Monthly adventure

 The house cleaners were here this morning. So an outdoor time was needed. And though the day started out grim and dark and rainy, it suddenly broke out into sun and wind, and after a couple of boring errands, I was able to get to Plainsboro Pond, and do the walk of what used to be known as the Island.

This is the way in from the main road, the official entrance, I suppose.  Great caution is to be observed here, because of the flock of Canada geese, who love it here, reproduce like mad, since they're protected, and make walking a hazardous endeavor, and you have to watch you don't skid.

This is a lovely walking path, water on both sides, different view every time you turn your head. Several runners today and one old party creaking along on an ancient bicycle, having a fine time.

View looking left.  A lot of people living over there have kayaks they put on the pond in season.

View looking right.  I really love to see sun sparkling on the water where the wind is whipping it up

Worlds of interest underfoot, too, this being a damp area, plenty of lichen and fungi and tiny plants

Getting near the end of the path now

And the bridge, looking like something from an impressionist painting.  Before this was built, the piece of land we just walked on was a peninsula, very safe for letting dogs run.  I had a couple of dogs accidentally learn to swim by not realizing the land was coming to an end, and they flung themselves into the water.  One couldn't wait to get back in, loved it.  The other was furious, very offended, demanded to be fished out again NOW and never willingly went in water again.

Now, with the bridge joining to a long walking path for runners, walkers, bicycles, running several miles, it's become a favorite place. No dog running now, though. It was windy today, but the trees on both sides of the path create a shelter from the wind, very welcome to this walker this morning.  Once across the bridge, I turned and retraced my steps back to the other end, because that's where I was parked.  Sometimes I do this walk the other way, park on the street you saw earlier, then start at the bridge, and end at the entrance, then loop back.  It's a couple of miles, I suppose, round trip.  Long time since I measured it with a pedometer.

Thanksgiving, the prequel

It's official. Chez Boud, Thanksgiving will be celebrated on Tuesday, since that's the day Handsome Son is free. 

He's doing the shopping as usual, so we simplified things. He has asiago cheese and bread sticks to start. Then heat and eat ready cooked food, his choice, I won't know till I see him, and ginger ale.

I've made the the pomegranate juice to serve in Fancy Glasses and the dessert giant cookie. There will be tea, too, he being a tea drinker, true to his roots. I'll haul out the red cloth and the white cloth to go over it, and the cheeseboard, and I'll polish up the best wine glasses, all the doings.

It will be wonderful. Cleaners coming Monday, great timing, so even the house will be ready. 

And, since we're early with our celebration, I'm getting in early with my thankfulness.

We're both keeping well, up to now, solvent, housed, know where our next meal is coming from.

 His main job, food store, is unaffected, essential worker, though requiring high level of precaution. His part time gig, once his full-time job, is in software, so it's online anyway, continues as usual.

I'm old but keeping well, very capable of living alone and enjoying it, a blessing during a time like this.

Our work to eject the present administration has been successful. Rocks ahead, but not the despair we were feeling just a few weeks ago.

I'm thankful for faithful friends who haven't fallen away when things are tough, neighbors who are fun to be around.

And I'm thankful, too, for the readers of my blogs, long distance friends,  who take part with energy, commenting, advising, suggesting books, emailing me with their own pictures and even sending me things they know I'll like and use. You can't know how much it means to have your friendship and know you're reading here.

Such generosity of support over the twelve years I've been blogging and recording some major and dramatic events in my household. Also some funny ones, where I did not cut a dignified figure, but oh well.

Thoughtful and timely gifts that have kept me going. From lint for art use, cashmere combings for spinning, Kool aid for dyeing, books, all kinds of yarn, fabrics, stitching and knitting materials and tools, handmade books, lace, scarves, ecards, and here's the latest, from dear C

She'd followed the flour tortilla adventure, and thought it would be nice for me to make corn tortillas, too.

