Once the Baby Bird Race winners were declared, the Scrub Blue Jays moved in
to celebrate the Pistachio crop, while the baby snake in the grass moved to
the closest potted tree, unsuccessfully avoiding the water droplets, but
sticking his tongue out in contempt of the violation of his privacy. The
pomegranate blooms functioned well, but their fruit is still not fully ripe
but displaying stress. The olives were few in number, and how did anyone
ever discover they were edible? Trying to cure olives is a cure for trying
to cure olives, and lye is dangerous with epilepsy, but salt is salt is salt.
No lemons, one orange, too many apricots, midget peaches.

The hot weather here a few weeks ago was too hot for our beautiful grapes,
but we kept our hopes up till this week. There's no agreement on how high
a temperature, and for how long, different grapes can take such (our temps
got above 110 degrees a few too many times). As amateurs we just wait and
sample the grapes when they look about right. With an excess of heat, the
grapes may become extremely sweet, but at times, very loaded with alcohol
right on the vine. Careful sampling of the most exposed grapes quickly
reveals the presence of alcohol, but the extent of which types, judgment
depends on the after-effects.

With epilepsy, my sensitivity to methanol is very extreme; even an aspartame
soft-drink stored too long in a too warm storeroom will give me an hallucinogenic
after-effect. My tolerance to ethanol seems to be much better, but below normal.
The presence of small amounts of alcohol in most everything edible, and with
alcohol being produced naturaly in the normal living human body, a minute excess
of methanol in anything gives me a real problem with epilepsy; even the methanol
in less than fresh vegetables is a problem. So, sampling high-heat exposed grapes
is a dangerous activity for me because of my epilepsy and the possibilty of methanol.