Yes we have no vaccine, but gardening is there

So yesterday's greatly nervous trip to the pharmacy for the Covid booster involved getting up my driving nerve to navigate a major highway to a town I was unfamiliar with and a pharmacy inside a store. All that went well, I arrived in good time, very proud of my effort.

And found an apologetic pharmacist telling me there was no vaccine, hadn't been for two days. She waited till half an hour before my appointment to leave a cancellation voicemail. I was already on the road. 

I had received a confirmation text that morning, reminding me of the check-in procedure. For an appointment they knew they couldn't honor. Clearly the software has no relation to the facts. The pharma said I could call to see if they had supplies. And gave me the number I'd been calling since Friday with no answers to any of my questions.

So now I wonder how I can trust them to honor any future appointment I might make, endless input of information required. If I can get one nearer home it would help if they don't have vax after all, I could regroup and do other errands. To give the pharmacist maximum benefit of the doubt, she told me they have no idea when and if vaccine will arrive. So I'm guessing they delay canceling until they're sure it hasn't arrived.

I came home and took a walk to soothe my savage breast. 

Here's part of it, where there used to be all that garbage dumping I complained about. Now it's once again a nice walking area.  

It's the broken window syndrome -- where there's garbage, it attracts more garbage, but where there's obvious care, mowing, pruning, there's no incentive to throw garbage. 

It was only after I got the management to get the cleanup done that the landscapers were able to access this area and mow. The results are terrific. 

In other news, I did a bit of gardening at home, pruned the dead twigs off the thyme and the Thai basil, tied up the butterfly bush and found there are two of them, now tied together, next to the mystery plant.

Amitha's back from India, so I must ask her what it is, since it migrated from her plantings.

I was talking to her husband yesterday, who told me it rained almost every day they were in India, cooped up indoors with the inlaws..by the time they left, the children were quarrelsome with the grandparents, longing to be here with their friends. 

He commented that when they got home and it rained here they were groaning,  until Gary said no, we're longing for it, after the heatwaves! I think India and NJ must have had a climate exchange.

Back in the garden, I cut a bunch of sage to hang in the kitchen to dry, along with the basil already drying. 

They're near the stove, right there to use.

Soon I'm going to bring in the ficus, a heroic effort usually, and the pots of Thai basil and Italian basil to the kitchen. 

I'm reading Donna Leon, essays on Venice, really entertaining and funny brief writings, highly recommend 

And I finally, after many weeks of waiting, got

Which turns out to be a chicklit beach read rather than the engrossing novel I'd hoped for.  

It definitely suffers from being read soon after the piercingly intelligent and funny Leon. Like chicken nuggets after Julia Child's roast chicken. But okay if you're in the mood for chicken nuggets.

On one of my many recent doctor office visits recently, the receptionist was intrigued by this pin and asked about it.

It's the bird's nest longtime blogistas will remember. A friend with cashmere goats sent me a sample of cashmere fiber from a couple of them,  needing to be processed, guard hairs and debris removed, long picky job, but I was happy doing it. 

I spun then knitted this bird's nest, in the natural colors of the goats, whose names I knew at the time.  This used up all the samples, just a tiny experiment. 

I pinned it on this jacket and forgot where it was. I do this, then when people ask, I have to squint down at my lapel to see what pin they're talking about. 

So I guess this is today's art offering.

Happy day everyone, if your vaccine doesn't arrive, don't take it personally. It's the triumph of software over reality. A metaphor for life.

Yesterday continued, there's more!

After the excitement of the morning's thrills and spills, I sat out to read, and woke up a while later, my audiobook considerably further on in the plot, woke up.

And realized I had nothing to go with a cup of tea. No cake or breadlike food. So I traipsed to the kitchen to study my Big Binder Full of Recipes. And found one cut from my ancient, supposedly Amish but I doubt it, book which didn't have much of interest but a couple of items, seen here. When I keep the actual good recipes from any cookbook it's surprising how few there are, but where was I?

 The book was a fairly amateurish spiral bound deal, maybe a fundraiser, which is probably why I owned it, and though some ideas were good, the tomato lemon jam definitely a hill to die on, they kept forgetting to list the ingredients.

 Only detective work as you embark on the recipe shows that they're telling you to mix in items they never listed --add the milk in three waves, wait, what milk, how much, and so on. I added notes to complete the recipe, guessing a bit, and did come out fine. I kept it, so it must have.

So with the notes, here's lemon nut bread, using butter, not shortening.

Finally while it baked, tea with the mail. One of the best mail days evah.

 One thank you note from my post office people, written by favorite carrier, responding to -- a thank you card I'd put in the outgoing mail slot! It evidently went over well. Now, do I thank them for thanking me for thanking them? This could go on.

Then, a soft envelope, expecting the seeds a friend had promised,and found not only the seeds she'd saved to share, but CASHMERE!  The raw fiber, combed from a goat, very likely the one whose portrait you see. Just a present to play with. About which more when I write it up at https://beautifulmetaphor.blogspot.com.   Anon.

Then excellent Zoom lecture via Princeton Art museum, all women, presenting on Life magazine women photographers and the  policy toward women by that testosterone driven publication during and after world war II. I think it's recorded so you might be able to find it on their website.

Mad rush to get supper in the interval between the end of the lecture and the start of my centering prayer group, what's all this free time and boredom i hear about, not much around here.

The quiet friendly meditation was just the thing after a fraught day. But technology was not yet finished with your humble blogger. Near the end of the quiet time, my tablet suddenly shut down and started a reboot. The last word, I suppose. The high tech equivalent of flouncing away.

And so, as Pepys would say, to bed.