Hibachi, anyone?

With weather in central Indiana more rainy than snowy, and temps bouncing from the 30's back up to the 50's several times since Thanksgiving, I sometimes have to remind myself that Christmas is less than two weeks away.  I'm not complaining about the weather, mind you, but I do have to remind myself to get with the program.  While we'll likely only have a small gathering of 6 or 7 here on Christmas Eve, there's deciding on the menu and grocery shopping yet to do.  Some house cleaning sounds like a good idea.  And there are gifts yet to buy and wrap. But who's stressing?  I'm refusing to so far, and somehow that's working for me. 

Last night Greg and I were invited to enjoy an hibachi dinner in the dining room of the senior community where our friends, Jack and Ruth, live.   Some of you may remember me writing about my experience providing companion care to the sweetest lady on earth.  Well, Ruth has declined deep into dementia, but still remains the same sweet soul I came to know about five years ago.  She is living in the skilled nursing part of the community where Jack lives in the house they had built nearly twenty years ago when they moved to the same town we live in.  

We sometimes join Jack for a meal, but haven't in all the time I was healing from surgery and then going through chemo and its recovery, but now that I'm getting back to normal activities, we've put a couple of dinner dates with Jack on the calendar.  This week's hibachi dinner was a first-time experience for Greg and I.

Jason, a traveling hibachi chef, first served us potstickers drizzled with teriyaki sauce for appetizers, then a first course of Mexican tomato soup, followed by perfectly cooked filet mignon (some had chicken fajitas) - with sides of Spanish rice and corn on the cob.

I do love me a good steak.

 

Oooh yes, drizzle on that delicious buttery sauce 

and sprinkle the corn with parmesan cheese.

Must try this at home...

Having never experienced an hibachi grill dinner, I had no idea what to expect.  It was a fun combination of watching and listening to Jason tell us what he was preparing.  He also shared a little about himself when we asked.  We also enjoyed the company of old friends, and made some new friends of a couple that helped fill out the table of eight.  An hour and a half after we sat down, we left happy with very satisfied tummies and spirits, and are very impressed with this new dining experience within a senior community here in town.

And now, I suppose I really should apply myself to some Christmas shopping...  

~~~~~

Knitting socks...

I've been knitting socks!  Well, actually yesterday I finally started knitting socks. As in plural.  As in TAAT ( Two-At-A-Time for the uninitiated).  I only finally determined I needed to knit TAAT after several days of trying to knit the toe of just one sock.  I knew if I didn't knit two socks at the same time, I was in serious peril of never knitting the second one.

Let me back up a bit, though.  

Can I just say...   Sock knitters make knitting socks look so easy.  While I can see that sock knitting can become easy, it's quite the thing to bend one's mind around the first time.  At least it is for me.  Exasperated many times after frogging and starting over, I wasn't willing to give up too easily, though.  Once I'd knitted myself to mental exhaustion (sometimes physical exhaustion) I would just put it down, take a deep breath and say, "I'll try this again tomorrow".   Staying calm became my discipline every day.

Don't get me wrong.  Attempting sock knitting isn't the only thing I've done all week, but I have tried to pick up my yarn and needles each day and give it a go again.  On Monday (I think), then Tuesday, Wednesday...  It did get easier, and finally late on Wednesday night I had produced this:

The first successful toe of my (almost) first sock

Now, the toe itself I knitted on 40-inch circular needles and I'm happy to say I have the Magic Loop method down.  What a great invention!  I think I even have more or less mastered casting on for a seam free start to knitting socks toe-up, and knitting "Lynne Ashton's Seam-free rounded toe" (through the help of this video).

Being pretty happy with my first completed toe, I decided I wanted to start a second sock right away (so both socks would be knit with the same tension - and believe me, I had tension).    So... to free up the 40-in circulars, I transferred the completed toe to my 9-inch circulars (as pictured above).  Ack!  That was a mistake.    

