a harvest of sorts

Posted on August 19, 2009 by Kathy

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The Hungarian hot pepper had turned red, so took it in this morning. The tomato is from the Roma plant I bought in a 4 inch pot. The Brandywine tomato is to the top of its 6 foot stake now, but only has one green tomato about an inch across so far. With the tomato harvest this year looks like it will be a race against blight as much as frost.

There are some green bell peppers about ready too, but left them on the plant for now. I made a pork loin stir fry with peppers, onion, and mushrooms for supper with the parents the day before last. I forgot to bring sesame oil, but my dad said that he wouldn’t fire me for that this time! He also questioned not putting in some of their hot peppers. Think that calls for another stir fry soon.

The parents are replacing their furnace so I went there Monday to stay with mother while my dad worked in the basement in the afternoon then mowed grass in the evening. Before that though, they showed me letters they got for two credit card accounts announcing increased fees for everything. Yep, after the taxpayers paid all that money to bail out banks. I heard that it now costs small business people a lot more to process credit and debit card payments too. As my mentor Neil T. often said, “No good deed shall go unpunished.” They had tried to cancel the accounts before but ended up being talked into keeping them.

There is anecdotal evidence that senior citizens do not fare well with credit card (should really be called debt card) companies. In addition, when I cancelled a MasterCard account before I left Milwaukee, prompted by a sizable lost payment fee, it was an interesting experience. I had to talk to three different people, one of which was a purported credit counselor. The final person attempted to scare me with not having MasterCard to pay for medical care! Now I wonder how might the finance industry be connected with the problems in our health care system? In addition to what I thought was nasty tactics, after talking to them I was able to formulate an SQL query that would generate such bogus charges while minimizing the probability of the customer catching it. (Oracle and MySQL DBA experience as well as database design background)

When I was prepared for a fight, like telling them that my parent’s religion prohibited usury and dealing with anyone who promoted it, was rather disappointed that they had cleaned up their act. As a warning to people who care for elderly and disabled relatives or friends though, even if you have power of attorney (POW) for them, you have to give the credit card company a copy of the papers before they will deal with you. If only they were so careful about approving large purchases and cash advances as with canceling accounts. Fortunately we had two phones available and my mom was feeling better than usual. Got two accounts closed and verified that a third was already closed. Whew!

The ground was wet when I returned to Ford City Monday night, and we had a couple showers mixed with sunny skies yesterday. It is still overcast now (almost lunch time) so guess we are back into the damp weather pattern. It is probably preferable to the two air quality alert days on Sunday and Monday though.

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wordnik

Posted on August 17, 2009 by Kathy

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mongrel – mutant – feral tomato plants

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Kathy

Seems that we have been here before: monster tomato plant. Last winter my dad was adding frozen grape tomatoes from one of their volunteer plants to salads. He took some of their seeds and they germinated. He planted some of the seedlings and gave me one to plant.

I remember a quote from Albert Einstein that God doesn’t play at dice, however that is not the case for Mother Nature with genetics.

Of the “grape tomato” plants that survived, the one I have and two in my dad’s garden have green fruit that looks like plum tomatoes. One of his plants has round, smallish fruit. The other has green tomatoes the shape of sausages! Suppose they would be good for making sandwiches in hot dog buns.

The Brandywine heritage tomato plants from seeds I saved last year are growing but no fruit showing yet. This is tough weather for tomatoes. I put one in the ground and it is up to my shoulder staked up. It has flowered so I hope to see some tomatoes before the frost hits. The other I left in a small pot. I am planning to take it in this fall and try to hold it over the winter, like I did with the chili pepper plant last year.

I have one ripe tomato so far. It was from the large Roma tomato plant I bought. A second one dropped off before it got ripe. When I am out with Bode I see that some of the neighbor’s tomatoes are starting to color.

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August gardening report

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Kathy

nasturtium

The tomato plants seem to be waiting for warm sunny weather, but some of the plants, like the nasturtiums above are doing great. After the fog burned off this morning I decided to go out and get some pictures while there was sunshine. There are three or four nasturtium plants in that bed, volunteers from one plant last year. I added the decorative white wire edging after the sidewalk construction was completed.

