The Perfect Together slogan is a long running tourist meme for NJ, and tends to crop up..
Anyway, today, perfect weather for the farmers' market, though I didn't need much, ended up with apples and salad greens,
because I brought my own bags, was given an extra apple.
And there were the usual huge array of food, veggies, plants, herbs, the local food bank collection (they take either fresh produce or money to buy it with).
And today, best of all, the local high school string ensemble, playing a great selection from Mozart to ragtime. Not easy to play a stringed instrument in warm weather with humidity. Keeping the tuning is a challenge. But they did a great job. Two first violins, several second violins, two violas, two cellos. Not easy to get pix of them without a phalanx of devoted parents getting into the frame as they did the same.
So I had a free concert thrown in to the morning's planning.
Then the library, and home for a plein air adventure, which I tell about here
Since my patio and the area out front is fully populated, mostly groundcover with all kinds of herbs and other plants in there when they can make it, but rarely a weed, I occasionally spot something I need to pinch and sniff to identify.
Here's peppermint! very happy to have it. I have tons of spearmint the same flavor as toothpaste, but peppermint is the one you want for mint sauce and other interesting things.
And here was a surprise, nearly pulled it for a weed until I stopped and checked, and found it was a rose geranium. This is a mystery, since it's years since I had one in a pot, which vanished over winter, and this one was growing happily in the ground. But the scent is unmistakeable, and makes you want Turkish delight, often flavored with it.
The Thai basil, tiny little plants, did survive the repeated squirrel attacks, and a pinch and sniff gives you the characteristic licorice sort of flavor. They're the tiny heart shaped leaves, and I hope they grow a whole lot bigger, since I have plans for them. I saved these seeds from last year's plant, so we'll see how well they do.
No need to name this one. This lavender is in its third year of absolutely no care, in a pot, just occasional douse with water, and it seems happy. I often think the secret to growing plants is to leave them alone, not be at them, pruning and pushing and nagging. And since I'm a pretty lazy gardener, that's not hard for me. I have neighbors who are much more industrious, and I think their plants die of exhaustion.
Gardening by scent, really satisfying. Dogs must go mad in gardens. Now I'm off to make a pot of tea, haul the pillow out to the patio chair and sit in the sun to read my Hiromi Kawakame.
I read The Briefcase recently, and it was wonderful. Great translation, I expect, since it seemed to flow so well. And I'm starting another, Manazuru, named for a coastal location the protagonist visits.
Are there any Kawakame fans in our blogworld?
Astute readers may have noticed my radio silence on the subject of Ulysses this year. I may have reached my limit, having got about three quarters there. Possibly when Bloomsday gets here, I may reconsider. Or not.
Since I had art business not far from the labyrinth, it seemed like a good idea to make a visit, first for a long time.
And I found it under renovation! no escape from reno. All the old shrubs gone, wood trim around the edges, prayer flags gone. I expect it will be fine, and Buddha, serenely sitting in a different corner, seems to have little concern.
Always on the walk, I get an answer to some concern I brought in with me, in the form of an object that I find on the path. Today it was an empty cicada shell, perfect, complete, discarded because the owner outgrew it.
So I carried it to the middle and set it there on a rock, as my offering for today. Many messages in that cicada shell, which I'll leave you to decode, since they might be different for you, and I don't want to impose my responses on yours.
And on the way out, joyful old fashioned roses, smelling the way roses should
A while since I did a book review, though I've been reading all along. I don't review books I didn't get much out of, or that I really didn't like, not fair, just my opinion. But when one seems really worth the energy, I do.
And, it's Monday, not that Marigold is particularly concerned about that, more that it's rainy and she was disturbed by my insisting on a picture. But readers who had to go back to work might enjoy a suggestion of a book to check out.
So here's the current choice: latest collection of short stories from Penelope Lively.
It's a bit uneven, but has a lot of layers and levels and is definitely worth reading. She likes to slide between real and surreal, points in history, points of view. Her writing is a kind of rollercoaster of technique, and very engrossing. You always feel she's pulling your leg a bit, and is really onto you.