Again, videos of people knitting on 9-inch circulars make it look so easy.  It was all I could do to knit two or three rounds before I knew I just couldn't possibly knit a whole sock with these tiny things.  I'm not giving up the idea that I might be able to manage these small needles sometime in the future, but I do not have the strength or stamina in my hands to do this right now.  Also, I think it has something to do with how I knit.  I knit continental style (flicking the working yarn over the working needle from the left hand).  Normally, I've knit pretty quickly this way, but after watching several videos I noticed that I hold my left index finger tall and very free from the needle, where others hold their index finger close to the needle and use it to flick yarn.  I flick the yarn onto the working needle with my second finger.  Which, when knitting with these little needles, puts quite the strain on the second finger.   On normal size needles, and thicker yarn this isn't an issue for me, but I was certainly having my issues on these. 

So now I had a problem.  I thought about knitting a new toe on the 40-inch circulars then try to transfer the first toe back onto the 40-in circulars to start knitting TAAT, but I could imagine several ways that could end in disaster, so finally I decided I should go to bed and consider the next day that my best option was probably to just start over.  

Again.

So I did.  

And after watching videos of socks knitted two-at-a-time, magic-loop-style, and after a couple of knitting sessions on Thursday I finally have accomplished this:

For non-knitters, that's two sock toes there.  So yes, I'm knitting socks!  Plural!

It feels like an accomplishment, but it's not without its woes.  I can now tell these are going to be too big for my feet.  The dilemma I face right now is to rip them out again and start over, or keep knitting these and hope that I can give them to someone who would like them (possibly hubs, though I'm not sure he'd be into wool socks, or one of my sons).  

And as if all that wasn't angst enough, if I keep knitting I'm going to have to decide on what heel to give these socks, and then actually knit them.  Of course, I knew from the beginning I'd have to knit a heel, but now it's become more and more real.  I'm curious if anyone has recommendations.  While I'd love to hear what your favorite heel is, I'm much more interested at the moment in opinions about what may be the easiest "first heels" to knit.  At the moment, I'm considering making a reinforced heel flap.  I'm trying to quietly hang on to confidence that I can do this with the help of online YouTube tutors, but I'm also trying not to think about it too much.  

And, of course, then after a lot more easy in-the-round knitting I'll have to learn how to do a stretchy bind-off at the top.  I'm open to suggestions for that too.  I want it to look neat, and not easily stretch out of shape.

So there you have it.  This is about the most interesting thing I've done all week.  No complaints.  Life is calm right now and I'm glad to have the winter to be a little slower, a little quieter, to think about all the things we'll do once the weather turns warm again.  I know these short cold days are going to change to wonderful warm long days soon enough.  As long as winter doesn't go on forever, and especially with the mild weather we're having in January (so far), I'm rather enjoying this quiet season.  

Thank you for stopping by!

I've gotta stop doing this...

Disappearing that is...

You wouldn't know it, but I have started a number of posts in the last two months (in fact, this post was begun a couple of weeks ago), but I just couldn't bring myself to finish typing and hit publish.

Today I decided I just need to DO IT! and hope this post gets me over a what's been feeling like a very challenging autumn.

In the early weeks after my hand surgery, there didn't seem to be much to write about - except for the after-surgery pain, and I had no interest in writing about that.  Especially then.  And when occupational therapy started (about 3 1/2 weeks post surgery) suddenly I found myself both deliriously happy to be moving my painful stiff hand, and at the same time worried that therapy was starting late and going slowly.  From the start, though, my OTist has told me I'm doing great, and I can say that now that I'm 2 1/2 months post surgery, I do see the progress.   

Even so, I am daily tempted to worry because the progress is soooo slow. 

It just is.  It's not just me feeling that it is.  I'm assured every week that healing from this surgery is a long road, so I keep telling myself to not worry; all will fine in another 3 months or so.  That's what they keep telling me.

One YouTuber who's had CMC Arthroplasty surgery calls it brutal. Before my surgery I thought she was surely exaggerating, but now I get it.  The pain is tough in the early days after surgery - mostly due to doctors being fearful of giving out too much narcotic pain medicine, which just makes me angry if I can be completely honest.  And then in the early weeks after surgery the slow slog through therapy begins (mostly done at home, alone) and it becomes its own kind of brutal. Every new stretch, or squeeze, or push promises new pain - for a week or so until the hand gets used to that movement and sore muscles and tendons heal over and over again, it seems. 

