Thank you, my friend im6, for this one!
Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ category
Now That The Summer’s Here: Michael Franks
June 20, 2012“Rarely does one see a squirrel tremble.”
June 15, 2012Cue the trumpets! It was coffee and the papers on the deck this morning for the first time this season, and the sun was so bright I felt like the Mad Hatter moving from chair to chair to avoid the glare. Gracie came with me and she found the shade. While there, I noticed the deck needs some more sweeping because of the rain storms, and I’ll do that later as I intend to spend most of the day there with book (disguised as my iPad) in hand.
Tonight is the first play of the season, and it is at the Cape Playhouse. The Hound of the Baskervilles is the play, but, according to the review, it,” … is absurd. Ridiculous. Overblown,” but then the critic goes on to say, ” But please, please don’t let that stop you, because those are exactly the things that make it an extremely successful, albeit odd, twist on the old Sherlock Holmes yarn.” I am curious and a bit uneasy. I always think of Sherlock Holmes as a character with whom you don’t meddle, but I will reserve judgment until I see the play.
I woke up when it was almost light, and I heard the chorus of birds greeting the new day. The air was filled with bird songs, and I stayed awake a while to listen. It is a perfect way to start the day, with a joyous sound. I fell asleep again but I think I might have been smiling.
The gray spawns of Satan have not been around. It seems they have been replaced by the evil red spawns who have been known to attack their grey cousins. The red spawns are small enough to fit in between the wires of the squirrel proof feeders, and when I see them at those feeders, I run out to the deck like a screaming mad woman. Well, actually, I am a screaming mad woman with mad having all sorts of connotations. Maybe, once the deck season starts in earnest, the spawns will stay away. I can only hope, but if that doesn’t work, I’m thinking a weapon might be what I need. Maybe I’ll try a potato gun. They can always eat the ammo.
“Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.”
June 9, 2012This morning I went out to the deck to fill the suet feeder then I just stood there enjoying the morning. All of a sudden the smoke alarm in the hall went off. Animals ran: the cats low to the ground and the dog out the door into the yard. I went in and the house was filled with smoke, mostly the dining room and kitchen. I went looking and found the culprit: the toast blackened and on fire in my toaster oven. I had forgotten all about it as I don’t usually have anything but coffee in the morning. The house still has a charred smell.
Finally a deck day! I have to sweep and clean it a bit but that’s fine with me. When I’m done, I’m going to bring out my book and a cold drink and soak up the sun and the beauty of the day. It is the best sort of day. The sun is bright, the breeze just enough and it’s already 70°. Gracie is asleep on the lounge. That’s a sure sign of a beautiful morning.
Once my brother and I rode our bicycles to East Boston to visit our grandparents. It meant riding along Route 1, a busy, busy highway, crossing it at a rotary with cars all over and then riding, still on Route 1, into the city. We knew the route because we used to go visit my grandparents many Sundays and every Christmas and Easter. When we knocked on his door, my grandfather opened it and looked around for my parents. He was shocked to find we’d ridden our bicycles. He called my mother, and she was horrified. She didn’t drive back then so she couldn’t pick us up, and my father was a salesman who could have been anywhere on his route so he couldn’t come get us. All my mother could do was tell us to ride home and be careful. My grandfather gave us some money for a snack and off we went.
It was just a ride home for us. For my mother it was waiting and looking out the door hoping she’d see us riding our bikes up the hill. My brother and I just couldn’t understand why she yelled when we got home. Her, “You could have been killed,” meant nothing to us. We hadn’t been. We let her yell as that always seemed the best approach. When she was finished, we asked if we could go out bike riding. “No,” was all she said.
“If you know something can go wrong, and take due precautions against it, something else will go wrong.”
June 7, 2012We actually caught a glimpse of the sun this morning. It was a fleeting glimpse but still heartening. It seemed a perfect day to get out and clean my deck for about the tenth time, but clouds have appeared so I’ll wait a bit hoping for a return of the sun. Last week I bought a new pump for my fountain. I couldn’t connect it because I needed new tubing so I went to the hardware store, one of my least favorite shopping spots, and bought some. Now I can’t find where I put the pump. I have checked the usual spots and come up empty. I hate getting older.
The bird feeders need filling so that’s a good task for today. I saw a cardinal pair the other day, and I’d like to keep them around so I’ll bring out the seed and get busy.
A fly is buzzing around me and the house. I hate flies. I like to whack them with rolled up newspapers. Fern also likes to catch them, but she is sleeping on the couch and has no interest in any activities. When I was a kid, we had a Woolworth’s turtle which lived for years in a lagoon on the kitchen counter. The lagoon was plastic and had a resting spot in the middle with a tiny fake palm tree. That turtle loved live flies so we’d stun them and put them in the water, and the turtle would go right after them and scoff them down. We’d always watch. When the turtle went to his reward, we buried him in the small grove of trees just below the last duplex on the street. We used a metal box to put him in. On that spot where the trees were is now apartments for the elderly, a place my father always called wrinkle city. I’d like to think the turtle’s tin survived and is still buried somewhere under the grass.
