Sturgeon, and Hey Presto, Pesto!

Remember the post I entitled something like "Sharks, Shmarks"? Well, now those Suwanee sturgeon and their boater-smackdownin' leaps have made the New York Times.

Interesting article, too. A little more in depth than the last one I posted. Don't miss the bit about the irate boaters who want all the sturgeon killed because their fun is being spoiled. Sigh. I imagine that's a very small subset of Suwanee boaters but...that's just so dumb.

Anyways. There are also people who are fascinated by this fish, more on the behavior of the fish, and a FANTASTIC picture of a sturgeon in midleap - breathtakingly close to a speeding motorboat!

Read it here!

Meanwhile, back in the Paerdegat -

I think that I can now say with relative confidence that my garden is ESTABLISHED. It was a rocky start, I was pretty dejected when I came back from Hawaii to find that all the seedlings I'd started on my windowsill were at best scrawny little wisps of things. There were suggestions of perhaps I should just throw in the towel, pull everything out & go buy well started plants from a nursery - but I was approaching this as an experiment and the mistakes & setbacks were part of it. Not to mention the fact that I figured out pretty early on in this experiment that trips to the nursery tend to end up extracting more money from the hapless shopper's pockets than she walked in intending to spend. So I stayed away from the garden center (well, except for the Union Square Farmer's Market impulse buy in the form of a $14 flat of lettuces - but my gosh, I'm having salad all the time now!), left the survivors to work things out or not, planted a few more things I'd started on the windowsill, started a few more things from seeds. It worked! Now even the things that were barely clinging to life when I got back from Hawaii are thriving!

Well, the funny thing is that the survivors, after a couple of weeks of looking puny and sad, suddenly took off & are now some of the healthiest things in a garden that's doing very well without me doing much more than watering & weeding once every couple of days! I guess the few plants (two cherry tomatoes, the kabocha, and some basil) that made it through the one-two-three punch of transplant/mini-heat-wave/dry spell were the toughest & healthiest. Give 'em a month of perfect growing conditions, and woohoo! They are taking off!


I was out there on Monday & decided to thin the basil. I had a seedling Adele the Gardening Co-Chair had given me, then I'd started a lot more from seed. A lot of them weren't growing very fast, so I just cleared those out to leave space for the more energetic plants.

That meant I had a lot of basil! Mmmm...let's see what happens if I throw that in with some other stuff and mush it all up...


I do believe that that is a pesto-like substance! That's what I was shooting for.


Rather fun, this having a garden...