Very Little

I have very little to show you today.  I got up fairly early and spent most of the day playing outside watering, deadheading, and weeding a bit.  Spent some time watching this bee work its way around the zinnias and talking about it with my able assistant.  He decided that this is a mama bee gathering pollen and nectar to feed her babies.  I think that's very advanced thinking for a man of his age.


Durwood, aka Baba, appreciated the cherry tomatoes as we knew he would.  He's getting excited to move next Wednesday.  I'm feeling frantic but I suspect that I'm kicking up dust and not getting anywhere.  The few things that I can control I will take care of tomorrow, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday--on Saturday I'm driving off in the morning to spend the day in Door Co. thrifting, lunching, and knitting with a friend.  I really need a day away.



The only creative making I did today was to get through the gusset stitches on the Pink & Gray Anklet.  Now I just knit around and around and around until I've got about 7 1/2" of foot and then it'll be time to decrease for the toe.  Man, I just love being able to knit a sock.  It's my favorite form of slo-mo magic.  All knitting is magic, I think, but knitting a sock is advanced magic, IMHO.


One of the daily recipe emails this past week was "How to Meal Prep for a Week of Easy Dinners" from allrecipes.com.  I looked at the recipes, ran five or six of them through the WW recipe create function (skipped the Italian Bread Salad and the Chicago Hot Dogs, as neither of them lends themselves to WW-ing), and finished up the grocery shopping today for a round of not really investment cooking since none of it will get frozen (except maybe some of the marinated and then grilled chicken), but I'll have the basis for a Cobb salad (love that), a Mediterranean chickpea salad that shows up as a vegetarian supper one or two nights and as a side to Lemon Rosemary Chicken Breasts which then become part of the Cobb salad.  I'm ditching the flank steak and marinating chicken tenders in the Dijon mustard, Worcestershire, and red wine vinegar meant for the steak (I try to save my beef meals for cheeseburgers. Hey, if I'm having beef I want it to COUNT.) which will go great with fresh corn and green beans from the farmstand.  Oh, and another recipe is Shrimp Florentine on Zucchini Noodles.  I'll make a half recipe because I don't imagine that holds in the fridge long enough for four servings to all be good and I suspect that wouldn't take well to freezing.  (Can you say limp and slimy?)  I'll report and probably have photos.  I'm looking forward to cooking up a storm over the next week--and eating well too.

July 26--Martin Johnson Heade, Apple Blossoms.  "I'll be with you in apple blossom time..."  The old song played in my head as I looked at the painting of the delicate pink flowers in clusters on the arthritic branches with their rough, dark brown bark.  The tree had to be alive with bees that were busy pollinating as they moved to sip the nectar in the centers.  How manipulative trees and plants are to have evolved the shape, color, and fragrance to entice the birds and insects they need to help them spread their seeds or grow fruit.  It's ingenious of them and sneaky too.  I like that.

Tomorrow morning I get to go sign a stack of papers to get Durwood into his new place and then call to get his phone and TV hooked up over there.  Then the rest of the day will be mine.  Maybe I'll sew... all I have left to do on a tunic no. 1 is the neck binding and the hems, how long can that take?  An hour?  Maybe?  We shall see.
--Barbara