Midsummer's Night

Happy solstice kids! Today is the longest day of the year. For me at least there is always something magical about solstice. Whether it is the longest day of the year or the shortest. In the winter it seems like the end of the slow decline into the dark and that the days will eventually start to lengthen noticeably and that warm weather will finally return.

The summer solstice is more about beginnings. Summer is truly on. Long hot lazy days are being promised. I think of days long past. Summers in the Green Mountains where constellations of fireflies danced in the black evening. Too hot to sit in the house, winding down the day in the backyard playing tag or hide and seek out in the yard until we were finally called into the house and to bed.

Later, long hot sunsets out at the lake with friends, sitting on the hood of a Chevy, drinking beer, making plans for what our lives would be like once we were real adults. The rest of life stretching before us as full of potential as the brief months of summer before us. The optimism and hubris of youth.

Later, it would be sunset parties out at Race Point, watching the sun set over the ocean, cocktails in cutoffs and t-shirts, feeling the days heat ebb away from the sand under our feet, the gentle soothing sound of the ocean breaking on the shore. Discussing the days misconduct and planning the evening. Who was hot, who was not and who we were hoping to maneuver into bed. There seemed no finer thing in this life than to be in love or lust or both. Happy that we were young and secure in the knowledge that we would never grow any older.

Once again the promise is hanging out there, tantalizing, unrealizable. Hot days, cool oceans, sand under bare feet, short nights that just might hold adventure. Is it any wonder that days like this seem like magic?

"I have had a dream, - past the wit of man to say what a dream it was: man is but an ass, if he go about to expound this dream. Methought I was- there is no man can tell what. Methought I was and methought I had, - but man is but a patcht fool, if he offer to say what methought I had. The eye of man hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was."

William Shakespeare

A Midsummer's Night Dream

Have a great summer everyone.

Mr. Hot Dom Top Daddy

I've learned to live with gray hair. My beard is pretty much white, the hair is getting more gray, even as we speak, gray in my eyebrows on my chest and down in the south 40. But the other day I found a gray hair on my arm! WTF is that about?

So far the words of wisdom I have received have been:

Monkey: "So, is your ear hair starting to turn gray?"

La Simpatica: "This is why Brazilian waxes are so important."

On the other hand things can't be all bad. I ran into Mike and another gardener Ron, last night. Naturally, as gay men we were discussing the important topics of the day, our weight and our workouts. Ron was making Oooooo noises about Mike's admittedly impressive guns. Mike was having none of it and was talking about bulking up a little.

Mike: "I'm thinking about putting on 5 lbs."

Ron: "How much do you weigh?"

Mike: "About 165."

Me: "Christ, you only outweigh me by 5 lbs!"

Mike: "Yeah, but you're all muscle."

Ron: "Yeah, you're looking pumped, dude. You still going to the gym a lot?"

Me: "These tits don't happen all by themselves."

Mike: "You should see his picture on his blog. He looks like Mr. Hot Dom Top Daddy."

Mr. Hot Dom Top Daddy? Maybe I should change my blog handle. (I just know that bitch RG is pissing himself laughing reading this)

On Saturday, I decided to get my pride on by going to the North Shore and visiting the Niece. She has just purchased a house and I had yet to see it. Traveling up there I have 2 options. One is to take the subway out to Wonderland and have her drive to Revere to pick me up. The other option is to take the commuter rail from North Station to Salem which is only one town over from her new place of residence.

I decided on the commuter rail. The ride is actually pretty nice for reasons I can't explain rationally. It could just be the novelty factor. I rarely use the commuter rail. It also tends to be a lot less crowded, at least on weekends.

So, still not feeling 100%, I headed off to into the public transit system. I got to North Station, switched from the subway to the commuter rail and headed north. One of the things about taking the train out of town is that you pass through an industrial wasteland. I don't know why, but there is something about it that fascinates me. Fortunately, I had my camera with me, so I snapped a few shots of the train heading out of Boston and environs.









Oh, and if any of you are saying, "What's so gay about going to visit your niece?", we spent most of our time looking at paint chips and talking color schemes. How gay is that?

(BTW, honey. Don't buy any paint until we've talked some more about it. We need to talk more about accent colors)

Second opinion

I was starting to wonder if I really had food poisoning last week after I ran into Mike and he told me something was going around. But, Friday I was feeling a little better by the afternoon, so I figured "Hey, it's almost over with."

Saturday, I woke up feeling kinda crappy, but I went up to the North Shore to see the nieces new house. It was fun. We looked at paint chips and talked about color schemes. It was probably a lot gayer thing to do, than attend the boredom that it Boston Pride. Emboldened, I ate dinner that night.

Big mistake.

Yesterday, I spent the day feeling just plain awful. I am not feeling a whole lot better today, but I came into work anyway, 'cause God only knows what they'll get up to in my absence that I'll wind up having to straighten out later.

