Catching My Breath

53°f/11.7°C, mostly clear.

The heavy rains last week caused much flooding, none disastrous, thank goodness, and now we are back to enjoying cool days and much less humidity. Weather really impacts our lives, particularly here in the country where it is the main determinant of what we do each day. Last week was a whirlwind, so today I feel like I am just catching my breath.

After all the rain last week, I put down mulch, working around the very wet areas, so now I have only about 1/4th of the garden left to do. I had to put that chore on hold though, as other life things intervened.

One of those things was a visit from two friends who are also gardeners, one of them a former landscape company owner and who wrote a weekly column for the Charleston newspapers about flower gardening. She is retired now but still works as a consultant. The lady coming with Lynne was Pam, a lady whose path has crossed mine numerous times over the years, but with whom I have never had the pleasure of spending much time. Now retired, she still lives far out in the country on her 200 acres. One of the ways we often saw each other was at music events, as she is a member of a women's Celtic music group.

So, you know I was working hard to make my gardens look as good as I could given all the rain, and, like most women I think, also getting my house put to rights. I am also grateful for the push to clean when company comes, because I am quite happy to give a link and a polish most of the time and spend my hours on more fruitful activities. I even made some chocolate-orange shortbread cookies! 

Well, it was a lively visit. I picked them.up in town, then we came here for coffee and cookies and a garden tour--which was marred a bit but the stench from the darned chickens. The rain had made a quagmire of their run, and although Larry did his best to alleviate the situation, the smell was still, um, pungent. Still, we enjoyed the flowers and the herb gardens, and discussed the vegetable garden from a discreet distance. Lynne took these photos of part of my gardens.

She also took this one of me, apparently mid-tale!

(Today Larry has finally agreed with what I have been asking him to do, and moved the chickens back to their old coop until we can get things figured out.)

We left here to drive the back way to Ravenswood, where my friends had fun checking out the antique mall. Then it was lunch at the nearby Mexican place, and back to their car. It was fun to hang out with them, and we are planning at day at Pam's place next.

Yesterday we celebrated our 40th anniversary,  which was Friday, in a small way, but taking a "mystery picnic lunch" trip on a sternwheeler in Marietta, Ohio. My friend Tamara showed up, unexpectedly, early that morning with some plants for me, from the high school greenhouse, which were going to be thrown out. She stayed for breakfast---scrambled eggs with cheese, ham, toast and sliced tomatoes from our friend Mark's high tunnels. So good! We got ready to go quickly, and arrived at the boat just as boarding started. 

The boat trip was great, and so relaxing. I have a fascination with steamboat history, and with sternwheelers, and Larry enjoys them too. 

The Ohio River is still quite high.

Mystery lunch!

My pasta salad.

Our mystery picnic lunches were varied. Mine was a chicken salad croissant that had cherry tomatoes in the filling, a Caesar salad, a pasta salad that was interesting but with too much pesto for my liking, and a sweet little lemon meringue pie. Larry's was a roast beef wrap, potato salad, tossed salad, and a sweet peanut butter cake with a caramel sauce. He pronounced his lunch delicious.

The flag of my people!

After the boat, we stopped at the antique mall where we had once had a booth. One of my favorite workers was there, and it was so nice to see her. We keep up on Facebook but hadn't seen each other since we closed our booth. Then we went back to Ripley, stopped at Shari's for coffee, then went on to Charleston for a little taste of the city-wide art festival called Festiv-All. It was fun to sit outside at our favorite brewery and just watch people. 

Larry enjoyed a stout, while I had ice water.

I wonder what outfit was passing by that caused me to look at it like this?

I guess since it was an art festival people wore their "artsy" outfits, so it was a colorful mix to see.

Last stop was Taylor Books to browse, have a glass of wine and listen to a group that is becoming a favorite of ours, Minor Swing. Their music is a neat blend of jazz and swing, which they define as "gypsy swing". Not my usual listening, but I really like their sound.

