Miraculous Resurrection

 
 A rainy day and another hose drenching and the Rudbeckia plants all look like they're worth digging a planting hole for now.  That'll be on the agenda for the weekend, maybe, probably, once I decide where they'll go.

The sky this morning had a lovely tinge of pink on the underside of the retreating clouds.  Now it's sunny and bright and warming into the high 60s.  We had the windows open for a few days but the constant overcast and impending drizzle kept the humidity high enough that I began to worry about it affecting Durwood's breathing so we're back in the a/c actually warmer than outside but much drier.

The other day when I made meatballs with veggies ground into them in an effort to find a way to get OJ to eat veggies I had to look up online how long to bake them.  I found a recipe for Fast & Friendly Meatballs made with ground turkey.  It looked pretty simple and in reading the comments I saw one from a WW member who jazzed it up and kept it on plan (I love meatballs) so I Pinterest-ed the recipe.  I remembered that I had an aging roll of ground turkey in the freezer so I brought it up to thaw.  Then I reread the recipe to discover that it called for 20 oz. of meat, not 16 oz.  I wanted to go to Meijer for some hard-boiled eggs they had on sale (Durwood's a fan) and thought I'd get 4 oz. from the butcher case.  Nope.  They were out of it so I had to shop the pre-packaged stuff.  Wouldn't you know that it was cheaper (per pound) to buy 3# of ground turkey than to buy a single pound?  I was peeved until I realized that gave me enough meat for two more batches of meatballs.  Score!  I made a batch this morning following some of the comments to make them not so bland.  (I minced onion and diced some bell pepper and sauteed them with a couple cloves of minced garlic until soft and getting a little color on the edges, letting it cool a bit before adding it and a generous tablespoon of Italian herbs to the meat mixture)  I was especially glad that we have 2 more batches worth when I shared one of this morning's meatballs with Durwood.  AND they're only 1 WW point per meatball.  They aren't skimpy meatballs either, they're about golf ball size, see?


Out in the garden the tomato tangle looks a little happier for being propped up and the nasturtiums are loving their home in the end of the straw bale.  Next year each tomato plant will get its own bale and I'll use much taller and much stronger stakes.  Tomato cages are no match for the vigor of these tomato beasts.  Now I see why the straw bale guy says to use 8 foot tall steel fence posts at either end of the bales and to string wire between them every 10 inches to use as a trellis, and he says to fix a 2 x 4 between the tops of the stakes with wire to keep the stakes from leaning toward each other.  Next spring will be fun, I'll get an earlier start too since I won't have a whole weedy garden to clear before I set out the bales.
 


Mrs. Hummingbird came by for a mid-morning snack today but she was so fast all I got was this shot of her flying away.  She is so tiny I was worried she'd get knocked out of the air when she came by during yesterday's rain. 

I knitted a couple rounds on the Crazy Z Reds Campfire sock the other night.  Trust me, this blue ends pretty soon and there's a lot more red or I'd never have bought the yarn.  You know how I feel about blue.






August 29--Franz Ritter von Stuck, Plakat for the first international exhibition of art by the Munich Secession.  Franz used the classic profile of a Roman gladiator in his plumed helmet on the poster for a reason.  The group of artists he was a part of were the opposite of classicists.  They called themselves The Munich Secession, they rejected the staid, safe art of their professors.  Like the French Impressionists they painted feelings and emotions, they even painted the wind, the way it curled around a woman's ankles and ruffled her skirt.  So his classical mosaic poster was pure irony.  He hoped it lured people into the exhibition so that their avant-garde art could smack them in their complacent and unimaginative faces.

I figure out how to get the scanned photos to load onto the CD all by myself.  It occurred to me that perhaps the old CD that I've had for a while was the problem so I tossed that one and put in one of the ones I'd just bought and WHAM! those 72 pictures scurried right over onto the disk without a peep of protest.  I rock.  Now I'm going to rock into the kitchen and find some lunch. Toodles.
--Barbara
P.S. I will be cutting out at least one new garment this afternoon.  Yes, I will--while we wait for the plumber to come and fix the toilet.  Ugh.  If it isn't one thing it's another.