a triple pine,
and this log is for Bob, who loves wood.
Archive for the 'appearances' Category
I was at a small 60th birthday party on Saturday. We’re very fond of the birthday girl, but have known her for the shortest time of any of the guests.
I made a toast, and part of it was to acknowledge that she was a beautiful woman. Wasn’t it remarkable that someone could be so beautiful at 60 without plastic surgery? She gave us all hope!
The rest of the toast was fine, but the plastic surgery quip fell flat.
Later she said to me: Alice, I’m from LA. If you knew how many tens of thousands I’ve spent, and how much agony I’ve endured… well, there’s nothing natural about it. (By now we’re cackling.) My body’s natural, she said, and paused. Well, some of it is.
So here’s a hot tip: don’t make toasts that include references to plastic surgery. Ever.
I have a full set of photographs on how to make this shade
which is nice when it’s down
but ugly when it’s up.
This is a National Geographic photo. I didn’t mean to make a shade like a National Geographic bosom, but it came out very, very droopy.
I asked Bob if he noticed that the guestroom curtain was really ugly, and he said, Yes, but I didn’t think I needed to say anything about it. (I’ll remake it someday, but not today.)
These sunrise photos were taken one minute apart.
This is at 6:25AM,
this is at 6:26
and this is a Monet haystack from 1890-1.
When you line up these pictures, it looks like the light in this Monet haystack falls right between them. The first photograph is from 6:25 and the second from 6:26, so Monet grabbed the sunrise light of 6:25 1/2–the light of a timeless instant. Or, those photographs and the Monet’s haystack are separated by about 119 years and 30 seconds.
There’s a saying about Bernese Mountain dogs that goes
Three years a young dog,
three years a good dog, and
three years an old dog.
As David Sedaris put it, there are cheeses that last longer than these dogs. (He was referring to Great Danes, but he could have been talking about Berners.)
I recently read that the current lifespan for Bernese Mountain dogs in the US is 6 to 8 years, which sparked a few conversations about how long much longer we think our Jessie will last. At 8, her hips and elbows are often sore and she has started bowing out of hikes she knows are excessive. She’ll be gone before too long because that’s her nature, and she’s such a fine dog that Bob thought we should build a big pyre and light her up for a bonfire party–really celebrate her passing. Which sounds reasonable to me because I had a female Bernese before and can have one much like her again. Their gene pool is about a quarter inch deep.
Here’s a Berner from the 1800s,
and here are three from the other day (a woman visiting a neighbor brought two, so we went up to a meadow to get some pictures). Jessie is the good-looking one lying down.
Mutts are one of a kind. If you get a great Heinz 47 dog, you’ll never see its like again. But a female Bernese is like the Dalai Lama, always the same good egg.
Here is the 13th Dalai Lama,
and here is the 14th:
Berners and the Dalai Lama: Cheerful, loyal and brave, every time.
My neighbor grew yellow squash and green zucchini.
She grew unremarkable dozens, and then one day she found this strange cross:
It has raised yellow areas on a green matrix. Some busy bee brought together a yellow squash and a green zucchini, and this was the result. (There were cucumbers around too, but I think they’re too different to cross.)
When Judy cut it open it looked like dinner, and she fried it up that night.
I don’t know if it was a squcchini or a zuash.
We should have kept it for seeds, but didn’t think to… and you know it wasn’t the first time. People must have eaten up agricultural innovations throughout history.
How fitting that a bumblebee probably made the squcchini–it bumbled into existence–while our bumbling ensured that we won’t be planting any of those next year.
bum·bling 
[buhm-bling]
–adjective
| 1. | liable to make awkward blunders: a bumbling mechanic. |
| 2. | clumsily incompetent or ineffectual: bumbling diplomacy. |
–noun
| 3. | the act or practice of making blunders: The bumbling of their officers cost them the battle. |
The buffalo is a grand American beast (this photo is my edit of someone else’s shot).
Of the estimated 350,000 buffalo alive today, 250,000 of them are privately owned and raised for meat. If you want more buffalo grazing the Plains, buy buffalo meat instead of beef.
Which brings to mind my lovely little chickens. These birds are starting their 9th week. I think they’ve been a little slow growing up because they ran around for those weeks, and because it stays cool at night. But the truth is I been waiting for them to get bigger because I think they’re nice animals.
My frig has never been cleaner, because they love dubious leftovers.
They’re handsome birds,
and they are easily entertained. I rearranged the stump and ramp, and they all tested it: they ran up the ramp and jumped off the stump, and then they changed direction and jumped onto the stump to run down the ramp.
I move the hoop house every day or two, so there is never a chicken poop build-up. They’re no trouble at all. And still I have to make the appointment.
So I bought an extra 50 pounds of cracked corn, and have been cooking up great potfuls and spiking it with vegetable oil, making a tender mash that they adore and trying to figure out this social contract.
Their existence depends on our willingness to eat them.
Or, better to eat animals with a happy life.
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