Today? Not much going on, although Larry has dressed out two rabbits, which I cleaned up for the freezer. He has picked a gallon of raspberries, which i also n put into the freezer. Jam in my future, I think. Raspberry is my favorite of all the jams I make. I painted some small pieces for our booths, made dinner, and rested, as I am feeling worn out. No surprise, after such a busy week. 

So that's what we have been up to. Tomorrow Larry has a doctor appointment,  but this time I will stay home. Maybe I will get that mulching done? Maybe.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Flowers, Atrange News, and More Rain

63°f/17°C, showers and humid.

The Fire Pinks are in bloom on Joe's Run! There are more this year than I have ever seen here.

This whole roadbank was covered with them. 

So amazing, they are just doing their thing, no human intervention required. Maybe it's all the rain bringing them on? 

After a very short break from the rain yesterday, it returned overnight, fortunately just intermittent showers. But it is so humid! The temperature isn't bad (77° at 2 pm) but the humidity is 88%. I was out doing some garden work and within minutes sweat was dripping off my nose, in my eyes, and running down my back. Pure misery. I retreated inside after a couple hours, turning on the AC even though it isn't that hot, just to reduce the humidity so I can work in here. The Roomba is vacuuming as I write, the fans are on, and I have hot coffee, so all is right in my world at the moment!

I am so thankful the rain let up for a bit. Flooding is everywhere, although nothing catastrophic, thank goodness. As we were going out yesterday we encountered yet another downed tree. Fortunately some nice person had been along to cut a way through, and Larry cleaned up more of the broken bits and debris before we went on.

Yes, tgat is a crack in our windshield, no idea why it cracked. Just got up on morning and there was a little crack. By the next day it had spread. One more thing to deal with. Later, though. Got things to do this week.

A surprising thing happened on the WV Turnpike yesterday. A truck's back doors got open and little piglets were falling out onto the highway! There were actually 2 trucks; the police were able to stop one but the other continued on its way, dropping little pigs here and there as it went. There were two near the state Capitol,  and several videos showed police and other people trying to catch the little things. Sadly, many of the pigs were killed or injured. I hope that somewhere the second truck got stopped. Poor little pigs.

It has been a weekend of bizarre wrecks, like this one in Charleston. (Photo is from WV Metro News)

This car is hanging over an interstate bridge in Charleston Saturday afternoon! Believe it or not, the driver had only minor injuries. His Guardian Angel was certainly looking after him. There were several tractor trailer wrecks, 2 blocking bridges. So all in all, I am glad we didn't make any long drives over the weekend. 

But yesterday was Larry's 75th birthday, so we went out for brunch with our son Derek. Afterward I sent Larry into Tractor Supply with $100 to buy anything he wanted. Would you believe he came out empty-handed? The man just doesn't like to shop. But later at Walmart he bought what he really wanted: a battery for the four-wheeler. Go figure. But he was tickled pink, so it's all good. We stopped by Shari's so he could have ice cream with his buddies--no cake, though. And everyone in the restaurant sang happy birthday. Pretty nice! I gave him a card and a $100 Grand candy bar, because I figure he's worth that much! It was a nice outing.

And of course when we got home we got right to work. I mulched another big section of my vegetable garden and did more stringtrimming while Larry ran the weedeater and took the tiller through his garden. Surprisingly it was dry enough to do that.

We picked the cherries this morning, or what the birds and the rain left us. We've never had a problem with birds in our tree before but they sure found them this year, and all the rain caused some cherries to split. Still, we got about a gallon, and that will be enough to make several jars of pie filling. What we couldn't reach, the birds can have.

All for now. Housework is calling, and I must go!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.

Washed-Out Weekend

63°f/17°C, raining. We had rain all night Friday night and most of yesterday and last night. Today, guess what? Rain, all day. I am not complaining, because we really need it.

So much rain! I cannot recall a time in recent years when we have had rain for such long periods, and this trend is expected to continue all week. I just hope it let's up by June 1, because according to my late neighbor Belvie, rain on June 1 means there will be no blackberries.  

Some places are experiencing flooding in expected places, but in a neighboring county at least one family is having flooding that they claim is caused by the ongoing construction of a data center. There have been rock slides and falling trees too. We had to turn around and go out the longer way on Friday because a tree was across the road.

