A potato from Professor Ben’s garden.
Happy Tuesday, Dear Readers!
I hope you’ve all had a relaxing and fun Labor Day weekend. While GF Boy and his dad backpacked their way up Mt. Whitney, I’ve been here in the Bay Area, visiting with family and friends.
The weekend’s activities included one of the most unique events I’ve attended in a while — a monthly sea chantey sing-along aboard the Balclutha. A motley crew lead by Park Ranger Peter Kasin sang from 8pm to midnight, and my friend Tom and I did our best to learn the choruses by ear, piping up when we could manage it. We left a little after 10, hardly able to pull ourselves away from the fun — Tom’s a baker, and he had an early shift to get to the next morning. We’re both planning to go to the next sing-along (they fall on the first Saturday of every month), and hopefully we’ll have a couple chanteys of our own to share with the group! Readers, if you have any favorite chanteys I ought to learn, let me know.
On Saturday morning, I headed down to Santa Cruz to meet up with a couple friends — first, I stopped in for a visit with Ben, a notorious cryptozoological epicure (a.k.a. my former music theory professor). We had lunch at Emily’s Bakery, then walked to his new home a few blocks away. His new backyard boasts an impressive amount of space, including a few plants inherited from the previous owner’s garden.
As we were walking around the backyard, Ben stooped down and pulled up a potato vine — and attached to the root system was one sturdy little red potato! I’m sure this is completely unexciting to anyone who has ever gardened much, but I’d never seen potatoes harvested before. It turned out there were quite a few vines, and Ben gave me a good amount of potatoes to take home, along with some chard and kale.
After we parted ways I headed downtown, produce bounty stowed safely in my trunk. I visited my favorite bookstore to up a nerdy read, then met up with my old friend Jessa for lunch. We headed down to the beach (how can you not visit the beach while in Santa Cruz, right?) for some chill-out time, then walked to a corner store for a couple of refreshing paletas.
Jessa’s dog, Piglet.
Driving home in the post-beach Highway 17 traffic, I thought of the veggies in my trunk — Ben gave me those amazingly fresh potatoes on the proviso that I use them in my next blog post! The kale and chard will go towards my daily smug smoothie habit, but the potatoes were destined are something original. I’ll be posting a recipe with them later this week.
