Pictures from yesterday and today

I was out and about yesterday, to the post office and bank. I drove around the "No Trespassing" signs at the golf course.

It would be only a very large meadow, were it not for the rows and orderly rows of spruce.

A final stop by the pond. I have not seen the heron in some time. Perhaps it's too hot for it, too.

I watered the plants today. Too hot to be out, at ten this morning. Next week will be seventies and eighties all week, including Wisconsin.

Have a good couple of weeks, until we meet again. I am going off off line.

Fifty years ago

We were so proud fifty years ago, as Americans, and every single one of us. We who were old enough remember where we were. Those not old enough tend to remember where they were the first time they saw the old magic.

Today we do not have that thrill, that image, that lift of spirit, mind and body. Like the heat wave so many of us and so much of the world is sinking under, we are oppressed by our president. Some words I've copied down of late:

Abhorrent

Obviously racist

Dangerous rhetoric

Antithetical

I cannot look. I cringe and shrink in at his words. Frequently there are tears.

I read even more disturbing news. The man can lose the popular vote by fifty million, yet capture the electoral college, he has so consolidated his base in this midwest of old white men, terrified of losing power.

I just don't know. I can only keep on trying.

Suspicious mind

Toby visited the vet this afternoon, to get current on his immunizations. This afternoon he sulks! Not because he was stuck.

No, he is put out because I haven't put away the cat carrier. Something is not right in his world, and he's stopped speaking to me. Oh well.

He's right; something is up. Although I'm not leaving until Monday, he goes to kitty kamp tomorrow. They can have a few extra days to give him a good, close haircut.

In other news, the shed saga is over. Les Nesman's office is in place.

I told Dan I was leaving Monday, and would leave him the key to the old shed, to handle the details while I was gone. His response was "Meet me out there Wednesday morning!", and I did. Following an overnight downpour, they brought it in.

Then Dan and Joe brought over "your damn stone", and set it. A giant slab of sandstone I bought on sale at the landscaper across the road, so I can step up into "my damn shed". My granddaughters sited it at the old shed.

And while Dan hung over the back of his truck and enjoyed himself haranguing me for twenty minutes, Joe carried the contents of the old shed up the slope and put them in the new shed.

Day trips

Someone in Wisconsin who reads the blog wrote overnight, that since my road trip was gone for now, perhaps I'd like to have lunch with her. Of course I would, and she and I have a lunch date. And Ann, who, like me, is up for most anything.

So what say you. Let's see how many lunches I can eat out in Wisconsin. Ann lives between Milwaukee and Madison. If you live an hour or so north, south, east or west of an imaginary point between those two cities, and would like to meet a stranger for lunch, let me know. I'll bring Ann, if I can.

Dear Mage wants to know what cookbook I'm bringing with me. My two cookbooks, Mage, are long gone. My mother gave me Settlement House cookbook and my mother-in-law gave me Betty Crocker, with the plaid cover. So my current cookbook is the internet. Laura cooked directly from Google. I have to have one or two versions printed out, in a plastic sleeve and in my notebook.

Tonight I had potato soup, and six servings are in the freezer. I won't be making that again until next spring. I made it this morning and played cards all afternoon. When I came home, soup was on.

If you live near enough in Wisconsin to meet me for lunch, I would enjoy the rendezvous. My email is over in the sidebar below the search box. Leave me a note in comments if you cannot locate it, but want to know.

Little to say, fewer pictures

I put stones in the birdbath. Still no takers. Perhaps I need a sign.

This small flower with heart shaped leaves is growing in one of the mandevilla pots. Small is an understatement; this is larger than life. I have no idea what it is. That's a mandevilla leaf in the upper right corner. I could not see the little plants leaves were trefoils until I looked at the picture on my computer screen.

This year I have a Gerbera daisy, a red one. It was in the orphan section, on sale for three dollars. The only one I found with buds is red, and that's fine with me.

I planned to leave for a vacation this Saturday, and was deep in negotiation with the insurance company to release one drug for refill two days early. I'll never know how that would have turned out, for the vacation was a proposed road trip with Ann, and she had to cancel it today. I'll leave Monday for a regular visit to Wisconsin.

The road trip probably is only postponed, so that is all I'll say about that. I told Ann I have returned to my status of forty years ago, and am a decent cook. I will bring my cookbook and she can find dinner on the table every night. No cold cereal while I'm there! 

Another hot week, and more to come

 My week began with a potential solution to my gazing ball stand problem. The green gazing ball, in a picture on the side bar, met a tragic end. To keep the stand, or throw it away?                                                                                                              

This glass bowl crossed my path. It is a footed plate, it has a rim, but no stand. It is heavier than a baby. It was on a donate pile. A nice birdbath, thought I, and lugged it home.

And, it rained. Seemed fitting. I have not noticed a visitor, to date.

I've always paid attention to the front side of the mandevilla blooms.  The back of this unfurling flower caught my eye, as it should. Fascinating, the color of sections still overlapping.

