BY BEA WESTERBERG

“Experience teaches slowly, Robin. And at a cost of many mistakes”. Taken from “Batman” TV series (1966) Ah, the good old days of Batman and Robin. I think most of us have had them in our life, and watched them outdo the bad guys and girls. They were an equal opportunity crime fighter team.

In today’s real world I will give you a few updates in my life. The cat bite has come a very long way in the healing process and I can move my fingers and am back to almost doing everything I did before with that hand. There still is a “funny” feeling in the bite area but I guess the body has to redo that area.

The garage and shop fire site has been all cleaned up and hauled away except for the concrete of the garage floor. We decided that since I probably will not even be hearing from a builder for another year or so, the concrete area would be used for parking. That means the garage rebuild is not going anywhere for who knows how long.

I have spent hours and hours making up the list of things that were lost in the fire and will not be replaced. That was a very stressful journey and I will be turning it in to the insurance company next week. I honestly have reached the point of not being able to deal with it anymore so however it turns out is the way it is going to go. A few of the basic gardening items have been purchased and I have gotten paid for them. The little garden tiller is not available right now and Neighbor Tony and I have to go chainsaw shopping. Those 2 big items will take care of most of what I will be purchasing.

The car is a whole other ballgame. From Day I, they told me that if I had a nice Chevy or Honda I would be taken care of in about a week. Screaming yellow 2004 Mustangs are taking a WHOLE lot longer as it soon will be 3 months since the fire. I have done a lot of research and found out how many of my type of cars were made in 2004 and very few were painted the yellow color. It appears that a whole lot more the of the GTs and the convertibles were made than the coupes. As time goes by, if you hear any SCREAMS from west of town, it will just be me waiting on the car news.

Did you know that July 1 is right in the middle of the year? It’s 6 months gone, 6 months to come. Then it also came to me that our longest day has passed and we are heading in the other direction. We sure don’t need to get the winter clothes out yet so we have time to be warm and work on our tans.

The Hastings Farm Market (and others) are up and running at a good pace and more vendors will be joining in as the season goes on. We have so much to look forward to! I am sure dreams have been had of eating fresh tomatoes, cucumbers and corn on the cob. Summer squash, green and yellow beans are also being looked forward to. Note: It will be a while before pumpkins!

Another big item for some of us is that we have fresh pesto and salsa. Did you know that you can make pesto from just about any vegetable that has a leaf? Google a request for vegetables that can be used in pesto and you most likely will be totally surprised! The same goes for salsa. Most of us know the usual tomato kind but you can make it almost any color with other fruits and veggies. Last summer I kind of pigged out on a peach salsa and after 2 weeks of eating it on EVERTHING, I called that program to a stop. I just get carried away with new projects.

It’s not too early to start thinking about new plantings to fill in the early crops. You may have to do some “babying” in hot August but you will be rewarded with fall crops. Here’s to YUMMY!