One odd choice: usually the title is from the strongest story, and it's put at the end of the book. Probably to keep people reading. In this instance it is the strongest story, but it leads off the collection, which, to me, tails off a bit after that. I think Lively really is better at following a thread or ten throughout the whole novel form, rather than encapsulating them as in the short story. But read it, and let us know what you think.
Aside from a lot of other things going on, some too soon to write about in the art side of life, I've been observing the feeder, kept supplied with suet put together in Minnesota and NJ birds seem to think this is the best thing ever. The feeder is mobbed and I get to observe a lot of interesting and some comic avian capers.
There are about three or more bluejays feeding regularly. One has got the hang of clinging to the side of the feeder, one is dedicated to standing on top of it, even when the food is so far down he can hardly reach. And the third, my favorite, tries to hover under the feeder and snatch food which he eats on the deck. You get to know birds as individuals if you observe them enough.
Here's a pic of him trying to flutter up to the bottom of the feeder. He's a bit off course, feeder being over there on the left, in front of the lantana on the fence. Which attracted the first hummingbird of the season a couple of days ago. Just a flash of a sighting.
Then there was a standoff between a female cardinal and the red bellied woodpecker, neither conceding until they feed at the same time before flying away at the exact same moment. And a real fail from a male house sparrow going beak to beak with a little downy woodpecker. Sparrow had no hope of holding on, eating, and fighting all at once, against the downy, small, but with that tail that enables them to hang on to trees. Sparrow eventually basically fell off, chuntered and stomped around the deck, catching the crumbs that the downy dropped.
But it's not all birding. Cooking is happening, too, since I got back the gumption to do a big shop, vegetables and tofu and parmigiano, and all kinds of good things.
So today, I roasted vegetables. Sweet potatoes, white potatoes, carrots, squares of firm tofu, all tossed in olive oil, mustard seeds, fresh ground pepper, kosher salt, turmeric, home ground curry powder (from Bill Veach, let me know if you want the directions). Then roasted at 425F for thirty minutes, sort of stirred about a bit, then another 25 minutes and all was done. And very good. You can make a whole meal from this mixture. Which I did. And three more meals to come. Probably next time Handsome Son gets here for a dinner, he'll get some of this. Maybe with sausage or chicken or something.
Here's the before:
and the after:
As you see, they shrink a little, but everything was just right. A bit crisp and spicy on the outside, tender on the inside. Highly recommended on a day when you can tolerate a hot oven.
Been a while, but now I'm up to cooking, baking, eating and generally having a food involved life. And walking my full walk, yay.
Simple is best for my taste.
Here, yogurt cheese (just yogurt strained, the solids make a wonderful cheese, like cream cheese but tangy, and the whey is saved for soup) mixed with fresh cut chives. Great combo.
And the dinner rolls can be split and yogurt cheese spread inside. Wonderful snack. The rolls are just from the regular bread recipe, just pull off roll size dough pieces, handle them a bit to get the shape, sticky work even with floured hands, then bake in hot oven. I took a guess and did them at 450 F for 20 minutes, and they're fine. Mostly whole wheat with about one third or less unbleached white. Then I baked the rest of the recipe as one big loaf, to slice and freeze.
The planting out front is now DONE. Massive labor to get the dead pachysandra mainly out. The trouble was that there was a big live root base under ground, and nothing on top to pull. So I ended up using a small saw, sawing in squares , through the roots, then peeling it back. Like cutting turf, but harder work. I tossed some of the turfs behind shrubs where they can regrow and not be seen looking unsightly, and now have better earth to work with. I'll be able to replant daffodils around this area in fall, my old river of daffodils having been crushed to oblivion during the reno work.
It doesn't look glam at the moment, but once the plants take hold and get used to their homes, it will fill out, some pachysandra will return, try and stop it, and it will look very good. That daylily you see, moved from the back patio where it was being crowded, will expand to use all that open space you see around her.
