn't know how to fucking drive. And through all of this I can tell I am becoming more of a Philadephian. Anyway, the sandwich at Mezze was really good and having a glass of wine during the work day doesn't hurt either. They also have cider, so I will get that if I go again in the future (they also have hard liquor, but for some reason, that and going back to work don't sit well with me).

So now I am blasting my ears with music I love to sing to get me back in my good frame of mind, I hope I am not annoying the intern :)

Harry Potter

I got Book 7. They delivered it at 8:30 am this morning. WooHoo! Corey called me from Texas at a Harry Potter Party and I heard the screaming, it was so cool! Unfortunately I have so many chores to do today before I leave so I will settle in with it tomorrow when I get back.

Saw HP5 on Wednesday and liked better than HP4 (which I did not like). HP3 is still my favorite. I want to go and see HP5 again to form a better opinion.

YEAH HARRY POTTER!

UPDATE:

Am Finished and went back through book 6 and parts of the new one just to understand the ending. Still a tad confused. Will read it again on Sunday.

Garden

So I have not been "out" in my garden in a few days. Sometimes the bees and unfortunately the couple of wasps we have prevent my foray through it. Today was a harvesting day and I picked 1/2 a bowl of two different kinds of hot peppers, 2.5 bowls of green and yellow beans, my biggest summer squash so far, a small zucchini (unfortunately I uprooted the whole plant when I picked it) and to my great surprise I found a big-ass cucumber. I didn't even think any of them were growing. I hope I have white vinegar, because I also grow fresh dill so I would like to make cucumber and dill.

UPDATE:
Made the cucumber and dill salad. It was soooo good. The cucumber was firm and juicy and the dill had a great flavor.

With dinner I ate one of the skinny eggplants I picked and the small zucchini. I am learning a lot about geographic spacing and time spacing in my garden. I have corn ears growing right now and carrots. I am very excited about those. My white crepe myrtle bloomed and it is so striking. It is pure white and is such a contrast to every other color in the garden. The hydrangea finally bloomed (I was getting worried), my tall yellow flowers (don't know what they are) bloomed and one of my 8ft high sunflowers looks ready to bloom. I have gourds all along one of my fences. I wrote to the company and they said I should not eat any of them, some might be poisonous. There are so many hanging on the fence. I was so eager to plant in the spring, I planted everything at once, again I am learning how to space my plantings. I planted a clematis vine and I might be regretting it. The gourds are attacking plants, but I can get them off easily and train them back on the fence and they are only annuals, the clematis are perennials and tie onto everything, I might have to cut them back or get rid of them, they might be poising too much of a threat to my other plants.

I want to plant more flowers, but I am out of room in our backyard, I even have pots everywhere too and we have no more capacity. My neighbor has two planters with nothing in them so I think I am going to go to Home Depot tomorrow and grab some cheap flowers and plant them in his planters.

I hate to see neglected gardens and I hate to see areas that are never tended or loved. I told Frank one of my life's ambitions is too plant flowers everywhere. Some bushes and flowers are so much easier to maintain than grass (which is a water sucking crap-ass plant). Just think of how many people have yards and never use them. They have a yard because in suburbia you are supposed to. Fuck that! Plant a wild garden that will need little maintenance, less water (the first year of planting is when flowers and bushes need the most water) and is beautiful, eye-catching and beneficial for bumblebees, honeybees, and butterflies (the good bugs).

I volunteered for the Wissahickon Restoration Volunteers (http://wissahickon.patrails.org/) through Greater Philadelphia Cares (www.gpcares.com) today. I learned about some invasive species to PA and got to let my aggression out on them. I didn't know how far in the woods we would be so I wish they "required" that you wear pants, I was in 3/4 yoga pants, and was worried about ticks (one guy pulled one off of himself) and poison ivy (which was in many places). Overall it was a good experience. I learned a new park area where we can hike or mountain bike. There was a "creek" but it was fed by stormwater runoff (yuck!).

Radio Star

I actually got on the radio. We were listening to 950am Sports Talk www.sportstalk950.com when we left the Phillies hold off of their 10,000th loss (won 13-3 bitches!) and there was a trivia question and since Frank was driving I called in. So on this radio show they just shoot the shit about sports with anyone for 5 minutes at a time and since I know nothing about sports, my stint was a little shorter, but they were happy to get a girl on the air. We got the trivia question wrong, but I was again later referenced in the show by one of the other listeners, yeah!

Spain Pictures

Frank put up some of our Spain pictures at
http://picasaweb.google.com/frankman10/Spain?authkey=s-QkS-m_MPo

Here are a few:


Bull fight in Madrid



Cat No.1



Cat's 2 and 3



The Phallic Symbol in Spain



So Happy!

Party on the Parkway

SUCKED!!!

No one was there (it was a rainy 4th) but it was just your standard food vendors, 1 NBA interactive stand, 1 carnival game and that's it. Philly's increased police force were groups of 30 cops huddled in different locations to the side of the event. SO we went, walked through and left. We headed to Penn's Landing. We checked out some of the cool ships docked there. The picture below is of the USS Olympia. A steel warship from the Spanish-American War. They had ait docked next to a submarine.