But since the official masa harina is available in big quantities, she kindly not only measured out enough for a single person's recipe, but handwrote the recipe, and sent it off like a care package! The note will be inserted into my Big Binder right away, for safety. Is this not a gesture to make a person happy? Yes, loudly!

And yes, it's all a two way street, but here I'm talking as recipient.

Then I looked at my plants this morning and saw this bud just beginning on the white primula.

See it down there, right at the base of the leaves, juuuust visible? Hope in plant form.

All in all, plenty to be thankful for, and I am, I so am.

I wish you all a happy week, coming into summertime for some blogreaders, winter for others. Let's find joy even in dark times, if we can.

From walking to pomegranates with tangents thrown in

 I've been walking outdoors most days as usual, but I haven't been doing much other exercise. Walking's fine, but it's just one form of movement, and it's good to have more.  I was getting bored with the Hasfit series, good as it is, and tried a couple of yoga ones, which were good, too, but today I thought I should do something involving not being in a chair.

So I found this mother and daughter channel.  Really good stuff.  And, instead of a young athletic person instructing older people how to go on, she has her mother working out alongside no, great illustration of what to look out for, how to pace it. I don't know the age of the mother -- often people are presented as seniors and turn out to be my son's age, but never mind.

I just did the ten minute walking workout this morning and I'll do more of these.  It's walking types of movement, but sideways, backwards, using arms, lifting alternate knees to touch, a variety of movements, punctuated by marching in place.  I think this is a great one for people who don't walk outside, too, especially when the weather gets a bit trickier, and there's ice.  And it exercises your thinking, too, to keep doing the actions without mixing yourself up.  At least for me it does.  Not gifted physically.

And then I needed some good music going while I was dressing and generally getting ready for the day.  This is Pinchas Zuckerman with a Korean prodigy, SoHyun Ko, when she was 12, playing Bach's Concerto in D minor, in Korea.  He's conducting baroque style, from his own instrument.   He's a great promoter of young musicians, offering opportunities, founding programs to help them get established.

He recorded this same piece with Midori when she was about ten.  When she was an adult, she performed locally and I got to see and hear her in person, unforgettable.

And while I was in search of more information, I came across a great don't miss it opportunity to add Samuel Pepys to my emergency Kindle reading.  He lived through the Great Plague, and the Fire of London, and various other disasters, and still kept on writing his diary.  Not the nicest of chaps, but an interesting writer to dip into. I doubt if he'd been happy at the price I paid, though.

Then, since food inevitably makes its way into everyday life at regular intervals, I thought I'd do something with the pomegranates from yesterday's Misfits box.  I looked at a few ideas online, found them way too elaborate for what I was looking for, and decided just to juice them.  

Way back in history, I made a peach curry, using canned peaches, and drained the syrup off the peaches thinking I could freeze that and use it one day.  Today turned out to be the day.  And I bust up the pomegranates and separated out the seeds, like little rubies, from the pith and the rind

and blended them briefly with the peach syrup.  I didn't want to blend too long, because each little ruby has a seed, which I didn't want to crush, probably bitter, just blend enough to get the jelly like part off the seeds. 

Then I strained it, with a lot of help from a spoon to push the material through leaving behind the seeds

Here's the debris from that operation, except there wasn't much waste, since the rinds on the plate are now in the freezer for future natural dyeing experiments.

And here's the result, two cups of the most wonderful juice, nothing better than fresh. Worth all the fiddling about that preceded it.  Not that I'm rushing to do it again very soon, I must admit.

But, having done all that prep, I can see why pomegranate juice is expensive, since I doubt whether there's a machine that can do all those stages without ruining something. It's very fiddly getting all the little bits of membrane separated after you remove the rind.

Like asparagus, which grows like a weed around here, but there's no machine that can harvest it successfully, since it has to be cut stem by stem at just the right place.  So the labor adds up and it sells as a luxury item.  I see the local farm family in spring patiently harvesting their field by hand.  It used to grow wild around here before development happened.  And I had a huge unruly bed of it in my backyard at the first house we had, used to invite neighbors to come and pick, since they were countryfolk and knew how to pick without damaging the plants.

