Bouquets and Misfits

The flowers are doing very well this year, and picking has promoted more buds. So here are two bouquets, one in the living room, one in the kitchen.

Misfits day, and the returns are out ready. Notice the bags of garden debris are gone, clever me, tossed out back to feed the ground under the trees.

Green beans for three bean salad soon, hydration additive for water, just trying this because water isn't always enough in this heat.

Honey wheat bread until I bake again, for toast with those beautiful brown eggs. Baby bella mushrooms to slice and freeze for future omelettes with those eggs.  Bananaz for smoothies with the berries, straw and blue, which will be jam or sauce.  Not eating raw berries for now.

Little sugar plums to macerate and cook with the apples, nectarines to slice and freeze for future crumbles. Shrimp because Mary's not the only person who can have shrimp, so there. I might toss them in the three bean salad. 

All good. I'm taking advantage of the fruit season while the going's good. It's wonderful to have such food literally put on the step. Another friend has signed up for Misfits, said they had her at heirloom tomatoes!

Early mornings are good just now. I'm out in my bathrobe before six, while the water's heating for coffee, to visit the plants and pick little bouquets. 

There's more shade now as the Japanese maple has extended her canopy and the butterfly bush overtops the fence. 

This is good for the people and the house, but raises an issue for next year's flower seeds, which may need more sun than they'll get. That's next year's issue.

 Speaking of issues, I had a little jolt when I got an alert from the bank about a deposit from my Brit (tiny) pension. This is deposited in my bank every thirteen weeks. Don't ask me why HM Gov works on lunar quarters, but anyway I looked again. Forty cents.  Yes, that's what it still said. 

Now this pension is small, based on a few years of work before emigration, but it's not usually that small. After panicking then trying to figure out who to ask, the bank certain to be no help, I went online and after plunging about all over the various websites the Brit gov directed me to, I'm a niche recipient, finally found my little slot.

Which told me to expect a credit of about $1 about now,to put right an underpayment. This is definitely granular accounting. Evidently it's what's left after the bank calculates the exchange and the handling fee.

However I usually have a time trying to figure out the thirteen weeks, usually miscounting, and thought it was time to be paid. But I rationalized that I must still be in the system since they're sending me my 40c.  And I think I should be paid next week. Everything crossed.

I should explain that unless they're sure you're still eligible, meaning alive, they'll stop payments. This happens when their mail fails to arrive so you don't know they're asking. It happened to me after 9/11  because of the anthrax attack.  

Our post office was the target, as if there wasn't enough to worry about, already being within the footprint of the 9/11 attacks.  Local people involved with all of it, local lives lost.

All the post office workers had to be tested and observed and injected with Cipro, after battles with the Feds, Bush the Second unwilling to release lifesaving vaccine to a blue state, sound familiar? 

And the mail had to be irradiated. This was a hit or miss operation and many people including me, received a bag of charred scraps, with an apology. 

Among the cinders, aside from now overdue bills of all kinds though a lot of agencies waived overdue fees and penalties because of our situation, was evidently the Brit pension are you alive form. 

When I finally found I'd been dropped I got in touch explaining and they were very helpful, also seemingly quite excited to be corresponding with an actual survivor, and they resinstated me after a few paperwork issues, many weeks late.

This is why I won't change my bank, after all the obstacles to getting this foreign, oh dear, foreign currency, oh dearer and exchange rate and handling fees oh dearest, set up in the first place years ago.  I don't think I have the fortitude to move banks and go through it again.

All good now though. Delicious food helps.

Happy day everyone, we got this, sez Ted and Big Ursy and Pony and Ursula