Day Ninety-Seven: Mimosa Flowers

Here's an interesting snack to try: peel a grapefruit with a knife, cutting the outer pith away. Then slice it into rounds and put on a plate. Drizzle with a little extra virgin olive oil, sprinkle a pinch of sea salt, and eat. It sounds weird but it is a delicious way to eat grapefruit. I've had it a few times since I discovered the "recipe" for it on the NYT cooking website, and it's good! Try it!

Now, onto Day Ninety-Seven. This morning Jeremy took a load of kid goats to the sale barn in Wister, Oklahoma. He was only supposed to be gone until 11, so I told the (human) kids they could watch shows until he got back. By 1:30 pm when he did finally get back I was starting to worry about their brains melting, but they seem to have survived it okay. Taiya was watching some garbage shows you YouTube of kids playing with toys. I could see why she liked it, though. First, it had girls around her age in it, and she is craving time with friends. Second, it had novelty: new toys she'd never heard of, something different from the past ninety-seven days. So I let her indulge, though I did explain later that it was advertisement, and those girls were getting paid to get kids like her to want things. 

I talked on the phone with my mom for a chunk of the morning, talking about gardening, cooking, family, life, mortality. It has been a year since I've seen her, and I miss her so much. She was supposed to visit in April, but a pesky global pandemic nixed those plans. 

When Jeremy finally got back from his errands (he stopped at his mom's house to see her for the first time since the pandemic - a justifiable delay) I went down to the creek where I had seen a mimosa tree had started blooming. I learned last year that mimosa blossoms can be dried and made into a tea that has anti-anxiety properties. Just picking the pink fluffy flowers with the creek running quietly behind me was an anxiety-relieving activity. Another name for the tree is the happiness tree, and I can see why. They smell so sweet and look so winsome. I'm planning to mix it with dried lemon balm and mint to make a tea for those days when everything just feels like too much. I got all I could reach, but there are many more buds not even close to opening - they have a long blooming window - so I'll just have to go back every couple days until I get what I need. 

Since it is the summer solstice weekend I have been trying to think of solsticey things to do to celebrate. William and I went down to the creek in the late afternoon while it rained on us, and while we were doing more exploring I asked him what he wanted for dinner, and he said waffles. So I made honey cornmeal waffles, white beans with rosemary, and salad on the side. Honey and cornmeal seem sunny, so I thought it was somewhat solstice-appropriate. The summer solstice is also William's half birthday and father's day this year, so a day to celebrate for lots of reasons. 

In the news today, Trump had his campaign rally in Tulsa. Before it happened, Jeremy and I were genuinely worried about what kind of violent mayhem might happen. But it quickly became clear that the hundreds of thousands of people everyone thought were going to show up were not going to show up. The count I heard in the end was around 6,200 which is still too many people in coronatimes, of course, but we thought it would be so much worse. I love so much that so few people came. So many of the Black Lives Matter protests and marches have outnumbered his pitiful campaign rally, I have a little more hope for our country after all.