A Legal Perspective on Inter-Personal Relationships

Often, when things go wrong between colleagues, friends, or family, one party says to the other, “I’m so sorry, but, I didn’t mean it. You know I didn’t mean to do it. Right? It was an accident!”

This statement is a plea for forgiveness, and a hope that all will return to normalcy.

In US common civil law, this statement would be a defense against intentional misconduct. But, it would be useless against a claim of gross negligence and negligence.

Gross Negligence is a conscious and voluntary disregard of the need to use reasonable care, which is likely to cause foreseeable grave injury or harm to persons, property, or both.

Negligence, rather, is a mere failure to exercise reasonable care.

In our inter-personal relationships, I fear we are often too binary — looking for intentional harm or assuming that without intention, the non-harmed party must be innocent.

But if we adopt the US common civil law standard, if we are careless with those we should be caring for, then we are responsible for the harm we cause them by our carelessness.

And, if (for whatever reason) we consciously and voluntarily disregard the need to use reasonable care in our relationships (for example, when the other party has asked us to pay attention to something that hurts them and we choose not to pay attention to it in our treatment of them), then we are grossly negligent, and we are even more culpable for their harm than if we just failed to exercise reasonable care.

If 2009 taught me anything, it was that I needed to stand up for myself when people (professionally, personally, and in the family) were harming me without intention. On accident.

They didn’t mean it. They were not bad people. I love them.

But, at the end of the day, even if the other party doesn’t mean it, if their actions harm you, they harm you. And, we all have a duty to avoid negligence (and gross negligence) when it comes to care of ourselves.

Remnants of the Summer Garden

Early this week, I had a cold. So, quite reasonably, brother banned me from visiting. Instead, once I felt better but still had the sniffles, I started to transition the summer garden to the winter garden (while sneezing — have I mentioned I’m allergic to dust? Yeah… gardening makes perfect sense…).

Due to the end of the tomato plants, we have green tomatoes that didn’t quite ripen. We selected 2 pounds of the biggest firmest beauties for deep fried slices sometime this week. So, now, we’re just trying to figure out what to do with the rest. We are evaluating between Arvay’s Chow-Chow, or our friend S’s aunt’s pickled green tomatoes, or dilled green tomatoes, but we certainly have enough:

Tonight, after a day at the hospital with bro, I let off some steam (literally) by canning okra pickles, green tomato pickles, cucumber pickles (3 different styles), eggplant pickles, tomato sauce, and just good old-fashioned skinned tomatoes (sorted by color). So far, we are pleased with the results:

And finally, in “oh-happy-day” news, we have lots of sprouts in our flat from the winter gardening class at Love Apple Farm:

Other than that, I must admit, there is very little to report.

Belated Harvest

With everything that has been going on in our lives, E and I have not been paying too much attention to the garden.

But, this year, we were much more professional than in years past, so we have an irrigation system (plus it’s *raining* right now, weird!).

Turns out, that even as your life is spiraling into its own random course, the garden, if properly planted, fertilized and watered, will continue to grow in your absence.

This morning, I finally had time to harvest after about 3 weeks of neglect (this was the haul minus the bag I packed up for E2, and without any okra, radishes, or cucumbers, all of which are also ripe):

Yes, I will be giving away some serious gift tomatoes at work tomorrow…

This awesome harvest is very unfortunately timed, as the heating element in our oven took the liberty of entertaining us with a very spectacular failure yesterday evening. I wish, in hindsight, that we had taken pictures, but at the time, we were watching the arc travel the filament despite the oven being turned off with E at the ready with a fire extinguisher, so the camera was nowhere near the top of our list. Bummer — this would have been a good week to return to the slow-roasted tomatoes… And, of course, while I’d scheduled a weekend to can at the G’s as they recovered from burning man, somehow that didn’t make the cut due to our other obligations (duh!). So, we’re stuck with entirely too many tomatoes. I suspect I’ll find a way to turn this problem into a blessing. Perhaps I’ll have to make and freeze sauce…

Anyways, in case you couldn’t tell from the larger picture, one of the hilarious things about the garden is what happens to small-to-medium sized summer squash when left on the vine entirely too long:

Yes. That is my arm for scale.

So, the moral of the story is that a well-tended garden will just keep growing and producing in September even if you completely neglect it. No matter what else is going on in your life, the garden will grow.

I find this very comforting.

Summer = Tomatoes

For me, Summer is tomatoes. Tomatoes are summer. And that’s pretty much it.

So last week’s harvest made me very happy, and confirmed that it was Summer, my favorite season:

And E making his mother’s slow-roasted tomatoes made me even more jubilant, and reminded me that it was still Summer, still my favorite season (mmm… if only you could slow roast without the oven in the Summer…):

Gazpacho? Yet more proof of the awesomeness of Summer, and why it’s my favorite season:

And Caprese? Is there anything more indicative of Summer? Seriously? Italian anything and tomatoes? That’s just the essence of Summer:

And camping, this weekend? Yeah, that’s Summer. But even moreso is returning to this harvest:

And, from the harvest, I was inspired to make a Summer soup. The only ingredients not from our garden? Salt, olive oil, and a red bell pepper.

Roasted Heirloom Tomato Soup

First, slice tomatoes into 1 cm steaks, and layer in a baking pan. Then, top with sliced peppers from the garden (Pimiento D’espellette and jalapenos) and garlic from the dried harvest. If you are lucky, some random genetic mutation may have happened in your garlic harvest, and you can just use *one* clove (i.e. not a head of cloves, just one). The largest clove you’ve ever seen:

After the garlic, add strips of a red bell pepper and sprinkle with salt and olive oil, and bake for 20 minutes at 350:

Turn and mix the tomatoes, and allow to bake for another 20-30 minutes. Puree in a blender. Serve into bowls and top with minced basil. Enjoy!

Food and Garden Update

The plants are growing like mad — every weekend there’s work to be done to catch up — harvesting, pruning, spraying, weeding, pulling up old plants. Our butternut squash is taking over the fence:

We’ve had two more great harvests since the last one:

(Chrysanthemum greens, a gift plant from Cynthia, are a tasty addition to tomato salads).

(The lame-looking cucumber is just a little dirty on a white spot — he tasted great. The troubled tiny squash, however, yeah, he went straight to the compost.)

And, from these harvests we’ve made many delicious meals — BBQ pizzas are a regular treat (no dishes!), plus tomato salads galore.

Also, C introduced us to the awesomeness that is quark by showing up with lemon quark and garlic quark.

We took the leftovers and made a delicious garlic quark squash risotto:

And here are some sliced Romano Squash to be baked with red onions on top that were marinated in olive oil and herbs:

Eventually, they were joined with baked tomatoes and a mini pizza for each of us topped with harvested goodness:

Have I mentioned how much I love the summer garden?