You load sixteen tons…

You load sixteen tons, and what do you get?  Another day older and deeper in debt.  St. Peter don’t you call me ’cause I can’t go — I owe my soul to the company store!”

Well, I don’t owe my soul to the company store, but I certainly feel like I loaded sixteen tons this weekend.   Of course, this is poetic license and hyperbole.  It was probably only one or two tons.   Anyway, water aerobics was a real trial today.   I went because I knew it would be good for me to move my sore muscles around.

So what was it that caused this state of events?    To sum it up in a few words:  Jim and I cleaned out the pond this weekend.   Mostly I cleaned it out.   It took several hours Friday, all day Saturday, and several more hours Sunday.   It still is not quite finished.

You may wish to go over to this blog post where I have several pictures indicating the history of the place.  A little ways down in the post there is a series of three pictures of the pond.    This one was taken right after I finished digging it.

Look over in the corners on the left and right sides.   Little did I know what a mistake planting those little clumps of cat tails was.   And I was so happy when they grew.

Every once in a while I would get into the pond and sort of try to beat them back from the center.   They continued to grow, however.

A couple of years ago, I noticed that one of the things that the birds had brought me was razor grass.   That makes beating back the marsh more difficult and painful.   But I finally steeled myself against the razor grass and got in there and really worked on getting rid of it.   I paid a high price for THAT one.

Needless to say, that experience made me reluctant to get into the pond when the weather was warm.   And my father’s decline and death last spring sort of took precedence over cleaning out the pond.   All last  summer, I was swearing to myself that  Something Was Going to be DONE about the pond this year.

And so it was.

We siphoned.   While the siphon was going, I began to hack away at the vegetative mass in the pond.   I used my trusty axe to cut pieces that were small enough to heave onto the shore.  I am about half done with the west side in the next shot.   The siphon has almost gotten to the point where it will no longer suck.

Observe the pile of cut pieces out on the bank.   The bucket contains the water lily, and river lotus, which I wished to re-introduce to the pond.   The water canna is still in the pond, just to the left of the bucket.  That mass in front of you is the east side marsh, which has not even been touched yet.

After a while, it became necessary to bail, as the siphon just couldn’t deal with the pond bottom.  It was hard work, but eventually  we got the water all out.

The above is looking at the west side.   It is completely clear of the vegetation that was in the shallow shelf.   Below  is a view of the east side.  I have already hacked a good two feet of vegetation back to where the shallow shelf begins.

A shot with Jim in it, for scale.

Here is a close up of that root wad that his hand is next to.

Back to the axe!   One must be circumspect about that tool.   Part of what makes the job difficult is lifting the mass of roots away from the pond liner so that when you hack through the roots you don’t also hack through the rubber liner.   When I bought that liner, it was over $400.   I can’t even imagine how much it would cost today, 17 years later.   I am just grateful that it hasn’t broken down over the years.

Another reason to be circumspect is the fact that over the years there have been rocks that found their way into the mass.  Big rocks.   Believe it or not, there was a time when the vegetation in the marsh was small enough that it needed to be anchored so it wouldn’t float around.   (Ironic laughter here)  Hitting a big head sized rock with the axe is hard on the axe. We tried to avoid that.   Fortunately, when you get close to a rock when you are hacking at the root wad, the sound changes so that you can modify your aim and miss the rock.   No axes were harmed during the project.

So anyway, we did not try to beat the east side all the way back to the edge the way we did the west side.   I decided the frogs and salamanders needed some marsh.  I left about three feet of it intact.   I know I will enjoy the water irises there when they bloom, also.

After we beat it back some, we cleaned the liner and refilled the pond.   I spent some time clearing the grass back from the stone “patio”.   That part is not done yet, but it rained in the night and there is a lot of water out there, so I will put that off for a bit.

This is how it all looked yesterday afternoon.

There are no fish in there any more, which means the salamanders and toads will have a much easier time propagating.   I know for a fact that there are seven salamander newts, because I meticulously saved them during the baling process and put them into the bucket with the lilies, and then carefully put them back into the pond after it was full.

A job well done.   And my body knows all about it, too.

Something a little less physical also going on:   The bargello quilt strips for Jesse and Lynette’s quilt are cut.

