Gardening in tiny spaces.

This is the north end of my garden. In this mess of plants are tomatoes, cucumbers, sage, thyme, basil (way too much to ever eat), rosemary, feverfew, kenilworth ivy, sunbeam coreopsis, morning glories, some sort of salvia which was supposed to bloom red but didn't, petunias and a few other things whose names I can't recall. a lot of this is just stuff that comes back year after year. I've had the feverfew and kenilworth ivy for more than 20 years, moving it accidently from place to place (well, 3 places). The coreopsis snuck in there about 10 years ago. I had the most lovely wild morning glories for years but they abandoned me. I feel bad about that. The thyme is perennial. It doesn't seem to mind staying on the balcony all winter. The sage is new this year. The rosemary comes inside in December and tolerates the heat and dryness of my condo until I put it back out in April. It usually has some sort of pest issue. Scale, mites, mildew, I give it a shower every few weeks.

Key lime Pie

Key limes are not easy to find if you are not a restaurant. I had to use bottled stuff with an additional kick from a regular lime. It has been almost 8 months since I made one. And I made about 4 zillion of them but I could not, for the life of me, remember what the hell was in them.

Dental fun

Root canal yesterday. Aside from the dread and fear before hand - I didn't have a lot of pain but making it hurt so they know which tooth is the problem was looming large - the actual procedure was horrifying and lengthy. Don't let any one, like my Aunt Elyse (a dentist) tell you "oh it's nothing." It's not nothing. And then the meds they give you afterward keep you up all night. And I'm only on a quarter of the dose I start tomorrow.

Poignant recipe

I made chocolate bread pudding for the first time since I closed the restaurant. I didn't realize how emotional it would make me. I realized that for the most part I avoid cooking anything that reminds me of the place. I thought it was because of how much I hated being there. But just slicing the egg buns made me wistful.

The detritus of the food industry

No restaurant anymore. Instead I'm doing other things now. Like weird religious iconography in colored pencil on ply wood. 3 individual pieces.

Couple o' things

This was a long time ago, when we just started to get busy, a couple came in, they had called for reservations, we told that we weren't taking reservations, which to them meant we didn't take them but instead meant, we were full and we no longer taking them for the night. They came in and were asked if they had reservations which made them angry. They waited then, for a table, which was in the back which they, for some reason thought was the smoking section. Rather than take the table, they marched out, stopping at the front desk to tell me that they will never ever come back. Began to rant about the smoking section (there was no one even smoking in the restaurant, which is only allowed at the bar.), the ill-informed employees. "And we have a lot of friends we're telling!!" I wondered, at the time, who would be friends with people like this.

I have hung about 80 percent of the fish. At least 80% of the ones that are made. It took forever and my feet hurt. But they're kinda cute.

Fish

It has been a long time since I posted on this thing. I think about it a lot but mostly am not happy enough about what's happening in the restaurant to want to write anything funny or interesting. 

Right now I am attempting to make a school of fish that I imagined would be miles long and swerve through the ceiling of the place. Instead what I have is about 3 feet of fish. Guess I have to work harder at it.