One of my co-workers came in and asked me how I was feeling and then started questioning me about symptoms. It turns out she started to feel lousy on Saturday and as far as we can tell, we both have the same thing.

As long as we stay away from solid food things are fine. We are both drinking lots of water and as I pointed out to her, on the upside, I've now dropped 5 lbs since Weds!

If this keeps up for another week, I should be at my goal weight.

Father's Day

Doris answers the phone. "I suppose you'll want to talk to the man of the hour?"

She puts the old man on the phone. "Hello? What say? I can't hear you. I've gotten so damned deaf."

I raise my voice. Shouting Father's Day greetings into the phone. Is it my cell phone I wonder? But no, he tells me my younger brother had called earlier and Dad couldn't hear him either. There is a workman in the house. Something that would never have happened in an earlier life. That house which the old man had plumbed, insulated, wired and heated. Drywall, cabinets, tile and paint. Now, someone hired to come in and fix a problem with the bathroom.

"How's your garden?", I shout into the mouthpiece.

"Not so good. I'm so damned dizzy all the time now I can't really get out there anymore", is his answer.

One more insult from time. His garden, one of his prides and joys, his escape from my mother and her bossing has been taken away.

Pity wells up in me. Pity and sorrow. Where is my father? Where is the strong, sometimes brutal, often cruel and at times oddly sensitive man whose roof I grew up under?

I search for some moment of joy, some happiness from my childhood with my Dad. And like most gifts it comes when you need it.

The day in early spring when we had gone up to Pepé's farm, to help my Uncle Eugene look for the cow that had wandered off to calf on her own. Climbing the mountain that was part of Sunnydale farm, climbing through the dappled sunlight in the old hardwood growth. Suddenly, he motions my brother John and I to stop, silently. He leans down and brushes away some leaves and as if by magic, reveals a fawn, lying perfectly still, only quivering slightly as it blends tawny red fur and white spots, disguising it in a nest of old leaves. He brushes the leaves back over the fawn and we move on to look for bossy and Dad tells us about the fawn they had raised here on the farm when he was a boy. Jigs. Jigs who had been hit by a harvester in the field and who they had nursed back to health. Jigs the deer, who came when called, that they had bottle fed and was like a pet. How one fall Jigs was shot by a hunter, because he wasn't afraid of people.

Is this the man who once hit me in the face so hard, he broke my glasses and then beat me for making him break those glasses?

Is this the same man, who would pull the car over in spring, just to stop and smell the scent of apple blow, when the orchards that dotted the Vermont hills in those days were in bloom? Who loved the roses he grew against all logic in Vermont? Vermont is a climate not kind to roses.

The same man, who when my cat got sick, got drunk and then, too drunk to do it himself, made my older brother take the cat out in the back, dig a hole and shoot it because, "he wasn't going to waste good money on a damned cat"?

I know he would have preferred to stay on the farm. But Doris was not going to be a farmers wife. It is a hard life and one she was not willing to take on. So he drank and worked at a job he did not like.

I cannot say if he would have been any happier on the farm than he was doing what he did. Supervising the facilities crew at the local college.

I still cannot reconcile the man who disdained me at every opportunity, yet who came up to bat for me when my mother objected to my buying a car when I was a teenager. The contradiction of the man who never finished high school and resented the educated, but insisted that his kids were going to go to college. This man who made no attempt to disguise his distaste for me when I was a child and now cries when I come to visit and cries when I leave.

I shout into the phone, trying to make myself heard, over the phone across the miles and the years. All of the anger and hatred and sullen grudges have been washed away by time. If it has not left love, there is compassion and pity and sorrow. Sorrow that this once strong, brash, boastful man, is simply fading, trapped in a body that has betrayed him.

Is there love there? I don't know. They tell me I am like my father. Physically, I am told I resemble him more than my brothers, emotionally, we are both pig headed and impatient, but that I think is true of all us boys. When I look back on my youth, there is too much to be regretted, too much I am not proud of, which on dark nights comes back to haunt me with my own bad behavior. Does that make me like my father? Will I find the compassion I need to forgive myself for my own sins?

I can find compassion and forgiveness for my father, but I don't know if there is any love, which requires some connection. Perhaps it is because it is sometimes not a pleasant thing to look in the mirror, to be reminded of all the flaws. Maybe that was why he disliked me so much when I was a child and eventually, I him. We were both too willful and too bent on having our own way. We could not understand each other because we could not get the distance to see each other in focus. We were always in it nose to nose.

"I'm going to give the phone back to your mother. I can't hear a damned thing!", he says into the phone.

Doris gives me the litany of Dad's latest complaints and ailments. What he needs to see the doctor about next, the order of doctors that have to be consulted before anything is done to make sure they are all on the same page. How this is made more difficult by Dad's increasing deafness and that unless she talks to the doctor herself afterwards, important information can be missing, having gone unheard. She tells me about the bathroom and the work being done. We talk about how Dad did things, sometimes not to the best effect, have a good natured laugh about him and his ways and then we say our good byes.