I have about 25% of the strip sewing complete.   I think I might just work on that today and let the pond and the gardens alone.   Just for today.

Spring is here again

After a lot of fitful starts and stops, it appears that spring has finally come to the Ozarks.   We had a lot of swings in temperature last month, one day it would be in the 60s and then the next it would be freezing and snowing.

Through it all the crocuses carried on bravely.   I had daffodils that got snowed on and showed no ill effects.

In the interim I have started going to water aerobics on a regular basis.   When I first started, there were things I really couldn’t do, and I certainly could not keep up with the instructor.   Now I can keep up with her and my core has gotten strong enough that I can do the things that were impossible before.   And my love handles have shrunk.

I started out a little too fast and intense, and wound up being very sore.   After a few weeks, my dear husband commented that perhaps I ought to give myself a chance to get in shape.   “After all, you aren’t twenty five any more, it takes longer for your body to recover.”

Of course, this elicited a bit of a grumble, but I had to acknowledge that I am staring sixty in the face, and June isn’t that far away.  So I cut back to three days a week, and I find that my body is much happier with me.  If things keep on this way, after next week I will start going four days a week and see how it goes.

I have been to Texas since we last were together here at The Havens.   I visited my older sister for a few days, took my quilt to her quilt guild to be admired (which it was).   I find I am quite the anachronism as pretty much everybody does their quilting by machine nowadays.   I chose to hand quilt the baby quilt so I could work powerful protective and loving energy into it.   I don’t think you get the same result with a machine.

While I was in San Antonio, I was escorted about to some of the numerous stores that sell quilt fabric there.  I felt much like a kid in a candy store with only five cents to spend, but I came home with a lot of beautiful stuff, including the rest of the fabrics I need for the next quilt I am going to make, which will be for Jesse and Lynette.   I have the strips cut out, but have not started sewing them together yet.   Soon.

Another thing that has happened is that young Mallory has gone blind.   Several trips to the vet and we discovered that the lesions she had were the symptom of a deterioration that appears to be congenital.   We believe she may be able to see large dark and light areas sketchily, although lately I doubt she even has that.    It hasn’t slowed her down much.   She still plays chase games with Impy and they wrestle.   He chirps at her so she can locate him, and he is very kind about now cheating in the games and sneaking away from where she last heard him.

Occasionally she gets confused as to where she is, but that is happening less and less.   She really gives us a dirty look if we leave the chairs out from the dining table and she runs into one.   Also, we have had to acquire a trash can with a lid for the kitchen as the heightened sensitivity of her sense of smell has led her astray in that direction.    She stole a chicken bone out of it the other day; I guess it just smelled too good to ignore.

So, the vegetable garden has seeds planted in it, but nothing is up yet.   No big surrprise there.   Soon.

So, I shall go off to give the latest massage and talk to you all later.

 

 

FINITO!!!

The baby quilt is no longer in progress.   It is done.

 

I actually had a dream about this quilt right when I was almost completely done quilting the white border.   This is a sample of the beginning of the white border:

 

This particular quilting pattern was suggested by the pillow conversation Jim and I had about the letter Y.  As it turns out, I actually did put the entire list of Atomic symbols into that border.   I am wondering how long it will be before the child asks the parents about that border, if it ever does.   Anyway, it pleases me no end that I did this and it worked out so well.

So, I was working Praseodymium, which I had to look up to find out what it was good for, when it was time to stop for the night.  As I slept, the quilt blocks were spinning in my head, especially since the idea has been planted in my fertile mind that the blocks of the alphabet represent the story of my life.  Eventually, the Man in the Maze came to me to speak, and made the point that the labyrinth which is such a large presence in our lives must be represented somehow on the quilt.

I am ever obedient to the Muse…

 

The labyrinth block is the one I reserved for the baby’s name and birthdate.  If you look closely, you can see that there is room left at the top of the maze pattern for those things to be added once they are known.

The block just to the left represents the parents.  Those ribbons were part of the decor for their wedding.

