I think I've mentioned that I always pronounce basil in the English way because the first time I ever heard the word was on Fawlty Towers. Isn't that unbelievable? That show was in the 1970s. The only herb I'd heard of was parsley, the curly garnish that no one ever ate. How very far we have come.
Anyhow, my basil plants didn't make it this year, so I bought some starts at the Co-op from a local, organic farm. They have grown tremendously under the lights. I kept reading that I should prune them, but you all know how hard that is to do when your plants are big and healthy. I went to my favorite YouTube gardener, MIgardener. His name is Luke and he is the dearest person, as well as offering a ton of information. This is the video I watched. Afterward, I went right out to the kitchen, and did what I needed to do. Here are my before and after photographs.
They should really take off now and be nice and bushy rather than leggy. Quite a difference. And a side benefit is I used some of the cuttings to make the first pesto of the season! My recipe is here.
This year's spring CSA flowers came from the woman who lives maybe ten minutes away. I love getting them in the spring, when I am so hungry for the sight of them. We did have lovely daffodils, but a whole swath did not come up.
We've actually had some disheartening problems. Many flowers did not come back. The gorgeous cleome and amaranth in the big garden didn't appear. We had to replant all the started tomato seeds because we tried something new in watering, and they got waterlogged. We've dug up areas of the patio and terrace gardens and plan to put some vegetables close to the house, hoping to fool the dear deeries. I still have to get some serious supports to thwart them.
I had taken some chances and planted some zone 4 plants, hoping they might work, but after coming back one year, they did not appear this spring. I guess global warming has missed us for now. So that is one of the reasons that our flower gardens are a bit bare. The daylilies never, ever let us down. They cheerfully come up before anything else, those green, green leaves just calling out "spring"!
Anyhow, I have huge basil plants (bought from a local farmer), medium sized tomatoes, and some lettuce under the grow-lights, and we are finally getting some warmer weather. Some years spring is a little slower coming than others.
And here are the four weeks of the wonderful, wonderful CSA flowers beginning May 4.
Each week there are two bouquets, and I usually put them all together for a couple days, and then separate into smaller vases. This week the small bouquet was full of poppies, and I put them into their own containers right away. I adore poppies but they do not last long. They are the strongest lesson from flowers - to fully appreciate them every moment because they are here and gone by.
Now, you'll see the dirty windows (and window sills)! I will clean them when the screens go on. It just hasn't been warm enough for them yet.
So, what do you know?! An actual blog post from me.
Last evening as I went up to bed, the (full) moonlight was streaming in the windows, and I thought about Emily's line in the Thornton Wilder play, Our Town. I don't seem to have a copy in the house, and couldn't find the whole play online. I did find the quote, but hoped to get more context. I think she was doing her homework, and maybe talking to her boyfriend out the window. But I could be way off.
I am currently reading Jan Morris' book, In My Mind's Eye: A Thought Diary, published in 2018. It begins on Day 1, and continues through Day 188, in 2017 when she turned 91. I went searching for a video of her at this time in her life, and here it is.
We've had some quite warm days, and more cool/cold days. Typical April.
The hen turkeys are off sitting on eggs somewhere, but there are up to six toms who are around most days.
And no picture ( I don't feel comfortable putting up pictures of other people's kids or grandkids) but I am a great-aunt for the first time! Tom's sister's son's baby. So this little girl is a second cousin to my grandchildren.
A few years ago, I posted about washing dishes by hand. You may read it here. It was really fine, and even better, it was fun for quite a long time.
Then, in the past few months, I kind of found myself not baking as much, and even making less complicated suppers so there wouldn't be so many dishes to wash. I also got weary of almost always having dishes on the counters; either waiting to be washed or sitting on towels, drying. I made a couple noises about wanting a dishwasher but then decided that it was fine hand washing. Was there a tipping point? Yes. The dishes weren't as clean as I liked them, even though I spent a long time washing them. I also got annoyed at having to soak everything for ages so it wouldn't be so difficult to wash them.
We got one at Lowe's, and it was delivered by two moving men - one of whom carried it in on his shoulder!
I am very, very happy with it. One of my gripes when I used one before was that it ran for so long. I now just use the one hour setting, and it works every single time. Sometimes it is very full, and others not so much, but I don't feel badly because it is just an hour. I'm delighted! I'm already doing what I wrote above that I had cut down on - baking and more complicated suppers.
I've searched around some, and it seems that both re-read and reread are acceptable now. I have been eliminating the hyphen just because it seems easier. But I find I don't like the look of reread, so I guess I'm going to go with the hyphen from now on.
