The food!

Florence, Siena, and Fiesole, Italy--March 2010

Four days and five nights in Florence, with minor side trips by bus to Siena and Fiesole. Everything is so, so, so old and beautiful. And the food, my god the food! It helps to go with an art major slash daughter as your tour guide.

Got my hat. Now all I have to do is build all the frames and the brood boxes. Oh yeah, and get my bees.

Wag of my finger to Stephen Colbert who made me buy and eat these.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Consumer Alert - Pringles
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care reform

I should be ashamed to admit that watching Colbert talk about Pringles the other night forced me to buy these. I did it consciously too. As in "you know what I have to go out and buy tomorrow? Some Pringles." So I did. They are such bad nonfood but I'm enjoying them immensely. If you're weak like me, watch the video at your own peril. I know it's stupid but sometimes stupid is very funny (and persuasive too).

Yes, on this rainy day I've been sitting at the computer wandering aimlessly around.

An Engineer s Guide to Cats @ Yahoo! Video

But it was worth it to find this video.

I'll plant these soon. I had mixed results with seeds last year--I suspect that my starting-out soil was too rich w/ worm compost.

Meanwhile, I found this discussion of seed-starting and liked it. Especially this: "Tomorrow I'm going to sprout my Tomato seeds on moist paper towel, inside a margerine container in a warm spot. The seed usually sprouts in 5 to 6 days, sometimes sooner. I then prick them out gently and plant in 21/2" pots.
They stay on the kitchen windowsill until they get 3 sets of true leaves and then they go into 4" pots."

I may try some of these techniques, but I'm not going to start for a few more weeks.

Bees in my backyard? Maybe.

I've been taking a beekeeping course, inspired in part by this beekeeper lady in Denver. Tonight is my 4th class and I think I'm ready, mentally, to handle a beehive. There's a lot to learn and a lot of details, but none of it is intimidating. One thing makes me hesitate: the instructors and the books keep emphasizing how important it is to talk to your neighbors when you start. Just to reassure and educate them. And I understand that. But. I don't know. I've got some complicated neighbors, well, one complicated one. He may not react well. And that's not good for anyone. And I've got another neighbor who once told me she's terrified of bees. So I'll ponder that question before I make a commitment to the equipment and the bees. Bees are sooooo interesting.

Pictures of my class last week making frames. Apologies to these classmates who I don't know and who don't know me. It's a very big class: 90 students plus all the instructors and vendors and other passionate apiarists who seem to buzz around the classroom.

Oh, and one other hesitation. I talked to an organic beekeeper a few weeks ago and she frowns upon the kind of beekeeping methods I've been learning about. Sigh.

I really like the idea of having a few girl chickens--for the fun and the eggs, in that order--but I'd get too attached. & hawks would eat them.

I may have to buy this book. And I want that chicken tractor -- badly. But I can't have chickens, I just can't.

A piece of trash. I loved every minute of it.

I'm creating a new category on my blog called Book Confessions. Another reason I love my library: I can borrow books like this guilt-free.

My sister catches the no-knead bread obsession.

But she's using an even simpler recipe, if that's possible. It takes about 96 hours but as I understand it you don't even have to get your hands sticky the way you do with the traditional (in quotes) Sullivan Street Bakery recipe.

Isn't he pretty?

Ahhhhhh! The first blooms. Crocuses and Lenten Rose.

The baby yuccas weathered the weather and the deer. But they look bedraggled.

Amazing lettuce. Planted in the late fall, been sitting all winter on a cold sunroom with northern exposure. I watered very infrequently.

The deer are back! Been so worried about them. I'll be cursing them soon.

I've been avoiding my blogs for a few weeks. Not sure why, other than some vague feelings of being a little too full of myself. I mean really: pictures of socks and deer and snow. Is that what my life is reduced to? Apparently. Do I care? I didn't think so. To be continued. Or not.

Randolph Rd--last week. Trucks hauling snow west. Today I was trying to see some beauty outside & it was tough. Old snow is ugly!

This was a fun read. About the words scientists, and others, use to define "invasive."

Sock No. 1 of Pair No. 2. I learned something new about the heel on this pair. But I still need to be more careful--too many mistakes.

My first pair of socks won me this poem from Mr. H.

Oh my happy feet, so pampered with fun
I note the weave so exquisitely done
The color just right, with irregular toe
Adds a smile for none to know
For the sock is unseen and Oh what a shame
For Pam's deft fingers the socks cannot name
The socks on my feet and covers my toes
And where my feet travel so the socks goes

Nice, huh?

NEXT year I'll stop enjoying snarkiness. Meanwhile, this book is a delicious read for a political junkie. How did Edwards fool so many for so long?

Snarky excerpt from the snarky book:
About Rielle Hunter
Feb 06: Regency Hotel, NYC. Everything about her screamed groupie. She looked like a hybrid of Stevie Nicks and Lucinda Williams, in an outfit more suitable for a Grateful Dead concert than an evening at the Regency. … She handed him [an Edwards’ handler] her business card. The inscription read, “Being Is Free: Rielle Hunter – Truth Seeker.”

A few months later, without warning, Hunter was back – in a big way.
[she was] a constant presence on the road with Edwards…[her behavior] was freaky, wildly inappropriate, and all too visible. She flirted outlandishly with every man she met. She spouted New Age babble, rambled on about astrology and reincarnation, and announced to people she had just met, “I’m a witch.” She told [Edwards] that he could be as great a leader as Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. Edwards swooned, of course. Gobbled up her every word like so much pop-psych popcorn. He spent hours talking to her, listening patiently to her ideas about the state of American democracy and her advice on media strategy. (She had intuitions about Chris Matthews.) He ate every meal with her, sat next to her on the plane and in the car, offered to wheel her bags through airports.”

A once mighty ornamental grass is now a bump. I miss the grasses blowing in the winter wind.

Did you catch Andy Borowitz's take on the Evan Bayh resignation? See link below.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/scandal-evan-bayh-admits_b_463203.html

Niece Sarah, Big Sister Anabelle, and Newborn Norah Eve.

Notice how close Anabelle is hanging to Mom. Beautiful ladies one and all!

Skiing! And a weirdo setting on my camera.

My cross-country skiing was limited to (a) asking my husband where all the pieces were (they haven't been used in many years), (b) finding them, (c) getting them on, and (d) carefully, oh so carefully, heading down my little driveway--which does have a slope--into the street, up past a few houses and then back. THAT wore me out. But fun!

Check out the ethnicity question. "None"?? I thought about drawing a box & labeled it "Other" or "50% English-50%German."

An application for a course at Montgomery College. I'm assuming there's a very good reason for this question but I wish someone had thought through the choice of no ethnicity.

Done!

It would take a full page to summarize the mistakes I made. Starting with believing the salesperson who told me that I was buying enough yarn to make one pair of socks---hence the brown toe.

Pair No. 2 will be started tonight, while the extra 10-20 inches of snow is falling on the DC area. (Several friends hate me because I love the snow. Maybe if I give each one a pair of hand-made socks they'll forgive me.)

I admit it Your Honor. I waste time playing FV. It's fun. Should I be cleaning out a closet? Yes.

It's over! Look at that sky. 30+ inches.

It may look like a plow came down our street but it didn't. A neighbor with an SUV has been at work much of the day. Digging, blowing, driving his car back and forth, back and forth. He must have a Superbowl party he's determined to get to tomorrow.

Update 2/7/10: I was beginning to doubt my yardstick's accuracy but my son pointed out that the US Weather Service notes that MY neighborhood (Colesville) had the most snow fall of this storm:
"At 10 p.m. Eastern Time Saturday, a report from the U.S. National Weather Service pegged the snowfall in Colesville, Md., at 40 inches, more than a meter. The city of Howellsville, Va., saw 37 inches while Dulles Airport was blanketed with more than 32 inches."
From: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/northeast-digs-out-of-snow-more-is-in-store-2010-02-07?reflink=MW_news_stmp

Thanks to Andrew Sullivan for this link. (So snarky, just the thing I was supposed to give up in 2010.)

Top = Friday at about noon. Bottom = 24 hrs later.

Very light snow now, at about 4:30 PM Saturday. We've got well over 2 feet. Grateful that we still have power. Lots of folks without.

Welcome Norah Eve! Born today--just before this shot. With Anabelle, happy and relieved Mother Sarah, and George.

Dad, Kevin, must have taken the picture since it was just the four of them... and then suddenly Sarah was holding the fifth of them. Am I proud of my niece Sarah? You betcha!

Yikes. Let's hope they're overstating it for dramatic effect.

This morning at about 10.

Some people love the snow.

Anabelle and George at home in far, far, far Western Maryland. Looks like a very big boy coming down that hill. And those cheeks! (My grandniece and grandnephew.)

Sock update. It's going to have a blue stripe over the instep. Maybe a different color on the second sock.

Mid-day Saturday. Ornamental grasses are worth having for snow alone.

Yesterday, before the snows came, I found this lone snowdrop. In my mind, spring has begun.