So, now I am without an active project just now.   There is a stack of fabric accumulating on my desk for the next quilt, which is going to be another bargello called Supernova and will feature a transition of color from deep purple through paler shades to silver.   I have about 2/3 of the fabric, but there is still a ways to go.   I am going to visit my older sister in San Antonio in a couple of weeks and there are wonderful fabric stores there which I intend to avail myself of.

And the baby quilt is going too, in order to be admired during show and tell at my older sister’s quilt guild meeting.   I guess I’d better think of a title for it.

Meanwhile, I believe I shall brave the slushy three inches of snow out there and go do my water aerobics.

Feeding romance

There are so many things one can do to keep romance alive for 30 years plus.   Of course, it is important to count your blessings on a daily basis.   I recently read an article in the AARP magazine that suggests that public displays of affection are good for your romance, as are frequent kisses and saying “I love you.”

These all seem pretty obvious to me.  I think it is important to make special efforts once in a while too, and as we hang out with a bunch of like minded individuals, we have established a tradition that every year around Valentine’s day the gentlemen get together, plan a sumptuous repast for the group, and then prepare it for us.

This year, it was suggested that we ought to dress up in our best, most sophisticated togs.   Jim immediately decided that he was going to wear his tuxedo, since it was going to have to be cleaned before our next cruise (in August) anyway.   Then he said, “I’m going to need an apron.”

I looked around, and did not find an apron I approved of, so I made him one.   Here are a couple of pictures taken on the day of the event (last Sunday) of Jim in the kitchen in his tuxedo and apron.   I think he looks rather fine.

Jim was not the only one cooking, of course.   Dick and Cliff were busy too.

This was a rather amusing moment, as Cliff had never seen a stick blender in action before, and was quite taken with the tool.    What they are doing right that moment is blending the sherried roasted squash bisque prior to serving it.   It was accompanied by a cheesy grits with shrimp, which was our second course.

The first course was a Salade Niçoise, pictured below.

What we are drinking are French 75s, a cocktail that involves both gin and champagne.   I admit it sounds rather awful but I can tell you that  while I really detest gin I find this drink delightful.  (Recipe note:  when Jim makes this he uses our home made limoncello rather than the cointreau listed in the recipe.   It makes the drink look much paler and is quite delicious.)

Back to the kitchen the gentlemen went to prepare the third course, Twice baked goat cheese souffles.

When they were done, Jim put them on the table, which was adorned with a quilted table topper I made a few weeks ago as a hostess gift.

This is a recipe we acquired from Seabourn on our first cruise.   Positively wonderful and well worth the effort to make.  (For the record, the recipe as printed in that blog I linked to is NOT correct.   If you make it the way they tell you you will discover that the quantity of milk is incorrect.   You need about 75ml of milk for the souffle portion.   Also, the version we were given uses a garlic cream for the topping.)

We were having a quite wonderful time, enjoying the companionship of friends and some rather tasty wine. Following the goat cheese course, there was a lemon sorbet course to cleanse our palates for the last course:  Pad thai with scallops, tofu, and shrimp.   Excellent!

Do we look like we feel special?   Because we certainly did!   Especially when the dessert course appeared.  (Yes I realize I have just written a series of sentence fragments.   Deal with it.)

Frozen nougat terrine with chocolate and raspberry sauces, in a special presentation.

As if that wasn’t enough, Liz made a wonderful almond torte to top off the experience.   The chocolates on top were made by Dick.

Now, after a wonderful afternoon enjoying food like that, how can your romance not be enlivened?

quilter’s progress

I have been very very busy since my last post.   So busy, in fact, that my dear husband asked me last night rather plaintively if possibly I might be done sewing for the day.   I think he was tired of trying to hear Rachel Maddow over the buzz of the sewing machine.

But progress has been made.   Observe:

Yes indeed, children.   All the blocks are now created.  Just in case you don’t “get” it, I will just point out to you that there is a block for every letter of the alphabet, these appear in clockwise order around the outside of the quilt.   Then there are the numbers and shapes, which will do double duty helping illustrate the major colors.   There are a few extras in there too, just for fun.

There will be a thin sash between each block, which I have yet to even start cutting.   It is a sage green with tiny pink flowers in it.   It will also surround the quilt body and separate it from the borders, and the same fabric will be used for the binding.

