Baby Papaya Trees, Trace Minerals, and Ben & Jerry’s Amazing Vegan ‘Nice Cream’

I’m adding trace minerals to our distilled water.

Discovery: Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Vanilla, non-dairy, almond milk ‘nice cream’. This is the best vegan nice cream in the cosmos.

The papaya trees arrived! I’m psyched. The variety is ‘Singapore Pink’, which produces papayas (also called ‘paw-paw’) with a sweet, deep pink flesh.

I’m not going to kid myself: these trees may never bear fruit here in Connecticut. But papaya trees are so gorgeous, so I don’t care. At one of my favorite coffee houses in the world, the Moon Dog Café in Vermont, the owners keep a large (about 6 feet tall) potted papaya tree in the front window year-round. I’ve never seen papayas on it, but it’s the most amazing tree. That big, tropical tree thriving in Vermont is my muse.

I’ve dropped about $30 on a bottle of Trace Minerals Research brand ionic, vegan mineral drops. Adding this to the distilled water we make fortifies the water with minerals that may have been lost in the distillation process. I’ve been reading a lot about replenishing lost nutrients in distilled water. Alternatively, the mineral drops can just be added to juice or anything else you drink. It’s tasteless and super concentrated. Minerals matter.

If you haven’t yet tried Ben & Jerry’s non-dairy, almond-milk-based, vegan, cherry vanilla ‘nice cream’, then stop wasting your time reading this silly blog, and go buy some. I thought Soy Delicious brand was good. This is even better. I dare any ice cream-loving carnivore to distinguish this from B&J’s cow milk-based cherry vanilla ice cream. Go to the market and get some now, before vegans buy it all out.

All the garden veggies have been planted, but the weather is not cooperating. We’re looking at non-stop rain in the forecast, with temperatures for at least the next two weeks barely lurching out of the 60s.

This is not a good start for hot weather, sun-loving vegetable plants. Not good at all. We’ll be working to stave off fungal diseases, which thrive in this climate. Aside from that, the plants will not get strongly established when they need to, which is now. C’mon Mother Earth: we had such a long, cold, wet spring. It’s time for us all to be redeemed.

Next in the mail is the turmeric plant we ordered. I’m still hoping that our turmeric rhizomes will sprout, but I’m hedging our bets with this little plant. It’s going to get a lot of TLC, and hopefully, it will behave like our pineapple plant.

The crown from our old pineapple plant is growing great since we ate the incredibly fresh, sweet pineapple from that tree and rooted the crown. No market pineapple ever performed so well. So, maybe the fresh rhizomes from this plant will also sprout easily when the time comes (in about 2 years). There’s nothing like fresh.

My husband and I got our wedding anniversary celebrating started this weekend. Yesterday, we had an early dinner at Tibetan Kitchen in Middletown, then headed to Mohegan Sun for a few hours of fun and pina coladas.

Our 5-year wedding anniversary is in just over a week. He gave me a ring and we were engaged just one month after we met, and married 6 months later. Fast. But when you’ve met the One, your head and heart know it, and time becomes inconsequential.

All the old disappointments, faux pas, and hurts just melt away, and you step into a new life with someone who understands what love and loyalty really means. He is definitely the best impulse decision I ever made.

Live in peace.