A new bouquet, a survey and Misfits

 New pickings today for a bouquet 

With an ink drawing suggested by it

The patio at this season is different every day 

Wednesday brought the last online survey from my hip surgeon.  It paid attention to pain and activity, where my answers ranged from none, pain, that is, to everything I want, activity, that is. 

I expect he'll be happy with my recovery. It's three months now, then my final follow up visit is in a couple of weeks. At this point I'm used to being unaware of any need for special care. Happy days.

Thursday was Misfits delivery day,  and they tell me they can't supply the peaches I ordered, but oh well. Everything else  arrived. 

Apples because they're the daily snack, strawberries and blueberries for desserts, cherries for afternoon snacks, tofu for crisp tofu katsu, yogurt, vital, bread because it's too hot to bake, shrimp for salad maybe, feta crumbles, two healthy sparkling drinks.

Easy food prep is on the menu in the heat and humidity.

Lovely colors of summer.

Thursday afternoon was about staying in the cool, reading 

New to me but starting out very promising 

Then I needed to set up an audiobook to spin by. 

I'd found a fine roving in my collection, with a bit of sparkle, which I used to spin some laceweight yarn. My hands needed a change from other fiber arts, different movements. This is a good regency,  full of comic scenes.

Happy day everyone, let's hope for some cool.  I did get a good walk early before it got too hot.

Late breaking: the insurer called, have approved the claim for the house repair, and will inform the contractor, so we can get on with scheduling the work. It feels like several years since this started. So this is good.

Still hot at 10pm

People need plants and water

Monday was about weaving while I thought about stitching, finishing the Sacks book and walking.

I recommend all three! If you can. 

Catching up online while weaving. Bruce and Melissa on the screen.

Lovely bright weather for walking 

As I got to this point I started hearing the plomp sounds of frogs leaping into the water, and saw a couple as they flew from the bank, see the widening circles in the pond.

I got closer 

There were dragonflies in action, we have a lot of them, several species, and water boatmen on the water surface. I think some of them may have been taken by frogs, when they suddenly submerged.  

Here's a wild strawberry or something adjacent, and there are many around here. There's also spraying, so I don't check them out.

Home again I sat outside reading and watching birds, and noticing the honesty has started its seedpods 

Once they're silver, I'll let the seeds fall then add the branches of  silver disks to my collection in the downstairs bathroom.

The purple flowers are the sage. They're similar in shape to antirrhinum. 

And 

the yellow potatoes are starting up.

The Sacks book of essays, some written near the end of his life, is full of wisdom, really worth reading. 

He understood the value of plants and being involved with them, and would seek out botanical gardens when he traveled. He comments that his psychiatric hospital work kept him in New York city, and only the gardens made it tolerable. How I agree.

And I'm now rereading an old favorite, full of comic scenes 

I know it so well I'm laughing in anticipation of the antics of Nicky.

Happy day, everyone, flowers all round!

Battery time, soup, Frederica and Pepys

The car died again, we jumped it again, I decided I needed a new battery.  Gary may help with that this week. Meanwhile the car's down the street out of the way of the truck coming to pick up the pod from his house.

Handsome Son tells me AAA might be able to replace the battery on the spot, so that might be worth investigating. I must admit to feeling a bit defeated at the moment, just not enough energy, emotional or physical, to deal with the cold weather and attendant issues. 

In my seventies this would have been very manageable, but once you get past eighty, things are very different, including the energy available to cope. I do continue with what exercise I can manage, to try to maintain strength.

One really useful one is getting out of a chair without using your hands,  then lowering yourself veeeeery slowly back down to a sitting position. It's like squats, and is vital to keep your legs working if they currently do. 

I do about ten of these in a set, and various stretches and balancing things at odd times. Usually waiting for the microwave is a good moment for a tree pose and other moves, with counters handy just in case.

Meanwhile, spinach, cilantro and potato soup, yogurt stirred in for a lovely tangy flavor. Toasted multigrain on top.

And I realized I've had Pepys' Diary on my Kindle since December 2020, probably a plan to do some serious winter reading which didn't get very far. Giving it another push now.