Walking, to Bach, to Pepys, to pomegranates, to asparagus.  You can't say I stay too long on one topic!

Misfits day mostly good

 Misfits box arrived today, this morning, several hours earlier than expected. Usually I think I'm the last stop of the day in this area.  Only one minor problem, a dented can, which they're attending to now after I sent them a pathetic picture of it. 

Today, the cornucopia includes a couple of pomegranates, first I've had in years, and I'll have to review how to eat them.  And what looked like more potatoes than I'd ordered, but I can deal with them.

Fnally the mushrooms showed up, so there will be soup in the near future.  And I invested in some more of that Aurora Mills wholewheat flour, this time pastry flour, to see how it goes.  I plan to pickle some of the red cabbage you see there, also some of the red onions. So see what happens to the skins, etc., go to Red veggie future

And here's tonight's salad in the works, celery, carrots, oakleaf lettuce, scallions, sliced dates.  Isn't that a lovely box design for the dates?

Since the box arrived early, this setup had to wait its turn in the wings, and it's now baked and about to emerge.  It's the Giant Cookie, for Thanksgiving.  Since I don't know what day that will be for Handsome Son and me, except certainly not Thursday, I thought I'd better get ahead of things and bake it now.

Like this

It smells excellent. This one I made with Gold Medal flour, less soft than the White Lily I used last time, so we'll see how it works.

Vanishing beets and other likely stories

The weather has turned cold, and there's nothing I like better than a hot bowl of soup, for making a person feel fit for whatever happens.

Today it's green soup, carrot tops, leek greens, tons of garlic, couple of red potatoes, chicken broth, basil pesto, seasoned with Bill Veach recipe curry powder, (let me know if you want me to give the recipe, it's very good, and fun to make at home) turmeric, kosher salt, and with added pumpkin water and beet juice, dash of lemon juice.  The beet juice is very fugitive, so where you see a rather lurid red here,  the color will vanish on cooking and become green. Likewise the seasonings were very golden, and they blended in to the green.  And I added in a handful of noodles.

Pumpkin muffin to go with.  Salty P. suggested it was a muffin type thing, and I agree, not to be presented as a cupcake, despite the paper case.  It's more savory.  She should know. Pumpkin is her last name.

This is a great soup.  You can feel strength flowing into you as you eat.  I did fish out a bunch of ultra fibrous remains from the carrot greens, and what's left is very manageable. 

Tomorrow my Misfits box arrives, complete with celery and lettuce, so I'm signing up for a few days of salads, too, ready for them at this point.  Misfits has certainly taken a shopping load off Handsome Son, who now has weeks with just a couple of requests, and one week with none, but an invitation to tea anyway.

The leader of my online Thursday centering prayer group got in touch, with today's link, and a question about whether we wanted to meet next Thursday, given that it's Thanksgiving.  I said no, I'd leave the Zoom traffic to people who really needed it for seeing family at a distance, since I'll be seeing Handsome Son in person.

My hidden agenda was to try to give her an evening off, by not obliging her to sign in.  However, one other person insisted they needed to meet, so she will try for it.  I wish they'd thought first, though.  Sometimes it's kind to agree to let something not happen for once. Leader Chris has family Zoom meetings, and now she'll have to juggle the prayer group as well.  I have a feeling that Zoom will be overloaded anyway, so it's possible that people may not manage to get online. Anyway, I did my tiny bit.

I'm definitely getting more absent minded.  To wit, ready to walk the other day: coat, check, hat, check, gloves, check, mask, check, phone, check.  Stepped out, ouch, this path is really hard today.  Look down.  Oh.  Shoes, check.

I'm about to go walking now, and this is in the form of reminder to self.  Shoes, Lizzie, shoes.  Always useful. Especially when the temp is about freezing.

Escape into hats

Since my Christopher Guest film festival is waiting for the next offering, Princess Bride, to come in to the library, I thought I'd branch out into the frivolous (!)