There will be a one inch white border, which is destined to have the atomic symbols quilted into it, then a 1/2″ crazy border, which is created from numerous small pieces of fabric sewn together, and then the final border will be 1 1/2″ of alphabet.

I may or may not put each block’s descriptive word on the pale green “window sill” in either embroidery or fabric paint.   I haven’t decided yet.   It may make the quilt, which is already quite busy, a little too busy.   I don’t know.   I DO know that once I start putting words on, I will have to put them ALL on, and there is no going back.  I am not interested in cutting and sewing all those blocks again, although I suppose if I started the labeling process and didn’t like it I could just replace the pale green sills.

The meticulousness with which I am approaching the last border is a credit to my obsessive compulsive streak.   I cut all the pieces for the border and stitched them together as they lay.  Then when I started pressing the seams open I realized that I did not like the haphazard way the pattern was emerging from this treatment.   So I took all those seams out, all 60 of them, which really wasn’t that hard since they were only 2″ long.   Now I am sewing them back together again, while matching the pattern lines more carefully.

So, the finding of the fabric for this quilt was a lot of fun.   I went to the fabric stores with my niece, who helped me find some of the very cool fabrics that illustrate some of the letters.

My older sister, who also is an amazing quilter, sent me a care package with beautiful fabrics in it, including some of the crazy border and a lovely Kokopelli, who is appliqued onto the block next to the giraffe block.   As soon as I opened the box, F was suddenly for “frog” rather than “fox” due to the fabulousness of the rainforest frog fabric.  There were a lot of fabrics that I didn’t need for this project, but I’m sure I’ll find a use for them later.

Mostly I was pretty set on what image I wanted for each letter.  I was bound and determined that D was going to be for dragon.   I had resigned myself to dragonfly since there were no dragons to be had anywhere, when I got a call from one of my friends who was at a fabric store in Columbia.

“I found you a dragon,” she sang into the phone.   While she was on the phone, she measured the image and told me what size it was.   It sounded right, so she bought it and brought it to me, and then wouldn’t even let me pay for it.    This is a most awesome dragon, courtesy of Judy Gibson.

The letter I had the most trouble finding an image for was, of course, X.   Jim suggested “X marks the spot” and just applique a big X on a block.   I looked in the dictionary last night, in hopes of inspiration.   “Xyst” is not a term that spring readily to mind when you see a nice garden walk lined with trees.   “X-ray” is a concept that is hard to get across without getting pretty silly.   “Xeric” or “xeriscape” could have been shown with a nice desert scene, and I was contemplating this.

I really wanted a xylophone.   I had an image on a fabric, but it was so small and insignificant.  So, this morning I woke up and said to myself, “I have permanent markers.   I can draw this myself.”    So I did.

I think it turned out rather well, actually.

So, I’m off to dust my massage room and put together another batch of lemon marmalade.

And the beat goes on…

So, life has its surreal moments.    I was not equipped with my camera when I took Ruby for her walk the other afternoon following the mini ice storm.  It was too darn cold; by the time I saw anything worth photographing, the batteries in the camera would have been so cold that it would have refused to function.

Consequently, the amazing beauty I saw as the sun was slanting down that afternoon will have to remain in my mind.   It was a mini ice storm, just enough freezing rain to glaze everything, to make little drops on all the branches that looked like tiny christmas ornaments adorning every tree and shrub.   After the freezing rain, there was supposed to be sleet but it didn’t hit our area.   In the meadows, the grasses were glazed with a thin coating of ice, enough to give them sheen but such a light dose that they did not fall down flat to the ground under the weight.

Off in the corner of the field I was walking around was a stand of sorgastrum, its tall heads were bending in gentle arcs, all glazed with ice.   As I walked past, the sun angle reached the magical spot and every arch of grass turned into a rainbow of color right before my eyes as the ice refracted the light to me.

Wow.

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I really have the best husband in the world.   He tolerates without grumbling the fact that my quilting exercises have pretty much taken over half the dining room:

 

What you are seeing here are the beginnings of fabrication of the baby quilt.   I got my numbers cut out last night, now I have to applique them to the color blocks.   In the first picture, you are seeing our dining room table.  Uppermost in the stack of squares you see is “A is for ant.”   I have all the letters except V and X, and they are coming.