After my unsuccessful trip to the nursery for perennials, I decided to shop in the garden instead. Transplanted some purple and white heirloom iris that needed to be moved, and some daylilies. With a small chrysanthemum and K's daisies, it will look just fine in a while. The daisies are back there, left of the Russian sage, which survived handily. And it no longer looks like some alien creature stomped about.
My neighbor keeps wanting to help, not realizing that the labor of gardening is what makes it fun. I love that I can dig and haul and toss and plant for myself. At his garden, I just point and suggest, at his invitation, and he digs and hauls and so on. But in mine I like to be the laborer.
And in the course of gardening, you come across some wonderful natural designs like this one, snail shell on the old wood bench.
Went to the nursery for a single perennial, now that I have a bit of room to plant one, where the contractors killed a lot of ground cover. And had a lovely time in the sunshine with the dusky swallowtail butterflies, and the resident calico cat playing in a box.
Everything seemed to be annuals, though. So after admiring a lot of things like this
and this
I settled on this
and a trip to the library having yielded a Donna Leon I hadn't read, this seemed fine anyway. Rosemary, tarragon and nasturtiums.
A lot of art emerges after trips like this, where you don't have an art related goal, but let images just flow in.
Speaking of which, I made a bonehead mistake the other day with that little purple flower. I had a brain freeze on sansevieria because of looking up snake plant which is sansevieria. Of course the little purple flower isn't. It's tradescantia virginiana, aka spiderwort. Great apologies to the Tradescants, father and son, plantsmen several centuries ago with exciting lives finding and identifying botanical specimens in some very hazardous places.
I do realize that this correction is like that joke in Christie's A Murder is Announced, where the learned parson says to the tiny congregation of tired old ladies: I expect you thought this was about Artaxerxes the First! Well, you're wrong! it's about Artaxerxes the Second! I probably got this a bit wrong, too, but you do see. Only an obsessive could notice and bother about this sort of thing, but that's me. And to prove it, go here for more info about John Tradescant and his exciting life. These guys got around.
Rain overnight, then sun this morning, so the patio is decorated in diamonds for the first of June.
This in turn triggered a quick drawing in the little journal early this morning
And reminds me that I made some new priority decisions this week. Readers who follow the EGA guild blog I've been writing for several years are alerted that I have stepped down from doing it. I've loved doing it, but really my priorities need to be adjusted, since art is needing more and more of my life, more exhibiting, teaching, sales. So something has to give. However, anyone who would like to give the guild blog a try is welcome. I'll sit with any local person who wants to do it, and you'll see it's not as techie as it seems!
But I've been thinking about reshaping my life for a while now. I finished up my commitments to leadership in the embroiderers' guild, and to the Artist in Residence at the library. And now I have breathing room for other things. Which may include sitting on the patio and reading and stitching! but also include a lot of new adventures in art for which you have to have a clear mental and emotional desk.
A commitment to art is a commitment to studio time, not to keep on letting it be cut short in order to attend to other activity. Art doesn't happen in the bits of time between other events. So I owe it to the rest of my life, however long or short, as the Queen said a long time ago...well, being a Royal, she said "shote" but never mind.
But I will not be gone completely, despite some panic stricken notes and texts from stitching friends! not moving away, no ominous medical situation, none of that. Just ready for the next stage. And this blog will continue happily. Also my Beautiful Metaphor blog about my art and process.
Between my being under the weather, and Handsome Son's work hours being unaccommodating, it's been weeks since we had a meal together. So Friday we resumed, and it went over well.
Chicken drumsticks, roasted with thyme, then layered with baby bella mushrooms, sauteed in olive oil and butter, garlic salt and red wine, and a can, sorry, it's the season, no fresh tomatoes yet, of unsalted diced tomatoes. All layered together, medium oven. Brown jasmine rice, cooked with crushed walnuts and golden raisins. This was a pretty easy meal in some ways and went down well. Glass of the same red wine used in the mushrooms, nice Italian. Banana bread with crushed walnuts (noting a theme here?) and big pot of tea. And it leaves enough for a couple of meals for me over the weekend.
