For more info on the squash borer, here’s the orginal article with pictures of the moth and eggs.

Next year, I think I’ll try that white, winter squash. I’m sure I’ll have the same problem, but I’ve always liked that squash…

Wrong World has decided to perform Haunting Clues in a special Halloween issue! I’m pretty impressed with their work; it’s a classy site with top-notch presentation. The short stories are sold as a packaged DVD or on a per download basis. I’m especially impressed with the production of the introductions. Here’s one sample. There are excerpts of the stories out there as well.

Some pretty stunning thought and work.

I’ve also sold a new short story (Year of the Mountain Lion) to Aberrant Dreams! (I love that animation! It’s still by far my favorite out on the web.) The story won’t be available for some time yet (could be as long as a year!) but after it is published online, it will be a part of their year-end print antholgoy. I’m already hoping for a fantasy cover, something adventuresome or maybe whimsical…(no, I don’t have anything to do with the cover. I just like medieval covers depicting heroes or mysterious, magical scenes.) I’m really looking forward to the publication of this story. It’s a little different style for me; a lot less whimsy and more danger-filled adventure.

Lately there’s been another mom cat scurrying through our yard. We started the long process of trying to feed her because it was pretty obvious she wasn’t getting enough food. Within a week, her kitten completely disappeared. It’s a dangerous world out there for feral cats trying to survive on the leftover scraps of other pets. At any rate, we continued to feed the mom and have gotten her used to stopping in the yard to look for food. We’ve even gotten the three days worth of dewormer down her…a bit off schedule, but you don’t really get to schedule regular cats, never mind feral strays that may or may not pass through.

Here’s a picture–not a very good one. We’ve gotten closer to her than this picture. She came over near the garden to see what I was doing one morning and she sat and watched me for about an hour. She runs only about 3 yards away now when we come out with food–unless something spooks her. So we’ll see how the process goes. She may disappear without a trace. I know that trapping her is going to be very difficult. Cats are quite smart and they don’t like entering the trap. We never would have caught the other cat except her kittens went in the trap. We then used them to get her. She was mad at us for weeks over that trick…

What I want to know today is this:

Why is it that when looking for maps of Spain, I can find them on amazon UK–that ship from the US? These same maps aren’t available at Amazon US. If I were to order them from amazon UK, I’d pay international shipping rates, pay in Euros (converted) and then the map would come from Jersey. HUH?

I couldn’t find any new cucumbers growing. None of the cantaloups were ripe. The tomato plants were mostly draped along the ground and I’m out of poles to tie them up off the ground. The plants are suffering from spider mites (again).

The cucumbers just had a huge infestation of aphids and what I think are white plant lice. I sprayed last evening, but I do it one individual leaf at a time so as not to get the insecticide all over myself and the rest of the garden. This morning everything is damp and drippy and I don’t want those leaves touching me.

I had to spray diluted milk all over everything because I’m afraid that I’ll get another mildew problem with the high humidity if I don’t. That made the garden even more drippy.

The tomato I went to pick this morning had been eaten out by a WORM. I found another one, not even started to ripen that has been attacked by worm’s brother.

I cut a zucchini off the plant and accidentally chopped a leaf off. Rats.

The rain barrel had about half a barrel from the rain we got two days ago. Emptying it is not usually that difficult, but today the hose got kinked. Then I couldn’t position the barrel right to get the water out properly. It was 75 degrees out when I stared, 80 before I was close to finishing. Hot. Sweaty. Drippy.

ARGH.

I just love them both. The Dragon Wings cover art was done by Jacquelyne Drainville and the Escape cover art was done by Kevin Wasden. Both are just fabulous.

