Alice's visit

Alice arrived Thursday evening, making good time and not getting lost even once. I had to transform myself into a proper hostess, and got into cooking again. We had a quiche with bacon, gruyere cheese, and spinach  and a salad with lettuce (from the garden) and a tomato Alice bought at a farm stand just before she crossed the state line between NY and VT.

Friday (we had to keep reminding ourselves it was Friday, not Saturday) we breakfasted on My Favorite Egg Breakfast: carefully cooked bacon, steamed garden-fresh spinach on the bacon, a poached egg on top of everything.  A bowl of mixed berries on the side. And coffee, of course. Alice took a picture of breakfast! Alice was the ever-present photographer all weekend.  Be sure to see her pictures on Facebook!

We filled Friday with sightseeing: the weather was magnificent. The State House's Golden Dome glowed in the sunshine. The drive to Cabot Creamery was pure Vermont, uphill and down. We took a tour of the plant to get a glimpse of the cheesemaking process, but the treat of the day was sampling the dozen varieties of cheese they make. Horseradish cheddar (yum), Seriously Sharp cheddar (yum), Tuscan cheddar (so-so, tastes like pizza sauce), caramelized onion cheddar (to die for, not available in stores, only at the factory, and We Bought Some). Then back to Montpelier to stop in the Artisan's Hand craft store, to Hope Cemetery in Barre to see all the stone-carving, and to the Floating Bridge, which has seen better days. We forgot to go to the waterfall that's in a woods nearby. Well, it will be there next time she comes.

We didn't have much planned for the evening. After supper we started to watch Napoleon Dynamite, which I'd never seen, and with which I was instantly bored. With Alice's kind permission, I bailed.  I know, I know, I am just not with it where movies are concerned.

Saturday was stay-at-home day. Alice nagged me into letting her help with a little raking and yard work in the morning, but I had a memorial service to go to. Ted Marsden, a man in our contradance community who was also a math prof at Norwich, died unexpectedly on June 7. He was a born teacher, and a man who radiated both kindness and purpose. He had no children, but two nieces spoke lovingly about him. One said that on his 70th birthday the family asked for words of wisdom and Ted responded "Do what pleases you". He taught math, he taught teachers how to teach math, he danced (he was introduced to traditional dancing in the 60s) and he was always the first person to teach a new dancer the important basic steps. It was a touching, heartfelt and uplifting service that confirmed how special Ted was to so many people. His family came to Northfield from all over the country, and said they were astonished at the number of messages from the dance community, and at the number of dancers and musicians that attended Ted's memorial. Dance musicians played everyone into the chapel, and played at the reception afterward. Nothing rehearsed - just sitting down together, playing dance tunes Ted would've loved to dance to.

Saturday evening before supper Alice and I went down to Thelma's to see my horse (of course Alice has pictures), and then we went to Village Pizza. We were tired from all our running around the day before, and Alice had worn herself out sitting in the sun, and we turned in kind of early.

Sunday I fixed pancakes, too many of 'em. Yummy, though, and what we didn't eat for breakfast we divvied up so that Alice had a snack on the way home. We'd forgotten to stop for more decaf and Alice had to really s-t-r-e-t-c-h the supply that she'd brought to get enough coffee for the morning.

The Sunday treat was that the peonies burst forth gloriously. We sat on the bedroom deck and just took in the morning. I never sit on that deck, because there are always too many things that need doing. Thanks, Alice, for making me sit down a little bit.

Catching up - this and that

Well, this year's grad school Residency is finished. A week of 7 am-7pm hours, and 80-plus students and 5 faculty in attendance, who arrived last Sunday and departed Friday afternoon. The best way to get through Residency is to consider these folks house guests. All the students were great and the faculty who came went out of their way to talk to students and not just huddle together.

We have a focus group for each program, and I ask what worked, what could work better, and what they would suggest for improvements. All the focus group members gave us thoughtful comments, a couple of which were surprising because they think that a proposed curriculum development is less important than we thought - and they gave us what they think is a better alternative. (And I sold $600+ of maple syrup for the Howards!)

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The stovewood arrived. A large pile in the driveway. Just enough room for cars. I would be stacking it were it not for several days of rain.

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I caught a nasty cold at Residency because I refused to accept the reality of unseasonably cool weather. Didn't wear a jacket, didn't turn on the furnace, didn't light the woodstove. Until it was too late, of course. But I stayed inside since Friday afternoon amd most of Saturday. Then I couldn't stand being inside any longer, put on a lot of waterproof/water repellent gear, and weeded in the garden.  My excuse is that fresh air is good for you. And I don't seem to be worse for it.

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I didn't get to mow the lawn before Residency began. And it's been raining some of every day since last Wednesday. Lord love us. The grass is over my ankles.  Half is mowed, the other half gets mowed this afternoon.

