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The Onion Harvest
Forest and I pulled onions about two weeks ago. I’m trying to remember the last time we had a really great harvest, maybe this one 5 years ago? I think we’ve had one or two since then but I know for sure last year did not give us much of anything due to you know, floods. Forest had been itching to pull them for weeks because they were already starting to become ready to pull, easily liftable from the dirt. So when I told him one evening we were going to pull onions he was ecstatic. I barely had to pull them because he was lifting them out by the…
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Glorious Gardenias
Nine years ago my mom and I were in a hotel breakfast room in Longview, Texas when we smelled something glorious. It wasn’t the waffles on the iron or the coffee brewing but something wafting from another guest nearby. After mom and I were done falling over ourselves at the smell, we asked the woman what she was wearing and she replied that it was Estée Lauder’s Tuberose Gardenia. Mom bought a bottle not long after that and a few years later I was gifted a bottle for Christmas. Every time I walk by our gardenia in May I’m reminded of that perfume and that time. Ah, 9 years ago—we…
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April & May 2017 Book Report
Completed Appalachian Odyssey by Steve Sherman: This Appalachian Trail memoir was written in the 70s and I both loved it and thought it could have been developed much more. What was most fascinating about this book was how it showcased the changes in the trail from 40 years ago versus now—it wasn’t completely off roads then! Not only that it also routed through towns that it does not route through now. Some of the sentiment was similar—the hiker hunger, trying to avoid unscrupulous people, etc. It actually reminded me of hiking the Florida Trail to some extent in how few people were hiking the AT in the 70s and the…
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Summer Songs Round 2
The last time I did this was back in 2013 and I only put a few songs on there—there were four but it looks like one was taken down from YouTube so it isn’t on there anymore. I’ve been listening to Spotify in the afternoons at work—podcasts in the morning, music in the afternoon is my mood these days—and I’ve got some songs that are making me really get the feel for summer. The humidity is ramped here and while it is spring on the calendar we might as well call it summer here. 1: Tom Petty Learning to Fly 2: The Head and the Heart Shake 3: Don Henley…
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Caterpillars
I can’t remember when I last mentioned the monarchs in the garden, maybe back in late March or early April? I think I said that I’d just seen a few monarchs flitting about the yard but hadn’t seen any caterpillars yet—of course a few days later I found several caterpillars crawling all over the tropical milkweed. Keeping up with where they are has been a challenge, mostly because I think the birds might be eating a lot of them. Which is fine, that is nature’s duty, but I do feel like we really should consider the butterfly tents to raise them. Chris was concerned about having enough milkweed in pots…
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Life Lately | Early May 2017
+In My Head Loving the weather right now, though we could use a bit of rain! I finished an actual book made with paper this weekend—that felt good! I’ll talk a little bit about it in the reading section. I’m thinking of dipping my toes back into the political realm again. I listened to a Pantsuit Politics episode and got a little bit of information about what is going on in the world but I’m not sure I’m completely ready yet. I have also started trying to listen to NPR and Democracy Now a little bit, but we will see how long that lasts! +Watching Not a lot these days.…
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Propeller Iris | Wordless Wednesday
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Tomato Season
Tomato season has arrived, finally. It seems like overnight the tomatoes went from one to two foot tall to reaching over the tops of their cages and onward for the sky. It’s been a dry spring compared to last year, though we’re getting about one good day of rain a week. Well, at least we were until the last two weeks. We seemed to have missed the storms that were supposed to come to frution with the last front that blew through. I have in my gut that we’re headed for drought again—don’t know why I feel like that, just do. I am enjoying the non-swamp aspect to our yard…
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Letting Go and Going with the Flow
I’ve reached a point in where I could easily just set this space aside and let it float through internet space for the summer. It’s been years—a decade? More??—since I’ve taken any considerable time off, more than a week or two, from writing online. I think we were living in Miami at the time, our little apartment on the edge of Kendall and the Everglades, and for whatever reason I went months without writing. Then I came back, of course, kept going through thru-hikes, field work, and having a baby. But I feel like I’m teetering on a ledge, ready to kick the blog into the atmosphere to fly off…
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The Moon | Wordless Wednesday