Cat pictures, analog things, travel picture dump, and personal musings. Little to nothing to do with actual cheese.
My campaign to draw and/or paint a thing once a week kind of turned into draw and/or paint a thing once a year :X. I saw a YouTube video of someone watercoloring cacti and succulents so I thought that I would give it a try. Watercolor consistency ended up being too watery. Also, I think I need more than literally one brush.
It is really tempting to water the lithops, but I know that I am not supposed to until the old leaves have completely dried up. No double splits this year unfortunately.
My echeverias were getting munched on and are just starting to recover. The flower stalks as well as some of the leaves were infested with some black aphid. I also ended up moving into a sunnier spot where they won’t get covered in pepper tree crap.
Lots of new leaves popping up on the baby toes.
I found some succulents (2x lithops and 1x fenestraria) at Ace Hardware the other weekend; We had stopped by to look for a couple of things after watching Beauty and the Beast (really enjoyed it, highly recommended). I had ended up repotting my lithops with the new plants into a one of the terrocotta pots that were discovered in a corner of the yard.
We drove up and spent the day at The Getty Center last Friday. The mother-in-law, who was in town that weekend had not been to The Getty Center yet so we figured this would be a perfect opportunity to go, particularly since we have had an itch to visit for a while. I chose not to bring my camera because I didn’t really feel like dragging it around all day; I did however snap a few photos on my phone:
Lithops are supposed to be “living stones” but everyone knows that they are really miniature butts. I am honestly surprised that they are still alive. Unlike the Baby Toes and other finicky plants, the lithops were more or less left outside and ignored for most of the year (I take some of my plants in when it rains to avoid overwatering and rotting).
The original plant came with 4 leaves. Shortly after purchasing it, a rabbit munched on one leaving me with 3. Lithops will flower in the Fall and split in the Spring. At around March every year each leaf will start to split, revealing a brand new leaf underneath. Occasionally 2 new leaves will appear. I was lucky enough to recieve 2 double splits bringing me up to 5 leaves.
At some point, 2 leaves died leaving me with 3. Overwatering is suspected as they were left out in heavy rain (we received a lot of rainfall lately). Since there is still quite a bit of room in the pot, I would love to fill it with other lithops. Unfortunately though, they seem to be hard to find in good condition if at all.
Also, for what it is worth: Never place anything under or near a California Pepper Tree, lest you wish for berries and shit to rain upon all that you love. So messy…
Dashi is a type cooking stock that is used in virtually every Japanese soup. Authentic dashi is not that hard to make but it is a bit time consuming compared to instant dashi, etc. It is however, much more rewarding to make and tastes much better in my opinion. This recipe is based off of my grandma’s recipe. I don’t remember how much kombu to use so I just sort of “estimated” that part.
Ingredients: Around 8 cups of water, 2 4″x4″ pieces of kombu (dried kelp), 2 hand fulls of katsuobushi (bonito flakes).
Tools: 2 medium soup pots (one to put on the stove and one to strain the dashi into), fine mesh strainer.
To make miso soup for example: Make the dashi first, then add the miso paste + tofu and stuff in afterward.
Not so much of a vlog as it is a collection of videos from my phone, mashed together, and then uploaded from an app (which did a shitty encoding job). Shortly after Christmas, my husband and I went on a short vacation up the coast of California to visit family. Fun trip, would love to drive up Highway 1 but maybe during a less busy time period.