- Baseball is extremely popular in Japan.
2. You can bake frozen perogies and they will turn out crispy and golden without needing much attention.
3. Renewing your Canadian passport from the U.S. costs $100 more than applying in Canada. (You can bet I’ll be crossing the border to drop off my renewal application.)
4. The nocebo effect is the opposite of the placebo effect; it occurs when negative expectations of medical treatment result in a worse outcome than would otherwise have occurred. (The term can also be applied more broadly than the medical context.)
5. Ann Patchett has a new novel (called Whistler) coming out next June!
6. Finally, some things I learned about gardening over the summer and fall:
- Large tomato plants are too much for container gardening (note to self: research small varieties next year).
- Jalapeno plants can produce upward of 70 peppers each (admittedly, I had a sample size of two).
- My family isn’t too fond of cucumbers, even though it’s fun to watch them grow.
- Summer squash plants can rot through the stem, so pay attention!
- Pea plants aren’t worth the space they take up, if space is limited (again, it was fun to watch them grow quickly).
- Black seeded simpson and romaine lettuce did very well for us.
- Bush beans continue to produce bit by bit over the summer.
- It makes more sense to me to grow expensive produce rather than things like potatoes, so I’ll definitely continue with herbs and tomatoes and hopefully have berries someday. (Of course it all depends how much space you have and how much compost, fertilizer, etc. you have to purchase.)