I ring off my cell and I feel sad. And maybe that is love or at least love of a kind. Could you feel that kind of sorrow for anyone you didn't love?

Dreamboat

One of the problems with not feeling well is that it is just plain fucking boring. Not that there hasn't been a certain amount of excitement over the past couple of days, but really not the type of excitement one is looking for.

On the up side. I have lost 3 lbs! On the downside, I know it is all water and will be back as soon as I start eating again. Which is another upside, come to think of it. Food has held no temptation for me. You could offer me homemade chocolate chip cookies and I'd take a pass. (And yes, Doralong, I am drinking lots of water. Thanks for the call last night, I'm all the better for it.)

But getting back to boring. Around 2 o'clock I decided if I spent another minute in the Ganome cave I would go stark raving mad. It's beautiful out, but I have been hard pressed to be tempted outside, since I didn't want to have to tell anyone why I was carrying a bucket around with me. I am not feeling 100%, but on the other hand, I am growing blessedly less familiar with every aspect of my bathroom, so I decided to take a little field trip to my new bank.

Like most people in the good old US of A, I have been the victim of a big commercial bank for the past few years. At one point, I had my money in a small bank. I really liked the bank and the people who worked there. I knew all of the tellers, the manager and the assistant manager and we were on a first name basis. On the rare occasions I had any problems or questions I could actually sit down with the folks there and figure out whether it was an error on my part or banking error. We came out about 50 50 on that, but the thing was I knew when it was an error on my part, it really was my mistake and there was no, "too bad about you, bank policy is that the bank does not make mistakes." Unfortunately, small bank got gobbled up by big bank the people at my branch were either let go, or transfered to other branches and that conveniently located branch was shut down.

I have been having some problems with big bank and the last straw was when they without ceremony changed my savings account from a minuscule amount of interest to a no interest account. I am not a company that needs a holding account, thanks.

After asking a couple of friends I decided to move my business to the same bank that La Simpatica and C. use.

It's a nice bank and I think it should work out. I am still in the process of setting up all of my automatic payments and it was to that end that I took my field trip.

When my account was set up, for some reason they had not set up my internet banking so that I could pay bills online. One of my favorite innovations of the past few years. So, feeling like I could make it back and forth without disgracing myself I set off for small bank. On my way, I even tried to do a good deed. 3 straight guys, who were obviously lost were poring over a street map and I stopped to ask if they needed any help. Being straight men, they of course let me know they were perfectly capable of getting hopelessly lost and did not need any help. We're men, we can read maps! (not)

I shrugged it off and went into my bank branch, where my future ex-husband is working.

The assistant branch manager, who I will call Mr.Dreamboat, set my account up for me. I call him Mr. Dreamboat because, well, he's a dreamboat. Bald, shaved head, big blue eyes with those thick black lashes that are like sable brushes, full sensuous mouth an aquiline nose that is a bit on the large size and ears that stick out slightly. He even has nice hands. Did I also mention the eyebrows. Nice eyebrows. Even my fellow eyebrow connoisseur, Mike would approve.

When he was setting up the account I had to keep picking the carpet lint off my tongue and try not to giggle or bat my eyes. And here he was now, ready to help me navigate my first hurdle with my new bank. He even remembered me.

Not that that was probably all that hard. How many middle aged, heavily tattooed midgets come into his branch. None the less, I had to suppress a girlish giggle.

Mr. Dreamboat it turns out is Mr. Helpful too. We got my issue with my internet access to my account straightened out and I was on my way in short order.

Okay. So it was a cheap thrill. But when you've spent 36 hours confined to the house and most of that time in the bathroom and you feel like something the cat dragged in, having a handsome man give you a little cheerful attention can really brighten your day.

And for the record, I ran into some other poor lost soul and offered to give him directions. He might have been straight but at least he wasn't brain dead. He cheerfully accepted my help and went merrily on his way with a thank you, secure in the knowledge that he was only 2 blocks away from his destination.

Maybe that's why Mr. Dreamboat is so nice. Sometimes being Mr. Helpful really makes you feel better.

Was it the fish?

Maybe it was the fish.

I am seriously thinking of calling in sick to work this morning. It would seem that while I was asleep last night, a drunken weasel crawled down my throat and decided to pass out in my lower tract. This morning it is making a spirited attempt to claw it's way out. I think it brought some rusty garden tools with it.

I am currently lying here in bed with my laptop trying to figure out what I ate yesterday. I keep coming back to the fish.

It is the time of year when the school starts shoveling free food into the support staff as a way of saying thank you for not actually killing any of the faculty or student body, in spite of all of the justifiable provocations.