I will make a concerted effort to find that pump because I know if I buy another, I’ll find the first. I consider that one of Murphy’s Laws because it happens to me all the time.
Missing Link Part Deux
May 31, 2012I had some great suggestions for a music storage site. One was packupload, but my anti-virus software stopped me and called it a malicious site so I backed-off. The best for now was the feed itself where the files are listed and can be downloaded: https://keepthecoffeecoming.wordpress.com/feed/
There is an alternative but I have no idea how to do it. This blog: http://a45blog.blogspot.com/ posts the link directly on the page. I am trying to find out how that is done; otherwise, I’m still on the hunt.
“The key to a nice-looking lawn is a good mower. I recommend one who is muscular and shirtless!”
May 26, 2012
The sun is shining and the day is getting warmer. It was cloudy when I woke up and only 65°. It is supposed to get as high as 75° and be sunny all day, the same with tomorrow.
Well, I spend mega bucks at the garden shop yesterday and wrecked my back pulling the heavy cart. Luckily one of my former students works there and he dragged the cart to my car and filled the trunk and the back seat. For the vegetable garden, I bought cucumbers which should be enough to fill the rest of it. I bought cherry tomato pots for the deck, four or five different herbs, a hanging plant for the deck and four different flowers for the front garden. The only flowers I didn’t buy were the annuals for the clay pots which are all around the deck rail. I’ll get those later today or tomorrow after breakfast. That’ll finish the garden for this season, said she with tongue in cheek.
My neighbors are disappearing. I can no longer see down the row of houses to my friends’ house at the end of the street, and the neighbors on each side of me are almost completely hidden. My deck is again becoming my private refuge.
I finished my book. It was an odd book revolving around two sets of conjoined twins born 80 or so years apart, but I really liked it. Sometimes I don’t enjoy interspersed backward and forward trips in time, but this novelist did it well. As always, I’m sorry I finished the book. The joyful anticipation of sitting and reading it is gone.
This world is such a noisy place. I woke up this morning to the sound of the lawn mower at my neighbor’s house and a leaf blower on the next street. The leaf blowers are the worst. They are the noisiest of all garden machines and the worst spewers of pollution.
I miss the summer Saturday sounds of my childhood: the click clack of hand mowers, the scratching sounds of rakes and the swishing of brooms across sidewalks and driveways. Back then, there was something communal about mowing lawns. I remember my dad stopping to talk with our neighbor who was also mowing his lawn. My dad would lean on the long handle of his mower. They’d talk a while then they’d get back to the task at hand, mowing their lawns. I also remember my dad with his hand trimmer working on the bushes in our front yard. His trimmer looked like giant scissors. My dad always chopped the bushes too short, and my mother always complained.
When I used to mow my own lawn, I had a hand mower because back then my lawn was so small, just the front of the house. I also had hand trimmers. Now, I have a landscaper who has all the tools, the noisy tools. I do have to admit, though, my lawn and my yard have never looked better.
“The key to a nice-looking lawn is a good mower. I recommend one who is muscular and shirtless!”
May 26, 2012
The sun is shining and the day is getting warmer. It was cloudy when I woke up and only 65°. It is supposed to get as high as 75° and be sunny all day, the same with tomorrow.
Well, I spend mega bucks at the garden shop yesterday and wrecked my back pulling the heavy cart. Luckily one of my former students works there and he dragged the cart to my car and filled the trunk and the back seat. For the vegetable garden, I bought cucumbers which should be enough to fill the rest of it. I bought cherry tomato pots for the deck, four or five different herbs, a hanging plant for the deck and four different flowers for the front garden. The only flowers I didn’t buy were the annuals for the clay pots which are all around the deck rail. I’ll get those later today or tomorrow after breakfast. That’ll finish the garden for this season, said she with tongue in cheek.
My neighbors are disappearing. I can no longer see down the row of houses to my friends’ house at the end of the street, and the neighbors on each side of me are almost completely hidden. My deck is again becoming my private refuge.
I finished my book. It was an odd book revolving around two sets of conjoined twins born 80 or so years apart, but I really liked it. Sometimes I don’t enjoy interspersed backward and forward trips in time, but this novelist did it well. As always, I’m sorry I finished the book. The joyful anticipation of sitting and reading it is gone.
This world is such a noisy place. I woke up this morning to the sound of the lawn mower at my neighbor’s house and a leaf blower on the next street. The leaf blowers are the worst. They are the noisiest of all garden machines and the worst spewers of pollution.