Fortunately, most of that pain is behind me.   At this point, the main discomfort I feel is some residual stiffness due to there still being a bit of swelling, and there remains nerve pain from the surgery.  The nerve pain can take me by surprise and it's rough when it strikes, but I am told this is normal, and should heal over time.

So... I will not sugar coat it.  While I don't want to discourage anyone from considering this surgery, it should not be entered into lightly.  I hope, some months from now I can tell you it was worth it, but I only know right now that it's been a slog.  That said, I hang onto daydreams of holding needlework in this hand, and stitching with the other.  I imagine playing the piano, and even picking up a guitar (though I can't quite fathom my left thumb ever being strong enough to brace against the back of a guitar neck again).  I promise, though, if it does get strong enough I'll shout it from the roof top - of this blog, anyway.  

I can fix my hair finally.  Remember I mentioned early on I got a perm a couple weeks before surgery?  I thought it would be a great wash and wear hair style.  It was not.  For two months, I had to labor one-handed, applying product, and slowly diffusing my hair to partial dryness so I could look like a curly poodle instead of a frizzy bichon.  I think it was two weeks ago I found my hand was strong enough to grasp my hot rollers.  I now have my smooth hair back - and the perm provides some nice body.  The perm is finally, paying off for me.  

Let me be clear...  I love curly hair.  Especially others' curly hair.  Hub and sons have curly hair and it's amazing.  I might have enjoyed learning how to work with mine if I hadn't given myself curly hair two weeks before becoming one-handed. It was a silly lesson to have to learn, but I've learned it's better to work with what is familiar in such a situation rather than think two weeks before a major challenge is a good time to introduce something new. 

Okay... enough about my hand.   And my hair.   Even though my hair has been a thing...

If anyone is actually reading this, I really don't deserve you.  But thank you, if you're here. Not only did I not have it in me to be active on my own blog, I found I had little to give when visiting others' blogs. I tried for a week or two, and then fizzled.  Soon it became impossible to keep up, let alone catch up.  Who knew having two surgeries in 3 1/2 months' time could suck so much inner drive out of a person.  I sure didn't.

And then there was Covid.  Yep...  the year just wouldn't have been complete if I didn't catch Covid.  And boy - has it kicked my keister!  I caught it a little over a week ago when helping a single girlfriend who was so sick she had to go the ER.  She was severely dehydrated and thought maybe she had the flu.  It didn't matter to me what she had, she needed help, and I was glad to be there for her.  I know it probably sounds ridiculous, but when the doctor came into her little room where we had been sharing air space for a couple of hours to tell her the results of her test, I was not expecting to hear she had Covid.  I know...  What rock have I been living under?!?

Ah well...  I've been saying for the last year, we all just need to suck it up and expect to take our turn with it, so it appeared my turn had finally come.  

A little segue...  After consulting with my doctor last spring I told her I was inclined to take a pass on the Covid boosters.  Things had gotten better, I didn't have any serious health concerns, and the number of infections were way down back then.  The word was Omicron wasn't as bad as previous variants.  Really hadn't Covid stopped being something we needed to worry so much about?  Well, somehow it was suddenly November (the week of Thanksgiving, no less) and I evidently didn't notice that people were getting sick again.  

That is, until hubs went to every pharmacy in town (I can't remember when - maybe Monday?) to buy me some cough medicine with alcohol in it and the shelves were bare.  It seems EVERYone is getting sick again.  He brought home a number of offerings, but none promised to put me to sleep and out of my miserable congested, coughing state.

After three nights of struggling to sleep, I searched the house and discovered a several year's old (expired by over a year) bottle of overnight cold and flu medicine laced with 10% alcohol.  I swigged a shot down and smiled as my innards warmed, imagining the sleep I'd soon be enjoying.  It's becoming my nightly ritual.  I'm smiling just thinking about it now.

It's been a slow climb out of the congestion and coughing.  And the fatigue renders me pretty useless still - now 5 days in.  On Monday I had a virtual appointment with my doctor and while she prescribed Paxlovid (at my request) she did tell me for as many days as I'd been sick already, the unpleasant side effects of the Pax might not be worth it since I'd likely be better before I was finished with the 5-day regimen.  I thought on it, and I decided to forgo it, and have continued to slog through with my cough medicine and maximum strength generic Mucinex, and figure sooner or later I'll emerge - singing the high notes again.  Well, the alto notes, anyway...