Yesterday the head of our department took us out to a restaurant. I will refrain from naming it, in case they are not the culprit. It actually was a very nice meal. We had 3 choices and since I am trying to lose some of the excess ganome, I actually showed considerable restraint. I did not eat any bread, or mashed potatoes or any carbs at all to be honest. I had green vegetables, unsweetened iced tea and I ordered fish. The fish didn't taste funny. If anything is was disappointingly bland. The only thing I really noticed after the meal was that I probably ate too much since I was in one of those post big meal stupors for the rest of the afternoon.

I always suspect that it was fish whenever I get some sort of stomach upset that involves cramps. Even when no marine life has been a part of my diet. I think it goes back to a particularly memorable occasion when I was working in a rather fancy restaurant.

We had a new sous chef. The head chef had told him to throw out a container of bluefish that was seeming a bit vintage and to use another container to make the employee meal. Needless to say, he got the containers mixed up, with as they say, hilarious results.

There is no sight more frantic and amusing than an entire wait staff that is in the throws of food poisoning trying to wait on customers and make it to the restrooms in time to get rid of the offending meal. I think it could also adversely affect business when there is a concert of hurling coming from said rest rooms during the dinner service.

I might be making this up, but I do seem to remember at one point sitting in a stall with the burning squirts while my head was in a bucket. Proving you can have it all.

That might be the problem with this morning. I am not getting a lot of action, which usually relieves the problem. If I were too busy at this moment with my ass hovering over the commode while I was leaning over the sink to be writing this, I would know that I was at least getting it out of my system in all the senses of that expression.

Instead I am propped up in bed, trying not to move too much and feeling like I am reenacting the dinner scene out of "Alien".

I would like to go back to sleep, however that is out of the question, sleep involves breathing, which seems to be its own little comfort challenge and I have figured out after a couple of exploratory expeditions to the john that this isn't something I am going to be able to walk off.

I guess my only hopes are either a swift and merciful death, or reliance on the old adage, "This too shall pass."

I'll let you know how it all comes out in the end.

You're not kitty!

It is a hot muggy night here in Boston. It is reminding me of high summer up in the Green Mountains when I was a kid.

People wonder at the wildlife that has found it's way into urban areas. Raccoons, skunks, wild turkeys, coyotes, I have even seen a fisher cat here in the Fenway!

Skunks however are the animal I remember most. While we would occasionally see a raccoon or fox, skunks were the pest of pests. Every dog we ever owned had at least one run in with a skunk and on a couple of memorable occasions, so did members of my family.

When I was about 12 we got a cat, who my father insisted on naming Boots. Boots was a black and white cat, mostly black but with as you may have guessed, white boots and a white chest. Even as big tomcats go, he was something of a monster. When he was fully grown he weighed about 20 lbs. He was not one of those enormously fat housecats either. Boots was the master of his territory around our house and spent much of his time outdoors, slaughtering the local wildlife. He was big and cantankerous and would attack any of the neighbors dogs that came into our yard.

He did not like being held, though if someone who didn't like cats came into the house he would immediately jump up into their lap, curl up and start purring like a diesel truck.

The old man, in those days was really a dog man and did not particularly like cats but he and Boots bonded. Dad would be in his recliner and Boots would jump up and settle in next to him and they would watch TV together.

Even Doris, who has no patience with pets or children unless they are clean and well behaved had her own special relationship with the beast.

I think it was because the cat had a sense of humor. Kind of a nasty sense of humor, inclined to practical jokes in fact. I still think back on the day when he carried a live snake into the house. I am not much of a fan of snakes, but it was worth it just to hear the screams that came out of Doris. There was the cat, gripping the snake by its middle in his mouth, with both ends wriggling wildly and Doris screaming at me and my brothers to get that damned cat and its snake out of the house. The 3 of us are still laughing about that one. Yet in spite of all this, Doris had a soft spot for Boots and probably liked him more than any cat the family owned before or since.

One summer we were having a skunk problem. Skunks for those of you who have never lived out in the country might look sort of sweet and cute, but they can be pretty nasty and with very sharp claws for digging up grubs and some equally nasty teeth, they are not an animal you would want to get into a fight with. Their first defense is their spray however and it is quite effective as a defense, consequently very few animals will attack a skunk. One of the few animals I know of that prey on them are great horned owls, and I gather that is only because they have no sense of smell.

My mother however, worried that Boots would get into a confrontation with one of the skunks and might not simply get sprayed, so she dictated that the cat was to be in the house every night.

I think what she was most concerned about however was that the cat might surprise a skunk close to the house and we would have to close the windows until the smell of skunk died down.

Back in the 60's, at least out in the middle of nowhere, air conditioning was still considered a luxury and people relied on fans and open windows for cross ventilation to keep the house at a livable temperature. Having to close the windows in an old house in the middle of July was like turning your living room into a Turkish bath. All the windows were kept open as well as the doors. Those were the days when screen doors actually served a purpose.

