Scattergories Part II

Since I love word puzzles and games, I was delighted that Curmudgeon made the post Scattergories Part I so I could do Part II. Here are my answers. Enjoy!

WHAT IS YOUR NAME? Wing Nut

4 LETTER WORD: whip.  I may appear to be sweet & innocent, but there's more to me than meets the eye!  ;-) 

VEHICLE: Winnebago.  When I was younger, I thought it would be fun to get a group of friends together and drive across the country in one.  Then I saw that episode of Frazier in which Frazier & Niles rented one for their dad's birthday.

TV SHOW: The West Wing.

CITY: Walla Walla, Washington.  Home of the famous sweet onions, as well as wine and other good things.

BOY NAME: Wilfred -- my grandfather

GIRL NAME: Wynonna -- I was listening to Wynnona Judd yesterday while cooking.

 

photo from wynonna.com

OCCUPATION: Welder.  Curmudgeon suggested "wench operator."  I said, "I think you mean 'winch operator.'"  She laughed and a devilish sparkle appeared in her eyes.  Hmmm...

SOMETHING YOU WEAR: Wellies.  Great footwear for gardeners in a rainy climate, don't you agree?

photo from the WellieArt Collection

FOOD: Watermelon.  We actually had some tonight for dessert following seared Ahi tuna with a ginger/cilantro sauce and steamed greens. Yummy Yummy!

SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM: Water. Geez, that was a no-brainer.

REASON FOR BEING LATE: Watch broken.

SOMETHING YOU SHOUT: "What the...???"

Again if you want to play along, here are the rules: Erase my answers, enter yours and post it on your blog. If you do play, let us know. We'd love to come visit and read your post.

Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names, things. Nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

Scattergories--Part I

It's a cool, gray morning and it's doing that thing it does here--not really raining, more like constant misting. It can do that all day long here. So rather than trek down to the Farmer's Market, I decided to visit some of my favorite blogs. Over at Aunt Debbi's Garden a game was on so I decided to join in. This isn't a tag so feel free to just read and enjoy. But if you want to play along, here are the rules. Erase my answers, enter yours and post it on your blog. If you do play, let me know. I'd love to come visit and read your post.

Use the 1st letter of your name to answer each of the following. They have to be real places, names, things. Nothing made up! Try to use different answers if the person in front of you had the same 1st initial. You CAN’T use your name for the boy/girl name question.

WHAT IS YOUR NAME? Curmudgeon--a.k.a. Cilantro, see sidebar. If you hadn't figured that one out you really need to get with the program. I'm also the snapdragon, see bottom of sidebar. Notice a theme?

4 LETTER WORD: café--In the interest of full disclosure, the first 4 letter word that came to mind was a Spanish expletive.

VEHICLE: Corvette--While in high school I owned, and wore, a T-shirt that read--WRAP YOUR A.. IN FIBERGLASS. Still trying to figure out how my parents let me get away with that one.

TV SHOW: Criminal Minds

CITY: Concrete--No, I'm NOT making it up. in Jan. we drove to Concrete, WA to see the bald eagles. About an hour and forty-five minutes northeast of Seattle with a population of 790, we could actually afford to buy a house in Concrete.

--from Wikipedia

BOY NAME: Carlos--The Spaniard Carlos Sastre just won the Tour de France. Carlos Montoya, another Spaniard, is one of my favorite flamenco guitarists.

GIRL NAME: Carmen--This was the first opera I saw performed. For you opera fans, here is Maria Callas singing Habanera.

OCCUPATION: concrete pourer--After visiting Concrete, WA what did you expect?

SOMETHING YOU WEAR: corset--This was the first thing that came to mind because this morning I was watching a video about Poupie Cadolle, a fifth generation "corsetière" or corset maker. If your French is up to it, Métier de la mode : Corsetière is a fascinating segment on Cadolle from TV5 Monde.

FOOD: Some of my favorite foods begin with "C"--calamares (squid), camarones (shrimp), cangrejo (crab).

SOMETHING FOUND IN A BATHROOM: comb--and in our bathroom cats

REASON FOR BEING LATE: construction

SOMETHING YOU SHOUT: ¡Caramba! Come to think of it, there are a number of expletives beginning with "C" in Spanish. This one is the mildest and can be used in situations where the other more vulgar "C" expletives might be inappropriate.