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Alice is coming Thursday and staying through Sunday morning.  What a treat this is - she's never been here. Unemployment is treating Alice well. I'm thinking of things for us to do, and must make a Plan B in case the weather falls apart again.

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What do you do with asparagus that's been aging in the refrigerator? If it's not too old you make a delicious salad.  Cook the asparagus. Cut off the tips and cut the green part of the stems into small pieces. Combine with RED (not pink) canned salmon. Add mayo and chopped scallion and other appealing seasonings to taste. Chill well. DELICIOUS, especially on a bed of home-grown lettuce.

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Would there be a blog post without a garden update? The weather changes have really messed up most plants' blooming timetables. The peonies have not bloomed yet (astonishing) but are full of buds. The tomatoes, beets, green beans and squash are slow to develop. The lettuce is overflowing! The spinach is outstanding, and I will plant more. Snails (little less-than-an-inch critters) have invaded everything. For the first time, I've purchased snail deterrent.

"Beverly Sills" iris, left; Tradescantia "Sweet Kate", right. (Click to make the pictures bigger, use your Back button to return. )

SPINACH!!!   

Hostas galore, peonies about to pop open, and a preview of the rose-and-delphinium display

Harvard Commencement Address

Newly-retired Justice David Souter gave this year's Commencement address at Harvard.  It wasn't advice to grads. Instead, Justice Souter discussed the challenge to the Supreme Court of making decisions that must take into account the many values that the Constitution professes.  Well worth reading.

See http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2010/05/text-of-justice-david-souters-speech/

New endeavors

A long, long, long time ago I told my therapist about a little shop I’d found on the Upper East Side that had Christmas decorations from Finland and Sweden. In the course of discussing why this was such an exciting discovery, he learned that I’d been a high school exchange student and spent 6 months in Finland. He said “You’ve been coming here for almost a year. From what you’ve been saying, this was an very significant experience for you, and I’ve asked you many times to talk about things that are important to you.  Why have you not mentioned this before?”

I replied “It was over 10 years ago. I was in high school. No one from high school is a part of my life. Why would it be important to anyone but me?”

And he said “Anything that has been important to you should be important to anyone who cares about you.”

So this post is about my horse and me.

I bought Raven last summer (after a disastrous previous new horse), and because she was so lacking in training I asked a very capable VTC student to ride her twice a week, which this young woman did for free, because she liked the horse and disliked the former owner.

This spring my VTC student was nowhere to be found, and it became clear that I would have to do whatever training Raven needed. I am unskilled and Raven was a handful. Wouldn’t go out of the barn unless the other horses were out. Wouldn’t stand still enough for me to get a saddle on her. Things came to a head when I walked her down to the riding ring about 3 weeks ago and she pushed me around, behaved badly and pulled my shoulder hard enough that I went to the doctor!

Thelma couldn’t help, because of her hip surgery, and Thelma doesn't have a lot of confidence in my ability to learn and use the horsemanship skills that are second nature to her. So I asked my next door neighbor (Alberta, Berta for short), who is a good horse trainer, for help. She offered to work with me and Raven once every week or so, show me what to do, and Raven and I would practice the rest of the week. On our first lesson Berta said “She knows what to do. She just won’t volunteer.” After two weeks of practice (4-5 times/week), Raven will walk with me, stop whenever I stop, and back up when I ask her. We’ve walked down the road, and into the Howard’s woods. She’s stopped worrying about where the other horses are.

Today Berta said “I’ll show you how to work her on a lunge line.” This is a very long canvas strap that you use to get your horse to travel around you in circles. You can drive a horse nuts with this, but it’s one of many ways to get a horse to pay attention. It lets the horse burn off excess energy. And it’s part of a set of very basic lessons called “ground work”.

Berta is a good teacher. She demonstrates and explains things in a way that I understand the first time. After 20 minutes of Berta’s teaching, I tried lunging Raven myself and we did well. Raven and I only worked about 10 minutes because it was hot and humid, and the flies were driving us all nuts. Bear in mind that we don't think Raven has ever been on a lunge line.  Then she got cooled down with the hose, which was another New Thing. And she took all these new things pretty calmly.

Raven accomplished a great deal, but I accomplished more. I’m learning how to do this work of starting a horse-rider partnership. I’m feeling the possibility of being a rider who can do more than stay on. I’m beginning to believe that my instincts are right, that I do know something about horses, and about this horse, and that I have a lot more than a lucky buying choice going for me.

Flowers!