BTW, one of the reasons I even brought up the Covid shots, and me not getting boosted is because my dear hubs (after getting his 3rd, 4th & 5th? jabs) had been asking me if I was going to get mine.  "Nah", I said.  I didn't think it was necessary.  

The chances of getting seriously sick are pretty slim I thought.

Even when my friend looked at me sadly and said how sorry she was that I was now exposed to Covid, I smiled and said, "It was going to happen sooner or later.  I've made peace with it."

So cavalier was I.

Okay...  so I'm likely going to make a full recovery, but the real story here is Hubs has been basically symptom free while I've been hacking up a lung for the last 5 days.  He had a bit of a scratchy throat a day or two after I came down sicker than a dog, but now he tells me he feels fine.  I'll be sure to update if he comes down sick, but dang!  If his boosters are what has made his airways like teflon, I'm thinking the credit most likely goes to the shots.

We'll never know for sure.  Maybe he just has some super power resistance to Covid (doubtful), or maybe he just hasn't walked through any virus ladened mists I've left behind (not likely), or maybe it's the N95 mask he wears when he enters a room I'm occupying.  I don't know.  I just wish I'd gotten boosted this fall.  I wish I could have potentially experienced feeling like I have super powers too.  

To be clear (again - because I really like to be clear) I'm not into telling others what they should do.  This isn't meant to be an endorsement of these "vaccines".  I don't care if people get vaccinated or not - against anything, really.  I'm as against mandatory Covid shots as I ever was.  I'm just relating our anecdotal experience.

This post has gone on way too long.  Be thankful I'm not going to bore you with all that's gone on since I was last here.  So much has happened this fall, that I've already forgotten most of it.  It has been a ride, though.  And I'm glad the roller coaster of 2022 is going to be shutting down soon.

I'm so worn out by this year that I think after this post, I may just continue my blogging break until the new year.  I might do a 2022 wrap-up.  Or I may just give 2022 quick good-bye kiss and kick it to the curb.

I have missed visiting with many of you on your blogs.  I'm going to start showing my face again, but I'm going to right here, right now, ask your forgiveness for not even trying to catch up with all I've missed.  I hope you all are having a better final quarter of 2022.  Or if you're struggling, I hope I can glean enough from what you're now sharing to be able to offer encouragement to you.

If you're still reading, you are really too kind.  If you leave me a comment and let me know you were here, I'll mention you in my prayers - giving thanks to my Heavenly Father for you and your encouragement.

Love and peace to you all.  

Week three after hand surgery...

 Monday of this week, I traded this:

for this:

A fun happening...  The Physical or Occupational Therapist who created my splint is a young lady I've known since she was probably in middle school.  Her family and ours were in two homeschool co-ops together, and eventually in the same church.  I don't think I've seen her but maybe once since she graduated and went off to college.  And now 12 years later we ran into each other in an Indianapolis hospital and I had the pleasure of receiving the sweetest care while we caught up a bit on each other's families.  Is that just the best kind of surprise or what!

While the removable splint is its own kind of miserable, it's definitely an improvement over the thick splint and wrap I left the surgery center in two weeks prior.   Mostly because I can take this one off for short stints when I'm sitting and not moving my hand.  

Above, I show the liner I wear with the splint, and provide links below on the chance that anyone reading finds themselves ever needing something like this.   I bought these off Amazon:  A package of off-white ones (in size small) that match my splint, and a package of white ones (medium size) that are a little less expensive.  I found these by accident when I went online looking for more of the material the OT gave me because I realized once I was home that what I was given from OT wouldn't last me very long.

The liner I received in OT didn't have a thumb section - only a hole the OT-ist cut to poke one's thumb through.  What speeded my realization that a thumb section on a liner would be a great help is that the cut thumb hole stretched.  A LOT.  Which was problematic because I found it really difficult to tolerate my now nerve-sensitive skin being in constant contact with the plastic splint.  And when my super tender skin near the surgery site would occasionally pull away from the plastic (or I would pull the splint away from my skin), it was downright painful.   It only took me one night of that misery to decide to purchase these liners.  And thank goodness, through the wonders of Amazon Prime I had them the next evening.  Wearing a liner with a long thumb covering makes a big difference in the comfort level.  If you're ever fitted with a hard splint, I recommend a liner like this.  I've also seen someone wear these with soft splints.  I imagine they would help a soft splint stay a bit cleaner...

