Now for calm, to balance the excitement

 Friday's knitting group was lively, stitching, knitting, crochet 

Lovely African work basket. Does anyone know the purpose of the loops at the base of the handles?

Talk ranged over birthdays, childbirth, kidney stones (!), knitting patterns, MDK, spf umbrellas, business travel, missing medical calls because made from personal phones, weather, goldwork, Williamsburg, color blindness and interlibrary loans. So long since I've been there, it was like a reunion.

In the garden, here's the drama of the season 

Friday the hibiscus did this 

Saturday 

It just exploded into its very first blossom. Tell me this isn't a metaphor for our political season! Gary and friend came to admire and take pictures. He's looking stronger now.

And less spectacular, but beautiful, the first zinnia 

and friends 

So that's nature and friends, coming through faithfully.

Saturday's walk gave more sights 

First tiger swallowtail of the year, blurred because she was busy 

Wildflower at the edge of the trees, don't know this one, guessing birds foot trefoil.

Ed. Note here's a much better picture of what I saw. Mine didn't convey the three part complexity of the flower, which can grow to 12", like this one.

And it might be yet another wildflower!

A lot of yellow sorrel underfoot 

My neighbors also have a hibiscus 

Then home to food 

Roast chicken breast with basmati rice with baby Bella mushrooms and dried cranberries 

And a pluot, apple and nectarine crumble, baked in the toaster oven. 

For the crumble part I just slung oats, chickpea flour, cane sugar and molasses mixed together, over the fruit, dots of butter, baked at 380°f an hour, first 30 minutes with a tinfoil hat (!) second 30 minutes uncovered and it came out well enough. 

Got to keep up my strength.

Happy day, everyone! Including dog people 

Mood swings, big plans for cool weather

Your exciting update on the mood swings in the sky. Thunderstorms, threatened tornadoes which blessedly didn't happen, high winds 

And note the humidity and dewpoint

Special weather warning almost literally in my back yard

My only casualty was the zinnias flattened into the deck and now staked upright again

It's so much cooler and I'm feeling more cheerful already.

Yesterday's stitching involved the negatives from earlier positive cutouts. Just as stencils give you a positive and a negative, so do the fabric pieces I used, and from which I saved the leftovers.

These will be reverse appliqued and go from there with a third color yet to be decided, shape also to be decided. 

This interesting project checks a lot of boxes, modular, flexible, colorful, manageable, frugal!

Today is full of plans now that it's cooler. At home I'm making granola, yogurt, and roast chicken. Abroad I'm off to pick up more Suits and return the current season.

And what helped get me through housebound hot days are a couple of great podcasts: Lady Audacitea on YouTube, and The Daily Fail which I catch on Google.  They're both  teams of two hilariously funny and astute young women journalists commenting on the follies in the media. They've also been guests on each others' podcasts, this being a small world. 

One, Meredith Constant,  also has her own YouTube and tiktok channels, very funny, very well researched, very accurate, penetrating questions, mostly about the msm's wildly inaccurate takes on Meghan and Harry.  I personally owe Meghan for bringing shakshuka into my life, and Suits, so I'm a fan.

And, if all the weather isn't enough NJ content, here's the place where the Big Bang was first detected

Just sayin. Jersey Strong.

Happy day, everyone, I hope your big bang is less dramatic, also your weather. Unless it's a military necessity

Apricots to cheese and onion, spiderwebs

Yesterday's reading in Apricots on the Nile led, of courses, to the kitchen. The memoir is lovely, old family photographs and anecdotes about relatives, staff, and with inserted recipes. 

This one was definitely for me. Sambusaks, pockets of pastry filled with a cheese mixture. I adapted, making a cheese and onion and garlic filling, all minced together, using the last of the feta crumbles and the parmesan, and a bit of  the cheddar, and an egg 

In the course of making the filling, a random chunk of onion ended up on the page, the first evidence that this is a cookbook.

The resulting dough is enough for twenty, but I froze half of it for a future fruit filling, probably apricot and cranberry or blueberry. Maybe even apple.

Home grown basil, fancy touch 

The pastry is lovely, light and crisp, flaky. That's because it's equal parts butter, avocado oil and hot water. The pastry with various fillings, is a keeper. Could be fruit tarts, too 

This book will be slow going, if this keeps happening. Delicious interludes expected.

And this morning's patio prowl, after a day of torrential rain, showed spider activity

And the zinnias are coming along

*Also the spider wort out front, growing where nothing else will.

*correction, thanks to Ellen's greater knowledge, it's dayflower, commelina communis. Corrected also on spoutible, to thanks from followers there, too.

I expect our local frog and toad population are happy today. Certainly the birds are, after the rain. There was a gang of house sparrows pecking busily all over the path.

Happy day everyone, I hope you get rain if needed. And relief from it if needed. Quite a bit of flooding around here. But thanks to a good power company, no loss of power.