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The peppers seem to be producing fruit sooner than the tomatoes. I put one bell pepper plant in the flower bed and this one in a pot on the back deck. I harvested a very nice one from the plant out front. Looks like there are two that will be ready soon on this plant on the deck. Peppers are a vegetable that looks good planted in a flower bed. The glossy green leaves and white flowers are a nice effect. I am also using leaf lettuce instead of plants like coleus. I harvested quite a bit of lettuce this year and left three or four plants go to seed.

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The winter before last I just took a New Guinea impatiens plant in and it withered and died. This one and the geranium provided a bright spot of color all winter under the fluorescent grow light fixture I set up. It stopped blooming when I moved it outdoors to the back deck. This is the first blossom since I repotted it.

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This is one of two pots of snapdragon plants that I didn’t have room to plant last summer and took in over the winter. The ones that were growing in the ground got a few blossoms just before the frost got them. These got spindly, but took off great once in the ground this spring. I have more started and plan to keep them in pots over the winter again.

I also kept a pot of lobelia over winter that took a while to get going in the ground but is covered with flowers now.

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My yard is quite shady, so until this year didn’t even try to grow petunias. My mom had some Wave petunias in a hanging basket a couple years ago, so bought a six-pack of plants and made one for her. Of the three in her basket, one was red, one light purple, and one light purple with a white center and a ruffled edge. The ones I potted separately turned out to be pink, white, and deep purple. They are all growing, but the deep purple one seems to be stunted and the blossoms don’t fully open. I planted the pink one out front to fill an empty spot from the sidewalk project excavation.

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a rant

Posted on July 26, 2009 by Kathy

Several close relatives have been urging my mother to get back on Synthroid to the exclusion of dealing with her other medical problems. The last any of them had anything at all close to medical training was high school biology class. Not one of them expended effort on doing research or looking into details although all have internet access. So, in hopes that others can benefit from my mom’s unfortunate experience, here goes.

Once a patient’s thyroid gland is removed, they need to take synthetic thyroid hormone for life. Abbot would like for people to believe that not using anything other than Synthroid ™ is the “rule” to follow. It has been a big money maker for them for over 50 years. Of course, in our for-profit medical system aggressive marketing is the rule (the FDA has determined that the generic forms of levathyroxine are equivalent to Synthroid). So my relatives felt they were justified in telling mom repeatedly that she should be on Synthroid because that is what their physicians told them — not to switch from Synthroid once they started on it.

The prudent procedure is actually to avoid switching from ANY brand once a patient has been taking levothyroxine for 4 to 6 weeks and has verified by blood tests that their hormone level is in an acceptable range. In my mother’s case, she had switched from Synthroid to one of the generic brands months ago and had several times had therapeutic hormone levels confirmed by blood tests. The last of these tests was about three weeks ago, after she started experiencing some rather dreadful symptoms.

So, when mom went to the doctor a couple days ago, she had her prescription switched to please people who should have known better. In her defence, although she has recovered significantly from two major brain bleeds last year, she gets confused easily. Both my parents’ formal education ended after 8th grade and the people involved are younger and healther, so it was an unfair match.

My dad drove directly from the doctor’s office to the drug store to get the new prescription filled. Synthroid is one of the most commonly prescribed drugs in USA, so you would think there would be no trouble. They use Medicare Part D. Lets not go into that further right now other than he found because of insurance rules they could only get 7 pills of the month’s prescription that day and had to pay for them out of pocket. Of course he was worried about her being out in the car alone and not feeling well and got upset with the pharmacy staff.

Mother is a bad stick. The last time she had blood drawn the technician told her it was easier to get blood from a turnip. Now, if her physicians are conscientious, she will need another blood draw in a few weeks to check hormone levels again.

In addition mom risks that switching brands might alter her up to now therapeutic blood hormone levels and complicate treating serious medical problems she has been experiencing lately. So, looks like more suffering and expense is the price she will pay for trying to be agreeable.

I am feeling angry. My mom has been through so much already with health problems. What has happened with the relatives was uncomfortably close to bullying and I have lost respect for people I would like to be able to rely on. I feel helpless because I was unable to talk some sense into them. Deep inside I wonder how much me being disabled contributed to their ignoring what I had to say.

It is a bit unusual for me to make more than one blog post in a day, but this has been bugging me and hearing news reports of what is going on with health care reform in Washington only makes it worse.

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