End of Season Bonus

As I have confessed before, I am no gardener, but I love flowers. GF gave me these ageratum as a transplant from her own garden, and I stuck them into an empty place, and they have been happy to come back every year, in spite of my neglect. They are a bit invasive, and they keep trying to move over and are crowding out my rosemary, which I am proud to say has wintered over for the third year, and is finally getting to be a decent size. I always felt so bad about cutting off a "sprig" for our dinner when the thing was so puny. But, I digress.

This ageratum is the just about last thing that blooms in the garden. It stays green and leafy and leggy until now, when it starts putting out little periwinkle balls, and then I think, "Oh, it is not going to do too well this year." But, then the flowers keep getting bigger and bigger until they are 2-3" across. The bonus is that it is butterfly season, and they all seem to love this plant. One day there were 10 monarchs out there all enjoying the flowers and the sun--all right outside my kitchen window. Sweet!

A Non-Event

Hurricanes are serious business--nothing to fool around with. We haven't had a real one since the eighties, and the weather people keep saying that we are overdue. So, here comes this year's string on the radar maps, looping their way across the Atlantic, swooping through the Islands and heading on up the east coast. That seems to be the pattern this time around--the last few years they have all gone to the south and into the Gulf. Yesterday was supposed to be "Earl". I say "supposed to be", because it sure turned out to be nothing for us--not even a gust of wind. We had a couple of 20 minute straight down showers, but for the most part, the day was still, gray and humid.

I put our pots of plants down from the deck, and unhooked the ones that were up on hangers. MT moved the deck chairs to the basement, so that nothing would blow around--all little stuff like that, since we don't have a boat or anything. Well, there was nothing.

Come dinner time, I'm deciding what to make, and I decided to grill some corn, and some tuna medallions. I put together some compound butter and a batch of chimichurri, and we pulled the chairs out from the breakfast table, and ate out on the deck. I guess there was a little breeze that blew out the citronella candles, but it was a beautiful evening.

I keep thinking of all the stories of the hurricane of 1938 which was a direct hit on Long Island and Rhode Island and there was absolutely no warning system, and big loss of life. They say it was a beautiful day, and people went out to the shore for picnics and parties, and the storm blew in and the surf came up and everything got washed away. Now we are "warned" for days ahead and "prepared", but no storm this time around. Just as well. We toasted Earl over our dinner, and know they'll be others in his track. May they all stay offshore!

That's Better!

A very loooong time ago, I needed a place to put my music next to my piano. I collected this old record cabinet from someone who no longer wanted it, and my music was always easy to reach, since I was teaching lessons, and it had to be handy. It was never a pretty piece of furniture, and for some reason, I never got around to even painting the thing. I confess, I really didn't even see it anymore, and it has gone on in its ugliness many years after the piano students stopped coming.

I finally took a good look at the pile of books and old copies lurking there and decided it was time to make most of it go away. I found a skinny bookcase that looked like it would serve, but the box was 80" long, and was never going to fit into my car. The other day we hauled ourselves and our van over to the store, and brought it home. I got out the tools that were shown in the picture. The whole set of directions was pictures, which work best for me, since I seem to be a visual person, and if the words are written in the country of manufacture, they often do not make much sense. I set about putting this little sweetie together. It was fairly simple, and I only made one (pretty big) mistake at the end when I nailed the backing in place and then realized I had the wrong side forward--very akin to stitching in Hattie's (see July 19th post) legs backwards so that her toes faced her heinie, and her heels were out front. I got a little screwdriver that let me dig out the nails (all 18 of them) without too much damage to the part that was going to show when it went back together.

I'm so proud! I threw out two big bags of books and paper copies, sorted out a couple of piles that can go to other musicians, and moved my organ music down from the back bedroom onto the nice new shelves. Now, no more shame in the music room!

Baby Stuff

Garden Fairy has finally met her first grandchild. She has always been enamored of her friends' grandchildren, but has had to wait for the proper moment (as is appropriate) to have one of her very own, and now he has arrived.

I popped into the sewing room and put together some little sets that I call "Slurp and Burp"--a bib and a burp cloth. I have sewn a number of these bibs for other babies, and the parents always get back to me and say what a success they are, since there is no velcro to get stuck on other things in the laundry, and with a good old button closure, it won't come off the way a snap will when the baby pulls at it. I keep picking up remnant cuts of flannel when I am in the fabric store, and have a pretty good assortment of prints ready and waiting. Keep those babies coming! And--congratulations GF!

Shopping When I'm Hungry

They tell you that all the time--don't shop when you're hungry. At least I don't buy a lot of junk food, but I do tend to dig something out of the bag as soon as it hits the kitchen counter, and stuff it into my mouth.

We have had three days of rain--and these have been the ONLY ones all summer. We have been suffering with 90*+ for weeks on end, and I have been loath to turn on the stove, for any reason. I'm pretty creative when it comes to putting things together from leftovers, so we have not been deprived of nice dinners, and we have eaten out on our deck every night for at least the last six weeks. But the last few day's readings have barely crawled up to 70*, so I thought it would be a good time to make something that would take a while to cook, and picked out baby carrots, and mushrooms, and the most beautiful bag of potatoes from Massachusetts, of all places, along with an assortment of veggies that will get us through the rest of the week.

I need to use up the frozen meat in our freezer, so I have been resisting the sale fliers, and pulling lumps off the freezer shelves in the basement. I ended up with a package of chicken legs, and turned out a batch of chicken stew, with three containers that will return to the freezer for future lazy days. "Chicken stew with baby carrots, mushrooms and new potatoes in white wine and tarragon sauce." See--I could write those fancy menus. Come by for dinner--I'll defrost for you!

Edward Gorey Would Like These

I took myself to the produce market yesterday, since we were out of fresh veggies, and they always have an assortment of cut flowers, usually at reasonable prices. Since I enjoy having a vaseful on my breakfast room table, and since I am a terrible gardener and there is usually nothing out in the garden to bring in, I will treat myself to something pretty. They had cala lillies yesterday, white, and these, which I think in flower terms would probably be called black. Very unusual, I thought, and they were very fresh. I put them in my basket with all my veggies, and when I got home, I did my little arrangement, and there they are, sitting on the table.

I confess, they are starting to creep me out. They look like they are waiting for something to crawl into their centers and fall down into the waiting pool of poisonous...

...maybe I should have bought the white ones...

Lime Blanket Baby Born

I did a second baby blanket using Bernat Softee, since the first one went so well. They had the greatest colors--the usual assortment of baby pastels, but also some gorgeous darker colors not usually used for infant yarn. The first blanket was for a boy, and I used turquoise. It was so pretty. That went as a shower gift, but that little boy is still waiting to be born. There was another baby on the way, so I chose the lime green, since it is still summer, and I thought this baby was also a boy. Turns out they waited for the birth to find out what it would be, and she was born last night. I confess, all this technology is pretty great--they had pictures on the internet from the hospital room, everyone looking happy, baby looking sweet--wondering what just happened here. Must be very confusing...

We did a lot of driving last week--first upstate to the old ancestral home for a school reunion, then on to Cape Cod for most of a very pleasant (and cooler) week of pretty scenes, beach and fun. Cape Cod never disappoints, even after all these years. I wonder how it retains its salty character, in spite of all the nasty development that goes on everywhere else. The bonus was crochet time in the car, and I got the blanket finished--ran out of yarn for the last round of lace on the edge, but that was remedied when we got home. Last night the beautiful baby came into this world, and luckily, lime green will go fabulously well with her little pink outfits. Glad I didn't go for the yellow!