Friday was Ripkey on Sale, a yearly yard sale event across the whole town of Ripley. We live to go to this, and always find great stuff, but this year? Nope. Just too rainy to enjoy it. So who knows what treasures we missed out on? I don't really mind, as i have plenty of things still to price, paint, fix, etc. 

We had planned to go to Vandalia Saturday. This is an annual celebration only our state's arts , music, and culture, held at the State Capitol. We go almost every year, but the rain and storms took care of that idea. I thought we might go to a local restaurant that was having live music in the evening, but that event was canceled. Vandalia was still going on today, but neither of us wanted an hour's drive in the rain, so once again we just stayed home, much to the delight of our dogs. So much for weekend plans! 

I am also pretty much held up on gardening. I have boxes ready to put down for mulch and another load of grass clippings in the back of the truck,  but we haven't had more than a couple short periods without rain since Thursday.

Friday morning we lounged around, then went out in the afternoon when the rain broke for a bit to do a little groceey shopping. We stopped at Shari's and had a long, leisurely visit with our friend Glenn, who lost his wife last year and is still struggling with being alone. Our friend Bill came in as we were leaving, so I suspect he and Glenn had a good chinwag too. 

Suzy was there, having her weekly crochet class with a sweet young lady called Gnomie (no idea what her real name is), and Crystal came in with her daughter and son-in-law.  It was lovely to just hang out drinking coffee, and not have to rush off.  When we got home I got some housework done while Larry finally cut those branches that were hanging too low over the driveway trimmed off the mulberry tree. Poor man got soaked in the process!

Yesterday morning we bustled about , getting ready for the new fridge to arrive. It was here by 10:30am, having come all the way from Columbus, Ohio. Those guys were efficiency machines! They had to back all the way down our driveway because they had brought a big truck, even though i requested that they come in a small truck. In less than an hour the fridge was in and the door reversed to swing the way we needed it.  

Changing out a refrigerator is a lot of work: unloading and cleaning up the old one, then reloading the food into the new one, cleaning up the coolers, etc. I was very glad when it was all done, and of course in the process did some dumping out of stuff thathad got buried in the back of the shelves. Which meant more dishes to be done.

And what did I do next? Sat down and read my book! I finished it too. Chris of the Always Smiling blog had recommended The Last Letter of Rachel Ellsworth, so I ordered it a few weeks ago. 

It has been a very long time since I spent an entire afternoon and evening reading! It was a good read, with references to foods that sent me to Google to figure out what they were. The story centers on a recently divorced woman, Veronica, who takes a job as companion to a young, recently injured young woman who had been an Olympic snowboarder. Mariah had lost her mother, and wanted to write the book her mother was researching, a book that apparently would focus on the Parsi café culture and foods. To accomplish this, Mariah and Veronica traveled to the places Mariah's mother had jotted down in her vague notes, accompanied by a former war photographer, Henry. 

The plot intrigued me, and I found the characters well drawn and interesting, but I squirmed at Veronica's seemingly submissive ways, particularly in relation to her ex-husband.  What woman today would weakly accept a man just cutting off court-ordered alimony? I don't know any myself. Mariah was quixotic, sometimes charming, other times difficult, and often struck me as someone who had been too indulged in her life prior to tragedy striking. 

As for Henry,  he seemed again I cringed at the often-used romance novel trope of the wise man guiding the helpless females.  Still, it was a good story,  with enough of a mystery woven through the many mouth-watering descriptions of foods and meals, and the rich descriptions of the places the characters visited. It was an enjoyable light read, perfect for a long rainy afternoon. I liked it well enough to order another by the author, Barbara O'Neal.

Today we had a good, late breakfast, then got into some housework together while the rain poured outside.  We went out briefly and I pulled weeds from the dill and basil until rain pushed us back to the porch, where I stripped tape from boxes so they will be ready to put down in the garden as soon as we get a break in the weather. And after I post this, I think I will go hunt up another novel!

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.