Yard & Garden News (Lots of Pictures)

But first I want to say that I'm in a better mood.  I still think I'm allergic to Fridays, but yoga and a much smaller and quieter knitting night helped.  Yoga especially.  Thanks, Mardi, you're the best, (tell J that I'm writing both sides of a page in my notebook each day and I can't wait to see what she writes in hers).  I know I said I'd never take yoga pictures because I feel all sleek and graceful when I do yoga, but I suspect that I'm neither.  I felt bad that I don't have a photo to illustrate my yoga remarks so I had a brainstorm last night.  Before we began I asked everyone to sit in a circle and I took a picture of our feet.  Feet are innocuous.  Everyone's feet look like, well, feet, not sleek, not graceful, just feet.  So, yoga feet!  Yesterday afternoon I went out into the yard with my lopping shears to remove the bush that had intruded on my variegated dogwood.  It's been so hot that I'd left it invade and get too big, but it was nice yesterday and I was in a mood.  I needed the exertion and destruction of lopping off those shoots.  I pulled out all the weeds crowding around the milkweed that I let grow for the monarch butterflies too.  In the "before" picture you can barely see the white and green dogwood leaves, and in the "after" picture there they are and the pile of trimmings is visible in the lower left.  It felt good to have a big pile of branches and weeds to drag to the curb.  I got nice and sweaty, and a little bit itchy.  Felt good.  While I was out there I surveyed the garden and, look!, our first spaghetti squash is growing.  It's so cute and tiny, about the size of a plum, but it's going to grow big and strong, I know it is.  Durwood harvested the first shallots to saute with some zucchini for supper.  It was very yummy and it's all gone.  I think we'll be glad that we planted so many.  This Stargazer lily was being overshadowed by the weeds.  I freed it.  So pretty.  Today's Photo a Day is "9 o'clock."  We got back from the Farmer's Market just before 9 o'clock.  Here's our basket of goodies--tomatoes, baby reds, sweet corn, golden beets, purple carrots, dried tart cherries, Asian pumpkin (something new to us), green beans.  The pork egg roll (his) and the crab rangoons (mine) were disappeared by the time we got home.  Heck, they were gone before we ever pulled out of the lot.  Mmm, what's better than fried stuff?

July 21--Ellsworth Kelly, Blue Green Red.  It looks like a big blue eye peering through a green screen standing on a red floor.  Is it art?  You know, Art with a capital A?  I don't know.  The blue has pleasing curves that contrast with the straight edge where the red touches the green.  It's straight, ruler straight and the paint is smooth.  No messy brush strokes to snag the eye, just the expanse of paint.  If you look closely you can see that the painting has a very thin black frame around it like it's holding something in.


I want to make some chicken soup for lunches this week and next.  I've been eating hummus and veggies on toast for the last month or so and I'm ready for a change.  Time to gather up Durwood and go to Sam's Club for supplies.  Later.
--Barbara