More About Pond Water Loss

I don't know what I'd do without Alice, the aquarium expert and fish pond lady. Whenever she and her crew come out to clean my pond and re-stock it, I always stick around in the back yard. There is a lot to learn just listening to her.

Alice emailed last night, and told me to shut off the pump to the waterfall. Let no water circulate for 24 hours, and if the water level in the pond stays full, then there is a leak in the vinyl liner in my waterfall.

Did it. So far so good. Will check again tomorrow morning.

I was a little disappointed not to see my mosquito fish in the pond. Maybe they all died during the cold weather. Well, no matter -- they are cheap if I need to stock the pond again. It's always something.

Water Loss in My Pond

To the right: The pond at the Gaylord Texan Resort in Grapevine, Texas

For several weeks now, I've been having increasing water loss from my pond. All my usual remedies haven't done anything to slow it down.

I'm losing 1.5 to 2 inches per day from the pond. I'd like to blame it on last week's horrible weather with its snow and ice, but the problem actually started weeks before that.

I do have a gunite and plaster constructed pond, and how and why it became a pond is a story that you can read from the earliest posts in this blog. Could it be that I have developed a crack in the gunite? I may not know that until we get spring weather and I can drain my pond.

I tried to cover the basics of water loss in a pond in this summary , but I may not know everything.

I wish everything looked as nice as the pond in the above photo. Sigh....

A Garden Harvest Basket

This is the harvest basket I recently purchased. I am most pleased with its quality, and I found out that the company which makes it is called Barber's Baskets. Their baskets have been featured in many magazines, as well as chosen for the set of the movie Julie & Julia.

See my review of garden harvest baskets .

Parsnips -- This Month's Vegetable

What a great winter vegetable. Parsnips. I'll never be able to grow them because of our warmer climate. But they are a good root vegetable for gardeners with a short growing season. The rest of us can buy parsnips at the supermarket.

Parsnips are sweeter than carrots and cook faster, too. To me, they are sort of a cross between a sweet potato and a turnip.

I have eaten parsnips cooked with a pot roast. Where you normally would use carrots, use parsnips instead. Along with onions and maybe potatoes.

Lately, I've been eating boiled parsnips with butter.

As you can see, there is not one vegetable that I don't like!

Hidden Triggers in Food

Another wrinkle with the New Year, 2011!

For a few weeks, I've been noticing that every time I eat chocolate truffles, I get a headache the next day. I usually only eat 2 or 3 truffles at a time, and that is enough to satisfy me.

I believe that I may be afflicted with the migraine syndrome, but in a sort of mild way. Once in a while, I suffer with dull headaches that no pain reliever will help. The headaches last 2 or 3 days.

But there's no escaping the connection with the chocolate. In both cases, I ate chocolate that was imported from France. Yum, ummy.... and these latest truffles (hazelnut) are the best I've ever tasted.

Not all chocolates are the same, though. It turns out that I may be sensitive to phenylethylamine, a chemical in chocolate.

Or it might be some other ingredient. I should check.

But I know that red wine and chocolate are definitely, in some people, responsible for triggering migraines.

I wrote about the connection between vasomotor rhinitis (which I have) and migraine. My doctor was the one who mentioned this connection.

See my article on vasomotor rhinitis .

What can I do? Well, white chocolate might be a wonderful choice for an alternate sweet. White chocolate is simply cocoa butter that doesn't have any of the chemicals contained in the cocoa bean. There are some very good white chocolate bars with coconut.

Lindt Lindor Truffles White Chocolate, 60-Count BoxMilka White Chocolate, 3.52-Ounce Bars (Pack of 10)Ghirardelli Chocolate Sweet Ground White Chocolate, 3 lbs.thinkThin White Chocolate Chip, 2.1-Ounce Bar (Pack of 10)Toblerone White Chocolate, 3.52-Ounce Bars (Pack of 12)

My Live Oak Tree

It's just had a rather severe pruning this month. The tree surgeon told me that winter is the time to do this.

Geoffrey ("G" as he is known) remarked that my live oak tree looked more healthy than most of the oak trees he's seen at this time of year. Why?

He asked me if I used commercial fertilizer, and I said "Never."

So there you have it. All that agonizing over nothing. 'Tis better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all. Well, I never loved at all. The lawn grass in my front yard just never would thrive, even when my mighty oak was a little sapling.

G said that the homeowners who put all their energies into maintaining a lush lawn with the use of commercial fertilizer usually pay for it with the health of their trees. He commented that the leaves on my tree are big and healthy. "There is two years of energy in that oak tree", he said.

So I just need to feel vindicated, and realize that grass is just never going to grow under my tree. But I've got the best shade tree in my neighborhood.

Just another benefit of going organic.

Heirloom Beets

Around the first week of December 2010, I harvested my Detroit Red beets, which I had grown from seed beginning 9/28/10. They were supposed to take 45-60 days, but the roots seemed a little slow to develop, as is so typical for heirloom types. I was advised to wait to harvest close to Christmas, but I knew that wouldn't work for me, so I pulled them up on December 7.

If you look at the below picture of my square foot garden, I had planted 8 squares of beets. And with my harvest, how many servings did I actually get? About 4 to 5. My biggest beets were somewhat larger than a golf ball.

But they tasted very good indeed. They were worth the wait. I'd certainly grow them again, but I believe it would be worth experimenting with hybrid varieties.

I hear you saying, "I'm just too impatient to wait two or three months for beets!!"

I understand, and if you don't like the idea, why not grow the beets simply for their greens? You'll have green tops worth harvesting for a few months, and very quickly, too. If you go this route, this is basically all you'll get from the plants, but it will be the gift that "keeps on giving."

How do you cook beet greens?

Well, you can cook them like spinach, add them to mixtures of other greens like kale or turnip greens, or cook them this way: Add a little olive oil, vinegar, and a small bit of sugar to a saucepan, let it get hot, and add your greens and let them wilt in the saucepan. You can add bits of bacon as well. They are great this way. Or just use bacon grease in place of the olive oil.

Behold, 8 squares of Detroit beets: