Two recent trips: 3 hours, 19 mins to the west and we're at my sister's house. 3 hrs and 1 min to the east and we're at Bethany Beach. Both trips wonderful.

Bottom two pictures are from Bethany Beach, Delaware, last week. Weather was perfect. I swam with the fishes. (Those are people on stand-up surf boards -- the proper name of which I cannot remember at the moment.)  Top two pictures are going through (literally) and over the mountains to my sister's house on the Potomac in Western Maryland a week earlier.  I love her patio!  She let wildflowers grow freely between the flagstones and they look fabulous. She planted what she thought was chamomile but what grew turned out to something else.

106 degrees tomorrow. (And where did the degree symbol go on the keyboard?)

Miscellaneous.

My lone bedraggled sunflower survived the deadly storm that blew through town yesterday, but the next door neighbors' picnic table did not.

We were very very lucky, and lost power for just about 15 hours. But there are more storms heading our way.

"Forward"??

The last time I thought I'd found a typo I quickly learned that I was wrong, as you can see if you go here.  Recently I came across another apparent typo (in the May 14th New Yorker) but maybe I'm wrong again. But I'm not, right? It should be "Foreword," right?

The article is a good one. About geoengineering. Depressing of course but what's new. The link is here.

How great is this? SF Friend M. becomes a foster beekeeper.

It's a long story, which I'll report later. Margo lives in San Francisco in a really old house. Details to follow.

[note: I'm trying to type using only one space between sentences; mostly I'm forgetting, so I have to go back and delete one space -- very annoying]

One space or two? How did I miss this debate?

This is wrong.  Because there are two spaces before the word "Because."

This is correct. Because there is only one space before the word "Because."


At least according to this January 2011 article from Slate.com.  Very interesting little history of typography, and I feel like I should have known this long before 2012.  I guess I could start using only one space but it would be hard.

About 15 years ago, maybe more like 18?, a smart, talented, polite young writer came to work with me, and after a few months she smilingly and casually told me that, in a previous job, she had learned that one space was the more appropriate style.  I smilingly thanked her for telling me about her former employer's interesting thoughts on spaces but I also told her that we would stick with the two-space rule.  My boss agreed with me so that was that.

Now, all these years later, I want to apologize to Natalie.  She was right, I was wrong.  I wonder if I would care about this at all if I still worked?

Daughter on a rooftop somewhere in Brooklyn. Last week, before the heat arrived.

Two weeks more or less in the life of my lone sunflower. He's in a pot on the back deck and he stares in the dining room window at us.

Bambi, unfortunately, loves my back yard--my so-called fenced back yard. Top picture shows her under the deck. Love those eyelashes!

 I spotted her yesterday morning and escorted her out of the back yard.  She left via one of her secret entrances, then trotted around to the front yard, where I got this shaky video of her.  The back yard is so full of deer treats that I know she'll find her way back inside again.  Here's how the yard looks now.  At least the ferns and the astilbe will survive.

Cardinal climber seedlings. From 2009 seeds.

I'm overly proud of these little plantlets.  Three years ago I bought and planted one small cardinal creeper plant and it had a successful summer in my vegetable garden, growing up, over, around, and  through lots of other plants in my garden. I saved some seeds and finally got around to planting them this year. They did very well which shows that seeds can linger a few years and still be viable.  The hummingbirds like the flowers and deer will only occasionally nip at the plant. 

A nice healthy what? [Locust? Kat's guess. Sounds right.]

I don't think it's wisteria but I can't be sure.  Any ideas what it is?

A wedding next June!

The home that became this Inn (top picture) was built in1829 and is about 50 miles west of Washington, DC, and just east (and maybe a little north?) of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia.

Up until the 1930s the building in the second picture was a one-room school house in this tiny town of about 65 people. 

Third picture from the bottom shows Becca, clipboard in hand, and Sean, camera in hand, and the Innkeeper.

I may be getting excited but it's a very, very low-key excitement.  And I keep telling Becca that I will do whatever she wants, in terms of planning, but she has to give me specific instructions.  I'm not in any way at all interested in events planning.  Sounds too much like work.  In fact, I hope to be the reverse of an interfering mother of the bride (or mother-in-law-to-be).  Maybe a little too much as a matter of fact.

My wooly thyme continues to spread oh-so slowly.

 

Top picture is from mid-July 2011. So the  bottom shows the growth in the past 11 months. My job is to keep its path cleared of violets and other healthy opportunists.  That's a good alternative word for "weed."  Opportunists.

Since I've obnoxiously bragged about one child I can't stop from reporting a little news about the other child, especially when a cake recipe is involved.

Last week Greg turned 30 (I can't quite process that fact yet).  And Erin, his special friend, graduated from the University of MD.  She worked hard for that degree, which is as it should be.  On Saturday, Greg's band will officially release their second full CD (I've lost count of their EPs). Meanwhile on to the cake, which was delicious if I say so myself.  I made it lactose-free, for Greg, and cut back on some of the ingredients. I worried that it would have an overpowering peanutty taste, but it didn't.

Peanut Butter Cake

Ingredients for cake:

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons sugar
3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
Peanut butter (at least 1/2 cup; if using more, decrease shortening by an equal amount) (I used 3/4
    cups)
3/4 cup shortening (I reduced this to 1/2 cup)
1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons milk (I used lactose-free milk)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 eggs (I used those cholesterol-free fake [?] eggs)

Directions for cake:
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F if using a glass dish.
2. Sift flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt together. Add graham cracker crumbs, peanut butter, shortening, milk, and vanilla.
3. Beat mixture until moistened, and then beat for 2 more minutes.
4. Add eggs and beat for 1 minute. Bake in greased 9-inch by 13-inch glass pan for 30 to 35 minutes. Do not remove from pan to cool.

Ingredients for frosting:

1 c. butter, softened (I used fake butter)
1/2 c. peanut butter
2 tbsp. water
2-4 tbsp. honey
1 tsp. vanilla
1/8 tsp. salt
4 c. powdered sugar (I only used 3 cups, and I could have used less)

Directions for frosting:

1. Cream together butter and peanut butter. 
2. Add the water, salt, and vanilla and cream again. 
3. Slowly add the powdered sugar. 
4. After all the sugar is added, beat in the honey until creamy.

Both of these recipes are all over the Internet but here's the site I'll credit for the cake, and here's the site I'll credit for the frosting.

It's mulberry season and I'm harvesting the lazy way this year.

This may be a red mulberry tree (Morus rubra) but there are many kinds of mulberry trees and this one just appeared in our yard 15 or more years ago.  I usually stand under the tree and pick the berries but too often I eat them before they make it to the dinner table.  Collecting them with a blanket works much better.

A new granddeer! He or she arrived in the back yard (the so-called fenced back yard) between about 4 and 6 PM today.

I only discovered her (I prefer to call her a her) because at about 6:15 tonight I noticed what was probably her mom eating our damn hostas in our so-called fenced back yard. I went outside to escort** the large deer out and then walked around the edge of the back yard looking for any weakness in the fence. That's when I found Miss Adorable above.  She's next to my little pond, up near that so-called fence.

Doug and I tried to carry out a somewhat elaborate plan to get her safely outside our yard and succeeded only in that she wobbled her way into the front yard by way of the carport.  Poor little thing.  I was determined to get her safely out of our back yard because it's filled with what many people call deer candy.  Some people might say that we should just get rid of the deer candy and live with plants the deer won't eat.  I do that in the front and side yards, but it's nice to have a lush back yard, so I was determined to move the babe just to keep the mom from coming back in (I still don't know how she got in).

Miss Adorable was last seen in our front yard, backed up into some tall lemon balm. I'm confident her mom will find her. A similar birth occurred a few years ago and I think I learned from that experience not to worry.  These deer are survivors.

The bottom picture was taken a few hours before Miss A arrived.  The pond is on the right a bit to the left of the bench. Her mom found what she thought was a good place to hide her baby.

Well, that was exciting!  Now I need coffee and a piece of cake. 

**This means closing in on the deer until she's forced to either jump over the fencing (easy enough -- it's only 5-6 feet high) or crash through it, ripping out portions in the process. Most deer do a combination thing. The fencing is that 7-foot tall, heavy plastic mesh sold in Home Depot. It's not perfect but if I'm diligent about checking for rips and tears I can usually keep the deer out until late in the summer. Eventually, however, they always win.

What's this tree? And look at the babies next door! I don't get too attached b/c nature some times gobbles one up. (Update: Kitt's right, it's a horse chestnut tree.)

Random shots in Manhattan.

Outside Madison Square Garden just before a Rangers - Devils game on Monday night.

Zipping by the Queensboro (59th Street) Bridge. Or as it's now known, the Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge.

Can you imagine? If you're doing this you need to reevaluate your life.

Heading uptown past the United Nations.

See that little face peeking out way in the back? Glad I caught her eye for this post-graduation picture.