There was a lot of commotion this morning, past my bedroom window. Men talking, shovels, that sort of stuff. Convinced I'd wake up to my new shed, I left the cat on guard at the window and went back to sleep.

It is a start. Not where I want it, but hey, I'm not setting it, and I'm not moving the contents of the old shed up the hill, and I'm especially not moving that huge flagstone step.                                                              

I'm almost awake

It's seven, closing in on my bed time. If I can put together a post in an hour, I can read blogs until bedtime. I would like that.

I wanted someone else to make breakfast, so Jim, Lynn and I went to another breakfast joint. The two of them have visited every restaurant in a three county area that serves breakfast. The last three, including this morning's, have been indelibly scratched.

One made Lynn very ill, as in out of it for three days, two of them in bed. She wrote a letter and has had no response, not even an apology.

On the way home we stopped at the nursery for a bag of fertilizer recommended to them. We passed a mouse  gasping its last. Ending its misery was not in our pay grade. I did buy a lot of three dollar pots to add color.

I scored a three dollar Gerbera daisy, but I don't know the color yet.

The Gerbera, the shamrock, Pig and Hedgy all need to trade places.

Coming back from cards, I stopped for the golf course picture. It is becoming quite rough! Nancy and I had a great card day, putting together one great play after another. You're pretty much as good as the cards dealt, and we did what we should with what we got.

When I came in from cards, I made a new mac and cheese recipe I found. It's ninety minutes in the slow cooker. I haven't made mac and cheese since I had school children at home, I think. From my years of doing and watching, this didn't sound unreasonable.

In fact, it called for cream cheese and a little more milk than I recall using, but I'm a fan of cream cheese, and forged on. I'm here to report, what may sound good is not necessarily so. I may look around for a new recipe, or tinker with the one I found.

My taste buds told me if I skipped the cream cheese, substituted water for the milk, skipped the butter and most of the quarter teaspoon paprika, it would have been good. 

A new day in the life

When I was dead tired last night, and making supper, I needed to mince garlic. I can do that. I reached for the jar with two new heads of garlic. Totally stumped. The last time I handled garlic from scratch was before Laura.

Google said put it in a plastic bag and give the root end a good smack. I quit after one thump. My palm is still bruised today. I looked around, picked up the knife holder for a mallet and it let fly. Woohoo, a bag of cloves. The paper kept flying as I put them back in the jar. I think if I shook the bejammers out of that jar, I could separate them from their skins.

Jenny_O wonders what I bought at Abby Ann's. The clerk wrote it up as the Pumpkin Bowl. $2.56.

I want a way to keep my soap pods accessible. I made an emergency run to Abby Ann's the other day. I gave Laura the casseroles I improvised to a double boiler for brown bread.

I bought a Pyrex casserole that's stashed there in the spring form cheesecake pan. The red lid is to the red tin cup I use to bake brown bread. 

I emptied the trash and missed the flowers, so they went out separately. There is the red cup passed along to me from Alberta. I had a note from Linda, Alberta passed away July 2nd, at 102.  Alberta is at the picnic table in the picture sidebar. I so admired her.

There was much on my list for today, and I have only accomplished trash and flower watering. I have an afternoon of shopping to do; three stops. It is raining torrents. I will go put more thread on the beam.

So, I'm closing with my dancing glass lady, who acquired the suitable size upright this morning, while the sun was shining and the rain was still in Wisconsin, according to Ann.

My Fourth of July

It has become apparent to me these last three years that more of us are alone on holidays than with family. Since the Old Cornmudgeon, our brother Walt slipped into the sunset, my family is out of people who organize a family party simply by declaration.

We have broken off into units of young people who may have a party, or old people who quit waiting for invitations. I had a startling, but not unexpected invitation recently. I went to lunch with dear Ruth a week ago, and as we parted, she tentatively asked, "Now that you don't have Laura, would you like to come to my house?" 

Having no more pride in the matter, I accepted.

Yesterday I drug my sister with me to the city second hand store, Abby Ann's. This house on one of the streets in my old neighborhood, is red, white and flag ready for the holiday. I hope there is a back yard full of grandparents, grandchildren and parents there today.

All my days are far slower than formerly. I can still walk a city block, if there is a bench at the end. And, I can walk back, and that's the end of my march.

Today I finished winding bobbins for the new warp and began winding it on. I believe I am putting on another fifteen yards. This time I've purchased a yardage counter. We'll see how accurate is my residual math.

In every two inch bout I am moving one blue or silver thread to the left and a green or brown to the right. The fabric will be very directional, and can also be used in a left/right side fashion. We'll see what happens.

After three bouts I stopped to make supper, which was ready at six-thirty. After kitchen clean up, my back was totally done in, and here I am, winding up (or down?) my day.

Oh yes, the cat left an almighty hairball on the blanket at the foot of the bed, where I pray he leaves hairballs, and so he has, these past three weeks. So, that went through the wash and is back on my bed. His grooming date, and my vacation cannot come soon enough.