crows, plants, cheese

[eub]

The crows have moved where they sleep. It's not Marsh Island anymore; the trees there used to be crowded full of crows, thousands and hundreds of thousands of crows. I think it's still somewhere in the neighborhood, since we can see them congregating and flying northeast at sunset.

People said that crows roosted on Foster Island, but it was always Marsh Island as far as I saw. Maybe they used to, and have now shifted back.

---

To-do list:
plant bareroots
plant lupine
call Pinetree
start landseaweed
separate tarragon
cage snail
oak logs - Plant Amnesty?
KILL ALL APHIDS
cut back B. caapi
dig rhubarb
prune dead things
spill water into electronics
plant stock
plant tomatoes [no]
plant sunberry
plant ground cherry

Would anyone like a rose geranium? My starts made from cutting-back last winter when I took it inside, they've all taken. (Though they probably all want to be put outdoors where you don't care about the aphids.)

Or new starts of the thing beaq gave me -- not the name "Dutchman's breeches" in my head because that's totally different, this is more like a Christmas cactus kind of thing -- from the tentacles smashed when it attacked me down off top of the spiral shelf?

Also I have extra seeds of just about everything, but especially the nightshades.

---

mesophilic propionibacter cheese

    1 gal milk, 90 degrees
    1/2 packet mesophil
    1/4 t. propionibacter
10 min
    1/2 t. old rennet that has probably lost activity
50 min to set.
cut curd.  it is soft.
to 100 deg.
45 min, stirring, cooling back to 90 deg.
drain curd.  it holds a good deal of whey, and has more volume than usual.
    1 T. cheese salt
press @ 2 cookbooks for 15 min.
redress, press @ 4 cookbooks 60 min.
redress, press @ 8 cookbooks overnight.
age at high humidity until it swells up; then begin to dry.

Comments

cage ... snail

[beaq.livejournal.com]

It probably is dutchman's breeches. I seem to recall. It might even be offshoots of the plant that is currently suffering so terribly in my "care".

Re: cage ... snail

[eub.livejournal.com]

It's not at all this Dutchman's breeches, the Dicentra, may it be another?

Oh, the snail-flower is Vigna caracalla, possibly syn. Phaseolus c., or maybe they're cultivars, possibly crazy invasive in frost-free climates, expensive scarce seeds left over if anyone wants any.

Re: cage ... snail

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Pipe. Dutchman's pipe..

Re: cage ... snail

[eub.livejournal.com]

Re: cage ... snail

[marzipan-pig.livejournal.com]

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Re: cage ... snail

[eub.livejournal.com]

Oho Dutchman's pipe. You gave me a night-blooming cereus, did you know! + "It closely resembles the Lunar Flower, a significant plot element in the anime Wolf's Rain."

Re: cage ... snail

[beaq.livejournal.com]

Epiphyllum oxypetalum, FWIW.

How's the cheeeeeeeeeeese?

Re: cage ... snail

[eub.livejournal.com]

Still very young, malleable, white. We'll see if it swells up successfully.

[mh75.livejournal.com]

I like geraniums, but i'd be afriad i might kill them?? I'm not so terribly good at plants.

[eub.livejournal.com]

Well, there are more where these came from. Drat, I forgot to send you home with one, but I'll remember one time or another.

[corivax.livejournal.com]

Landseaweed?

[eub.livejournal.com]

There's a plant Salsola komarovii that people call "land seaweed", which makes me giggle. Also okahijiki. Juicy, crisp, and salty, by report.

Salsola is the tumbleweeds, so I will keep an eye on it.

[laurabee.livejournal.com]

How did you kill all the aphids? They demolished my squash last year and they must be made to pay!

[eub.livejournal.com]

Well, I pruned off 60% of one plant's leaves, and 90% of the other, to get it down to manageable levels. :-/ Then went over the whole plant by hand, and then by hand again smearing insecticidal detergent, and now I just go over it again each morning for a week or two and I hope I'll be out of the woods...

Aphids mostly are a pest on my indoor plants, but they also got the dill pretty good last year. Getting aphids out of dill flowerheads? Not possible.

No magic bullet from me, sorry. Good luck with getting some squash this year. Maybe aphids can be an excuse to release thousands of ladybugs, which even if they don't effectively control the aphids would be great fun?