Heading into week two of vacation and just beginning to feel like a human being again. I was tired. Run down, dragged out, wrecked kind of tired. And now I’m looking at a lovely summer day stretching out before me and thinking that the hammock sounds good, and a book. I should probably mow the lawn at some point, but it’s a small lawn, that’s ten minutes of activity. That’s enough. It’s summer vacation.
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The garden is finally starting to come in this summer. I’m on vacation for 2 weeks, and I spent a lovely morning the other day puttering in the vegetable garden. I pulled out all the peas, which did really well this year, but which were starting to get woody. The tomatoes are starting to pop after a couple of days of hot weather — it really takes until August to get a tomato around here, but once they get past that 6-inch stage it feels like summer’s really begun. I have a lot of greens, and more onions than I…
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They’re back! It’s spring in the Greater Yellowstone area, and the bears are awake and afoot. Some of you may remember that the dogs and I had a little encounter last year (see Not the Top of the Food Chain, and Bear Update). Well, this year it was three local girls, who got pinned up in Suce Creek for two or two and a half hours by a grizzly. They were hiking, they saw the bear, the bear charged and they all yelled at one another to drop and cover their necks. They dropped to the fetal position, covered the…
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I spent my long weekend painting the two grotty little bedrooms in the basement, and turning one of them into an office. I also install chair mats for office use for safety and comfort. It was one of those projects that, for much of the weekend, felt like I’d never get to the other side of it. First I had to move all the furniture out of those little rooms — I’d been using one as a guest room, so other than moving a queen-sized mattress by myself, it was pretty simple. But the other room I’d been using as a…
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When I was in France a couple of years ago, we shopped in the local ville most nights. it was more expensive than going to the big Carrefour warehouse store, but it was much more convenient and we liked the idea of supporting the local economy. Plus the butcher was loquacious and fun to visit, and despite his heavy Provencal accent, after a few days, I began to understand him and could converse a little. It was a lovely store — not only cuts of meat, but any number of prepared foods as well, and if you wanted to buy…
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Thinking about food, that is. The San Francisco Chronicle has been running a whole series called The Faces of Organic — there’s this profile of Jim Cochran, who started Swanton Berry Farm and grows organic strawberries (regular strawberries use approximately one ton of pesticide per acre). There’s a good piece on Earthbound Farms, about which I have such mixed feelings. It’s definitely organic, but also industrial, which I find troubling — the article does a good job parsing the issues. There’s a nice piece on Clover Stornetta — organic milk from non-industrial co-ops is one of my pet issues —…
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The garden is starting to come in again — fresh chives on my morning egg for the past couple of weeks, the mint is coming back so my morning pot of tea tastes fresh and green again, and as always, onions are poking up from all sorts of odd places among the perennials. I’ve begun planting, the tomato, pepper, eggplant and cucumber seedlings are in the cold frame. And it’s spring, so I’m craving greens — spinach or asparagus, for example. But at the supermarket I look at those crinkly packages of baby spinach, or mixed greens and I just…
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That a six-hour, subtitled Italian movie (that began life as a mini-series for Italian television) would turn out to be the best thing I’ve seen since I can’t remember when. I wanted to see The Best of Youth last year when it was in the theaters, but it never played in Montana, and I didn’t think my stepmother would want to spend a whole day at the movies when I visited her in Seattle last spring. I’ve been just exhausted lately — there’s been sort of a spate of personal crises, and I’ve just been getting crushed at work with…
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The mini-daffodils are blooming in my side yard and yesterday I turned over the vegetable beds, planted peas. Tonight it looks like rain (or maybe snow) is on the way, but yesterday was sunny, nearly seventy degrees, and a lovely day. Things outside the garden are still a little alarming, but inside the yard there are dogs, and plants starting to green up, and tiny little spinach seedlings coming up.
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Sorry for the hiatus but sometimes trouble comes knocking … my mother had a fall, from which she’s recovering … and there’s bad news from a friend who is up against a dark diagnosis. I’ll be back … but for now, I’m just trying to fight fires, keep my job, and get through a bad patch. It’ll be fine. I’m fine. But people I love need my attention.. something needs to give for a bit, and it’s the blog …