Here are links to the books along with cost and shipping information:

Dragon Wings
Escape ]]> http://www.bearmountainbooks.com/books-and-stories/short-stories/around-the-bend-in-print/feed/ http://www.bearmountainbooks.com/home/first-cantaloupe-of-2008/ http://www.bearmountainbooks.com/home/first-cantaloupe-of-2008/#comments Thu, 03 Jul 2008 08:20:19 +0000 Maria http://www.bearmountainbooks.com/?p=280 Actually it’s the first cantaloupe I’ve ever grown, period. And it was a success, if I do say so myself!

It’s a “little sweetie” that is smaller than your average cantaloupe–supposedly about the size of a softball. This one is considerably bigger than that and I’m not complaining. It was easy to grow in Texas (because all the bugs were on the zucchini and tomato plants, I think!). It took a long time to grow–this one has been in the ground since February/March. It was probably 4 feet long before the first fruit set. Then it took weeks and weeks to get big and start to ripen. I picked it pretty much by accident, which I read, is the right time. I was just looking at it and picked it up just a tad and it fell off in my hand! We tried it this morning and boy was it good. Very firm and very sweet. Success!

I hear the best way to eat them is to scoop out the seeds and fill the center with ice cream…so I wonder…chocolate ice cream or vanilla???

Have you noticed that grocery stores (including Wal-Mart) are starting to carry better chocolates? Instead of just low-end Hersey’s there’s the high-end Hersey bars. Even better, there’s Lindt chocolate and some very nice Ghiradeli bars. I didn’t like Ghirardelli all that much the first time I tried them years and years ago. I drank their cocoa because it was one of the few decent ones on the grocery shelves–easy to obtain. Several years ago the internet made it possible for me to order from anywhere and I’ve tried a number of cocoas:

Scharffen-Berger: This is a lovely cocoa, especially for cooking. Very rich, non-dutched, deep cocoa. My favorite recipe for this cocoa is: Chocolate Buttermilk cake with chocolate buttermilk icing. Be prepared to swoon.

Guittard - I believe they supply chocolate to See’s Candies (My all-time favorite store candies). They also have some dynamite chocolate bars for baking or making your own chocolate. They have single region chocolates and mixed. Quite a selection to choose from. Single region chocolates have really unique notes. Many have what I describe as “fruity” notes–a blackcherry or an undefinable fruitiness that just…melts into your sense.

They also sell a wonderful dutched cocoa that is very similar to the more expensive French and quite well-known Valrhona cocoa. I have a cup of Guittard cocoa almost every morning.

What are your favorite chocolates? Where do you get your chocolate fix?

Me, I usually order the cocoa in bulk from www.Chocosphere.com. I enjoy the Ghirardelli bars from my local grocery story. The Citris Sunset has tiny bits of orange scattered throughout a luscious dark-chocolate; the Toffee Interlude is perfect for just a bit of crunch and when you want that extra sweetness; And their Twilight Delight is a wonderful 72 percent creamy chocolate bar with a hint of fruitiness that is all about chocolate’s deep base flavor. All of these bars are just dynamite. Expensive too. But really, really satisfy that chocolate craving.

I like the Lindt bars too, but they’ve gone up in price recently, so I don’t buy them nearly as often. Hersey’s has some new “fine” chocolates out as well, but I haven’t tried them.

Here’s my favorite chocolate recipe book:  Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate: Alice Medrich, Deborah Jones (Photographer)

I pretty much make the sauce much like tomato sauce is made, only I don’t have to cook it down.  The chiles are rehydrated from a dried state, and so to get the right consistency it’s a matter of adding just the right amount of water.

Making the sauce is very messy because the chile stains pretty much everything it touches–instantly.  When I’m finished, everything goes straight outside to be hosed down.  This morning, I did just that. I was pretty pleased with myself. The dishes were clean and the lawn got some water. I walked around the corner of the house to rinse my hands a final time and to shut the hose off. When I came back around I saw my work sabotaged!!! Or maybe he was trying to help dry the dishes…The neighbor’s cat was licking my nice clean dishes. He looked up with a very innocent expression on his face when I demanded to know just what he thought he was doing. He then proceeded to stick his nose right inside one of the pans and slurp up the remaining water.

