Processing My Newly Arrived Celeste Cuttings

Celeste is commonly referred to as sugar fig due to its sweetness and it's considered a dessert fig, but can be used for drying and making preserves. It produces fruit about medium in size and has light brown to purple skin and bright pink flesh. One great advantage of this variety is the fruit is closed eye which discourages fruit beetles.

The trees are very cold hardy down to HZ 6. I do live in New York state and this is VERY important to me. Our winters are cold and we get quite a bit of the white stuff. 

I bought these cuttings from an Etsy seller. They advertised 10 cuttings for $16.00 plu shipping. I thought the price was reasonable and I went for it.  It took them two days to ship them, I thought that was reasonable, and then two additional days for me to receive these cuttings. If I had a penny for every time I tracked the package I'd be a rich American. 

The package came via USPS and it was clearly marked that it contained live plants. Sweet! 

I opened the outer package and inside I found the cuttings wrapped in a plastic bag. The bag was securely sealed with easy to open ties.

Inside the bag I found 12 cuttings! The original offer was for 10 cuttings. At that moment I knew they were working hard for a good Etsy review. The bottoms of the cuttings were wrapped in a wet paper towel. They do that to keep the alive during shipping. 

Using a mat knife I removed from the bottom of each cutting the bark to expose the cambium layer in order to promote root growth. 

After I removed the bark of the cuttings I set them in three separate plastic containers that were 3/4 full with regular tap water.

The cuttings need to be near light BUT NOT in direct sunlight. 

Cover each bucket with plastic to keep the cuttings nice and moist. Change the water one a day RELIGIOUSLY. In about four weeks you will see roots growing. Watch out for an update in a month or so. 

 Cloning figs with cuttings is a very slow process similar to watching elephants mate. Be patient...

Taking advantage of great supermarket bargains

Recently I was shopping at my favorite supermarket, Adams in Newburgh, NY, America, where they have a very nice vegetable section where I saw the "bargain" cart loaded with packages. Normally that's the first area I go to because I always find great bargains there especially after holidays. 

This time they had bundled organic dill with spinach, leek and parsley. Each package had my name written all over it and it was very generously stuffed. Just the dill had an original price tag of $3.79 on it. I was buying $19 worth of stuff for $3. 

Most times I cook whatever I buy from that bargain cart the same day, but sometimes I choose to either freeze or dry it. The dill is already tied up with string and hung outside on the grapevine trellis to dry in the sun. At night I bring it inside the house because of the morning dew that will rehydrate the herb. If it's sunny and not too humid it will dry in 2-3 weeks. Then I take it indoors for further processing. I made a good video about processing my own dried herbs and you can watch it here. This time I will dry enough dill to last me sever months. I will add it to my world famous spinach pie and fish recipes. 

The point I'm trying to make is that you should take advantage of these special offers in order to stretch your money to its fullest. 

Language barriers from an Immigrant's perspective

 This is the quintessential immigrant video. I talk about problems that I've encountered in my American life with my accent and mispronouncing words. 

I forgot to include the difficulty I had with the Spanish name Jesus where in Spanish it is pronounced "hay-SOOS". 

Here is my YouTube video where I talk about three different situations I've encountered as an innocent immigrant.