Just for fun, here's a picture the surgeon drew for Hub after surgery - to show him what was involved:

My surgeon does a variation of CMC Arthroplasty, where after removing the trapezium bone (at the base of the thumb) he pulls tendons together under the thumb to create a little sling or hammock to support the remaining thumb bones.  This surgery is done to relieve (and remove) severe arthritis of the basal joint of the thumb.  A not uncommon ailment for women (and some men) around my age (early 60's).

My OT (who is someone different from my young friend who created my splint) told me that of all the patients he helps (working with patients of 3 different hand surgeons in the same practice), the ones with this type of surgery and after-surgery-splinting seem to have the fewest complaints during OT.  I'm braced for quite a bit of pain before completely healing, but since I haven't started OT yet, I don't really have a clue what exactly that means.  I'm feeling thankful, but not sure why.

And that's week three after surgery!  I don't necessarily plan to give regular updates, but if anyone is interested in what is involved (either before or directly after surgery, or during the physical and occupational therapy), let me know and I might just share more.  I expect to be doing the work of therapy for the next three months.  Hopefully, I'll finish before the end of the year, but time will tell.

Praying for people struggling with the devastation of Hurricane Ian.  And for those who perhaps didn't lose anyone, or anything valuable, but are going to experience their own kind of loss as they help others, and simply live and work amongst the constant reminders of this tragedy.  It's amazing to see so many volunteers already setting up to help those in need, and to serve those who are already working tirelessly to rescue and recover.  While Operation BBQ Relief has been around for years, I heard about this organization for the first time on tonight's ABC evening news.  The segment with David Muir was more detailed and gave more information about what all is really involved in this operation, but this will give you an idea of what these people do, if you don't know:

I love the comment:  "Tell me you're American without telling me you're an American."   

Summer garden is closing...

September started out busy and full, but it's coming to a screeching halt with hand surgery today.  The surgery I'm going to have is CMC Arthroplasty.  It's to relieve basal joint arthritis in the thumb.  I'm having the left hand done first.  If it's a success, then in a year or two I hope to have the right hand done too.  Surgery has felt like a long time coming, and yet it's amazing that it's now here already.  Why is it always that way?

By the time you read this, I may actually be finished with surgery and home!

While I've been quiet online these past few weeks, it's been busy here.  Finishing up a 2021 tax return for my brother's estate, and an amended return for 2020 has been an excruciating experience as I've worked with an accountant that has been a serious disappointment.  But all of it is finally on its way to the IRS and to the State, and I'm relieved to have that task finished.

Other than that, what has occupied me is the stuff of life. I've enjoyed gardening this summer, and doing some food preservation.  There was a real push these last few days to finish up whatever I could since I won't be able to do that kind of thing again 'till my hand heals up.  We ended up giving a bag of cucumbers to friends on Monday because I had other things I wanted to do the day and night before surgery.  I doubt I'll be posting anymore for the rest of the month (unless I can find a draft that's ready to post).  I'll try to visit my blogging buddies in the upcoming days, but if I'm able to type comments I imagine they'll be short and sweet.

Tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, zucchini, yellow squash, and Marconi Giant sweet peppers have been a regular sight in the kitchen.  I can't believe I've failed to take pictures of it all during these last weeks especially.  While I regret that, I'm happy to be putting away the canner, and unused jars, and all the paraphernalia that goes along with preserving the fruits of summer.  

Here's just a small glimpse into what was happening around here the last few weeks.

These few pictures do not capture all I've been up to.  Because the green beans were ready for picking in too small of batches to can, I froze all of them as I picked them.  What we didn't eat fresh, that is.  Sweet peppers, zucchini and squash were either enjoyed fresh, or were frozen for future use.  And while the last pictures show what I canned, it's just part of what is in the pantry.  

