Mmmmmmm, smoked brisket! That sounds heavenly.
Enjoy it and your quiet time!
I'm a few hours late. We had some impressive storms come through here yesterday afternoon and evening and so, with all that lightening, I was "unplugged". But my Friday Five:
1) I was going to toodle over to the allotment this morning to see how it had weathered all the storms this week. (So glad I put in some drainage, even if it doesn't work terribly well - it'll be better than having not put any in at all). Unfortunately, the road is closed due to power lines across it. Again. We had some really blustery storms on Thursday, and the lines went down in the same area They stayed back up yesterday through some truly epic lightening and wind, but are down again this morning. I am thinking they went down about 45 minutes ago, judging from when all the lights in my house blinked on and off a few times. So that's off the calendar, for the time being, this morning.
2) Instead I'll be cleaning out the car to take into the shop on Wednesday. Right now the back is full of garden tools, dirt, and misc., and smells just a bit like fertilizer. I think I'll go to the carwash and use their vacuum cleaners, and then air the car out for a few hours. Vanity, I know. I don't want the people at the shop to sit in my car and say "This lady's car smells like cow sXXt!"
3) Watching Hurricane Lee, fingers are crossed that it turns north sooner rather than later. (With apologies to Bermuda.) No garden drainage is THAT good. And, I'm in the end unit of a row of flats, exposed to the wind on three sides. Near several very large trees. (Aka, living projectiles.)
4) Just read that there have been over 1,700 different varieties of Omicron Covid identified now (straight lineages and Omicron recombinants), and that something like 350 to 400 of them are still in circulation. And that's just the Omicrons. I'd hate to be an epidemiologist right now.
All of which leads to, they're going to roll out another Covid vaccine in the next two/three weeks. Technically it's not a booster, since it's not addressing the original virus any more. So I assume side effects would be like it was the original vaccine. Aka, several days of unpleasantness. Which is, of course, better than Long Covid or death. But.... oy. In the last two months the docs have had me have jabs for: tetanus, diphtheria, & whooping cough; pneumonia; and, shingles. They still recommend the new flu vaccine when it comes out, and, of course, the new Covid jab. I think I'll go ahead and get the flu and Covid shots at the same time (they say that's ok) so I'll only be miserable for a couple of days, rather than dealing with side-effects at two different times. I am tired of losing days at a time for vaccine side effects. Yes, I'm
highly grateful for the vaccines, and hope they do their jobs. But if they were spread out a bit more over time, perhaps it wouldn't be so odious. It's seemed like I just started feeling 100% after one when I had another. Oh, I forgot the RSV. They recommend that one, too. Later. I'm avoiding people, and masking, so maybe I can avoid RSV.
5) All the rain and heat at the wrong times really hit us over at the allotment as far as veg output. I picked as many tomatoes as were even remotely ready from my moribund vines, and I canned up six pints of those that had ripened at the house. Today I have enough here ripening for six more, and there might be a few more pints' worth still on the vines. But it's not been a good tomato year. Still, a fresh tomato has got store-bought beaten hands down every time! The garlic did well enough. The beans are still alive and producing pods, but I won't know how well they did until the vines die back and I pick the pods to shell out the seeds. The squash were, last I checked, doing quite well. I'll be donating those to charity as I'm really not much of a butternut squash fan. Didn't do well with onions or scallions at all. (Rot) I have several beet, bok choi, and kale seedlings ready to put out (they can survive cooler temps under a row cover) once I'm sure the weather is a little more favorable for their survival. Then it's just wait for the end of the season, plant garlic for next year, and put it all to bed for the year. That's coming sooner than I'd like, really.