However you spell it, I am having the best reading time reading books over again. I mostly don't remember the whole story, but I have flashes of recognition sometimes. I kind of got started on this scheme because I didn't want to keep spending money on Kindle books. I am happy to buy a book that I can see; a book I can put on a shelf and look through anytime I want. I just can't do that with a Kindle. I am in high praise of the device because it is how I get to sleep and go back to sleep at night. Years and years ago, I read by lamplight. Then I had audiobooks on tape. Then I tried one of those itty-bitty lights. They were all distracting in terms of sleep, except for the books on tape. I gave those up when they went to CDs or phone. That was too much work for me in my sleepy state. And then the Kindle came along. It was perfection. But I've decided to read what I haven't read yet or re-read the books I have. And what a delightful experience it is. Just now I'm zooming through the Mrs. Pollifax books by Dorothy Gilman.
I wondered if there were quotes about this subject, and I found some great ones.
Robertson Davies: "A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight."
(To quote a word from one of my favorite books - The Diary of a Provincial Lady)
Query: Am I in maturity or old age?
Anne Fadiman: "The reader who plucks a book from her shelf only once is as deprived as the listener who, after attending a single performance of a Beethoven symphony never hears it again."
Italo Calvino: "A classic is a book which with each rereading offers as much of a sense of discovery as the first reading."
Garry Fitchett: "Rereading the works of a favorite author and, once again, learning something new shows me they are not done with me yet."
Lauren Groff: "The greatest texts, I think, first dazzle, then with careful rereading they instruct. I have learned from Virginia Woolf more than I even know how to articulate."
Susan Sontag: "Most of my reading is rereading."
and last, but definitely not least -
C.S. Lewis: "An unliterary man may be defined as one who reads books only once ... We do not enjoy a story fully on the first reading. Not till the curiosity, the sheer narrative lust, has been given its sop and laid asleep are we at leisure to savour the real beauties. Till then, it is like wasting great wine on a ravenous natural thirst which merely wants cold wetness."
"When I was a novice, I found Lent the hardest season. Not for the hardship of self-sacrifice - that I willingly embraced - but for the absence of nature's beauty in the chapel. I always found it an invaluable aid to spiritual labour. But then I encountered a passage that gave great illumination. It is not the penance that we choose which is pleasing to God... it is the setting aside of ego and the submission to His will."
"The sense of smell is the only sense that is fully formed in the fetus. And it's your most dominant sense until you're about ten years old, when your vision takes over."
Gardeners' World - an almost blind woman who works with trees said this
"When Coleridge's infant son was dreaming, he'd show him the moon." [I think meaning, having a bad dream]
"Focusing on me is why I started gardening. My shrink says it's a way to tune everybody out and hear the universe. I know it sounds "hippie" but doesn't that sound nice? Hearing the universe."
"There are those who would say that a life devoted to food - cooking it, eating it, writing about it, even dreaming about it is a frivolous life, an indulgent life. I would disagree. If we do not care what we eat, we do not care for ourselves, and if we don't care for ourselves how can we care for others?"
An introduction to a book by Hilary Smallwood, a fictional character who writes cookbooks in Pie in the Sky
"I hate telephones. It was much better when people had to do everything by letter."
And that's it for this installment. You really should see all the post-its I have! I am gradually entering them into a beautiful moleskin notebook. And when I do, I pick out some to bring to the blog. And incidentally, we moved the television back into the living room. It is colder, but it seems more fitting in there.
“Anyone who thinks gardening begins in the spring and ends in the fall is missing the best part of the whole year; for gardening begins in January with a dream.”
Josephine Nuese, 1901-1974, American gardener and author of The Country Garden, 1970
These words are so very true! My head is full of ideas, and I spend a lot of time looking at catalogues. I am just happy they still come in the mail. Some of them I don't even order from, but this year I feel like I should just as a little thank you for the pleasure I get from looking through them.
I had declared that I wouldn't have to buy any seeds for this summer because there are still a lot left from last year. More fool me. My head is full of tomatoes, again. After months of eating them fresh, and then using the sauce I made from them, I am again bereft of tomatoes. I've begun thinking of having just a basil, garlic, and tomato garden but then I see a new climbing zucchini, and some varieties of tomato I just must try. And the packets of scallions that didn't get planted last year. And then I think the garden should be doubled!
From 2014-2017, I wrote a few posts on What I Learned From TV.
This is the introduction I always began with.
Each time I do a post about What I Learned From TV, I’ll begin with the explanation from the first posting:
Now that my kids are grown, and Tom has retired, I’ve been able to go back to my natural sleep pattern which is to stay up late and get up late. Tom’s natural rhythm is just the opposite. So, he’s the lark and I’m the owl.