So dinner was good, and after HS had been forced to tour all the new windows, admiring them at length, very patiently, he picked out some of my glass collection for himself. When I had to reorganize before the windows were done, I put away all my glass collection for safety, and decided after weeks of not seeing it, that I probably only needed to hold onto a few pieces. So Handsome Son was very happy to take away several nice pieces for his own use.
This leaves a few I can take to the thriftie on my next trip there. HS always gets first refusal on anything I find at the thriftie, or anything I'm planning to take there. He's very good about selecting only what he wants, resisting the collecting temptation pretty well. Partly this is because his condo is small and fills up easily!
All my neighbors are resigned to having a tour of the windows if they stop in. I think I may need to curb my enthusiasm a bit..
More
strawberries today, and I got half a dozen nice basil starts, which are
now potted up on the patio. I need rosemary then I'm set. Other herbs
came through the winter fine, oregano, mints, sage, Thai basil, if the
squirrel's rampage hasn't stopped it in its tracks.
Positively the Last Big Thing I'm doing for this house. Windows are now done, curtains reorganized and working nicely. Contractor neighbor who installed the rods for me now decided to get a new patio door at his own house across the street, very impressed with mine.
Footnote to this bedroom pic: the two plants you see on stools I started from scratch. One from a single leaf from a bigger begonia, took ages to start, and is now pretty impressive. The one on the right I started from a single leaf of snake plant, one of the many sansevierias, which I cut up and rooted in sections.
Did you know the sections of this plant know their north-south orientation? unless you plant the sections of the leaf in the same direction of their original growth, they will not root. So I had to be careful to keep them organized when I cut up the leaf. And all of the parts rooted. Several years' growth there, very slow plant. I never bother with rooting hormone, just shove them into potting soil and leave them alone. That usually works fine.
So all is done and I can just stop thinking about the fabric of the house and get on to more interesting stuff. In fact I do love my surroundings, and would far rather be there than anywhere, drag myself out when I need to be with friends, enjoy their company a lot, glad to get home again!
The only little drawback to the new windows is that the glass is so clean that I've had a few bird collisions with it, against the patio door. It's huge, and they see the plants inside, including the ficus tree, and I guess plan on flying into it to perch, then discover the glass. Up to now no fatalities, just annoyed birds.
Once in a while I get a redtail hawk colliding, thinking she can fly right through, if the front door is open. Looks to a bird like a passage between trees. Redtails are so powerful that when that happens it's like a minor explosion, bird unharmed, flies away pretending it never happened.
So you will be pleased to know that the Saga of the Windows is now complete.
Suddenly I noticed that the climbing roses are out. And what's left of the iris on the patio after the renovation.
Foreground is the wildflower, not yet out, sansevieria virginiana, little three-petalled purple flower. Planted herself last year, and recovered after the winter. I expect she has a common name, but I don't know it. Hence the fancy Latin!
In front of the house needs some work. Neighbor promised to help yank out the dead pachysandra, paths worn by contractors, and heavy stuff being left on it. But on the good side, I can plant something else there instead. Thinking about a couple of decorative grasses, maybe. Maybe finally a peony, but I think that's for Fall planting and I'm impatient to put something in. Trip to the nursery has to happen. Once my energy finally returns, that is. Still getting there.
This week, what with recovering from the flu, took ages longer than it spozed to, and the endless drama out of Washington, stress nobody needs, suddenly the window installers showed up at the door on Monday. Could I get my installation done next day?
After having to bring endless pressure just to get them to respond for the last three months, I was not about to send them away. And I'd cancelled my housecleaners anyway for next day, not up to going out for a couple of hours. Urgent text to son to come over and help move stuff away from windows in every room, take down curtains, and various things I didn't have the strength to do. Which he did, cheerfully, good guy.