Royal stuff.  Mainly about the 1936 excitement of the English  abdication when the King wanted to marry Mrs. Simpson.  There's a lot of constitutional history wound into this, and the second World War plays a role in the real life version, but the movies don't usually get into that very deeply.

No, we're in it for the hats.  At least I am.  Wallis' clothes are wonderful, and the interiors, and the cars, and the men's fashions, even, since Edward was a bit of a clotheshorse, too.  So this is my critical analysis and comparison and contrast of these three major artworks, and their production values. Or something. Hot chocolate may be involved.

I think I already saw Wallis and Edward on YouTube, but never mind. Anyway, if I have time in the evenings, I'll be watching them.  My evenings seem to get used up with reading and emailing and spinning and messaging and keeping in touch with people, and various other things.

Including baking.  In honor of the upcoming Thanksgiving, I baked a dozen pumpkin cupcakes.  Just the usual old banana bread recipe, only cooked and mashed pumpkin substituted for the bananas. Jury's out on these. The pumpkin may work best in soup.

The flavor is not as good as the sweet potato, but the texture works okay.  I think Handsome Son will like them, because they're not too sweet, since the sweetness of the banana was absent.  And, for once, I omitted inclusions, since I have walnuts in the house and I'm saving them to use in the Giant Cookie for Thanksgiving Day, whichever day that turns out to be for us.

He's working on the day itself, as usual, so we'll just fit in wherever we can.  I hope it's not Monday, since the cleaners are coming that morning, but even if it is, I expect we'll manage. And there will be a clean house, no matter which day we celebrate, always a Good Thing tm.

I said a dozen, and eagle eyed readers will note that there's one missing. That's the cook's privilege, first try.  Usually eaten too hot, can't wait.

Still reading Maisie Dobbs, yet another.  This one A Lesson in Secrets is excellent, and I hadn't read this one before, a plus right there. It's set in Cambridge University, and involves not only the Secret Service and the police force, but the powers of academia, too, all very complex and interwoven. 

Quesadilla, Monday what's that? Tuesday it's lunch

So, Monday I'm playing with tortillas, and notice the name quesadilla on my YouTube research into this important subject, and figured cheese must be involved, judging from the name, but I didn't know what it was exactly.

Further study revealed it was something I'd seen but never identified, in restaurants.  And that you can put other stuff in as well as cheese.  So here's Tuesday's lunch, thawed tortilla, sharp cheddar grated, and lovely portabella mushrooms cooked in butter and oil till all the liquid is absorbed. All fried together till the tortilla, one side cooked fast, turned over, additions heaped on, then lid on the pan, cooked till the cheese melted, just a couple of minutes. It was great. And my experiment about freezing the tortillas worked fine.  They're a little smaller than they were supposed to be, so a little thicker, but nothing to fuss about.

  

The miracle of the internet...I realize this is hilarious to people whose knowledge of Mexican and TexMex is so much greater than mine. Bear with me, this bit of NJ isn't a Mexican food region.  More Indian and Thai, really, aside from the traditional Italian.

And I just finished reading yet another Maisie Dobbs, well, rereading really, but it's good enough for a second run.  This one was very moving, and I remember my mother telling stories of things like this happening at home at the outbreak of World War One.  She was about nineteen at that time, so remembered it very clearly.  I won't say more, because that will interfere with the mystery, and it's a really good narrative, definitely worth reading.  She also takes time to describe food, they're always stopping off in little teashops for Eccles cakes, and clothes, great detail on current fashions and how Maisie isn't much of a fashion dresser, but needs to look smart for business purposes.  She wears her cloches all the time, and even, shock, horror, gets her long hair BOBBED!  Scandalous.

My mother used to tell me that she, in her twenties when the short hair came into style, so much easier to care for, had her long hair bobbed.  At that time, the boast was that your hair was so long that you could sit on it. Not sure why you'd want to, but anyway, she bobbed hers.  And my father came home from work and nearly collapsed with shock.  Lizzie, your HAIR!  But I guess he learned to live with it.

