The Merola Opera Program, an arm of the San Francisco Opera, provides young singers with the opportunity for great training and public performances each summer. Some of them are named Adler Fellows afterwards and perform during the regular season at SF Opera.

While I was playing for one of their concerts the other day, I picked up the 50th Anniversary book which provides a fantastic and unique perspective on the program. Just looking at the roster of participants over the years is eye-popping – oodles of major and/or famous modern opera singers were there… some notable conductors as well. The program’s very first year (1957) had as a student  Jess Thomas, one of the greatest Wagner tenors ever.

Anyway, if you’re interested,you can get the book at some Merola performances ($20). The author Tracy Grant, was even there on Sunday. Not in the area? It might be available through an Amazon market place seller:

http://tinyurl.com/Merola-book

If you’re interested, Merola will be presenting Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz next week, Così fan Tutte and the Grand Finale concert in August. More info here:

http://sfopera.com/merola.asp

I love this time of year in the yard because everything ripening is fresh and new. By November, we’ll be bored with them, moaning that the plants are still alive, and might “accidentally” neglect them to hasten their demise. For now, it’s exciting, every morning brings new discoveries.

This morning we saw cukes and chili peppers:

A neat new plant for us is the rat-tail radish, originally from Asia where the Thai call them phakkhithut, it was actually grown in the US since the mid-19th century. Looking suspiciously like a weed as it gets going, the pretty pretty blue & white flowers are followed the elongated edible seed pods, which really do taste like radishes. They’re seen either picked or still on the branch in farmers markets with Asian suppliers. I think this would be an extremely easy plant to use in open ground anywhere.

Finally (for now), the raised greens bed has been going full-force for a while now. We normally eat lots of this stuff, but it’s impossible to keep up with what’s ready now. There are several kinds of salad greens, some cooking greens and the cukes which climb the trellis to give everything shade when they’ll need it most in a few weeks.

The first tomato of summer appeared in the garden over the weekend. As about as small as a tomato could possibly be, this variety – Matt’s Wild Cherry – is the best-tasting cherry tomato I’ve grown. Even though we have varieties that are supposed to ripen earlier, Matt’s Wild Cherry always beats them by at least a week.

(Pommes d’amour, love apples, Paradeiser are lovely, evocative alternative names for the juicy fruit.)

Is it because the recession is really cutting down on travel? Or maybe it’s that Hillary is cracking the whip at the State Department. Either way, I was very surprised to receive my new passport just 12 days after turning in the form at the local post office. Yet another nice change from the days of GW (when it was taking 2-3 months).

It’s been a long time coming, but still it’s sad to see that Smith & Hawkins is calling it quits.

It’s unusual how things bought there over the years easily come to mind:  the white California poppies that regularly appear in our yard came from plants purchased at least ten years ago, the sturdy Adirondack chairs with the S&H markers. my first snail-leafed begonia, as well as our long-lived Haws watering cans.

During the housing bubble, the move away from the garden and towards very expensive outdoor furniture was an understandable choice, but finally a fatal one. The garden chemical-addiction pushers, Scotts Miracle Gro owned S&H and deserve some of the blame as well.

It’s been a while since we updated the progress on the Airstream… After working on cleaning up the exterior, Tom decided he’d rather not have to do it again after every rainy season. So up goes a shelter. It’s l-a-r-g-e. Today’s challenge was to raise a 20 foot piece of 2×12 engineered lumber 10 feet in the air, get it level, and then bolt it to the posts which are sunk 3 feet into the ground. After considering lots of approaches, the easiest, requiring the least muscle power, was the good old ratcheting strap.

After thinking getting this one piece of wood attached would take the better part of the day, 30 minutes and it was time to move on to other things..

Meanwhile, we got some fabric shopping done for the curtains and the pull-out sleeper sofas. I think it’s going to look nice when it’s all done.

No-knead sourdough bread is in the regular baking rotation at our house so I thought I’d share a couple of solutions to things that come up. (A little background on no-knead bread is here.)

First, there’s the matter of burnt bottom crusts. Putting the dough into a very well-heated vessel in a very hot oven can yield a dark and bitter crust once in a while. This has to do with the bottom of the pot getting hit with the greatest heat first and throughout the baking time. I’ve tried taking the bread out of its pot after 40 minutes and finishing it in the open air of the oven: it does work, but takes away from the simplicity of the no-knead method. (If you have a convection oven, this might not ever be an issue.)

Playing around with our ceramic cooker outside, which can sail up past 600 degrees, the necessity of a heat diffuser for anything that’s on the grill for more than a couple of minutes gave me an idea. If you slide a cooking sheet on a rack beneath the bread in its pot, the heat won’t hit the bottom full force. I have yet to see a bad crust this way.

The other thing can come up during very hot summer weather: the dough becomes floppier and harder to handle. Anyone working with artisan bread is familiar with wet and floppy dough. However, too much is too much. Adding more flour to stiffen it up drastically changes the character of the bread. A simple solution is to chill the dough in the fridge when you turn the oven on. It takes 30-40 minutes for our oven to heat the ceramic cast iron pot sufficiently. That’s perfect for cooling down the dough enough so that it naturally is easier to handle. (By the way, I’ve found putting fully-risen dough in the fridge until I can get back to it can be baked without returning it to room temperature.)

Our new solar installation passed final inspection this week. Hoorah! Seeing the electricity meter running backwards for the first time was pretty exciting.

From the day we signed the contract, installation took about 8-1/2 weeks. This system is estimated to be able to cover 65% our electricity bill, with a 100% payback happening sometime in 2016.

The environmental benefit is equivalent to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 7,050 pounds (3.5 tons) per year, or planting 1.2 acres of trees. When I did my own calculation using DOT numbers adjusted for our two hybrid vehicles, it’s the equivalent of NOT driving 19,012 miles per year. That neatly works out to be about how much we drive yearly.

A couple of more ways to look at this financially: the rate of return on over a 15-year period is 11.8%. Comparing this to current and foreseeable investment yields was a major positive. Also, there are rebates and tax incentives, the most impressive being the federal 30% tax credit. A tax credit comes off your total tax bill, not your adjusted income. So, assuming you’re in a 25% tax bracket, a $1000 tax credit is the rough equivalent of a $4000 tax deduction.

Whenever we have major work done, three bids is a must. In our case, only one company got up on the roof to take actually measurements. Putting the panels on the garage is as good as on the roof of the house, since passive solar water heating is already there. (The garage has panels on the eastern side as well.)