England has no kidney bank, but it does have a Liverpool !
Today was slow! We worked on that infernal puzzle for two hours and made only a little bit of progress! Sometimes you just gotta walk away! We did walk away but after returning to it, several pieces came together easily! Funny how that works!
We had a twenty minute talk with Silly Lilly, our great granddaughter! She loves the Bat Phone! She answered and we heard about Disneyland, her dog, her brother and a long conversation about her playing softball later this year!
Ten minutes later, Calhan, our Great Grandson, called us on the bat phone …he just wanted to drop in and say hello and stick his bottom pointing toward the camera…boys you know! Gotta love’em.
Where does time go. The picture below is my father-in-law, Charlie, with Colleen about 45 years ago in our backyard. Seems like yesterday but believe me, it wasn’t! Charlie is gone, Colleen is a two-time grandmother, and we are as old as dirt! Time does indeed fly!
Did You Know? Charlie Feltz was a plain-speaking engineer who had grown up on a cattle ranch in Moore County, Texas. After graduating in from Texas Tech University in Lubbock in mechanical engineering in 1940, he joined went to California and was hired by North American. During the war he worked on the P-51 and B-25 aircraft. In the postwar years he played roles of increasing responsibility on the B-45, F-86, and F-100.
His performance as Chief Engineer on the X-15 program convinced NASA that he could walk on water. He was able to handle directly and without any runaround all aspects of the job of managing the translation of engineering designs into hardware – production design, managing the construction, getting the aircraft out of the door.
When the time came to put together North American’s Apollo proposal for NASA, Harrison Storms called Feltz from his sick-bed in Texas to join the program. He was thrown into simplifying the company’s detailed design for Apollo by cutting out the unnecessary while still meeting NASA’s fail-safe criteria. After North American won the competition, Feltz was made Chief Engineer, and then in 1964 Assistant Apollo Program Manager, with 10,000 engineers reporting to him
I needed to make a “Lowe’s Run” meaning a trip to the hardware store. 36 minutes round trip to Long Beach Town Center and I got wood filler (to fix a chair) and some tools that were on sale. You can never had too many pliers, scissors, or wrenches.
As I returned, I stopped and thought about why Rossmoor is such a great place to live. Three miles to the beach and we can get on the 405, 91, 605, 22, and 105 freeways in minutes from out home. We love the old trees along our street.
After the puzzle meltdown and the successful run to Lowe’s, we attacked lunch! First, we did the last batch of artichokes. They were delicious dipped in butter and the hearts were magnificent.
Growing up in the 1950’s, we never heard of or even saw an artichoke. I think I was in my 40’s when I first tried them and since then we grow them in our yard! Funny, the people down the street had several of them in their front yard and always let them go to flower. Walking by one day I asked why they did that and they did NOT know it was an artichoke,,,now, their plants never produces flowers..they are lopped off just in time to make a meal!
Sue being the creative genius tried boiling, roasting, broiling, and microwaving them…we settled in on the old fashioned boiling process! Now Sue varies the dipping sauces form plain ol’ butter to delightful onion dips!
Did You Know? The artichoke was first developed in Sicily and was known to both the Greeks and the Romans. In 77 AD the Roman naturalist Pliny called the choke one of earth’s monstrosities, but many continued to eat them. Historical accounts show that wealthy Romans enjoyed artichokes prepared in honey and vinegar, seasoned with cumin, so that this treat would be available year round.
Breakfast for me this morning? Ah ha! I fired up the grill while we did the artichokes. Protein rich indeed and the eggs tasted super. Add to this roasted asparagus and Knott’s blackberry jelly on the English muffins, we have BREAKFAST! About 500 calories…not too bad for something that tastes so good!
Sue read today and I headed to the front yard as I have a large tangerine tree which is done producing and there was 100+ tangerines at the top of the tree which can no longer be consumed…they went dry. My job, should I accept it, is to dare death in the eye and pull off the old fruit and clean out the dead limbs. The other reason is I want to remove the constant shade from our entrance way and allow the sun to hit the concrete more often!
So, I accepted the challenge! I am at the top of the ladder…reaching out to remove the fruit and the phone buzzes…who can it be! Just a text message, I better look see!
Well, our grandson was at Laguna Beach with his girl friend and decided to text us! I took one look and darned near fell off the ladder…my jaw dropped… I became gabberglasted…I was shocked…choked up! Can you image, standing in that COLD WATER in bare feet?
I walked around out front yard examining the fruits of our labor. The plum trees are doing quite well. Since 3.5 oz of raw plums supply 46 Calories (they are composed of 87% water, 11% carbohydrates, 1% protein, and less than 1% fat) and we expect at least 300 plums or 1,050 ounces of plums. That means, using my powers of scientific reduction, we can expect to get about 65 pounds of plums!
Further regurgitating that figure at 736 calories per pound, we will get 47,840 calories from our trees this year! Not too bad as that means if we eat every plum, we might gain 13 pounds and just think of the number of trips to the gentlemen’s facilities!
My head hurts!
The only problem with plums is that they ripen all at once so we deliver a lot of our neighbors! We see jelly in out future! One of the neighbors takes all the plums I can give her and in turn, we get plum jelly! A good trade me thinks!
The avocado tree is also doing quite well…the tiny fruits have formed as we are hoping they stay on the plant this year…the tree is only three years old so it may need some more time.
Checkout the red blossoms behind the avocado,,,they are pomegranates! Probably 150 blossoms on this side of the tree alone.
After filling a 100 gallon can with tangerines and other branches I returned inside and we watched TV until about midnight. We ignore the puzzle as we need a fresh start tomorrow morning. We did have our tookies about 10:00 PM along with our wine. To quote a old Christmas movie, “It’s A Great Life”.