One evening, it was my younger brothers turn to take the trash out to the incinerator in the back yard. People still burned their garbage in those days. Out near the back of the barn my old man had put a 40 gallon oil drum up on bricks and punched some drainage holes in the bottom. In some attempt to beautify this piece of rural domestic furniture, he had planted rhubarb for reasons known only to my father. It wasn't until we were able to reflect on this at our leisure afterwards that we thought that having a tipping area which attracts skunks, since there is always some sort of household waste treat just waiting to be eaten, and a large leafy plant, perfect for seeking cover under might not be such a great combination.

My mother's parting words to Mike as he headed out the door were, "and if you see that damned cat, bring him in! Those skunks are still hanging around."

Mike headed across the yard and the family settled in around the TV, the windows open letting what breeze there was waft through the living room. We heard Mike dump the trash in the barrel and then we heard him say, "C'mon Bootsie. You gotta come in the house."

Then there was an explosion of skunk.

Mike started cursing as only someone who has just been sprayed by a skunk can curse. Even at the tender age of 11, Mike could make a sailor blush and this was beyond the beyond, this would have blistered paint. I can't blame him. I would have given my vocabulary a good work out too, had it been me.

The living room was alive with the smell of startled skunk and everyone frantically began closing windows. Doris, every quick on her feet, closed an locked the door.

"Anthony, go upstairs and get your brother some clothes!", I was ordered.

By the time I got downstairs, Mike was furiously demanding to be let in the house. My mother had thrown open one window and was informing him he was not going to be allowed back in the house until he had, a.) buried his clothes and b.) hosed off. He would then be c.) marched directly to the bathroom where there would be tomato juice waiting for him.

I was then told to go down cellar, where we stored all of the canned goods to bring up some cans of tomato juice. Clean clothes were tossed out the window and Mike went off to bury his current fragrant apparel behind the barn. He was then escorted to the bathroom where there was tomato juice waiting for him and instructed to scrub.

If I remember correctly, the tomato juice didn't do much other than make everyone feel like everything that could be done, had been done.

I should also mention that the author of this mishap came lounging up the stairs from the cellar where he had been beating the heat, as only a cat can, by lying on the slate flags that our cellar was floored with.

My poor brother took an awful lot of teasing from my father and we boys for not being able to tell the difference between a skunk and a cat and my mother, who has a habit of taking every mishap in life as a personal affront that was somehow planned to make her life miserable rode poor Mike's ass for what seemed like weeks about how hot the house had become and how long it took to get the smell of skunk out of the house. What was the matter with him that he didn't know a skunk when he saw it and when he tried to defend himself by pointing out that it was dark out and that the cat was the same general size and color of a skunk, Doris informed him that she didn't care how dark it was, he should have been able to tell the difference between a skunk and a cat, with his head in a sack.

As the summer wore in both the heat and the skunk population began to dissipate. Though the evenings started to cool, we still kept the windows open, a welcome relief after the still hot days.

In spite of the growing absence of any members of the Mephitidae family, Doris had remained obsessed with making sure Boots was in the house once evening had fallen.

So is was that one evening Doris discovered for herself the difficulties in species identification in low light conditions.

"Has anyone called the cat?" she demanded.

There was a general murmuring that we thought he was in the house, he had probably snuck down cellar where it was cool and a demonstrated a pretty decided unwillingness to uproot ourselves from our spots in front of the TV.

Radiating self righteous indignation at the laziness of her male offspring, Doris marched to the back door in a spirited attempt to shame one of us into persuading Boots to come in, when he would in all likelyhood much prefer to stay outside and hunt down any small nocturnal creatures that were foolish enough to enter our yard.

We could hear Doris standing at the back door, calling kitty, kitty, kitty. Eventually we heard her say, "There you are! Come on, get in the house! There was a pause, and then we heard our mother say in very careful measured tones, "You're not kitty..." and simultaneously the back door slammed and the house filled with the odor of frightened skunk.

I have to say, for a woman that was not big on exercise, Doris could move like lightening if she needed to. Those reflexes served her well in that she managed to get the door between her and the skunk before he let loose.

This resulted in her progeny having a field day for some time pointing out the numerous ways in which one could distinguish a skunk from a cat, even in the dark, and saying "You're not kitty!"

The whole joke would have had much better legs, but Doris can unexpectedly have a sense of humor about her own mistakes and instead of trying to defend herself, joined in and thought her near miss was a riot and laughed louder than anyone about it.

I have a feeling she would have found it a lot less humorous and we boys would have found it even funnier if she'd been the one burying her cloths in back of the barn, but you can't have everything.

Too much of a good thing

After a week of chilly gloom, we had a hot, muggy weekend. The temperatures soared from the high 50's into the 90's. With a youthful enthusiasm that turned out to be slightly misplaced I went out into the garden on Saturday to try and manage the encroachments of weeds into my little patch. I managed a couple of hours and then sensibly went back to the house and found slightly cooler pursuits.

