First Week in the Garden

Concluding my first week in the garden, already I've found my hand pruners, a pair of pliers, and my old reading glasses, which I had written off years ago.  If my summer garden bears half as abundantly as my spring beds, we will have a bountiful winter board, indeed.


 

Just As Desirable

Regard it just as desirable to build a chicken house as to build a cathedral.

                                                                    Frank Lloyd Wright 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                            

A Limerick

There once was a girl from Nantucket
Who grew tired of her barn till she mucked it.
But having scraped up the piles, she broke out in smiles --
Ah, fresh bedding and flowers in the buckets.

My GwynnyDonk

I knew Gwynny was sick, but I didn't expect her to die.  All summer, she had minced around like a Geisha, but I hadn't worried about it because she was old, 28 years is old for a donkey, and her doctor had told me years earlier to expect arthritis in her old age, given her history of white line disease.  But by August, she didn't want to walk anymore.  She looked stuck in place, interested but unable, as if her feet were glued to the ground.  I had to take her morning corn stalk to her in the field, finally, because she wouldn't walk to the gate to get it.  And she was slow.  She didn't limp, she didn't falter, she just trudged.  I could see she was uncomfortable, but I didn't think she was in pain, and I never thought she would die.  I never thought she would die.

Gwynny in her first year with us, always the extrovert.

Gwynny in her prime, always the opportunist.

Gwynny in her heart's home, always with her beloved Benjy.

One Week to Christmas

One week to Christmas.  I don't have a single gift yet and the Christmas cards are still on the dining room table.  The only thing that has changed is that Fred and I are now at each other's throats.  He wants to mail the cards, and of course, with my writer's block, I don't. 

I have baked 15 pounds of sugar cookies; that's 15 pounds on my hips, not on the tray.  My sugar cookies, a recipe from America's Test Kitchen, are good enough for the dog and me to eat but not good enough to give away.  Although I have read everything I could find about making them, every batch comes out dense, flat, and much too sweet.  Every single time.   This is despite the fact that my butter is precisely 65 degrees when I start and the room is 64; I cool my cookie sheets between batches; I have opened two new tins of baking powder; I have beaten the butter and sugar for 3 minutes, 5 minutes, and finally 10 minutes.  What I do doesn't make a lick of difference -- the cookies are embarrassing.  So I am giving up.  I can't bake cookies forever.  Fred's officemates are not going to eat them forever.  Not the way they are.  This will not be the year when I give away tins of pretty cookies. 

Today I worked on Fred's decal instead.  He wants to give sweatshirts to his surfer friends with a decal that says, surf for life.  He doesn't realize how much time that can take, especially me, who is slow at everything.  I have looked at fonts and found some graphics on the web.  Maybe when he gets home we can put them together and get this thing on the road. 

Christmas is just a week away.