Making pickles was a totally new experience for me.  Dill pickles were fairly easy, but Bread and Butter pickles were a challenge.  The first batch I made I thought were good, and I even shared them with some friends, but after that I just couldn't get the taste right.  I admit I've thrown out almost as much pickled cucumbers as I've ended up with.  One of these days I hope to have a taste test of the batches I've saved with my sons who like B&B pickles.  I'm hoping to find there are a few jars that are worth eating. 

Oh, and I almost forgot...  yesterday I dehydrated a bunch of walking onions for future use.  A large bowl of them were cut up and after dehydrating were reduced to a mere pint-size jar.  My dehydrator (that I hadn't used in many years) didn't appear to be working very well, so I finished them off in the oven.  I should have just started with the oven - I would have saved myself so much time.  Unless these onions are just amazing dehydrated, I don't know that I will do this again in the future.

And that, friend, wraps up a summer of gardening and food preservation.  With strawberries and cherries frozen in the spring time, then peaches in August, and the garden produce "put up" during the last weeks of summer, I'm looking forward to fall and winter and cooking with these things we grew.  

And lastly, while I'm not about to post a picture of myself right now - mostly because I recently got a perm, thinking it would make a great wash & wear hairdo while I'm limited to one hand for a few weeks, nevermind there is nothing wash & wear about it...  I thought I'd look for some old pictures of the first garden Hub and I had.

We rented a small bungalow house when were first married, and the landlords owned a lot with a tilled-up patch behind our house.  They offered it to us to plant a garden if we liked, and we went to it.  Looking at the pictures, I'm amazed at how large it was.  I don't remember if we planted that whole thing, or perhaps just the freshly hoed ground in front of the fencing material behind us.

 Just for fun, this is 22 year-old me, 

and 27 year-old Greg

putting in our first garden.

And me with one of my first jars of home-canned green beans:

I remember being so proud of those green beans.  And proud of being brave enough to use a pressure canner.   I had never canned before that summer, but I grew up hearing the rattling of the pressure regulator on my mother's pressure canner and that was enough to give me courage to give it a go.  I know now there is a rubber safety plug that would have blown out had the pressure built up too much to be dangerous, but I didn't realize that back in 1981.  The canner in the earlier pictures is the same canner I used in 1981.  I believe it was a wedding gift.  I haven't canned in over 20 years, but even for a 42 year-old pressure canner, I was able to easily replace the gasket and an overpressure plug, and it worked perfectly for me.

This is a wrap!  I hope your summer is winding down nicely, and you're looking forward to autumn.  I sure am.  This is my favorite time of year. 

Garden games...

 Picking green beans and cucumbers is an almost daily game of Hide and Seek.  

The above picture doesn't show any of the plant's stem, but the stems that support the main part of the plant look very much like the green bean itself - with something that looks like the dark "spine" in the middle of the green bean.   It's kind of fascinating how similar the two parts of the plant look, but it makes it really challenging to find the mature beans sometimes.  I've been fooled a number of times reaching for a green bean, only to find myself grabbing hold of a stem.

I circle around and search through each bean and cucumber plant two or three times before feeling reasonably confident I've found all that are the right size for picking, and a couple days later I almost always find a giant cucumber I missed.  When this happens, they are always so large (like 7 inches or more), I wonder how on earth I must have missed it several times.  It starts to feel like the plant is playing pranks on me.

While I try to harvest the pickling cucumbers before they get over 5 inches long, it's important, I've learned, to never let a cucumber grow so large it turns yellow.  At that point, the plant will likely stop producing fruit and think it's time to die.  So evidently, as long as I keep picking while the fruits are young, the plants will keep producing.  But if I let just one go too long, and get too old, it's Game Over! 

I have to say when I decided to plant cucumbers, this was not a game I anticipated.  

I also have to say... the Bread and Butter Pickles I canned earlier this week are worth it all.  Mmmmm.  I was so happy with them, I gave some to friends who came over for supper last night who'd never tasted Bread and Butter Pickles.  I hope they like them as much as I now do!  

Walk like an Egyptian...

In spite of having surgery right smack in the middle of planting the garden this spring, and then subsequent challenges for me of bending over for several weeks (something one does fairly often when tending a garden), somehow my garden has managed to thrive - more or less.   