So after a couple of days of intense noise, stress, much shouting in Russian, good thing I don't speak Russian, at least any of the terms the crew was using, all the windows are now replaced. Beautiful new ones, many times better than their predecessors, great insulation value, both weather and sound. Now paid for. Done. All worked lovely. Bp now reducing nicely.
Old windows waiting to leave
Spencer prepping the empty space while I keep an eye on cats
Upstairs, new window in place
And here the big one, the eight foot, 600 lb patio door replacement, in progress, no sound effects added here
Bedroom window, same width as patio door, lovely framing of tree
Here, Marigold feigns total oblivion. We Burmese are Royal, We Do Not Fuss When Our House Is Under Siege. We took a brief trip out of doors, but it was too noisy and hot and We came back in.
Duncan not so lucky, ran to hide under my bedclothes when the crew came up to the bedroom window, got trapped there, daren't come out and exit.
Excellent crew, total focus on work, really good craftsmanship. Expensive but worth it. The value of my house now considerably better than three days ago. And the neighbors, having hung back until I got through it, so brave, are interested in maybe doing likewise while the contractors are around working on the renovations. Especially when they saw the pristine state of affairs with the installation complete.
Then today, caught up on vital errands, stamps, lantana for hummingbirds, wine, I saw the sign up at the farm: Strawberries!
Scoop of yogurt. Perfect. Happy camper here now.
Long hiatus here recently, owing to having been totally out of action for over a week with the neighborhood flu, just now getting back to sort of better.
The indictments coming down today in DC, together with FBI search warrants being executed on the GOP fund raising group also raised my spirits, in the hope that this is the start of the end of the current regime. Watergate is still a bitter memory, and then we wondered why small potatoes went first, before it became a landslide ending with the regime change. So I am hopeful.
Anyway, my new supply of watercolor pencils arrived while I was out of it, and today I finally felt up to trying them out. I managed to do a couple of little tries before my strength was all used up.
They're Caran dAche, the cadillac of pencils, soft watercolor pencils, thinking about using them for plein air work this year. You can move the color about with a wet brush, etc., so you have a range of choices.
And I may even get back into a spot of knitting, that lovely hand dyed yarn from Shepherd Susie. Haven't even been able to hold up needles lately.
Good thing Handsome Son did some urgent errands for me, such as delivering promised artworks to a benefit Popup Gallery, for Homefront, very good cause. Luckily the artworks were already completed, framed, labeled and priced and all the preliminary paperwork done before I got sick.
The opening, at 19 Hulfish Street in Princeton, is Friday evening, May 19th, so locals are encouraged to come, enjoy, buy original art from established artists, and support Homefront at the same time.
HS also did some grocery shopping, in case I ever felt like eating again. Still no word on installing windows, probably a good thing for the moment since I doubt I could have got things ready for them anyway. It involves moving stuff and rehoming plants etc.
So that's where we are, hopeful once again that we will live to fight another day!
So today, I was looking at a twitter feed which had a pic of the writer's current day, in her planner, complete with drawings, plans, thoughts, rather typically wordy as in writer. And I thought, self, you haven't done an illustrated journal in yay these many months, why not give yourself one of the books you made, just a little one will do, and make an entry?
No sooner said than done. And I have little fear that anyone can actually read this, my writing having once been described by my boss, an Egyptologist, as reminding him of Minoan Linear B. That's one of the writings that has still not been deciphered.
I should interrupt myself here to say that a neighbor moving out left one of those plastic three drawer storage things at the dumpster. Perfect timing, just as I was unloading the crates from my recent workshops and general bookmaking materials. All stuffed in any old way, not good.
So the storage unit is now cleaned up, and filled with my raw materials, organized for the first time. In the course of doing which I found more finished books I'd forgotten about making, as well as the makings for some others, which may become this summer's plein air paper carrying things. And I have a large empty crate which may go out. Before it gets all filled up again.