I used to wonder about those long hair stories, until my Aunt Kitty, one of mom's older sisters, showed me her special dressing table box which held a ringlet of her hair, which she proudly used to say was auburn.  Looked brown to me.  Anyway, it really was long.  I guess she could have sat on it, if necessary!  And it was a long ringlet, not unlike my own before I'd got my hair cut as a kid.  Her dressing table had a cheval set -- a crocheted set of pieces to set your stuff on.  Ring stand, brush and comb, powder bowl with lid.  She'd been born in about the early 1890's, so she'd kept on with the fashon from them.

And Anne Tyler never fails.  I think I may have read this long ago, since it came out a few years ago, but it's worth reading again, if that's the case, and I'm reading it.  So much of my reading nowadays is electronic, I bless the libraries who made apps like Libby, on which I'm acquiring these, available.  It's much more laborious to get physical books now, what with curbside arrangements and appointments and that's okay, and you can't stay and browse, all the furniture rearranged to discourage hanging out.  And the hours are very limited, so this is a good alternative.

This is a really weird premise, where a widower's wife comes back to him a year after her sudden death in an accident, and walks about, exactly as in life, chatting with him, and visible to everyone, and  unnerving everyone but him, since he decides oh well, go with it, I was missing her too much to pass this up. That's as a far as I've got to date, but I'm definitely putting time aside for this today.

My spinning and plying stint is done, meaning my arms are telling me to quit for the day, though my spirit is saying, oh, don't listen to them.  But I know tomorrow will be less fun if I don't stop now.

Tortillas my way

 So I made the tortilla recipe I showed you yesterday, involving flour and milk. Mixed, rested, all that. I used whole-wheat flour.

Divided it into six bits as per instructions.

Then I flattened the first ball of dough with my hand, and rolled it with a rolling pin. The first one I overcooked and got a collection of little bits, which are crisp enough to sprinkle in soup.

On to T2. This gave me a ragged little effort, but I fried it, not too much, rolled it up with ham and cheese, and had it for lunch. It was nice and pliable, tasted fine, and needed work on the shape.

However I decided that everyone doesn't have a tortilla press, so what could I press (!) into service? Aha, a glass baking dish.

Soooo I sprayed olive oil into a plastic bag, inserted the dough ball, pressed the pan on it, and achieved something more like a tortilla and less like a dishrag. You can use anything heavy I expect, but I wanted to see what I was doing.

Oiled my hands -- this is good for your skin-- and tipped the last four tortillas, interleaved onto parchment paper, for the freezer. If this works as well as the wraps did, thawed right before fried, I'll be happy.

So that's today's foray into the wrapaganza.

This was fun, like preschool clay time.

Diwali and tortillas

 Last night was fireworks in the street for Diwali, Feast of lights. No bangs! Just fountains of light and it was lovely. Grown-ups in charge, cars moved away safely, kids kept at a safe distance.

Watched from upstairs, too chilly outside

Houses are decorated with lights all down the street. The Minn. Star Tribune had a silly feature about minnesotans celebrating Christmas early with lights. What do you bet it was Indian houses, celebrating Diwali at the normal time? 

There were similar silly comments on TV networks about Londoners setting off fireworks to celebrate Biden's win. It was the fifth of November, Guy Fawkes Night in fact

Ignorance is bliss, and a source of amusement, too..

In other news, I'm going to try tortillas, since I really like wraps and now I'm off on a wrapaganza

Like this

I'll let you know how it goes. I won't be making this today.

Handsome son is visiting this afternoon to drink tea, eat cornbread with peach plum lime jam, and help me pull pachysandra at the fence line.

Blogger is resisting all my attempts to left align this post. I'm a helpless prawn.

