Yesterday could have started out very badly. Earlier this week, I found out that my hairstylist had quit the business. I was put in the horrific, hated position of having to choose a new one from scratch--one who would, hopefully, not slaughter my hair.After some pondering, I made an appointment with the owner of this salon, which is kittycorner from the bar where I used to work. (It is also directly across the street from a "gentlemen's club," but that's not relevant here.) The appointment was yesterday morning. As it turned out, she did a wonderful job--my style is mostly the same, but somehow more modern--and the s.o. complimented me on my sleek hair several times throughout the day. Sweet!
The day had gotten off to a good start, and it continued that way. A couple of days ago, I had written this:
It's dry as a bone out there, so once again we had to water the garden. I want to automate the watering process somehow. I have never been satisfied with the water distribution I get from soaker hoses, and I need something more movable and adjustable than a drip irrigation system, so I am considering hooking up a battery of sprinklers to a timer so that at 5:00 AM...fsssssshhhhhhhh! They kick on. Anything has to be more efficient than me standing out there in the heat with a hose.
Well, initially I bought four little sprinklers with adjustable spray patterns and hooked them up to a forked network of hoses. The result was pathetic, pitiful, comical. With the water pressure divided up like that, the cheap sprinklers couldn't project water more than, say, three feet.
So yesterday I exchanged the four little sprinklers for two very powerful oscillating ones. I brought them home, cut off the water supply to half the garden, and hooked them up to the hoses in the other half. VICTORY! It is a thing of beauty. I can't put the system on a timer in my hoped-for hotel lawn style, because I have to manually move the sprinklers from one set of hoses to the other midway through the process. But the coverage is thorough and gentle, like a soft rain, and I can simultaneously work in whichever half isn't being watered. My life has suddenly gotten much easier and more productive. Already I've gotten around to clearing some beds that have needed it for a week or more.
We celebrated by eating the tenderloin of our half pig, with a side of homegrown kohlrabi. I found the world's easiest, best recipe for the pork in an old New Orleans restaurant cookbook: You brush the tenderloin thickly with honey and sprinkle it with an equal mixture of sea salt, coarse pepper, and crushed brown mustard seeds. Then you sear it for four minutes per side (for medium to medium-rare) in a hot cast iron skillet. It makes kind of a sticky, charred mess in the pan, but it is heavenly.