Here's one of the small books I forgot.
Very simple, just a greeting card filled with good paper, pamphlet stitched, edges rounded, small for putting in purse. And the small page is about as far as I felt like going.
Not a journal keeper usually, I sometimes do a few days or more in a journal with drawings and ideas, then I lie down and the mood passes. But it's an occasional fun thing to do.
As is baking the last of my barley flour (on the subject of crazes, readers might remember the frenzy of flour-making using my coffee grinder? I do grind spices etc in it, but made flour from walnuts, almonds, chickpeas, lentils, barley, oatmeal and probably other things I've forgotten.) Anyway, I had this barley flour left over, just pearl barley ground up, and finally put it to use making a batch of hot biscuits; the flour was half and half barley and unbleached ap.
Barley flour doesn't take up the liquid like other flours, so you have quite a wet dough, best baked as one big biscuit then cut with a pizza cutter once finished. It's a nice flavored, sort of grainy textured flour, browns nicely. Also needs 12 minutes rather than 10 because of the relative wetness of the dough. But it does come out light. And it works with jam or with your breakfast egg, or with practically anything that requires a bready accompaniment. Which for me is practically anything.
Today, I put my vague plan about painting the tiny downstairs bathroom into action, which first entailed removing a ton of small art from the parts I needed to paint. Then remembering what tools I needed. A roller is too awkward for this small space, so I use those big square pads you sort of brush down the wall, and can cut in pretty well. Touch up with a sponge brush, done. And finally I was wondering where my painting clothes are.
So I did get this show going, and painted the lower half of the wall in the same color as the staircase. It looks almost white in the can, but lovely caramel on the wall. And finally the place where the grab bar was installed just looks like part of the wall instead of a replacement. Note the towels on the grab bar.
The paint job spiffs up the room quite a bit, since it's always the lower half that gets the traffic and thumps. The contrast with the pink is very happy, a bit like a strawberry/ French vanilla icecream.
And the white rabbit for May 1 had to wait to make his entrance until Kate H reminded me it was indeed May 1 and not April 31, as I had sort of been thinking. So here he is, midst greenery, wishing you a good May Day.
But I celebrated the Workers' Day by working, so that was okay. And mayday mayday did come to mind a time or two in the painting process.
Next the loose moraine of artworks on the dining table need to make their way back to the walls of the bathroom, those that are going back, that is.
I may change my mind about some of them, always a possibility.
I will recoup my failing energy with a couple of paleo cookies, recipe suggested by Carol H and tried out yesterday, and a pot of tea. They're Elizabeth Barbone's paleo cookies.
I guess paleo doesn't actually mean cavemen ate them, though they were missing a good thing, but the ingredients have no gluten, maybe that's it.
Four ingredients: almond flour, a no brainer around here, vanilla essence, baking powder, dark maple syrup. I had no maple syrup so I subbed jaggery. In fact I subbed half and half honey and molasses which itself is a sub for jaggery.
Anyway, it made fewer cookies than the recipe said, probably because of this change, but they went down dramatically well with Handsome Son who stopped over to do a thing or two for me yesterday and get a cup of tea while he was here. Hot biscuits with either mango or blueberry jam, plate of paleo cookies. Not bad. He wants me to make them again. So this is good.
And my house wall painting is under way for another season. In fact this is thrilling, that I can do it with no ill effects other than feeling a bit tired. Shoulder totally well now, yay. So other walls now call.
I have enough of the staircase color to paint the inner wall of the stairwell, the one you don't see unless you live here, so maybe that will be next. It always looks better when the stair tread sides, there's a name for them which escapes me, please supply if you know it, are newly painted. Not treads, not risers, the zigzag bit that goes up the side and is the devil to paint without getting the rug involved. Stringer? when I built miniatures I used to know all these technical terms, muntins, fascia boards, soffits, all that, but this one has left me.
So that's where May Day finds us! St Joseph the Worker, whose feast we celebrated it as kids, would be proud.