Food in war and peace, fruitflies always

 This came out in 1985

A local friend sent me this image, the cover of a book she has in her collection, a gift from an English friend, very old at the time, who clearly remembered all this wartime rationing and cooking.  I love that the title is a pun on Vera Lynn (The Forces' Sweetheart)'s hit song in wartime, to keep morale up:  We'll Meet Again!  M sent it after reading yesterday's post.  Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5C4meGkNyc

Vera Lynn lived till June 2020. Aged 103.Think what she saw in her long lifetime. Some people are reviving her song to help get us through the pandemic. Think what she saw in her long lifetime.

The recipes in the book involve dried egg, margarine, cooking fat, and various other substitutes for actual food.  And there's a note explaining that austerity and rationing persisted for years after the end of hostilities.  Interesting historical and social notes there.

Fast forward to today's world of luxury, and jam!  Woman can not manage with memories alone.  She needs jam.  Today it's Misfits peaches and plums and lime chunks.  I'm trying the lime instead of lemon as a source of pectin. And I macerated the fruit since last evening in sugar and the lime pieces, to see if that did anything interesting.

Then added the rest of the sugar, not as much as usual, didn't have a lot of sugar in the house, but we'll see how it works anyway.  Sometimes additional boiling can take the place of a full complement of sugar.  In the background, the jars and lids bubbling away sterilizing.

No pictures of the unboildownable stage, since it's way too hazardous to be coping with boiling jam and a camera at the same time

And here's the result.  I guessed pretty well, since it exactly filled the three recycled glass containers I'd boiled. I won't know till it's completely cooled how well it gelled, but it did the two drops off the side of the spoon test fine, and the wrinkling on the cold saucer test, too. I'll know for tomorrow's breakfast.  And if it didn't gel well, I'll give it a different name, Sauce aux peches et whatever plums is in French.

Cook's note:  as well as humans liking organic produce, fruit flies are crazy about it.  I have never had so many buzzing into my face, getting all over, before I got Misfits produce.  Which probably proves that the produce has not seen insecticides.  So I wielded the giant spray bottle I had filled to take care of some critters that were eating into the house from the outside, and succeeded in wiping them out. Just a mixture of lemon juice and vinegar.  I had also added borax when the baseboard infestation was worse, but then washed the spraybottle and after that just used the benign mix.

Just as well, since I  had to spray the apples and pears on the counter, then wrap them in clean cloths, and when I got tired of  firing at these teeny little guys, I looked up ideas for a home fruit fly trap.  And found that an open jar containing a cup of apple cider vinegar with a dash of dish liquid worked just fine.

It's standing next to the fruit and there's population of tiny corpses in it, must refresh it now, and the fruit is left alone.  No more critters in my teeth. It's odd that even when their Auntie Edie is clearly seen at the bottom of the jar, more fruitflies climb in anyway.  You'd think they'd avoid the same fate.  But then we have humans, supposedly of a higher order of intelligence, claiming that they don't need to wear masks, so I guess we have no room to criticize the fruitflies.

Then after all this strenuous activity, it was time to display the makings of lunch.  Remember the pickling I did a while back?  Carrots and beets?  they came out a treat.  And they daily grace my lunch wraps or sandwiches, whatever I'm doing.  The colors scream at each other, so they're separated on the plate.

This is the Misfits Beet and Carrot pickle extravaganza, with the American Cheese on nice sliced deli ham, on wholewheat bread with a little spread of mayo.  It's really a Lurid Lunch combo.

Nice day, and this evening will be about noting Biden's now well over 300 in the Electoral College vote count, took Georgia and Arizona definitely, and I'm spinning and emailing and generally loafing this evening.

I sent a donation to the Georgia organization that's funding the runoff voter registration  and get out the vote push, and signed on with MoveOn to get the lady holding up the funding of the transition to get with it and release the funds.  We already have Republicans pushing to extend the daily intelligence  briefings to Biden. And Homeland Security has made an official statement that the election was perfectly clean, won fair and square, and no evidence of  any tampering or fraud. A couple of dozen DOJ AGs have written to urge Barr, the USAG, to drop the attempt to investigate the election, on the grounds that no evidence of any kind has been found to support his suspicions.