A newly commissioned ship was docked there for the Fourth, the USS Farragut.


We had a drink on a really cool tall ship

(Moshulu Restaurant) and then went to the new brewpub, Triumph Brewery. They were trying to be posh, a slight turn-off, but a good wine list ($9-$11/glass, it's Philly, stupid liquor laws). I had a very good Sauvignon Blanc from Hunter in New Zealand and a Rioja Vega. The food was very good also.
http://www.triumphbrewing.com/indexfl6.html


So our day was not lost since the party on the parkway was a huge disappointment. The headlining band for the evening concert was Hall and Oates. I didn't think they were the best choice (yes they are area natives) for our cultural mix in Philly. I was so happy for the Fourth of July in the nation's birthplace, oh well. Next year we are just going to throw a huge party.

An Indian Affair

Frank and I finally got to An Indian Affair. We've been wanting to try this place since we found it and have not gotten there until now. We both enjoy Indian food a lot and have found some terrific place sin the past and this did not disappoint. We did the lunch buffet. Their dessert pastries, tangy eggplant and naan were very good. The naan was the some of the best naan I have ever had and the flavor of the tangy eggplant was very rich. I had a glass of Syrah with the meal and there's nothing like a spicy wine enhancing the spiciness in already fairly spicy food. My mouth was burning a little, it was fun.
http://www.an-indian-affair.com/

We are headed to the Party on the Parkway in a bit. Should be fun.

Garden

So last night we ate a lot of fresh veggies from the garden. We ate the best eggplant ever (a very skinny, long eggplant), summer squash (very good) and hot peppers. We also had a ton of string beans and yellow beans and I need to go out today and pick some more. The are very prolific. All in all, very delicious. It looks like I will have more eggplant, summer squash, hot peppers, zucchini and peas this weekend. The corn stalks are looking healthy and I am eager for the sunflowers to bloom. I have been putting branches of the mint plant in vases (mint is very invasive and needs to be cut regularly to be controlled) and they last forever in the vases. I have had some mint in vases for two weeks now and it still looks freshly cut. At the moment I have two favorite parts of my garden: the corner with tons of orange flowers and echinacea (such an eye catcher) and the corner with the crepe myrtles, lavender and butterfly bushes. Only my pink crepe myrtle has bloomed so far and it is stunning. The white still has yet to bloom. The butterfly bushes started blooming and they are so striking and fragrant. My gourds are a little annoying. I didn't realize they would try and strangle everything in their wake. But some parts of them have moved onto the fence, so that's fine. My hollyhocks have trouble staying up so I have staked them. But now the flowers are dying off and it doesn't look that nice. I also have a problem weeding because I also planted a bunch of seeds and I don't know what I planted and what are weeds. Oh well. My garden kicks ass!

Flowers

Herbs and Potted plants

Roses

Vegetables

Panty Lines

It really grieves me to see a woman all dressed up, wearing the cutest outfit and having it ruined by panty lines. Panty lines completely ruin the classy, dressed up outfit that the woman spent time and energy putting together. Now she just looks trashy. Embrace the thong ladies and look classy and put together.

Vino

I am a crazy wine lover. My favorites are big, bold reds that are either smoky, spicy, and/or creamy. My favorite whites are oaked aged chardonnays that have an awesome creaminess. I keep track of most wines I try. I love enjoying a glass of wine on my patio on a nice day. It doesn't get much better than that.

Rockland

So after doing so well yesterday,we get to Rockland and enjoy two bottles of red wine with his parents along with cheese, crackers and soppresatta. So that didn't work. Breakfast then consisted of a huge ass bagel with cream cheese, some fruit and coffee. So I am not winning this weekend. Just gotta do my best with what I am given. So I don't know how to keep track of this and all the other stuff the Zummo clan will put in front of me, so I am just throwing my hands up. Is it time for more wine yet?

Yeah- Pizza and Bagels do not help a diet and I especially don't feel good about myself on the whole as I do not look good in the outfit I brought for the party. Oh well i am just going to have to live with it.

So my last day included the best cannoli ever from Dee Maria's pizzeria in Rckland county. If you haven't been you gotta go. Then I have Zio Joe shoved sausage down my throat all day. Good eats. But I must go after what I want, and just not good tasting food. So I am going to start Weight Watchers online, again, and do the points program. I really need to do well, so I know I will. No more if's and no more bets, it has to be do and complete and achieve.

The Start of My Journey in Philly

So this will not be an exciting blog or an entertaining story of my usually drunken nights (or maybe it will if I get on here at night). It will be more of a check for myself so I can have my swan story. For me that's becoming healthy, fit and more attentive in my relationships. It will also be an account of Philly and the places I enjoy.


Got Lunch from
Greenhouse Cafe
They have this fabulous avocado salad. I just can't get enough i of it.
I also had cucumber with dill, the only way to eat cucumber and a small side salad.