He mentions a lot of names, which are instantly explained in brackets, and hold up the narrative flow to a trickle. This part is happening during the upheavals of the Rump Parliament, around the restoration of the monarchy, and his undramatic recital covers a very dangerous and dramatic time to be living in London.

He still makes a point of describing his outfits and meals, though, and continues to enjoy his life despite all. So I'll push on a bit.

and for comic relief there's Frederica, with some of the funniest scenes ever, the best being the passage where someone actually does object to a marriage, cries out for video!

Happy day, everyone!

My salute to Ukraine today is to its fiber arts, here the exquisite white work

Not reducing the size here. This is from the blog Fils et Aiguilles

Textiles and Tea, mushroom bake

Helena Hernmarck was the featured weaver on yesterday's Tea and Textiles. Sadly, her own audio was so low I could scarcely hear a word, though the host, from another location, this being Zoom, was perfectly audible. 

So I have no commentary, other than to say she's Swedish, a tapestry weaver, who makes enormous works intended for public buildings, some covering the wall and extending right across the ceiling.

Anyway here's a couple of images of her work.

Aside from the tablet pillow, which is working fine in bed, too, I made a good dinner.

Mushrooms, onions, garlic scapes, broccoli and yellow potatoes, sauteed in oil and butter, grated parmesan over, then baked at 385° f for twenty minutes.

What's left is going to be a second dinner today as filling for pasties, using the last of the pasty dough.

Audiobook to sleep by last night was The Grand Sophy, a great old favorite and one that doesn't get into my dreams disturbingly. 

I had to discontinue Charles Todd at night because it turned into nightmares. Todd is now daytime listening. 

Storms have passed for now, and I've been spared watering my outside plants. Indoors, it's just as well I took that picture of the maranta flower, since it lasted one day. Evidently the foliage continues to be the main event.

Tempus fugit 

Self care on a winter weekend

 Bitter cold and windy, even the sunshine is not tempting me out.  But it's a good time to catch up on things I promised myself to cook.  Here are some of the frozen sweet potato gnocchi, and a couple of hot Italian sausages, plus while I was running a hot oven, heads of garlic roasting to make a garlic spread

The gnocchi were frozen uncooked, so they have to do the diving into boiling water phase first, before they go into a 400F oven to roast for about 20 minutes. I just plunged them in still frozen, made no difference. Sausage was frozen, just thawed enough to skin them, then same oven, same period.

The garlic needed about 20 minutes more, still in a hot oven, doused liberally with olive oil.  When it's cool, I'll squeeze out the softened garlic, great for a spread.  You can use this all over the place, specially good for garlic bread.

 

And here's lunch.  Also another helping of same for tomorrow.

 

 And everywhere is evidence of my industry, now doing humble duty in the kitchen.  Left a painted tote bag, I made a lot of these at one time, and taught other people how to, great fun.  Stuffed with my hand-knitted face cloths now relegated to be kitchen and floor cloths, but sturdy? you can't wear them out.  I made them in order to try out new stitch patterns as well as to have useful things.  On the right is the bag I wove years ago, using a pattern from the Weaving without a Loom book, and still holding up after much use, now stuffed with kitchen cloths.  I don't use paper in the kitchen, but I do use a lot of cloths.

Some blessed soul has suddenly started uploading some of my favorite books in audio form on YouTube.  Here's a Georgette Heyer. And they have excellent readers, who understand the text and the humor and where the  emphasis should go.  Which is more than I can say for a lot of the audiobooks on the library apps, which are strictly amateur night at the Bijou.  This book accompanied today's spinning, plying and cooking.

Onward, new reading on my Kindle, Lisa See never fails when I'm wondering what would be nice to read next.  And since I got it via the library app which lets me download onto my Kindle, not onto a device with a refreshing screen, which gives me migraine, all the better.

 So I guess I'm set.  Keep warm, if this applies!  Find your snowshovel, that's advice to me, since it's outside in the storage closet, and I may need it to dig the door open..