hearts of palm

ok, so.....i just got back from a round of saturday shopping...starting at the big lots, where i was thrilled to find jars of roasted red and yellow peppers, as well as cornichons, nicoise olives, and hearts of palm....all at bargain prices.....and there were more of the rose bubble bath that i bought out the last 2 jars the last time i dropped by.....on to the krogers and the aldi....and then the bonafide liquor store, which has relatively empty shelves and none of my favorite box white.....i did leave my picks on a wish list......and so now i have a pork shoulder roasting in the crock pot for barbecue, and a load of wash going, and the oven on self-clean.....and the luggage dragged up from the basement for the preliminary packing for london.....that trip is less than 2 weeks away......the birth mother's annual visit comes first and i must survive that weekend before flying away......i have downloaded 2 books for the trip.....in all truthiness, i had already downloaded pride and prejudice, but i couldn't help but listen to it now that i am walking at lunchtime at the h-burg baptist church....and so now i must hold myself back from listening to these books.....it is not like i have nothing in print available to read in the numerous stacks and shelving units spread over these three floors....i am simply spoiled with the luxury of being read to......so now.....i have water boiling for pasta (salad using those lovbely hearts of palm and roasted peppers).....and then i could either start into the upstairs shower stall with the lime-remover i remembered to purchase....or i could sit out on my terrace with the new yorker.......

sunday.....

ok, so i had earnest intentions of sleeping late this morning...or at least til 7:30 am.....but my dog took up the spot next to the bed where his whining could best resonate in my upturned ear......and so i dragged myself out of bed, grabbed my robe and cuppa....and walked with him up the road.....where he could not be bothered to actually accomplish the only task for which i would drag myself out of bed to aid/abet.....and so i am fixing to take my iphone and my growing library of audiobooks out to my terrace for a few minutes before i get ready for church.....i am listening to Michael Pollan's Second Nature......his tome dedicated to gardening.....so far i find his observations on the growing of roses and the grappling with weeds to be satisfying.....especially when one listens to the book read by the author while sitting in one's own work-in-progress......i have felt validation in that sense.....that gardens evolve....or at least that people who live to garden cannot quite see their planting schemes as complete and/or finished.

i do need to point out that i sat about listening to the book yesterday rather than actually working in my garden.....i DID step off the terrace from time to time to deadhead cosmos and take out completely dead stalks of phlox......but mostly i sat and thought about what i will do with my beds when i have the time.....and the money and cook weather and a bit of help......the next garden project is a low wall at the bottom of the garden just up from the brick walk to the compost pile..... this will add at least 12 inches of depth to the plot where we hope to grow vegetables in summer and install a purchased cold frame for extended season goodies like lettuces and onions.....we did get the played-out privet hedge taken down, but the stumps must be dug out before we can move ahead......and neither of us had the gumption to get out the ax in 95 degree heat......i could slip in a secondary project while i wait on the hedge job.....the drought kinda burned off some Achillea that had gotten out of hand and spindly to boot.....the empty space could accomodate rosa shailer's pink provence that resides behind the deck by the wall.....where the dirt is deepest and possibly problematic for transplating a settled-in plant.....after i move the rose i can put in a new display of srping bulbs.....hopefully may-flowering to complement this rose that tends to bloom in early may.....ah yes......so many things one can do to upgrade one's garden....or at least day-dream about on this glorious sunday morning....

altercation

ok, so.....someione in our neighborhood had it out at 3:30 am......loud voices that become screams...with at least 3 people contributed to the argument.....could not discern whether the voices came from a boat on the lake, or the cabin on the bend of our circle, or neighbors prone to disagreements who live up the creek.....i suppose i drifted back off to sleep at some point despite my determination to listen intently enough to make out actual dialogue.....i could really use a nap right about now.....