I miss the summer Saturday sounds of my childhood: the click clack of hand mowers, the scratching sounds of rakes and the swishing of brooms across sidewalks and driveways. Back then, there was something communal about mowing lawns. I remember my dad stopping to talk with our neighbor who was also mowing his lawn. My dad would lean on the long handle of his mower. They’d talk a while then they’d get back to the task at hand, mowing their lawns. I also remember my dad with his hand trimmer working on the bushes in our front yard. His trimmer looked like giant scissors. My dad always chopped the bushes too short, and my mother always complained.
When I used to mow my own lawn, I had a hand mower because back then my lawn was so small, just the front of the house. I also had hand trimmers. Now, I have a landscaper who has all the tools, the noisy tools. I do have to admit, though, my lawn and my yard have never looked better.
“The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind”
May 24, 2012The day is brighter than the last few and the sun is just biding its time behind a cloud. It’s expected a bit later. It’s a long sleeve day which I found out when I investigated Gracie’s intruder bark. She was standing on the rail by the deck stairs, and the hair on her back was raised from her neck to her tail, never a good sign. I looked but saw nothing. It must have been the rabbit which just stands and stares at the dog. While Gracie was standing on the rail, I noticed the border along the side of the rail is in pieces held together by only a single wire; the bamboo has seen its last. I got her inside before she leapt that rail. This time she’d have hurt herself as the rail borders the holly bush. I put wire across the spot for the meantime as I do have a woven screen I bought yesterday. While I was attaching the wire, I noticed a spot near the driveway where she’s started digging under the fence. I put a board across it. Gracie is an escape artist, and when she’s on the run, she’s quick and won’t come to me. Neighbors come out, and she goes right to them. My yard is huge but obviously Gracie prefers the wider world.
When I was a kid, there were no leash laws. Dogs roamed. I never saw one hit by a car as the dogs were wary on the streets and car smart, and I think the cars were slower on local roads back then. Duke, our boxer, was quite the traveler. He’d follow us to school or follow the neighbors to their school. My father would yell for him, Duke would turn around to acknowledge he’d heard my father, then he’d keep going. My father got so angry he’d jump in the car to get the dog. My mother had a different strategy. She’d hold out a piece of bologna and call Duke. He’d come and eat the bologna leaving a small piece in my mother’s hand then he’d run on his way. Duke and his son Sam were notorious for prowling the neighborhoods. Sam was my aunt’s dog, the aunt who gave us Duke, and he lived three or four blocks away. The two would meet up and travel together. They looked fierce but Sam was the gentlest of dogs. Duke was stubborn and protective. They scared people.
We moved to the cape and their days of roaming together were over. I swear the entire town let out a sigh of relief.
“The gift which I am sending you is called a dog, and is in fact the most precious and valuable possession of mankind”
May 24, 2012The day is brighter than the last few and the sun is just biding its time behind a cloud. It’s expected a bit later. It’s a long sleeve day which I found out when I investigated Gracie’s intruder bark. She was standing on the rail by the deck stairs, and the hair on her back was raised from her neck to her tail, never a good sign. I looked but saw nothing. It must have been the rabbit which just stands and stares at the dog. While Gracie was standing on the rail, I noticed the border along the side of the rail is in pieces held together by only a single wire; the bamboo has seen its last. I got her inside before she leapt that rail. This time she’d have hurt herself as the rail borders the holly bush. I put wire across the spot for the meantime as I do have a woven screen I bought yesterday. While I was attaching the wire, I noticed a spot near the driveway where she’s started digging under the fence. I put a board across it. Gracie is an escape artist, and when she’s on the run, she’s quick and won’t come to me. Neighbors come out, and she goes right to them. My yard is huge but obviously Gracie prefers the wider world.
When I was a kid, there were no leash laws. Dogs roamed. I never saw one hit by a car as the dogs were wary on the streets and car smart, and I think the cars were slower on local roads back then. Duke, our boxer, was quite the traveler. He’d follow us to school or follow the neighbors to their school. My father would yell for him, Duke would turn around to acknowledge he’d heard my father, then he’d keep going. My father got so angry he’d jump in the car to get the dog. My mother had a different strategy. She’d hold out a piece of bologna and call Duke. He’d come and eat the bologna leaving a small piece in my mother’s hand then he’d run on his way. Duke and his son Sam were notorious for prowling the neighborhoods. Sam was my aunt’s dog, the aunt who gave us Duke, and he lived three or four blocks away. The two would meet up and travel together. They looked fierce but Sam was the gentlest of dogs. Duke was stubborn and protective. They scared people.
We moved to the cape and their days of roaming together were over. I swear the entire town let out a sigh of relief.
keepthecoffeecoming.blog 