Sigh.

I came back inside, washed the dishes again, and began moving the containers to the freezer–only I set one on the door where it wasn’t secure.  The next time I opened the door, it slid out, smashed on the tile floor and spattered EVERYWHERE.   We’re talking have to paint some lower walls…throw out the rug that was there and someone is in serious need of a bath.

It took me the better part of an hour to clean the freezer, the doors, the walls and the floor.  I was already hot and sweaty so may as well make a day of it.

Anyway, I’ll be very happy to have the marinated pork or marinated beef in a few days.  It’s a wonderful dish.  I’m trying not to cry over the container of missing, splattered chile, but it’s hard.
Click on the photos for larger images.

Zucchini in Texas is a lot of work. We have these nasty little moths that look a lot like orange wasps. They lay their eggs (see above picture) on zucchini stalks. The little worm that hatches bites into the stems and begins to eat the plant from the inside out. Yeah–science fiction in the real world. This year I tried injecting the plant with BT worm killer. I had no real way of knowing it if was working or not.

Two weeks ago, I saw one of the parasites (moth) land on my zucchini. I managed to kill it. Had it already laid eggs? I had no way of knowing at the time because I didn’t know what the eggs looked like. I injected the stalks again as best I could and began to watch. Had I known what the eggs looked like I could have knocked them off. They aren’t that hard to remove because unlike a lot of other insect eggs, they aren’t very sticky, and they are actually pretty easy to see on most parts of the plant.

Today, I saw frass–this is basically worm poop that squirts out the entry holes when the worm invades. Sigh. I began cutting the stalks from the main stem. My hope was that I could cut the leaves/stems off before the worms worked their way to the main stalk. Once they are inside the thick, main stem, injecting BT worm killer is almost impossible–and so is killing the worms. Within a few weeks they will eat the stem out and the plant will die. I found one spot with worm poop where it looks like a worm made its way in. We’ll see, but I don’t have very high hopes. I also found several more eggs which I removed.

On the bright side, I do think the BT worm killer works. There were some leaves/stalks where the worm did a bit of damage–but then the damage stopped and there was no worm. The leaf continued to thrive. I cut a couple of these leaves off and inspected them pretty carefully.

The overall problem is larger of course. The moth lays so many eggs (I found about 10 tonight, about one per leaf) it’s impossible to find all the worms and kill them in time. The eggs are much harder to see near the soil or on the main stem.

At any rate, I did better this year than last. I have had zucchini now for about two months–at least 3 zucchini per week. I don’t expect the plant to live much longer, but at least the moths are infecting it rather than the cucumbers and cantaloupe. I’m afraid that if I didn’t have the zucchini, the moths would use the other cucurbits as a substitute! I’ll be planting early again next year. It seems to have helped that the plant was quite large by the time the moths began looking. (They started late April or early May and then continue throughout the summer in Texas.) I’ll also be vigilent about looking for those stupid eggs.

Here’s a picture of a moth–I didn’t take it because when I see them, I kill them if I can. I tried to make sure the credit for the photo showed up.

Update: I’ve had a lot of questions about cutting off leaves and or the leaf stems and whether it will kill the plant: Yes, you can cut some of them off. I have cut several away as time has gone by–the worms entered the stems of the leaves and left evidence. If they are close to the main plant stem, I definitely recommend cutting the whole leaf/stem away from the plant. If they are not, you can inject the BT worm killer into the hollow leaf stem. The BT worm killer does seem to work after about a day.

I also inject the bt worm killer into any infected parts of the main stem. It’s hard to do because the main stem is not hollow, so you kind of have to hunt out the part where the worm has eaten it away. At this point, my plant stem is large enough that it has withstood two or three worms–so if you see frash (worm poop!) don’t give up. Try the BT worm killer, try to follow the path of the worm with a thin, sharp object and kill it.