Meanwhile, I am not committed to some of my letters.   “J is for jungle” is pretty good, but there might be something better.   So I Googled “J is for” this morning, and found lots of examples:   Jet, jam, jelly, jellyfish, journey, jump, joy, etc.   The last three might be concepts a bit difficult to portray.   But the surreal one was far down the image set on Google:  ”J is for junkie” accompanying a bedraggled soul actually shooting up.   Disturbing.

The quilt has been quite the topic of conversation around here.   My niece went with me to the fabric stores and observed that when I get surrounded by lots of fabric and imagery I get what she calls “fabric brain” and what I would call “fabric induced attention deficit disorder”.   She really was a lot of help to me in finding some of the very cute fabrics that are going to be featured in my alphabet.   My older sister is contributing too, so it is really a family effort.

Jim is actually quite a good resource in this endeavor, giving me some very good ideas.   So last night, as we were settling down in bed on our way to sleep I was talking about the quilt a little bit (not doing that thing with my mouth… but the Other Thing: talking…)  Anyway, we got a tad silly and he suggested that Y could be for Yttrium.  When I pointed out that it might be hard to find an image that screamed “Yttrium” to the poor parents who are going to be playing the Naming Game with their baby, he then said “Well, you could just put on the whole periodic table of elements.”   I declined to do that, and then he went on and said that later on in the child’s life I could do a needlework project of the periodic table.

Do you think he was being sarcastic?    I don’t.

Anyway, I pointed out that it might be more to the point for the CHILD to do the needlework project as that would give it the opportunity to really learn her (his?) periodic chart.

But the upshot of the whole discussion was that we realized that the list of Atomic Symbols of the elements could be used somehow in that quilt, a subtle thing.    And it is going to be used, too.   When I quilt the first border, which is going to be a plain fabric, I intend to do the list of elements in order of atomic number.   It is exactly the right size to give each element about an inch and a half of space for its symbol.   I think this is very cool.

And this is the sort of pillow talk we engage in.   Then I did that thing with my mouth and stopped talking.

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As I work on this quilt, I realize that there are plenty of images that could be multiples.   Like the image of the horses.   That could also be P is for pony or C is for colt or F is for foal.

While we were discussing J today, Jim came up with J is for jonquil.   Now this is just a dandy idea, but I can see the poor people looking at my quilt and wondering why J is for daffodil.   You could put the same image under N is for Narcissus and create the same confusion.

I’m really trying not to be TOO subtle here.   Maybe later.

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This year on Jim’s birthday one of our friends presented him with the butternut squash to end all butternut squashes.   Today he cut it open and it is roasting as we speak.   I believe it is going to be featured prominently in our dinner tonight.

 

For your information, that is a french chef’s knife with an 8 inch blade.   We are saving some seeds to see what comes up next year.

And so, life goes on its merry way.    Hope your surreal things are beautiful and tasty too.

Funnybone

We have an email friend whom we met on a cruise.   Nice old fellow, who loves to forward funny stuff.   I think he doesn’t have enough to do, he spends a lot of time on the interwebs.   Sometimes he sends collections of wonderful photos.   The other day he sent us some funnies.

I guess it depends on your funny bone, some aren’t as funny as others.

I liked:   I was taught to respect my elders but it is getting harder to find one.

Also:  God created man before woman so man would have time to think of the answer to her first question.

Then this one made me laugh, but made my mother not laugh:

A man and a woman are in bed, lights out.    The woman asks:   “Honey, do I please you in bed?”   The man, no dummy, replies, “Or course you do, dear.”   She thinks a minute, then asks, “So what is it that pleases you?”   “Oh, lots of things, honey.   I especially like that thing you do with your mouth.”   “That thing I do with my mouth?”  she asks, puzzled.   “Yes.  You know, where you stop talking and go to sleep…”  This made me laugh because for some reason, lying down in bed and turning the lights off often makes me think of something that we wanted to talk about…

Then my particular favorite:

Answering machine message,

“I am not available right now,

but thank you for caring enough to call.

I am making some changes in my life.

Please leave a message after the beep.

If I do not return your call,

you are one of the changes.”