the pound and pedal

ok, so.....the annual pound and pedal is over, possibly over forever.....this event has evolved over the past 23 years(give or take a year) from a one-way 20 mile bike/run from a friend's law office in downtown d-ville to his home in forkland.....when the friend moved his family to town, the venue changed to our house, and became a 10 mile out and 10 mile back bike/run.....in those 20+ years the original participants have aged, moved away, or passed away.....young blood has been recruited, the particpation choices ammended to include the option of biking the entire route has helped keep the event alive.....but the competition from the uk/uofl game as well as the tri-for-sight dramatically diminished the crowd this year.....we still ended up with 30 for lunch.....but it is disheartening to put time and effort into the preparations only for your friends to say that they have better things to do that morning.....

making progress.....

ok, so.....we made great progress this week as parents.....in that we survived the reality of a child who managed to move without our physical presence.....granted......we packed up his selected possessions from home and sent them up east with another child to act as proxy.....and we conferred several times daily in hopes that said child had communicated with the other parent for advice and/or good counsel...'oh, he didn't call you either?'.......we may have located an aerial view of his new neighborhood, but we have no confirmation of which house he now calls home.......as for us.....our lives will remain much as they have always been.....our child will be able to call up snapshot visions of our kitchen, and my terrace, and the porch.....but we have only our recollections of the last time we saw him-on graduation day with his gown and diploma under his arm waiting for us to insist that we take this things home for safekeeping......i have created a summertime reading nook in his basement bedroom.....the club chair and hassock up against the sidewall with a pole-light....it is private and cool and a pleasant place to read on a Sunday afternoon......when the weather gets colder I will be back upstairs by the woodstove...but for now i enjoy the solitude of a room that has passed from eldest to the middle child but not to the youngest given the secluded outside entrance.....in my dreams the door opens into the greenhouse......problematic with the blue plush carpet......if we tunnel into the large cistern that sits unused just uphill, we could seal-off the bedroom door and create a new entrance by the hotwater heater.....on a winter's day the greenhouse might just be warm enough for yet another reading nook.......i reflect on these potential scenarios as i break from the book at hand.....not that i am actually reading these days....i have moved into the audio age full-force.....with an entire book downloaded onto my phone.....i listen even as i type.....as i drive to work, as i take time for lunch at my desk.....there is enough room on the....chip?..... that i have 3 novels downloaded for that day when i finish the current book....as well as talking points of the major works i will see at the national gallery in london this october....as well as a narrated walking tour of westminster.....ah.....making progress....

unconventional

ok, so.....i got into a spirited discussion with several of my closest kin over the weekend about the notion of whether or not i am unconventional.....of course, the discussion started out not really being about me, but me being me i somehow made it so......below is the dictionary version, which is worse than i suspetced as the definition of unconventional....

Main Entry: unconventional
Part of Speech: adjective
Definition: very different; odd
Synonyms: anarchistic, atypical, avant-garde, beat, bizarre, crazy, eccentric, far-out, freakish, freaky, free and easy, idiosyncratic, individual, individualistic, informal, irregular, kinky*, kooky, nonconformist, oddball, off the beaten track, off the wall, offbeat, original, out in left field, out of the ordinary, unceremonious, uncommon, uncustomary, unique, unorthodox, unusual, way-out, weirdo*
Antonyms: conventional, formal, normal, standard, usual
* = informal/non-formal usage

sadly, the synomyms that i feel best describe my life choices are in the minoirty of the list....on the other hand, i have never desired to be descrbed as standard, normal or usual......so i suppose that unconventional IS the more desirable of the descriptives.....

the audit

ok, so......this week was dominated by a local accountant and his very pregnant assistant.....who performed, under a pricey contract, our required yearly audit.....yikes.....the former director was asked to leave upon the results of an audit....and even though i have done my best to avoid his controversial ways.....i still hold my breathe that all of our accounts are in order.....

million (and a half) dollar houses.....