Sunday however was a different story. There is something compelling about weeds. They are the potato chips of gardening. You figure you'll pull up a couple and the next thing you know, you are making your 8th trip to the compost heap with a bucket of uprooted weeds.

I had gone out at around 10:00 figuring I would put in a hour and then go to the museum or find some other air conditioned activity to pursue. Bend over, yank up weed, rinse and repeat. All the while a slow hose running in the beds.

Finally as I was sitting in my arbor taking a brief rest when one of my neighbors came trundling by with a wheelbarrow. "Your garden is looking good!", he said, letting himself walking into the garden. "Budge over.", he said. "There has to be enough room on this seat for 2 asses."
Briefly surveying my little piece of Eden he commented on the view. "I've never seen your garden from this angle. No wonder you love this plot."







I had to agree. I love my garden. I get to look out over the gardens and the park and the skyline beyond.

However, I have been reminded that there is such a thing as too much love. After Iory left, I looked at my watch. It was 2:00.

Yesterday morning I woke up feeling like crap. Too much sun. Fortunately, I had had the foresight to slather on a lot of SPF 15 all weekend, so I didn't have a sunburn on top of what I am guessing was a case of heat exhaustion. I called in sick and spent the day pretty much on the sofa feeling like crap.

Today I dragged myself out of bed. Blew off the gym and made my way to the office through the fug of air pollution that is currently hanging over the city. Summer is here, someone turned the heat up and everything is moving at a much slower pace. That said, I will take it over winter, heat exhaustion and all. Besides, I've got a pretty good tan now.

Turning the heat up on the garden

For the past 3 days it has been chilly and gray and rainy. Today dawned gray and chilly again. By 9 it had started to warm up and now it is pretty much like being under a blow torch. The humidity is so thick you can cut it with a knife.

Consequently, everything in the garden is exploding. The clematis has started to bloom, the yellow rose is going to town and it's only a matter of minutes before the pink rose gets in on the act. Hopefully, the pink rose and the clematis will bloom together again. It's like a parade float of drag queens.

At the moment, it's peonies, poppies, yarrow and cornflowers, which is a bit of a relief from the blues and purples. The lupines and pansies were nice, but it's always nice when the garden gets its loud on. Here's a few pictures of what is starting to happen.

More gardening

I have managed to negotiate another weekend. This one was far less social, and I think I needed the break. By the end of the week, I had been just about peopled out. I think I was starting to suffer from paranoid delusions and was willing to take the most innocent remark from friends as a token of their dislike or indifference to me.

Instead I got in a little quality time with the garden. Dealing with some less than glamorous and largely unnoticable maintenance that needed to be done. There are still weeds and uprooted plants littering the paths that need to be cleaned up and old take out cups and plant containers that need to be bagged and sent off to the garbage can.

Paths need to be dug up and weeded. Should I seed them with grass?

My neighbor Mike's garden is looking great this spring. It has matured nicely and looks orderly and graceful. My own garden is starting to look like the attic of your crazy aunt who can't throw anything away. Like a messy house, there are also things I know I didn't bring in with me. Some I can't complain about too loudly. Larkspur is sprouting up everywhere. I can only guess that the birds were feasting and then suffered a serious bout of incontinence. Oh, shut up! How do you think those oddball plants that you never introduced to your garden got there? Garden fairies?

Be that as it may, I will work with what I have at hand for the summer. I think some serious rethinking and editing is going to be called for. Some plants that were living side by side in a harmonious manner are now crowding each other like fat people in a small room.

Considering food prices, I may also reconsider my boycott of food crops. I have actually put in some radishes this year and I planted a couple of green beans, so I will see just how good or bad I am about harvesting. I am looking forward to baby green beans.

All that is beside the point for now however, so instead I will settle for a feast for the eyes.

Page 123, 3rd sentence

Doralong tapped me for this meme. Page 123, 3rd sentence.

The closest book to hand was "The March of Folly", by Barbara Tuchman.

"Palaces were plundered and left in flames; churches and monasteries sacked for their treasures, relics trampled after being stripped of jeweled covers, tombs broken open in the search for more treasure, the Vatican used as a stable."

Ms. Tuchman is describing the political situation in late Renaissance Europe. I think what we learn from history is that mankind is incapable of learning from history.

More flowers

Yesterday threatened rain all day, without delivering. Finally, last evening we got the thundershowers that we had been promised. I trotted out to the garden this morning to see how a little rain affected things.






The poppies are poppin'! My oriental poppies are really letting loose and there are still plenty more buds. And my shirley poppies have sent out their first scout! I love field poppies. There is something delicate about them and they are pretty ephemeral. But while they are blooming, they are like little shreds of red, orange and pink silk floating around the garden.

