The Shadow

The specific criticism of Krauthammer here is irrelevant to my point. They refer to Jung's theory of "The Shadow". We project our dark side onto others. That just made me think, "what is the Shadow that I tend to see in others?" I have been realizing that I do get locked in certain behaviorial and relational patterns that are too similar to be coincidence. So let's see what I see in the shadow of people that I tend to reject:

judgemental
shallow
authortarian

The funny thing is that I have seen this in people whom I now consider great friends. I have seen these in people that I never grew close to. That makes me wonder what I have missed out on.

hmm... food for thought.

garden update

I must say, this year the garden has been bountiful. As opposed to last year when i got ~1 fruit per plant that I grew, this year has been whelming. We have eaten a number of meals just from the garden. I have a jar of pickles made with cucs, dill, and garlic straight from the garden.

I just looked at my tomatoes, which had given me bumper crops in the last two weeks of July but then went largely silent, and found that a second crop is on its way for many of the plants. The Brandywine plant has 10 (!) green tomatoes, black from Tula has a few, and others are coming along. I guess I will need to get some netting to keep the birds away.
I had a lot of caprese salad this summer and a lot of tomato sauce, all of which was just fabulous

pumpkins - i planted a pumpkin plant on a whim, and after doing nothing for a couple of weeks, it took off, sending out multiple vines that grow ~4 inches per day. Three beautiful green pumpkins are coming along so quickly. We will have a couple ready for Halloween to be this year's Jack and Jaqueline 'O Lantern. Bess was very intrigued by them last year.

Melons - worked out well, except for one beauty that the birds killed before ripeness. The watermelon sugar baby has one beauty under the foliage of other plants. I have one Charentais melon hanging on the trellis in a sling. I am checking it daily for ripeness.

Eggplants - wow, these are a major success story of the garden. Three of the four were great. Rosa Bianca is absolutely the most beautiful eggplant that I have ever seen. White with lavender striping, and it tastes great in eggplant parmesan. I grew Ping Tung long purple eggplants which are similarly great. some green apple eggplants for which I got seeds from the folks at "Path to Freedom".

Squash - i grew a patty pan squash plant and unfortunately we were not ready when it started producing. It was a couple of ripe squash every day. We did not know enough recipes to make it interesting. So I froze some for zuchinni bread later. I will be better prepared next year.

ok, that's it for now. I will try to get some pictures up.

more novel spellings

just added to the list: Brangow

overripe lemon cucumbers!

while the ripe lemon cucumber is truly a delight, an overripe lemon cucumber tastes like a foot (or what I imagine a foot would taste like!)

new misspelling/mispronunciations of my name

For those of you who don't know, the name Brandow is the source of unbelievable (to me) amounts of confusion:
is it pronounced like bow (as in bow& arrow) or bow (as in bow of a ship)?
then the misspellings:
Brandon (all the time including driver's license)
Brando
Branclau
and now on the phone someone said

Chris Brodeville

I have no idea how that came about, but it never surprises me anymore.
What is weird is that in theory my name really is not that tricky, but in practice it apparently is.