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday were stifling.  Awful. Then Wednesday night we had a summer thunderstorm of incredible proportions, with non-stop lightning, a soaking rain, 2 heavy downpours and a couple of minutes of pebble-size hail! No damaging wind.  Thanks to the hail, leaves litter the ground, and the purple iris (the picture is pre-storm) were shredded, but the tomatoes and most everything else came through. And now the temperatures are much more bearable. 

The picture above is one of several patches of batchelor's buttons, which turn out to be a long-lasting cut flower, although the buds won't open in water.  And now more pictures (click to enlarge), a mere hint of things to come:

"Sun Power" hosta from Vermont Flower Farm

Camassia lilies to the right, a super late-spring/early summer bulb.  Below, the old purple iris, in the garden when I bought the house, always the first iris to bloom, and "Ballerina", another early and very short iris that is thriving in the worst soil imaginable.



This is a Preston lilac, a late bloomer,  that is thriving thanks to Tim. On his last visit he moved this and its pair from their original spot, where they were dried out and competing with burdock and other weeds, to the shed, after he took down an old and overgrown shrub that was beyond reclamation. Look! Flowers!

 

And finally, the first daylily, accompanied by Coral Bells (heuchera):

 

Garden time!!

We're about to have a week of summer: it started warming up on Friday, and the weekend has been a prime gardening (and lawn mowing, and horse training) weekend. During the week it's supposed to be hot and dry, so I've been really busy.

It took 3 45-minute sessions to get the lawn mowed - May and June the grass grows like mad, but I lowered the blade so that I only have to mow every 5 or 6 days (instead of twice a week) and it hasn't grown to ankle height.

I've been weeding like crazy, but with the temps so warm it was time to really get going on the garden. So I bought my tomatoes (one cherry, one early salad tomato, one heirloom variety and two later, larger varieties).  I had bought new tomato towers that are taller and sturdier than the wire cones.  I'm going to be diligent about feeding the tomatoes this year (Miracle-Gro and Epsom salts), and hope that we don't have a soaking wet summer like last year. And I've already put grass clippings around them.

Pictures of tomatoes will have to wait a bit, but here are the pole beans that got planted today.  The spinach went in last week.

The beets went in a couple of weeks ago and have started to sprout.

The arugula and lettuce have been in for almost a month. I will eat my first home-grown salad tonight for supper.

I spent most of Sunday working on flower beds.

I dug the dandelions out of the daylilies, and started clearing out the bed by the brook, that has the yellow iris (Tim will remember digging it out) and phox, and catmint and valerian. 
These beds by the brook got ignored last year and they'll take a lot of work to get in shape.  But my determination to make the gardens take care of themselves is starting to pay off.  Most of the plants are moderately invasive, but easy to control by pulling them out (not digging!).  So I can have a nice full garden without it being a jungle.  (This does not apply to the garden by the fence, though.)

Tim will be happy to know that the maple that he tried to loosen the roots around is trying to get a shape.  My friend James said to fertilize it and TRY AGAIN, after the brook repair happens.  He says the contractor is likely to loosen up a lot of the surrounding soil.  

Tuesday I'll plant the red climber and the morning glories.  The seed has to be scratched with a nail file or sandpaper or something rough, and soaked over night. I don't have time to do that until Monday.

Lots of pictures coming in a few days.

Some days getting up early is worth it

I'm an early riser but a slow mover. I'm usually up around 5:30 am during the week because I need to have breakfast (and I do mean breakfast, not just coffee) and pack a lunch, to say nothing of making myself publicly presentable, before I leave for work at 7. On the weekend I'm usually up about 6 because I'm so used to getting up early.

Today I woke promptly at 6 because I've hurt my shoulder and it's hard sleeping, and because the wind was blowing a gale, with dark gray clouds racing eastward toward Chelsea, and light rain showers.  I was pouring out some cereal when the sun shone on the hillside across the road (a number of miles away). Lo! a rainbow!

Most of the rainbows I see are to the east, not to the west. They're way over past the interstate, and sometimes far enough away that I can get a picture. No doubt there have been rainbows to the west before, but I've never seen one. There it was, growing out of a hillside that my map tells me is somewhere in Roxbury, or even West Brookfield.

I was transfixed. Should I put on a robe and shoes and try to get a picture?  If I stop watching will it disappear? I stayed at the kitchen sink watching, and it grew, and grew, and in about 10 minutes (because the sun came and went) it was a complete arc, all the way down to Randolph!!

And there was no way I could get picture of that arc, because it was too wide and too close. It's been coming and going ever since. Just marvelous to watch.

At 7:03 I caved in. Out the deck door in nightgown and robe, garden shoes, uncombed hair, camera.  On the left, the Randolph end. On the right, the Roxbury end. Use your imaginations. Click to enlarge the pictures.

Now the dark clouds have moved in for real.  Looks like a thoroughly rainy day. What an early morning treat!