Good morning, good news

First, the early morning doctor visit,  medical bulletin: the leak has healed, so the leak healing drops can be discontinued, yay. no more eye events till August, yay again. 

And a final medical bulletin, so engrossing, after a lot of trouble with the shoulder, pain aggravated by the tables and beds in surgery and recovery, not designed fot my dodgy neck and the skin so tender to the touch even clothes hurt, I realized that, as I ran out of aloe gel, not a problem. 

Enter the trusty kitchen aloe plant

Which I use all the time for minor burns from cooking. I can trust it to be effective on sore skin. And a pain reliever. Certainly Advil and Tylenol have done nothing, heat and ice helped, aloe gel better but I was running out of supplies.

So last night and this morning I bust open a stem and smoothed the gel on. I think I'm going with this. It's helping. Fresh is better than the jar.

Meanwhile back on the patio, finally buds. Actual marigolds appearing

And Gary's butterfly bush started, weeks late, and two monarchs appeared immediately. I wonder if there's a butterfly newsletter or something.

The volunteer tomato is flowering

Aditha tells me it's from her cherry tomato plant. It's growing in a very unpromising spot, lousy soil, shade, but seems unconcerned.

And in case you wondered, after my recent Pollan reading on the effect of various substances on the brain, we're not alone

I wonder if they enjoyed the change of pace.

Yesterday's movie was a rerun of

Which I've seen a couple of times, and will again. I never fail to sob along in the iconic scene where Eleanor finds Edward is not married after all,  despite the fake news. 

Alan Rickman, of blessed memory, as Colonel Brandon, Hugh Grant as Edward, Emma Thompson as Eleanor and scriptwriter, Oscar level, Gemma Jones, oh, everyone's excellent. Hugh Laurie as Charlotte's long suffering husband, everyone's a star in their own right, and I guess they would jump at the chance of an Ang Lee production.

Anyway if you've seen it you know all this , if not, it's you have a treat to come. 

Meanwhile I'm about to embark on

It was her teview of The Buddha in the Attic, that got me to tead it so I thought I'd read her own current work. When I get into it, I'll let you know how it goes.

This is after

Comfort rereading, despite being set in the London blitz (!)

And the evening audiobook, when I'm too too tired to read

Yesterday a couple of granddogs visited next door, Chase the golden retriever and Joey the Heinz terrier mix. So the book went along with the theme. 

Happy day everyone. Find something to enjoy. Brits, your heatwave will pass, it will.

Alice in wonderland, no, it's the power co. And cheering soup

There has been an ongoing billing thing with my power company for several months, since lockdown. I'm getting used to previously reliable folks being shorthanded, working from home, much harder to keep everything straight.  But this was a puzzle.  I have equal billing, meaning every month the same amount is charged, then once a year there's a balancing month when they either pay or bill me the difference between my usage and the monthly charges.  

And every couple of years my township gets into a contract to cover everyone unless they opt out, with a different fuel source, to get a group rate, much better than the individual householder rate.  This has worked fine, same power company, same repairs, same coverage, excellent outage remedies, etc.  Just their source is different. And more and more it involves solar and wind.  And it's cheaper.

Then this year, I got my annual notice that the monthly charge, based on usage, would be 1., a very manageable amount,   I'm saying 1.  because it's proportional, read on  They charged me that once.  Then after one month, it went to 2. which was double the amount, and stayed that way for three months, oooookay, then this month it went to 3. which is triple the amount.  And it seemed to me to have changed three times, not just one steady billing.  

So I emailed them, and after a week of anxiety, this being a lot of money from my budget, heard back from them this morning, one sentence saying I had cancelled the third party billing which was driving up my charges.  So I got back to this lady saying, but I'm billed differently, what happened to my equal billing.  Whereupon she got back, saying, you cancelled the third party that was causing the increase, you are not being billed differently (?) and from now on your bill will be for 1.  Back to the original May number. 

Translation: oops, we fixed it and we don't plan to admit we might have made a mistake...but we'll see what next month brings. It's not the service, that is excellent, great infrastructure, constant communication when there's an outage, all that is great.  They are by far the better company of the two in the state.  It's just the accounts department at the moment.

Then, it being a rainy old day, and my shoulder a bit tired from the spinning, needs a rest for a day, I made a Great Big Green Soup.  This large bowl of frisee leftovers, leek greens, asparagus, and cabbage all cooked down to a very manageable amount, although at first it looked as though I couldn't stuff it all into the pot.

I used baharat for spice, about which more below

And here's the finished product, and pretty good it is.  I used only about a teaspoonful of the baharat, which is just enough for a lovely warm spicy taste, but not heat.

This is where I learned it.  From Ottolenghi's book Jerusalem.  It's a wonderful book about the culture and history of Jerusalem, both Arab and Jew, and the food as it reflects and passes on its culture.

I also talk airily about berbere as if I'd been making it all my life, learned it a few months ago, and it's from Marcus Samuelsson, Ethiopian/Swedish food writer and cook

This is hot, and very good.  I use only a small amount and it goes a long way.  I think you can buy it ready-mixed, but I like the fresh toasted and ground effect.  Also you can decide how hot or not you want it when you make your own. And just a note on fenugreek: in Indian spices, it's known as methi. Same thing, different name.

And last, here's my kitchen friend, which came into play in the course of making the soup when I slipped and caught my finger on the hot saucepan.  Aloe vera, cure for burns.  It's saved my hands many a time. Just break off a bit, squeeze the gel right onto the burned place, and the pain vanishes, the burn subsides and there's no scar.  My neighbor saw this a few months ago, and said, why are all those bits broken off? that can't be right!  I explained the first aid idea, and how that's why it was there at all. Not a decorative plant, a working partner.

Now I'm going to goof off, reading Dodo by E.F.Benson, which I think is a forerunner of the Lucia series.  Certainly Dodo reads like a rough draft for Lucia, and it's interesting to see the development.