Photos I forgot to post over the summer.

Volunteer cantaloupes, which I get every year because of my compost pile -- I guess. Purple hyacinth beans (seeds courtesy of my sister), the ONLY nasturtium I managed to grow all summer despite planting a number of plantlets, and some late tomatoes. These tomatoes perplexed me because they remained green on the outside but were red, as shown, on the inside. And tasted ripe. Unfortunately I don't remember what kind of tomatoes I planted.

Quit! Again. Let's see if it holds this time.

I always quit, this will be the third and I hope final time, for the same reason. I comment on someone's post and then hours later I'm embarrassed by what I said. Today I made a stupid, pointless (hey, it's Facebook) comment on my brother-in-law's post about a computer problem. I did it quickly and without noting that many others had already commented. I said the same thing that someone had said earlier and she pointed it out to me. OK, said I. The only way to avoid all this nonsense is to just get out of FB. I don't need it, I don't learn anything much on it, but I admit that I check it several times a day. Waste of time. I'll read two more books a year, I figure, with the time I'll save.

Thomas Jefferson did NOT say this.

Quotation: "The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."

As this nation makes yet another attempt (almost certainly doomed from the start) to put a few sensible and responsible restrictions on firearm ownership, this quotation pops up here and there as evidence that T. Jefferson was seriously pro-gun. Don't believe it. The Internets are full of bogus quotes attributed to Jefferson, Adams, Washington, and Madison. There are so many non-Jefferson quotes that the website for Monticello has a link to Spurious Quotations. Link is here.

Update: I thought I was so clever....I thought I had discovered some little secret about this and other quotes. But then half an hour after I posted the above I was roaming around on CNN News and found this. Good! I want everyone to learn about the dishonesty of some gun lovers. Not all, I know. Just some. But still.

True? If so, does it matter? Let me answer that. Nah.

I'm a half-hearted member of the Facebook world. I have only posted a couple of times, although I comment on friends' posts occasionally. I have very few Facebook friends and some of them are people I've never met ("friends" I picked up when I was addicted to FarmVille or FarmTown or some farm things). So the fact, if it's a fact, that posts only reach 12 percent of a user's friends doesn't bother me at all. But I do think it's kind of interesting.

Wisteria.

http://www.berkeleyside.com/2011/04/22/the-hanging-gardens-of-berkeley/

Check out these stunning photos of wisteria in Berkeley, CA. According to the author:

There are several types of wisteria. Most common is Japanese Wisteria (Wisteria floribunda) which winds in a clockwise fashion and the Chinese Wisteria (Wisteria sinensis) which winds in a counter clockwise fashion. There are more than 25 different cultivars.


My wisteria winds clock-wise so I guess it's a Japanese Wisteria (floribunda). But I'll check this out on some other sites. One is never enough when checking out info from the web.

A report on Hurricane Sandy.

We were so very lucky. Hurricane Sandy came through the DC area with a lot of rain and bluster but did surprisingly little damage. I was totally prepared for a week without power.

But my daughter and sister, who live in quite different locations, didn't fare as well and are in for some Sandy-related inconvenience and loss of income, at least in my daughter's situation.

She lives in Brooklyn, works in Manhattan, and depends totally on the NYC subways, pictured above (photo from inhabitat.com).  Who knows when the unprecedented damage will be repaired. I've always been amazed at how NYC keeps itself functioning but this is a brand-new challenge.  Daughter is otherwise safe and has power, so that's the good news.

Sister lives in Western MD and telecommutes but she lost power last night and at 10 AM was looking out her windows at a foot of snow, with another foot predicted.  [The snow picture is from her front porch but was taken in Nov 2008.] Also, she had not yet heard a single snow plow, which in those parts is unusual. 

I know they're luckier than others in Sandy's path but I want everything to get back to normal for both of them. Soon. 

Cold frame.

