the remaking of a kitchen

a week from today we will be at my class reunion. i visited with my friend angela this evening and we plan to meet up in omaha thursday evening for a bite to eat. i'm really looking forward to seeing her and meeting kishin her husband. angela and i have written to each other at least once a year since she moved away at the end of our sophomore year. that is a really really long time ago! we saw each other one time since then when i was visiting a friend in bethesda. we spent the day in d.c. and it felt like we'd seen each other the day before and we were able to just pick up the conversation from that point. it was pretty amazing.
old friends are the best for sure. i'm looking forward to seeing a lot of those old friends next week. i'm lucky that so many of my friends and i have kept in touch over the years.

Labels: old friends

every day it seems to be drier here. the paper today said we are 6+ inches below normal. i am thinking i want to transplant some things, but with the dry situation i will wait until we return from nebraska. my reunion is august 29-30 which is a very warm/hot/humid/sultry time to spend time there. but, i digress, i want to plant some of the larger hosta by our fence on the inside and some smaller "ruby" hosta on the outside. the latter seem to grow most anywhere and in any condition.
today the city has been measuring, surveying and putting up flags to mark the location of the new asphalt path that will go from the south entrance to the ct to olg and hence to the library! it will be 2 feet in from the street and 6 feet wide. you can see the red flags if you look carefully, and also perhaps imagine that with the berms along the frontage road there will need to be some serious cuts made to place the path. should be interesting. we are doing a bit of plotting as to whether to lay claim to more of the city's property after the path is completed and do some planting of evergreens on our side of the berm for some noise absorption. we will see what we think when it's done. they mentioned some planting when we went to the original meeting, so maybe we can work together and get what we want.

Labels: asphalt path, berm, dry, hosta

i am slowly trying to clear some of the excess and unwanted plants from the garden under the autumn blaze maple. i have, with don's help, removed the two evergreen shrubs that suddenly grew into big things after starting life in a smaller mode. i planted a hydrangea and a green japanese maple in their stead. earlier this week i made an offer of a good sized sedum to brian and he accepted and appeared to dig it out and trundle it across the street. i am now pulling a lot of "something" that has tried to take over another adjoining area. with the evergreens gone i can see that the stella d'oras are in the wrong place, so they need to move a bit. on and on.
i am now thinking that when the city moves the sidewalk from behind our fence to the area closer to the street i will consider planting hosta out there. grass seems reluctant to grow and hosta seem to like the weather here. it will mean some water, but we can manage that.
can you tell that as a garden planner i tend to work backwards????

Labels: evergreens, garden, japanese maple, sedum

our little garden areas are beginning to be productive. it's always a race since the growing season is so very short here. i am now picking cucumbers, cherry and early girl tomatoes every day. the onions are growing well, and we will certainly enjoy those too. the csa delivery has included less tomatoes than i am harvesting which seems a bit weird. we are getting lots of beans from them each week, some cukes and a few summer squash and one small eggplant. i also went to a small farmers market at park nicollet and got some little golden potatoes and some small eggplant from a hmong woman. she warned me they were a little stronger tasting, so i used fewer than usual when i made some caponata......i used some csa peppers and onions, our tomatoes along with some red wine vinegar, olives and garlic. i'm supposed to let the flavors blend in the refrigerator for a few days before i use it. i love the stuff so this will be great! i got the recipe from jewlee's kindergarten or first grade teacher!
the second picture is don doing the duty and watering the plants near the concrete thing. we are still 5+ inches below normal for precipitation so we do a lot of watering!

Labels: caponata, eggplant, tomatoes and cukes

oops, just realized it's been quite a while between posts. it seems like it's been busy, but again it's hard to tell what we accomplished! we've been able to see some friends that live out of town.....catching them on their way through so to speak. susan and kurt were in the area for his class reunion and the birth of his grandson, who has the kurt right there as his middle name! it was good to get to visit and share lunch in the midst of all their driving back and forth.
this past weekend our friend neal was here from omaha. he had been in the area for a prairie conference and accepted our long standing invite for a visit. we had a good time, fairly lazy which is just what i enjoy. i was fighting yet another sinus infection so lazy was a good thing. we took him on the minne tour, had a peek at the new bridge being built, the walker, the guthrie, the library and of course the lakes. we also got a tour of the garden from brian and gary which was great. neal was able to identify a bird flying over by its call which amazes me. i am more likely to talk about lbb.....little brown bird. after he got home he sent a website that identified a large feather the guys had found.
on monday our friends june and roland came for dinner. they had been in chicago for june's nursing class reunion and came to visit us while they were in the "area." i guess it is a lot closer than sunnyvale, ca! roland and neal were trying to find some connections as they had both grown up in small mennonite communities in nebraska. the connection they found was that roland's sister actually lives next door to neal's sister in california. now that is weird and strange and great fun too.
we visited and laughed and ate.....all for a good time.

yesterday i joined friends and walked around most of the uptown art fair. it was great to see everyone and to see different creations from artists around the country. of course it's always the best just to visit and gossip a bit with the artist friends from around here. sadly i learned that one is quite ill, and then reached the other end of the spectrum when another announced she recently became engaged.
i talked to a potter who gave me some good advice on which shows i should apply to and the reasons why. this was great.....he has participated in a lot of shows, good national shows and has a perspective that others don't. his advice was contrary to what i'd heard before, so i need to weigh and measure, but all together it is sound. he suggested the american craft expo rather than the philadelphia craft show, and the washington craft show just ahead of the smithsonian. he recommended the palm beach show although he said that he hadn't done well there. his reasoning was that people were not looking for pottery.....they had caterers, they didn't cook. the things that were selling were the high end items and he thought i would do well. we shall see! i'm grateful for his thoughts.
several people asked if i was showing, and i was absolutely delighted that i was NOT. outdoor in the august heat just does not appeal any more. another artist did suggest that i really should try the cherry creek show.....she consistently does very well there, so i will think on that. i just cannot consider doing it on my own, so helpers would be essential. something else to ponder!
after we toured the show we joined some people that work with my friend dave and ate way too much at chino latino. i enjoyed it more than i have on previous visits, so maybe it's just figuring out the system. the crowd and the dress code definitely made me feel over the hill. lots and lots of skin on parade there. oh help

Labels: art fairs, heat, potters