And what this owl does in the late hours is watch television- not in the traditional way but through Hulu, Netflix, TunnelBear, and Acorn TV. Most of the shows are British, though I am a great fan of a few American television shows, and have been watching some from other countries now that we have TunnelBear. Some of these shows Tom will watch in the mornings, but some of them are all mine. So, when I hear a great quote from a show I know he’s not going to watch, I’ll leave him little post-it notes near the computer keyboard. I had a notion this morning to begin a new ‘letter topic’ called What I Learned From TV so I can put up some virtual post-its for you to read and, hopefully, enjoy. Some are funny, some are educational, some are wise.
I no longer have Hulu, and we stopped TunnelBear when we found out it is rather illegal to watch British shows that way! We do still have Acorn, along with Britbox, Netflix, PBS, and Prime, and my many DVDs .
But I haven't done a TV post since 2017, so I thought it time that I bring back the topic. I keep pen and paper next to my "TV chair" and I jot things down that interest me. The other day, I cleared out a desk drawer that had myriad post-it notes with those jottings.
Because it has been so long, many of the quotes are not from shows I am currently watching.
I did once have a television like the one in the picture above, but nowadays this is the scene (currently watching the excellent New Amsterdam on Netflix):
With talk of oil and electric prices going up, we decided some months ago to put the TV in the kitchen where the wood stove is so I didn't have to turn up the heat in the living room when I watch television in the evenings. We have liked it so much that we probably won't move it back when the weather gets warmer.
Without further ado:
I don't know where this came from but it is quite amazing. I am one of them.
"In 1967, never before had so many Americans been under 25. There were over 90 million of them, nearly half the population."
Being a watcher of older British television shows, I have noticed a lot of griping about two particular subjects - the National Health Service, and the European Union. Here is one from Dalziel in Dalziel and Pascoe.
"Do they sell toffee hammers anymore? No, probably banned by those clowns in Brussels." 1996 show.
"GPS is just another way for the government to keep an eye on me." US televison show The Finder. This said by a man who buries his money because he doesn't trust banks.
From Darby and Joan.
Joan says, "I never saw the appeal of sunrises. They're just like sunsets only bloody early." Those could be my words!
From Nadiya Hussain on one of her marvelous cooking shows:
"Oh, my God, mashed potato is my favorite thing in the whole wide world."
I'll end this entry with a few quotes from Horace Rumpole in Rumpole of the Bailey.
"Who was it who said that Wagner's music is not as bad as it sounds?"
Upon hearing someone collapsed while jogging. "I've always said that exercise is the short cut to the cemetery"
"No pleasure on earth is worth sacrificing for the sake of five extra years in the geriatric ward in the sunset old people's hospital in Weston-Super-Mare."
The campaign for a federal holiday in Martin Luther King's honor began soon after his assassination in 1968. President Ronald Reagan signed the holiday into law in 1983, and it was first observed three years later on January 20, 1986. At first, some states resisted observing the holiday as such, giving it alternative names or combining it with other holidays. It was officially observed in all 50 states for the first time in 2000.
Stevie's album with this song on it came out in 1980.
"Happy Birthday"
You know it doesn't make much sense
There ought to be a law against
Anyone who takes offense
At a day in your celebration
'Cause we all know in our minds
That there ought to be a time
That we can set aside
To show just how much we love you
And I'm sure you would agree
What could fit more perfectly
Than to have a world party on the day you came to be
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
I just never understood
How a man who died for good
Could not have a day that would
Be set aside for his recognition
Because it should never be
Just because some cannot see
The dream as clear as he
that they should make it become an illusion
And we all know everything
That he stood for time will bring
For in peace our hearts will sing
Thanks to Martin Luther King
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Why has there never been a holiday
Where peace is celebrated
all throughout the world
The time is overdue
For people like me and you
Who know the way to truth
Is love and unity to all God's children
It should be a great event
And the whole day should be spent
In full remembrance
Of those who lived and died for the oneness of all people
So let us all begin
We know that love can win
Let it out don't hold it in
Sing it loud as you can
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday
A real sadness for Tom and I to hear that Jeff Beck has died. He was THE BEST as was this band. Rod Stewart vocals. Ron Wood on bass. Mick Waller on drums. Nicky Hopkins piano. In the comments to this video, a man said he saw them at the Boston Tea Party, as we did. Rod didn't stay in the band for long, and how I wish he had. For us this was the perfect group.
On the first album, Truth, Beck writes about this song.
"Shapes of Things
Rearranged, but the same Yardbirds hit. This must be played at maximum volume whatever phonograph you use. Makes very appropriate background music if you have the Vicar over for tea."
Go to YouTube and type in "Drinkin Again" Jeff Beck group. A masterpiece. AND it is a Johnny Mercer song!
On his Instagram page, Jimmy Page wrote:
"The six stringed Warrior is no longer here for us to admire the spell he could weave around our mortal emotions. Jeff could channel music from the ethereal. His technique unique. His imaginations apparently limitless. Jeff I will miss you along with your millions of fans. Jeff Beck Rest in Peace."
