Cleaning day, so I was out at the library, then Textiles and Tea, Victoria Manganiello

Torrential rain earlier Tuesday, which I mostly ducked, at the library. Here's a bearded collie whose owner probably would rather dry himself than the very fluffy dog. So he held the umbrella over the dog and got wet himself.

And once inside I observed the construction going on out in the square, reorganizing walkways and doing something about the fountain, currently out of the main pathway.

When the rain cleared up, this mom brought her baby out to watch the boys with toys happily pushing gravel about 

 

Later, home to anchovy toast and tea for lunch, then Textiles and Tea with fiber artist and fiberoptic specialist Victoria Manganiello. 

She's a Brooklyn-based artist and professor,  working at the intersection of weaving and technology using fiber optic cables and LED lighting to create and illuminate her art. She has made many public works and collaborations, and looks forward to making works that can be exhibited outdoors. 

She has an idea for a playground! I think adults would have to be held back to let kids have a turn! I wonder if this might be a future Archewell Foundation project.

Anyway, this is what she does

She's an exciting artist and a congenial teacher, worth following.

I started George Gently and found it very well done and too violent and dark for me. In the return pile. I'm waiting for the same actor in Judge Deed now. Also another season of Foyle.

Reading is divided between good old Brenda Ueland and Dorothy Sayers. 

Happy day, everyone! The rain gave way to sun in time for an evening walk.  This, swiped from Barbara, thank you, says about everything we need for today

Cleaners, seeds and plans

Today being the day the cleaners come Chez Boud, I usually stay out and group my errands to do then. After a fruitless search for non-box-store plant nurseries, for my spring planting, my old faves apparently gone, I turned my thoughts instead to seeds.

Tried the local dollar store which I've never been in, and oh look, seeds

So for two dollars I scored eight little packets, for annuals. If you scream and point at the dreaded morning glory , here they're a harmless annual, wiped out by winter cold, not an invasive. And I love them.

I think it will be fun tending seeds, haven't done it in a while, other than basil, Italian and Thai.

Then to another store to pick up potting soil in small enough bags I can heft them.

And a lovely little coleus, haven't had one for ages, also a chive plant since my own finally stopped going last year and I do like chives.

So here's the homeward trip

And the coleus repotted and in its new home out front

The seeds will take their turn, maybe in the earth, maybe pots, TBA.

While I was out, my dear cleaning family accepted my Misfits box, which I found in the hallway, must have arrived very early

And here's the array, missing only the shrimp I'd ordered, which they'd messaged me about ahead. So my shrimp curry will be postponed, but I think I'll manage not to starve. 

Lovely dried apricots available, which I eat for breakfast, or any time, and which will be a great chutney ingredient any minute now.

About dried apricots, I found that there's a difference between dried Turkish apricots and Turkish dried apricots. 

The first are supposed to come from Turkey, and the second refer to the drying method. Turkish dried is where they're dried,  then pitted, instead of the other way round. They can and do come from California.  It results in a much juicier and tender fruit. 

I'm sure you've been living just to learn this. On the subject of dried fruit, both Gary and Handsome Son loved the maroo raisins without knowing they were anything special. So maybe the growers have a point.

In case the excitement of this post is getting too much, I am also reading a very entertaining Marie Benedict

Apparently this is a fictional account of the sisters, one of them the writer Nancy Mitford, one married the fascist Mosley among other people, another married  a Duke, one was Jessica, who famously wrote an expose of the American funeral industry and was a passionate communist, and there was Unity, close Nazi friend of Hitler. And one sister lived a quiet life as a farmer.

And there was a son who died in the Spanish civil war fighting against the forces some of his sisters supported. Interesting family in real life, so I'll see how they unfold in fiction. 

This writer evidently works in this pattern, taking famous actual people, including Agatha Christie, as her characters. It might be my summer's patio reading.

Are you up for a puzzle before I prep and put away my Misfits and do the laundry?

Here

Happy day everyone, take it easy, aka, do what I say, not what I do.

Cleaning day

 My saintly housecleaners came today, and, as usual, I arranged to let them have the house to themselves. This usually entails more forethought than it got today, what with being distracted by paperwork, and needing to make a trip to the town hall about one lot, which worked out fine, and having to make copies and finish up my tax paperwork, which also worked out fine.

The day was beautiful, bright sun all day, temps in the 40s, so after a couple of errands, on one of which I saw a covid vaccine clinic in full swing at the local pharmacy, mixed feelings of jealousy of the people who'd managed to get appointments, and pleasure that if I can get in here, the travel is eliminated and it's a much easier thing to handle. Once I can get in, that is.  

Anyway, I thought I'd better get calm and go to the Preserve to see if I could walk. Which I couldn't much, because of the snow.  I'm not very steady walking in hard snow that lets your foot suddenly plunge as you go.  So I walked where there wasn't any, and watched the birds, a lot of activity. Virtually every tree packed with them.  A family arrived with little kids, all excited and shouty, and the birds promptly vanished. Lovely morning trip with kids.

Standing here, in the lee of the preserve building wall, to take pix.

Since I had taken no thought as to how to use the time if I couldn't walk, nothing to read, no wifi available, I decided to use it to breathe, in the car with the window open, just sit, not easy for me, and I took a few pix, then did a quick line drawing of trees opposite me, shadows lying along the snow.  A couple of minutes. All I had was a little jotting pad a couple of inches across,  and a ballpoint. That's why there are weird things at each end of the drawing, it's a St Jude little scratch pad.

Very much out of practice, and it reminded me to put a bit of real drawing paper and a couple of  pens and pencils in the glovebox for future times when I might just want to draw a little because there's a bit of time.  I'll do that.

 So here we are.  Calmer for being in the open air, in sunshine, and the family next door is back from India, kids already out playing again, yay.  It's good.