As far as color goes, I needed this. Things are pretty heavy on the purple and blue side right at the moment. So having some nicely clashing orange and red is refreshing and my yellow rose is starting to open up. In a few more days the yarrow should be adding a nice cluster of yellow as well and I am hoping that in another week, the New Dawn rose will be doing its thing lending soft cream and pink along the fence.

I put in marigolds this year, so once those boys get going, I should have some nice vibrant yellows and oranges.

All in all, late spring is well on it's way and I am looking forward to seeing how things work out this year. So far, so good.

Garden shots

I haven't been very faithful so far this year posting pictures of the garden. The lilacs, rhododendron, and tulips are already past. However, the poppies, iris and my yellow rose are all going at it.

Long weekend

It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood! This morning has started off chilly, but they are predicting that it will finally hit 70 and as the weekend progresses the temperatures will climb.

At long last. Perfect timing too with the long weekend coming up. In a way, I begin my long weekend a day early with the Uberboss out of the office. It has been calculated that we will have 90 hours Uberboss free, from when she headed out early yesterday, til she comes back on Tuesday.

My own exciting plans for the weekend? I will be kicking the long weekend off by seeing Whizzin with RG and C tonight. From what I hear, it's suppose to be hilarious and I am looking forward to spending some quality time with friends.

Other than that, it will probably be a quiet weekend. Some gardening, where hopefully I will see Mike and maybe get a burrito in at El Pelon.

After all the excitement of last weekend I am up for a little quiet time. I stopped by the garden for quick peek on my way into the slave pits. Things are looking pretty good, though there is plenty of weeding to be done and I have to work on my paths. I may see if I can get C. to let me put a bag of shit in his car this weekend, since the weather is suppose to be dry and with luck I will be able to find a bag that is sufficiently dry and lacking in liveliness that it won't offer to drive.

So, aside from reducing the size of Mt. Laundry and perhaps trying to beat back some of the encroaching clutter in my house, I am looking forward to spending 3 days of not doing anything unless I feel like it.

I am a 14 year old girl

Every now and then you hear a new album by a favorite artist, or even better, you hear someone new, rush out get the album and start channeling your inner 14 year old fan girl.

Last fall, Joe mentioned a new artist from England. (Wales really) Not being able to wait til the album came out on CD, I downloaded it from Amazon onto my iPod and I have been wearing it out ever since.

This song isn't on the album and if anyone can tell be where I can get a recording of it, they will be my BFF! (High pitched girl scream)



Thanks again, Joe. My iPod loves you.

Pickles

While in New York, Roger and I were talking and the topic of homemade pickles came up. Roger puts up his own pickles. If there is one thing I love, it’s pickles. Homemade pickles are even better. Strange as it may sound they are very evocative.

My grandmother used to put up pickles every year. She grew her own dill and tended cucumbers, picked green tomatoes at the end of the season to turn into green tomato relish so they wouldn't got to waste and made bread and butter pickles out of the overripe giant cucumbers that had gone yellow in the garden. Dill pickles, sour pickles, relish, piccalilli, pickled green tomatoes, green tomato relish, mustard pickles,I am not sure I can even remember all the varieties of good things she would make.

Canning time was always a busy time. In our house it was my mother rushing about, shouting us kids out of the house, to get us “out from under my feet”.

But when Grandma was “putting up for the winter” it was days of activity. At grandma’s it was different though from my mothers kitchen. Grandma bustled, but it was the busyness of a woman who had grown up on a farm where there was always too much work and too few hands even with 10 children to take care of chores.

Grandma was one of those women, who seem to be disappearing, who cooked by feel. She was a wonderful cook. Measuring ingredients using her hands. “You use a bit of shortening the size of an egg…” was one of her instructions for making her molasses cookies. The best molasses cookies I have ever had in my life. My older brother and I still talk about them wistfully. It was the same when she was preserving, her hands the measuring devices for the spices and herbs. An old mug used for measuring liquids, pauses in thought as she went through some mental rolodex till she pulled up the proportion of brown sugar needed to go into a specific relish.

I do not particularly remember being of much service beyond sitting at the big, round, old fashioned, oak table, keeping grandma company. I am sure I must have been put into service harvesting and helping to wash the vegetables and fruit but what I remember was sitting at that table, enveloped by the good smells. What I remember are the stories.

I think back on those long afternoons. For some reason they are always full of bright blue skies and warm autumn air with just the tang of the coming cold. Light autumn winds that would make the leaves dance by the window and the branches of the butternut tree outside the kitchen sway.

And there was grandma. I can see her before me now, in that kitchen. Her sensible gray pageboy cut hair. The Dr. Scholl’s black lace up shoes, like those the nuns wore. Her softly faded cotton dresses and pinafores and the kind expression behind the cats eye glasses. All the while in constant motion.

Grandma’s movements were economical. If grandma bustled, it was with practiced confident movement, so unlike my own mothers hurried and tense industry.

Grandma would settle into a rhythm and then the stories would flow out, as vegetables were prepared and jars were sterilized in the big black, speckled, enamel canner on the stove steaming away.

