Dreaming of Tomatoes

Seeds are beginning to arrive.

I started my seed ordering at Victory Seeds, where I’ve been a customer for over a decade. They moved from Oregon to Texas a few years ago, though, and I think the quality of their seeds took a hit. They were also sold out of quite a few things this year, so I had to go looking for alternative suppliers. (I do have some seed saved, but I like to have backups.) Victory Seeds did not have my beloved Orgeon Star paste tomato. However, TomtatoFest did. While I was there, I got sucked into looking around and ordered a few new varieties. I am particularly excited about Cherokee Chocolate and Cherokee Green, because Cherokee Purple is a staple in my garden. We’ll see how those two do this year. (Sarah, I will make sure to save a couple for you if you want them.)

I know, I said I wasn’t going to plant 40 tomato plants again this year but I lied. 😇

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I am making progress on my to-do list. My last class handout is almost done. I’ve made copies of the other ones and put each set of handouts into its own folder with the date and time of the class on the front. I am teaching six classes next week and I need to keep them straight.

The binding has been sewn down on the jelly roll quilt. Yesterday afternoon, I made and attached binding to the Correspondence quilt. I began sewing it down last night. I lost my favorite binding needle and have not been able to find a replacement. The quilting betweens are close, but they are shorter than the one I was using for binding. I think I need a sharp, but I have to find the correct size.

This week’s podcast episode is going to be on interfacing, and wow, has that been a tour of a bunch of rabbit holes. I now know more about interfacing than I thought I needed to. Oh well, I am just adding to the base of knowledge I can pull out when I am teaching.

I spent an hour before dinner yesterday cutting the last group of 5" squares from my pile of scraps. I’ll give the tote to Pat this morning at church. The husband spent his day moving snow. It has been snowing off and on for the past couple of days and now we’re under a winter storm watch for another system moving in. Mid-week, though, it is supposed to warm up —into the 40s!—which is going to turn everything into a sloppy mess. That bodes well for my trip to Sew Expo, however.

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Reddit, for all that it has a dubious reputation in the social media world, has been a great source of information about that MTHFR mutation and my discovery that extra riboflavin is helping some of my health issues. I have been researching this issue for a long time—long before a lot of this information was readily available—and Reddit seems to be the repository for what Tom Naughton refers to as “the wisdom of crowds.” There is a lot of anecdata there that would be dismissed by conventional practitioners, but if you’re willing to be persistent and sift through it, you can find a lot of great information. One poster in the MTHFR forum is particularly knowledgable and helpful. He developed a road map of treatment for people with the same mutation that I have. I was amused to discover that I had developed a similar road map for myself—through a great deal of trial and error, because the information wasn’t available five or ten years ago—except that he starts with riboflavin and I am finally adding it in as the last piece of the puzzle. I think that’s because I uncovered that mutation as a result of a folate deficiency, so the focus has always been on folate. Also, the riboflavin information has come to light more recently.

In any case, I find it fascinating how scientific research meanders down the path of discovery.