Sunday

Sunday morning in the garden: more herbs planted in the perennial herb bed, tomato cages in place, everything watered, an abandoned bird nest admired, all while three dragonflies flew in circles above us. Perfect.

Red Tape - An Adventure

It’s 5:00 p.m. on a Tuesday, late enough in the Spring to feel like afternoon instead of the evening almost-night of the same time in Winter. In about an hour I’ll have dinner just about ready – leftovers -  and not long after that will settle in for the slow decline of day before heading off to bed at a reasonable time so I can get up in the morning and go make a living. My weekend is over and for the first time in ages I feel accomplished and rested. (Maybe I shouldn’t say that out loud; it might be tempting fate or the sandman. It might reek of bragging.)

The house is cleaned, laundry finished, business bookkeeping and errands are caught up, the garden is holding its own. I even stretched out on the couch with a book and drifted into a twilight kind of sleep for a half hour or so. It was lovely. And now, from that place of feeling a deep breath in my soul, I’m writing. It’s time to catch up on this blog.

For a while, a couple months, I managed to post a few times a week. A little rhythm developed, take some pictures, write a few paragraphs, polish it up a bit, post. Then things went a little sideways.

Here’s the short version of what happened: Last autumn my husband had knee surgery. Nothing major, a little repair that should have corrected the problem and had him back on his feet better than new in six to eight weeks. Piece of cake. But that’s not what happened. Instead we discovered what a bureaucratic nightmare the Worker’s Compensation system can be. We learned about the ways a person can fall through the cracks of a medical system that doesn’t listen to the patient and that the insurance program intended to protect injured employees requires constant monitoring and advocacy. When it was long past obvious that his knee wasn’t healing properly the system failed. Our dining room table has been strewn with papers for months, a trail of events and notices, requests for information and confirmation, copies of letters we’ve sent, and notes to help us keep track of it all. My husband’s supervisors delayed filing paperwork, resulting in a tangle of over-payments and crossed wires, leading to demands for re-payment and proof that a doctor’s report should have amply answered. And the part that frustrates us the most? My husband’s knee is no better than before surgery.

We looked for an attorney, only to learn that there are only four lawyers in the state who will take on this worker’s comp insurance. It’s a big, bad, mother of a federal system. And we’ve been going head-to-head with it.

In the end it’s most likely going to be just fine. My husband’s knee is finally getting stronger, he’s returned to work, and we’re gradually getting our feet back under us again. We took a deep breath on Sunday morning and had a delightful day.

And this blog? Sheesh, it needs some serious attention. Bear with me while I figure out how to bring it back to life and re-establish a writing and photography routine. There are amazing things in this world, even in dark times, and I plan to string together words to describe them. Red tape be damned.

Playing With Words

A Chicken in Every Yard

We think we're so clever, discovering that chickens keep well in backyards. And that we're somehow side-stepping the government. Hah!

Spice Dyed Easter Eggs

Sunday morning I got up early to dye Easter Eggs using spices, herbs, teas, vegetables, and assorted juices. I've always been hesitant to use commercial egg dyes since getting sick after eating an Easter Egg when I was a kid, therefore I was delighted to learn actual food could be used to color eggs. The results were mixed, with some dyes barely tinting the eggs and others giving a soft color. The basic recipe uses one cup of hot water in which to dissolve the spices and a tablespoon of vinegar. The eggs soaked for 60-90 minutes. I used one teaspoon of ground spice per cup - not quite enough, but a good start. Next time I'll use more spice. A light rub with olive oil after they dried gave the eggs a nice sheen.

Here's the list and results:

Fresh spinach (a good handful boiled for a long while) - not much color change and really icky, slimy spinach to strain out

Celery Seed - no color change

Mexican Saffron - very pretty light orange

Chili Powder - light orange

Curry Powder - pretty yellow

Ground Sage - nice greenish brown

Paprika - pale beige orange

Beet Juice - pale pink

Cherries in Wine (canned last summer) - purplish grey

Raspberry Tea - soft grey

Black Tea (Barry's) - varied browns

Dried Hibiscus Flowers - mottled grey

 Setting up for egg dyeing with spices and teas.

My favorites turned out to be the oranges and yellows: Mexican saffron, chili powder, curry powder, and paprika.

While I took the natural route, my brother and nephew used pens for a different take.

Eggs to warm a rocker's heart. 

Oh, and a Storm Trooper too.

A Weekend's Worth of Pictures, Sort Of...

The only thing these pictures have in common is that I took them over this weekend with my phone.


A Curious Bird...

 Dessert at a Disco-themed 50th birthday party.

The drive home on a rainy night.

An Encyclopedia of Cooking

Last year on a summer afternoon we wandered up the block to a moving sale. It was an elderly couple getting ready to downsize and move closer to their kids. My vintage antennae were twitching and I convinced my husband to come along. I’ve learned it’s wise to take him with me on these expeditions, otherwise we’d have a house full of things we don’t need, don’t have room for, but I just couldn’t pass up. He gets a subtle look I’ve learned to read as, “Are you kidding??!!!”.

There were lots of old cookbooks, boxes of them tucked in a corner of the garage. I picked out a couple for a grand total of $2.50 and headed home to flip through them. The first, and biggest, book is The Encyclopedia of Cooking, by Mary Margaret McBride, first published in 1959. It’s full of recipes from another era, some that I’ll try, others, um, not. The other book is hilarious and worthy of an entire post of its own next week. (How’s that for a stay-tuned tease?)

The Encyclopedia of Cooking is over 1,500 pages long, a hefty book of recipes straight from the 1950’s and 1960’s. The recipes range from cookies that look good even in black & white, to gelatin salads (yuck), to frankfurter casseroles I don’t even want to imagine. There’s even a canning section that, though out-dated, is fun to read through.  I’ve definitely gotten my money’s worth out of this book, and a bit more.