Quite often the stories would begin, “Andy and Polie and I” as she would talk about her favorite brothers Andy and Napoleon. They were wonderful stories about a time that seem so innocent now, taking place in turn of the century rural Vermont. She would tell me about the first time that as a group, she and her brothers and sisters had seen the breathtaking sight of a motorcar. The first time she ever saw an airplane. Summers spent running off leaving chores undone. Punishments meted out by my stern great-grandmother and the forgiveness generously given by her father of whom she was the apple of his eye. These stories always had an unreal aspect to them. It was impossible for me to picture my grandmother as a child, much less her sober brother Andy as a rambunctious boy or my ne’er do well Uncle Polie as anything other than the fiddle playing drunkard of the family.

I didn’t recognize at the time what a pretty woman my grandmother was. Perhaps because she always dressed so simply in the style of a country woman. I had seen pictures of her when she was young woman before she married. She was quite beautiful. This came through in the stilted studio photos, when having your picture taken was still a serious business. The props and the stiff posture didn’t disguise the soft dark beauty, but seemed to bring it forward. The conventions of pre World War I style framed her in a way that left behind an image held in time, like an insect in amber.

Now as an adult, I can see the laughing running child she must have been, bent on mischief with her brothers.

She seemed so old then, but now I know she was only in her early 60’s. An age that today does not seem so great but to a child was beyond ancient.

Perhaps also, it was because all of the things I took for granted were not common place in her youth. Electricity, central heat, telephones were all still marvels to her. I remember that one of her peculiarities was her phone manner. She would hold the phone away from her, as though it might bite her, and speak loudly in the direction of the receiver. So, even when store bought pickles and preserves were commonplace, this woman still went on, making these things herself. Part of it must have been thrift. Grandma had only her social security to live on. But I think the larger part was simply that it was what you did. You put things up, you grew your own food. The simple house, furnished with old slightly shabby but well cared for furniture. The welcoming smell of the place that was peculiar to that house. I have never been in another house that had that smell. Something of fresh linen and baking. This was simply the way Grandma had always done things and the way she always would as long as she was able.

So, the prospect of a jar of pickles that someone took the time and made the effort to make themselves brings it all back. That modest little house with the warm welcoming kitchen, perhaps the only place in my childhood where I ever felt loved and valued and welcome.

Sunday in the Park

After the festivities on Bear Hill, I went back to the Y to take a nap. Bad move. I did wake up around 10 and tried to call RG to see when they were going to the Eagle. I got his answering service and left a message and then promptly fell back asleep. He did eventually call back, at 12:30, from the Eagle. By then I was down for the count however, so I went back to sleep and woke up at my usual ungodly hour.

After I had my shower I went out for coffee and then decided to take a walk around Central Park, since it was right outside my hotel.










It was a nice walk, though it turned into rather a longer one than I anticipated. Olmstead's design is meant to allow you to meander. Meander I did. I eventually got fairly lost and wound up somewhere in the East 90's.

Eventually, I did find my way back down to West 63rd. Stash called and we met for brunch before I got on the bus for home. Walking down 63rd, we ran into the Farmboyz, who made several suggestions as to places we could get a good brunch.

I was feign to call RG & Co., to see if they wanted to join us, figuring they were still sleeping off the night before. I found out later from CB that they were actually up around 8:30.

Stash and I finally decided on a place called Cassis, and waited 20 minutes for them to open. We had a nice meal and then it was time to collect my bag and head down to Penn Station to catch the bus.

At Columbus Circle, we did have one of those straight out of a bad comedy film moments. We were standing on the platform waiting for the train to pull in. Another train pulled in opposite on other side. Stash said, "Let's take this one, we'll only have to walk 2 blocks to get to the bus stop. As we got on to the train the train to Penn Station pulled in. Stash said something to the effect, let's grab that train. I stepped out of the car and the doors immediately closed behind me and I watched my guide head off on the NY subway system. I darted across the platform and got on the train opposite. The next thing I knew I was on the corner of 34th and 8th.

Stash showed up a couple of minutes later and we made our goodbyes as the bus pulled in.

All in all, I had a great time. I didn't get enough face time with other people. It was nice to see some of the familiar NY faces. It was also great meeting the boys from the west coast, Mark and Roger. I also got to meet Mike, of Mike in the Middle Ages. CB, who I didn't get to talk to enough, was very funny and what time I did get to visit with him was very enjoyable. RG and I will have to lure him down here to Boston.

Now it's back home and back to real life. It was great to see everyone, and like CB, I am feeling a bit melancholy. Lots of great new friends, and unfortunately, some huge geographical distances between. Hopefully, though, we will be able to continue the connections and will be seeing each other again.

Time to take a shower and head off to work.

I never did say thank you to Father Tony and Little David for taking on the task of herding cats this past weekend! Thanks for a great weekend.