Last winter I bought an inexpensive (about $50) cold frame and set it up in my very small vegetable garden. Then I didn't do much with it -- just let it sit there -- all spring, summer, and fall. The top blew off once or twice so at some point I just moved the top onto the porch. Finally in November I reattached the top and planted some lettuce plantlets, not seeds but plantlets. Everything is still growing, or at least nothing has been frozen, so I guess the frame is doing its job. Our temperatures have sometimes been in the 20s at night which normally would kill off lettuce (I think). Unfortunately, although alive and presumably healthy, the lettuce doesn't seem to be getting any bigger. Bottom pix was taken yesterday, pix above it was taken 3 wks ago. Maybe if we get a burst of sustained  warm weather -- in the 60s -- everything will grow in a burst.

See the grass in the upper left corner of the top picture? That's my neighbor's lawn. She has a lawn service which comes occasionally to give her lawn a "treatment." The kind where the lawn guys leave little warning flags in the ground near the driveway, warnings about pets and children, maybe? I haven't examined one. Anyway, do you think her chemicals, plus the chemicals from the neighbor next to HER, who also gets such treatments, will get into my lettuce? I think yes, probably. If nothing else some chemicals will be airborne and will float onto my garden.

It would be a big deal to move my vegetable garden to another location in my yard. A combination of not enough sun in some places, not enough free space in others, proximity to the road (and the stuff that cars spew out), and the whole aesthetic factor. We live on a corner lot so two of our four sides are visible and accessible from the street (ie, open to the hands of passers-by...we have a fair number of passers-by since we live next door to the entrance to a park).

Pie in a Jar!

 

 I bought this at the Takoma Park Farmers' Market on Sunday. Tonight I'll put it in a pie pan and heat it up. Report to follow. 

Wang Dang Doodle Barbeque. Go while you can....

This little restaurant is in the back yard, sort of, of an ice cream parlour in Takoma Park, MD. It's run by one guy who opens only on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. He's been there since September and makes barbeque to die for -- chicken, pulled pork, brisket, ribs. He cooks it outside (outside being just behind where I was standing when I took this picture) on a grill. He stays open only as long as he has food so you have to get there between noon and about 6 or 7 PM to guarantee finding him open. We went one day when it was bitterly cold so we ate inside that door, in the ice cream parlour where the owners were quite friendly, even though we bought nothing from them. (Well, I bought a bottle of water...) But!!  I learned today that The Big Guys are moving in. The Big Guy in this case means Jeff Black who owns and operates a bunch of fabulous restaurants in Bethesda, Rockville, and Garrett Park. I'm happy to see any new restaurant open close to home but I will mourn the loss of Wang Dang, which is a seat-of-the-pants place. Takoma Park is slowly, slowly, slowly becoming just a tad too upscale for me. Oh well, times change.

My neck feels great! Could it be because I stopped yoga a year ago?

I started taking weekly yoga classes in the fall of 2008. Within a couple of months I began to have low-level, intermittent but annoying neck pain. Aspirin, ibuprofen, tylenol, and aleve all worked to relieve the pain. I assumed the yoga was the cause but I didn't want to give it up. And I thought that maybe my body would adjust. (Magical thinking.)

In January 2012 I stopped taking classes. A conflict came up with the class I had been attending for years but there are tons of options in this area so I could have managed. I didn't. I procrastinated. I just kept saying "I'll start again, when I feel like it." Now it's a year later. I almost never take pain meds for my neck and I'm back to not remembering that I even have a neck. (Which is nice, because I hate my neck. It's too long and floppy, like Alice in Wonderland when she's eaten a mushroom.)

I miss yoga, and I think it was good for my strength and balance and brain and a bunch of other things. What I should do, since I know the basic moves, is create my own routine, making sure I do only movements that put zero pressure on my neck. That leaves out a lot of moves but it could be done.  Even if I did it only once a week it would be something.  It's a thought. I'll file it with all the others.