Hub helped out with some weeding in the early weeks of June, and he hammered tomato support stakes in the ground when the tomato plants started flopping over.  And while I don't really know how I managed it, I was able to finish the planting of some pole beans, zucchini, yellow squash and cucumbers in early June.   Then by mid June, when we were clearly in a drought, Hub set up hoses across the yard so I could just step outside when I needed to turn the sprinkler on.  That has been wonderful during recent scorching hot weeks.  

All that said, I have to admit... until this week (when I turned a significant corner in the ability to bend forward and toward the ground, and even get down on the ground), the garden has mostly done its thing while I've tried not to overdo it for most of the last six weeks.  I learned the hard way (as I suspect most people do), that a person often can't tell they've overdone it until after the deed is done.  

Anyway... as of today, this:

Looks like this:

It's amazing the difference a month and a half makes.  I know it's not the prettiest garden, but considering the spring I've had, I'm kind of impressed we have a garden at all.

The thing I want to write about today, though, is something I've shown here before, and I've had a complete change of heart over.

Some may remember that back in April I wrote about this mystery plant:

At the time, I couldn't figure out what it was.  I was even a bit cautious about tasting them.   Well, I finally did taste one, and was surprised to find it tasted like a peppery onion.  While I concluded they were edible, I still wasn't overly impressed, and I figured I would at some point just dig them up and plant something else in their place.

Before I did that, though, I decided we needed to ask the previous owners just what this mystery plant was.  I'd never heard of it before, and since none of my regular readers suggested it back in April, I'm guessing none of them (or you?) have heard of these either. 

Or maybe this will jog your memory...

These are Egyptian Walking Onions.  Or simply Walking Onions.  Or Tree Onions.  Or top-set onions...  I have no idea how many different names this plant has, but it seems they go by a variety of different names.

Once I learned more about them, I became intrigued and decided that I'd give them a year (at least) and even harvest some and use them in cooking before I turned my back on them.

I'm not going to explain them in great depth here (there are lots of articles and YouTube videos that will do that), but I enjoyed taking pictures of this plant as it progressed through spring, and I've decided it is time to let you in on my fun little adventure with Egyptian Walking Onions.

In late spring, these little white sacs started appearing at the top of the green stalks:

You can see them atop just about all of the stems late in May:

It wasn't long before the little sacs started opening up, revealing what was inside:

What appeared were more stalk-like things, breaking the sac open as they unfurled.

And then little pink bulbs started appearing.  With more stalks growing out from them:

And at the ends of these new stalks were new little white sacs:

It was all kind of magical.  And I knew before May was over, we were keeping these babies.

The short explanation as to why these are called Walking Onions is because at some point, the top-set bulblets weigh the stalk down, bending it over until the those bulblets are touching the ground.  If left there, they will take root and form a new plant - shooting up a new green stalk, and the process starts all over again. Over time, the plants "walk" across the garden, replanting themselves over and over again.

And as if watching that happen every spring and summer isn't enough reason to grow these, I came to learn that every part of the plant is edible at some point.  These plants earn their keep!  When young and tender, the green stalks can be used like chives, and the plant can be dug up and the small onion can be used just as you would use any onion (they are a little spicey all by themselves, but in a dish they seem fine).  Even the little purple bulblets can be harvested when they are tender and used as small onions.  Some say they taste a bit like scallions, but perhaps a little more pungent.  I've never tasted a scallion, so I have no idea.  Now that I've developed something of a relationship with these amazing plants, they don't need to taste like anything but themselves as far as I'm concerned. 

The plants that have sprung up outside the raised bed boundary for the onions,  like these (in the foreground):

I'm digging up and cooking with them.

Cleaned up, you can see they make fine, if small, onions:

At this point, most of the green part of the plants are dying back. I'm planning on cutting back the dead stems and what I don't separate and transplant, I'll be letting overwinter in place and see what's there when I dig next spring.  I suspect they will be larger onions, and possibly more than one onion per plant.  

 

And I'm harvesting the top-set bulblets to plant where I'd like them to be, rather than just let them take root wherever they fall.  

At this point, these bulblets are starting to dry out on the plant, and most of what I read indicates that late summer through autumn is when they are best to plant.  I'm so looking forward to seeing the annual cycle of these plants.  And I'm so glad I didn't dig them up when they were still a mystery to me!  😊

How does your garden grow?