So we hope things are lurching in the right direction.

Maisie Dobbs and thoughts on masks

 

Right now, I just finished reading the first Maisie Dobbs book, called, doh,  Maisie Dobbs.  After that she's the main character in the series, but they have other titles.  I didn't post yesterday, for various reasons, one being that I am very concerned about inadvertently glorifying war by my words of appreciation for the people in combat. No criticism of those who posted movingly yesterday, just my take.

But I did read Maisie Dobbs, which is very much involved in the first World War, and the battle of the Somme, in the course of the narrative.  It's accurate, thoughtful, and compassionate reading, though it's really a mystery story, and she's a onetime battlefield nurse, now a private investigator and scholar.

The narrative also centers those men who had terrible facial injuries, to the point where they were shunned by family and friends, and had to endure this ingratitude on top of the war wounds and ptsd, then called shell shock.  But ptsd was little understood outside the medical community.

There were new technological advances in reconstructive surgery, and on masks, made of thin tin, colored to match the wearer's own remaining skin, but a sad attempt at trying to simulate normality.  The men wore linen masks, too, to disguise their facial appearance. 

Maisie's intellectual mentor, Maurice, points out to her that we all wear masks, whether physical or emotional, and this is coming home to this reader, now in the era of mask wearing almost all the time.

One odd advantage to people like me about mask wearing is that,  I can't very well recognize people, and  usually keep a friendly smiling face on all the time out of doors, just in case. But now the mask covers my expression to the point that I'm now finding my face relaxing when I'm out, and it's wonderful. I had no idea how much tension I was lugging around with this defensive smiling mask.  And my normal expression looks very glum now, no matter how cheerful I might feel, gravity does this when you get old, so it's a good idea not to dwell on it! 

My dad served and was terribly wounded, at the Battle of the Somme, mentioned in Maisie Dobbs, and in his later years, not very old, he only lived to his sixties, after all the other sibs had left home and I was alone there with both parents, he talked to me a bit about his experiences.

The horrifying accounts of battlefield medical procedures, scraping of exposed bone with minimal access to morphine, desperate to avoid gangrene and loss of limbs, that you read?  take it from me, they're true. He endured this as just a kid, about 20 at the time. After lying out in no-mans-land for two days till medics could get out and bring him in to the field hospital.  The Salvation Army were the brave medics. And the endless rehab back in England, and the nurses who were amazing and terrifying all at once.  He limped for the rest of his life.  There's more, but that's enough to give you the gist. He, like Billy in the novel, could have lost legs if not for this harrowing early treatment.

As his daughter, I read Sebastian Foulks' Birdsong, a novel based heavily in and around the trenches of the time, partly because if he could live it, the least I could do was read it.  It's a wonderful novel, a love story as well as a stark picture of history.  I really recommend it.  It's important to understand just what it is people endure in combat.

And I always say, the civilian population, little kids in year after year of  rationing and bombardment and darkness and cold with little fuel at home, collecting rosehips and tinfoil for the war effort,  and wondering where all their big brothers have gone, and when this would all end, they're to be remembered, too.

Somber today.  Let's try not to let violent men thrust us into war again.  

The wild cherry has left us

 New Jersey Native Cherry

Planted by birds

Spring 1990-November 9 2020

She had a  valuable life on the patio. In summer masses of honey scented blossom and an orchestra of bees, in fall cherries for birds and squirrels, in winter thorns beloved of squirrels.

This was after her last big snowstorm, the 2018 March one that brought down her biggest branches, leaving this survivor.

She shaded the humans, and was especially friendly to Handsome Partner who spent summer afternoons in his last years, in his wheelchair in the shade, watching birds and the antics of the ever present squirrels.

 Since she reached the roof, she gave green shade and privacy to the bedroom.

It was a long life, for a wild cherry. We should all be so useful and beautiful!

And now she'll warm a house down the street over the winter.

As my friend, reluctantly felling her, said, it's all part of the cycle.