Playing this game has made me hungry so I think I'm going to go make myself an Hijole Caramba omelet!

Potager update--in shades of purple

First and foremost let me thank all those who stopped by and left a comment on our June 25th post "A surprise in the potager". Life intruded and I never posted revealing the identity of the mystery plant. We had some extremely perceptive guesses that I'd like to acknowledge.

Yolanda from Bliss guessed "sprouting seeds".

Eve from  Gardening on the Gulf Coast guessed "new plants".

HUGE thanks from the wenches to everyone who played along. For the green shoots we had  guesses of spiderwort, crabgrass and corn. For the purple shoots we had purple basil, amaranthus and love-lies-bleeding. Well, those cute little day-old shoots are indeed  PURPLE BASIL. Here's an updated shot, minus the green weedlings, which may very well have been crabgrass. This year, for the first time, we tried to use seeds instead of starts. We've had great success with the salad greens, carrots, radishes, chard, peas and now basil, all started from seed.

In other parts of the potager kale, cabbage and cauliflower are thriving, along with shallots and garlic. The very large cabbage is one of Wing Nut's compost rescues from work. We thought it was kale when she first brought it home. We've never grown cabbage before.

Or cauliflower for that matter.  The purple cauliflower is ready for harvest. This is our second one.

The 'oreilles du diable' lettuce finally bolted and is setting seed. We'd like to save the seed but haven't a clue as to how to go about doing this. Any of you seed savers out there, feel free to pass on any words of wisdom.

 

The pic below, taken over the July 4th weekend, is Wing Nut going in to harvest peas from the pea jungle. Her last words before disappearing were, "If I'm not back out by sundown, send Diva Dog in to rescue me!" The peas threatened to smother the bronze fennel, which is a monstrosity in its own right. They got so heavy that they broke two of the three stakes we used to trellis them. The package said that trellising was not necessary. I wonder if we got some mutant seeds? Wing Nut followed the "one for the rook and one for the crow, one to die and one to grow" method of sowing seeds. I think we may have over planted.

What does a wench drink after a long day of shopping at the mall?

I'd rather undergo a root canal than go shopping at the mall. I go about once a year, kicking and screaming--I'm trying to get it down to a biennial trip. Yesterday the trip was precipitated by the need for summer skirts and sandals. And okay, it was only three hours at the mall, but it felt much longer. Wing Nut used the "it's too hot to garden this afternoon" ruse and I fell for it. Must wise up to that one.

In the year or so since last I was at the mall good taste has definitely become a thing of some bygone era. The colors and patterns were enough to make a legally-blind woman (ME) keep her sunglasses on for fear of having my retinas permanently scorched. And how they put so much synthetic material in one outfit is beyond me. Eeewww!

One skirt and no sandals later, I managed to flee back to the peace and relative quiet of our garden and some serious dirt therapy. After a scrumptious dinner of smoked chicken with grilled veggies I figured it was time to hit the bottle. What does a wench drink after a long day of shopping at the mall?

This new brew was released April 24th, 2008 by Bridgeport, Oregon's oldest craft brewery. The Tart is a Belgian ale blended with fresh Oregon marion berries and aged in French oak casks. Bold and extreme--perfect for summer.

WWOOF Adventure

No, this post is not about Diva dog. WWOOF stands for Willing Workers on Organic Farms, also known as World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. A few days ago, one of Wing Nut's co-workers boarded a plane bound for Italy. She will spend six weeks working on three different organic farms. It sounds like an awesome learning experience, a cultural immersion experience, and an adventure of a lifetime all wrapped up in one.

WWOOF got started in the early 70s in the UK. Today it is a world-wide network helping to bring together people seeking a meaningful volunteer opportunity and organic farmers looking for volunteer help.

Wing Nut convinced  her co-worker, Looky Loo, that this would be an adventure worthy of a blog. Check out Ciao Bella. She's a new blogger so make sure you say "hi" if you drop by. Here's a scene from her first farm, La Cascina del Finocchio Verde.