Diane posted days ago asking for an update and, finally, I’ll pop out my head to say that I’m still here and actually doing fairly well. I work two to three hours each day on my data business. On occasion I work zero hours on data. The rest of the day I work on yard work, lie in a hammock, or watch the latest from Netflix. Most days in my pregnant state I do wonder how the human race has ever perpetuated itself.
My mental state is pretty good but I expect that is in large part due to my schedule. On the one time each month that I venture from my place here in the Sequoia National Forest to civilization, I do get a bit frazzled and overly tired. My solution: don’t go.
After months of “not going,” I have had a bit of cabin fever, a strange thing to have in the summer. I’ve been complaining over the last week about being a shut-in. I suppose we should all be careful what we wish for. We are actually packing the car now (I’m on a break) to find fresher air in the Los Angeles basin. That is a sentence that I would have never thought I would ever form, but here we are.
I’ve mentioned that forest fire is our biggest natural threat here and that the local rangers tell us “It’s not a matter of ‘if’ but ‘when.’” We a due west of the Clover fire burning in the Golden Trout Wilderness and further east to highway 395. Weather patterns are bringing us quite a bit of smoke and socking it in. The Clover fire is no threat to us now and it is unlikely it will become one. However, we did have some excitement early yesterday morning when a grass fire started about three miles away on Forest Service land. We could see the smoke plumes and the air got much worse. We had our evacuation list ready but luckily did not need to pack the cars. The fire was within a mile of a ranger station and half of the local population (all employed by the Forest Service) descended on the fire within minutes. The fire lasted for about three hours before it was put out completely. It did add a good bit of smoke to our smoky air.
My weather-watching uncle called us this morning and offered us refuge from the smoke. He says it may clear by Saturday and we considered waiting it out, but my lungs hurt a bit, my son has sudden allergy symptoms, and my husband has a mild case of asthma. I figure we can cure a few symptoms and cabin fever at the same time. My uncle and aunt live north of San Diego and should have great air tomorrow. Today we’ll seek refuge in the Los Angeles area. I hear they have places called "restaurants" and "stores." I'll have to check those out.
The garden has had a slow start this summer, but we have had an abundant and welcome collection of volunteer purslane. Many people refer to purslane by its more common name, "weed." Purslane, however, is a great vegetable source of omega-3 fatty acids, the alpha linoleic acid form. Omega-3 fatty acids build our brains; clinical trials have shown them to be effective in fighting depression. Packaged as purslane, omega-3 fatty acids also make a great stir fry. We fried some up with a small zucchini and yellow crookneck, the first bit of produce from our garden. I highly recommend purslane and you can find it literally anywhere -- even growing out of the cracks in your sidewalk. (It is that sprawling weed in the picture above.) According to a recent New York Times Magazine article (also discussed at The Ethicurean), these weeds could be the food of the future with climate change.