ok, so......i took 2 vacation days off to drive my mother and my daughter on a whirlwind tour of ohio memories.....including dresden where my favorite aunt and three of her four children live on the family orchard....and then through holmes county...the amish country where i was born and thrived til 5th grade.....and then on to cleveland where my mother was born/raised and where her only sibling still lives and where her niece lives in the family homestead that dates back before the war( read that as civil war).... when my mother's father died, the newspaper published not a photo of him, but of the house and its role as one of the last stops on the underground railroad.....but i digress from the trip....made tolerable by 'the help' on cd.....the lives of my cousins (on both sides) make my life seem like a cake walk by comparison.....and may i say for the record that my mother is no more senile than either her blood kin or extended family.......my aunt's catch-phrase 'million-dollar houses' has become family legend to describe all that is ostentatious, indicative of northern ohio and better than anything we (from the south) could aspire to......on this trip the price of this standard jumped up to a million and a half......which i immediately texted to my middle child....and then covertly angled the text message to my daughter in a conspiratorial gesture...... we had a quiet chuckle of the inflation.....that moment may have been the best on the trip.....

amen, amen, and amen....

ok, so.......i have three reasons to rejoice.....my eldest is back from his two-year Fulbright stint, mu middle child has a (perfect) job lined up for after his internship, and the first-ever meeting between our youngest child and her birth father went better than expected.....

beating back nature.....

ok, so......i am convinced that should i neglect to weed my beds for more than a a few days....such as a 9-day vacation....my beds would be taken over completely by vines......time was when honeysuckle was the plant to rip out whenever it raised its ugly head....but this is clearly the year for vines..... thick, ropey vines....vines with thorns.....vines with pods (milkweed?)......vines that snake up the long canes of rambling roses, and hydrangeas, and.......even the dead daylily stalks......i have alrteady spent time this morning ripping vines off of the back fence....i swear they were not there yesterday.....i heard on NPR that the excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere makes for exceptional vines growth...as evidewnced by the huge poison ivy clumps that i must get around to ripping out with disposable gloves.....on the other hand, there is a lovely trailing ground cover that has hybernated in the boxwood oval that is peaking out from the nooks and crannies of the stones and bricks....it is from an Amish farm in northeastern Ohio.....Miss Fanny Schlabaugh gave me the original clump.....we were there with my parents, spouse and children.....visiting her father who was nearing 100 at the time....when we arrived he was out on the thresher......and he came rising into the barnyard waving his arms at my parents who had known him since the mid-50's....but i digress from the vining ground cover......which could possibly get out-of-hand and be just as pecky as the vines i did not plant and do not want in my beds......

jane austen's fight club

ok, so this link is to the youtube version of jane austen's fight club......

"The first rule of fight club is one never mentions fight club. No corsets, no hatpins, and no crying."

book club selection gathering.....

ok, so....we hosted the annual book club selection dinner last evening......and it was preceeded by a months of property upkeep projects....like restaining the deck and latticework, relaying the brick walk behind the garage, repainting the porch, spraying for chiggers, fixing the pond lining......last night the temperature at 7:00 pm was still above 90 degrees.....so we opted to eat inside rather than on the pristine deck area....and we found a workable solution to a gathering that exceeeds the maximum of 12-13 at the table expanded with all leaves....we left the table as it was and borrowed 2 lightweight folding tables from work that sat 6 each....and so we could have accommodated 18 folks for supper.....we dined on grilled citrus marinated salmon, pasta salad, a bean and barley salad, marinated asparagus, cumcumbers in sour cream, strawberry/spinach salad, and strawberry-pretzel salad...plus jan's peppermint patty cupcakes.....we will be reading several books that i have already read....which works out well as my spouse can take his time reading those books......we selected a book that our eldest was asked to read for discussion purposes.....which means we will host the january gathering and worry about clearing snow rather than upkeep projects......

humboldt fog....

ok, so i dragged myself out of bed early to water the flower beds before driving into town to go to the farmer's market......i bought yellow tomatoes and 'bodacious' sweet corn from the only gut who appeared to be selling his own produce.....the other stand appeared to have boxes clearly labeled tomatoes under the tables......and then i popped into V-the market for the humboldt fog as promised on her facebook page.....omg.....i came close to eating it all when i got home from the stop at the aldi store.......if there is a flavor of this earth better than goat cheese i would like to know what it is......

incorrect spelling.....

