birthday greetings

Happy Birthday, Naphtali!!
Here's hoping the day and its events bring you joy.

flotsam and jetsam

We had a busy weekend.  My assignments were turned in early Friday afternoon, I didn't have to work Saturday, it was actually nice enough to work outside - and so we did.  Weeding and tending and planning and plenty more waiting to be done.  My half price - half dead hydrangea from last season is looking wonderful.  We turned the air conditioner off for a couple days - it went back on this morning.

Friday morning I rode my bike down the hill to town and ran a few errands.  When I got back about 10:30 I was hot, thirsty and surprisingly hungry.  But  I realized it had already been over 4 hours since I'd had my bowl of cereal....

Tim fixed an amazing shrimp stir fry with asparagus beans, peppers and thai basil from our garden.  Cucumbers have been doing well.

There are 2 weeks of classes left in this session.  I will be writing a paper over the next few days, rough draft to be submitted on Friday.  In preparation I've been reading Theodore Roszak's "The making of an Elder Culture," which I have found fascinating.  Roszak first applied the term counter culture to the baby boomers and this book looks at how they (we) have handled aging.  It's given me much to think about....

let's just say

that this has been a good weekend.  I did work yesterday morning, but I had my assignments turned in early and treated myself to the night off on Friday.  I did housework, as usual, yesterday, with ironing still ahead later today.  The sounds of golf coverage are floating up from the basement and I will probably join Tim there shortly.  Yesterday I hemmed and stenciled some dish towels.  This morning I baked muffins - savory muffins, to go with salads and grilled chicken....
Zuchinni from someone's garden, and fresh rosemary from our garden provided the inspiration.  They are tasty. And healthy. Unfortunately the only definite measurements I can provide are:
2 eggs and 1 Tbsp baking powder. 
grated zuchinni
corn meal
whole wheat flour
white flour
wheat germ
buttermilk powder
2 eggs
sugar
salt
1 Tbsp olive oil
rosemary
grated cheddar cheese
water

mix and bake at 375 for 15 minutes.

My next assignments are due Friday, and I have been working at them. English is multi-parted so I plan to build up to the big, saving it for Friday.   I'm enjoying my subject but have to admit that the tenetative thesis submitted several weeks ago is just not pulling together for me, so I'm reading and jotting and hoping for inspiration, hopefully early in the week. 

Catching up

 We had hail over the weekend.  Both Saturday and Sunday nights.  These pictures are from the damage on Saturday night.  We had egg-sized hail.  There are broken windows, which my pictures failed to catch, so you'll just have to take my word for it, but you can see several of the holes  punched in the "shutters" and the mess it made of the siding. There were branches down, leaf debris everywhere. The weather service reported 94 mph winds on Sunday.  Less debris, (due in part to the fact that it all came down the day before?) but we lost the robin nest in the maple tree in the backyard.  The hail on Sunday was probably about the size of those glass pebbles you get for flower arrangements.  This window has broken panes on both the inside and outside.

This window is broken just on the outside pane.  Tim has a few dings on his car, mine was safely in the garage.  We had just been talking about how spoiled I've been with an attatched garage.  One of our daydreams includes a generous double stall, attached garage, with a drain in the floor. 

The insurance people were called Monday morning, we are in the queue for assessment. 

I am writing from the library because the new wireless system that Tim worked so hard to get in place for me, refuses to play nice with my Norton 360, or maybe it's the other way around, either way I have no wireless, have been managing fine with a combination of my laptop and Tim's PC, but last night the electricity was out for an undetermined amount of time and this morning there was no wireless to be had.  Anyway...

Sweet dreams

I love the fragrance of lavendar.  I have several planted in my flower beds. These are lavendar sachets that Naphtali gave me for Mother's Day. 

You can see that they are rather flat, which makes them perfect to tuck inside my pillowcase.

 I put them inside, about right there, and at night if I wake up tossing about, they release their soothing fragrance and I'm off to sleep again. Just. like. that. 

Wishing you pleasant dreams....