Anna Hutchins

In my ecosystem grass would have been the climax... Sort of.  The American Indians constantly burned it and reset the ecosystem to make it favorable for buffalo. In a very protected area you'd probably get bur oak, chinkapin oak, juniper, and if you're lucky enough to have a river bottom you would have gotten black walnut.

I'm a day late, but I just wanted to chime in and say I did in fact mash'em.  (The potatoes that is.)  That was just how my menu turned out.  I had not realized it was hobbit day.

But happy birthday Frodo and Bilbo!

I guess I can't speak to cherry plums, but I know on my peach (which is a stone fruit) that if the background color has changed to yellow and they has a slight give to them, I can pick them and they finish ripening nicely inside.  That's very useful when you're fighting with squirrels for them.

Sonny, I found that same link too but they actually let me read through it. (Bonappetit has put their stuff behind a paywall in the past.... Not sure why it's working for me today.)

The long and short of it is: you cook the potatoes in the oven for quite some time with some water until they're pretty soft.  Add a little extra water to get all the stuff off the bottom of the pan, then you put all of that through a strainer and get as much of the liquid out as you can. You then cook that liquid down until it's a thick caramel texture.

I'm assuming that's a borer? I figured that's what it was even when you said you couldn't find anything at first because peaches are basically borer food.

https://youtube.com/shorts/lKfjn9tS9G0?is=Gfo8pvUvTHOOg--S

Huh...  maybe you're right Paul...  I did not watch the full video but it sounds like LEDs are leading to modern scurvy.  It also looks like Nicole has already talked about why in her wave spectrum post.

I'm still going to say that in the heat of summer I do not want incandescents in all my fixtures putting out heat.  But I should probably switch to them in the winter.  That's probably when the full light spectrum is more important anyways because I'm getting so much less natural sunlight.

I have one that's certainly not worthy of a name (it never gets much fruit) but I have it in my yard because it was free and pretty.  I just dug up a chunk from my parents. This one sent up sprouts several feet away from the parent plant and two springs ago I dug around it, stuck it in a bucket, then plunked it in my yard.  I probably didn't even get as many roots as you're supposed to.  I was not very careful. Anyways it's survived and it's even tried to spread a bit... although this year's been so blasted hot and dry that it's struggling.

Edit:  I guess I should clarify that it was probably early spring which I think is when you're supposed to transplant most shrubs. Also it probably would have done better this year if I watered it more than once but other things got priority.

The sourdough starter that I killed had just been yeast from the air. My husband had started it so I feel a little bad.  I'd be willing to try kombucha.  

Has anyone mentioned biscuits? They probably have because I didn't read through the whole thread very closely.

Anyways, tlhis is the recipe I always make that's not just a sour dough loaf. I love it because it uses the discard so I can just pull my starter out of the fridge, get a cup of discard, feed my sourdough starter, and stick it back in the fridge.  Or I could until I killed my sourdough starter. I need to get it started back up again.

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/buttery-sourdough-biscuits-recipe

I know I've posted in this thread before, but I'm going to add another reason. I have barely baked anything this summer because it's been so darn hot!!! I don't want to heat up the oven, and therefore the whole house, for a loaf of bread.

I do make an exception for biscuits. I am bummed though, I killed my sourdough starter.  I use it for sourdough biscuits and not much else. So I'm going to have to try and revive the thing.

By the way an answer to the two posts above me, I neglected my sourdough starter horribly and it survived for a couple years! I would stick it in the back of the fridge in a container with holes in the top, take it out when I wanted to make biscuits because the biscuits used sourdough discard. I'd only feed it then, and then stick it back in the back of fridge. I think it died because I put something over the top that blocked the air out of the holes and then tons of mold grew.  So basically if you don't want to constantly feed your sourdough, you can kind of put it on pause by just sticking it in the fridge.