ok, so.....in my dreams i was editing the headlines for a blog that looked like the huffpost......and every time a word was spelled incorrectly i would correct it....and this tedium went on and on....no action, just spelling errors...i had my fill of headlines yesterday....especially the one that i found on the clipping ripped from wednesday's newspaper by my spouse......uk student in critical condition after police tazing.....seems we know this fellow.......seems he was on the roof of a two story apartment house.....a bit out of his right mind...and the police came to save him from himself by tazing him twice...he got back up after each tazing.....and when they went to taze him the third time he jumped off the roof.....omg.....i feel great sympathy for people who find themselves temporarily out of their right minds.....it is only by the grace of god that i cling to sanity on most days...i cannot fault those who struggle with their own....

world cup......

ok, so.....we talked to our dear middle child after lunch, after church....then rather than heading outdoors to do manual labor....we settled onto the sofa for a nice afternoon of air conditioned world cup final play....which i am certain involved short naps for each of us.....i have no recollection of the first half after the group photo ops and handshaking.....and then i waited for the brilliant professional soccer moves that i have been led to believe comes with this level of play....but mostly all i saw was chaps dashing to the ground and holding various parts and screaming indignantly....well, all except the guy who got kicked in the chest.....that looked like a bonafide foul.....in my humble opinion, the dutch looked a bit meaner and rougher than the spaniards......

riding for reading

ok, so.....my eldest child blogged his way across america last summer.......62 entries give or take.....with the blog hosted by the local newspaper....at some point after the ride was finished, the paper took down the blog.....which made the links to the blog broken, and made the actual content of the blog inaccessible.....phone calls and emails to the newspaper asking for access to the content by the author have produced no results....sad to lose such a valuable piece of writing and scrapbooking.......and then yesterday, while i was whiling away my lunch hour catching up on my favorite blogs on google reader......i saw riding for reading as a blog that had not been recently updated.....and there, drawn up into that site, was the entire blog, pictures, verbal descriptions and all.....and so i have copied and pasted my way through 160 pages of blogged memories, tidied them up a bit by downsizing the photos a tad...and downloaded them onto my thumbdrive......the days are not in actual order, and the end is somehow in the middle....but i will leave the final editing to my child when he gets back from his latest ride.......

true

ok, so.....i was driving back into d-ville with errands plotted out for minimum carbon foot printing, when the song that was playing just before ATC was scheduled to come on had a lyric that almost brought tears to my eyes....'so true'......and i missed my friend gail so very much at that moment.....she who often described realities as 'so true'...or just 'true'.....and she has been gone for so very long...or has it been just the other day......i last talked to her on my birthday.....but i cannot remember which birthday it was.....

stain.....

ok, so......i spent the afternoon staining the latticework that hangs below the deck.....mostly because now that the deck has been restained, the latticework looks grungy.....because it has never-ever been stained....and because i have a planting scheme for the bed beside the under-deck gate.....i figured i might as well go ahead and stain that entire area before i planted the new things and before the existing roses grow back from severe pruning......and so i managed to get all but the higher parts....and i found myself in a curious daydream as i dabbed down the long strips and across the counter-ribs.....even more curious is my reluctance to record the daydream for posterity...suffice it to say that gardening was involved.....

a moment of feline amusement.....

ok, so...on this freebie day-off i started out early with the mid-summer weeding, removal of dead day lily stems, etc....and i ventured outside the fence to weed out the wild shrubberies that want so badly to grow between my boxwoods.....and 'all the sudden' as we like to say in these parts...i noticed that the dog had strayed off and so i called out to him with several extra-loud rounds of Buddy,Buddy,Buddy......but instead of the dog running obediently my way....the cat sprang out of the underbrush and came scurrying to me.....i decided to reward her with a little morsel of leftover porkchop out of the refrigerator......one must reinforce such loyalty......eventually the dog came home, but he missed out on the treats....

zones.....

ok, so.....i appear to forget from sunday night to saturday sometime midday that our house is temperature and time controlled to maximize comofrt while we are home and/or sleeping to save fuel when we are not at home and/or sleeping......and so when i try to take a nap on saturday or sunday afternoon i wake up almost feverish only to recall that the daytime temeprature upstairs is way higher than the evening temperature....this is not huge news, gentle readers......just a window into my current state of confusion...