Saturday, June 23, 2007, 17:38

A Sunny Saturday For Pumpkins

It is another sunny warm day here at Rural Route 2.

And with any luck at all, I will be able to get the rest of my pumpkins planted. I started some teeny-tiny pumpkins in little containers "way back when." Other pumpkins we just seeded straight in the garden, and they are growing gangbusters. But the little guys took a while to get started. They are growing now, too, and I need to plant them out in the garden.

I have to try to make sure, though, that they are not close enough to the big pumpkins to cross pollinate. Because if they do cross, I won't have teen-tiny pumpkins. I will have much larger pumpkins. The small pumpkins are the ones you see used for decorating, but the package says they are very good to eat when hollowed out, stuffed and baked like green peppers. We shall see. First I have to get them to grow and produce pumpkins.

A few years ago, I bought a certain kind of "louffa gourd." Supposedly, when the gourds are dried, they end up like louffa sponges and you can use them in the shower or bath.

Right. I got the plants to come up. But they were always puny plants and generally experienced a "failure to thrive." They never did blossom. So of course, I never did get any louffa gourds. Everything else in the garden -- peas, beans, squash, pumpkins, carrots, sweet corn -- did very well. But louffa gourds did not want to grow very much.

I am hoping that this is not going to be the experience with the tiny pumpkins. If they do fail to grow and do not produce pumpkins, perhaps it is time for me to conclude that I'm better off sticking to the "traditional" garden vegetables and to forget about the exotics.

But that, of course, is what's fun about gardening. You never know from year to year what or how the garden is going to grow. Sometimes things grow and produce like weeds. Sometimes things don't grow at all. Sometimes it's a joyful experience. Sometimes it's frustrating.

But at the very least -- it is always interesting!

LeAnn R. Ralph

Thursday, June 21, 2007, 05:13

Call Me Professor

You'll never guess what I did Wednesday morning.

You'll just never guess.

I taught a class on making lefse! At a university!

A friend of mine is a program assistant in the home economics department and she also goes to my church. One of the professors she works for is teaching a summer class on international/ethnic foods. So she asked if I would teach a section on making lefse.

For those who don't know what lefse is, or haven't read my book,"Christmas in Dairyland (True Stories from a Wisconsin Farm)" (the first story is called "The Lefse Connection") -- lefse is a flat Norwegian pastry made of potatoes and flour and milk/cream and butter rolled flat, baked on a hot griddle and eaten spread with butter and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.

The recipe I use is my mother's recipe. She was a first generation Norwegian. Her parents and grandparents came from Norway.

Anyway, it was lots of fun teaching the class. Many of the students are dietitians in training. They all had a chance to roll some lefse out and bake it.

The best lefse roller was a young man! He was the only guy in the class of 16. I told him he was good at rolling out lefse, and he said =it--

Well, that was interesting. I'm back again. My little black kitty cat, Snowflake, just shut down my computer!

I have to say, I can't say I am particularly fond of this time of year. The moths come in through the air conditioner in my office, and Snowflake, and sometimes Sophie, too, love to chase them. The moths are attracted to the lamp over the computer. Snowflake was dancing around the keyboard, chasing a moth, when she shut down the computer.

Only a minute before that, she was sitting on top of the iMac, watching a moth. Her tail was down over the monitor, and it was difficult to see what I was doing.

Anyway, about the lefse class.

The young man was best roller. He said it was fun. He had never made lefse before, and he was an enthusiastic consumer of the product. He ate everything he made with his partner and got some from the other groups. At the end, he asked if the Germans made something similar because his grandmother used to make something like it. Another girl in class said, yes, because they make it at home, and it's similar to lefse. I also know that many of the people of German heritage who live near where my sister lives make lefse, too.

At any rate, the class was fun. And now I can say I have taught at a university. For my next teaching gig, I would love to teach a *writing* class as the university level. . .

Guinevere -- I took my silver tabby kitty, Guinevere, to the vet on Monday. She was suffering from a sinus infection that started when all of the kitties were sick with their sneezing ailment. I started her out on amoxicillan and then switched to clindamycin. Guinevere's face is still swollen.

The vet is about 90 percent certain that Guinevere has cancer -- a sinus tumor is what she thinks it is.

We have switched my beloved Gwinny to another antibiotic to see if that helps for her symptoms. The vet said she would have to do a sinus biopsy to be sure, but that the biopsies are terrible for the cat and that sometimes, when you disturb the cancer cells doing a biopsy, it runs wild. She said that we could do chemotherapy and radiation therapy for Gwinny, but that cats get very sick from the treatment, just like people. I don't want to put my Guinevere through that.

Other than antibiotic to control infections and maybe cortisone to help her feel better, there's nothing we can do for her.

I suppose it is just coincidence that her face swelled up at the same time she had the same sneezing as the other cats. The vet said cats never swell up in the facial area from a sinus infection -- only from cancer.

I can't help but think we are missing something. I suppose that's just denial on my part. I keep thinking, what if Snowflake jumped on Guinevere and bit her in the face, the way she did with Bobby Cat. Earlier this year, Bobby Cat ended up with a facial abscess, and I know it was because Snowflake was trying to play. Snowflake is forever jumping on the big kitties' heads, trying to get them to play with her.

By the same token, Guinevere is on an antibiotic, so that ought to have taken care of the abscess, if that's what it was. Then again, our Springer spaniel, Charlie, was on an antibiotic last summer after surgery to remove some fatty tumors, and he developed an abscess that was missed by two vets who looked at him three times. The abscess (which was on his stomach between his rib cage and hind legs and was about the size of two fists) nearly killed Charlie before they figured out how sick he was. I knew he was sick. I had a terrible convincing the vets he was that sick.

Anyway, as I said, I suppose it is grasping at straws and denial on my part. The vet says she has no way of knowing what kind of cancer it is and how long Guinevere will live because she doesn't know where the cancer is, exactly.

All I know is that I don't want Guinevere to be sick. And I don't want her to suffer. For now, I think she feels fairly well. And she is still eating. In fact, her appetite seems to be quite good. Guinevere was one of the four kittens I rescued 16 years ago when they were two weeks old and their momma was trying to protect her babies and was killed by a dog.

LeAnn R. Ralph