Surprise!

Bob received an early birthday gift from me. For the past three years, I've been meaning to get a Star Magnolia for Bob as he'd expressed his admiration for these trees every spring. But come his actual birthday, the trees were past bloom so when I'd confront them at garden centers, they'd be played out grey sticks- none too impressive as a present! This year, we encountered a magnolia in full bloom near a store and I ran out the next day to a nursery and bought the little tree above. We know exactly where it's going to go.

And that leads to the thanks that are overdue to our friend Tina who last year divided some of her daffodils and delivered a 5 gallon container full of bulbs to yours truly. Tina has been collecting and planting daffodils for years and has an amazing display on their back hillside- every color and petal arrangement and sepal to corona ratio is represented. It's really exceptional at this time of year. So I dutifully planted all the bulbs given... not easy as our soil is like rock and gravel until dug up and amended. But they're coming up! I'm certain that with passing years, they'll thicken up (I planted them in clusters of 5 or 6) and will only get better. But it's a start on springtime magnificence!

And that reminds me that I totally forgot (a lot on my mind and very short of time!) to mention one possible reason my delphinium seedlings did so well... could have been the generous doses of raw manure! I purchased a few delphinium for Balleck's Nursery in East Haddam last year. They do have pretty fabulous Delphinium; bigger and more bumptious than most nurseries. Anita Balleck, the probably 90 year old proprietor started talking Delphinium with me. She told me a story about seeing tremendous delphinium at some famous garden in England. Like acres of seven foot tall blue monsters. The next time she was there, the Delphinium were past, and there were two men with a tractor and a trailer full of raw pig shit. They were shoveling and pouring this hot, stinking mess right around all those Delphinium, which were wallowing in it and eating it all up. So she maintained that's where good Delphinium start: a whole lot of shit. Bob ladled the horse manure on last fall ( I guess we have Crisco the Stallion to thank for that!) and looks like a big success this spring. (Bottles courtesy of our white wine drinking friends, with whom we trade manure for rocks).

1040- A- Go- Go and Various Little (and BIG!) Green Things

Yes, I'm a happy woman as I finally finished my taxes. As I confided to a friend earlier today, I thought about doing my taxes back in January but successfully avoided them until this week. Do we know how much I really hate doing taxes? Have I mentioned just how crazy I think the government is to trust (math challenged) artists such as yours truly to do their own taxes? It's not the paying of taxes; we need schools and roads and hospitals and the like. It's that awful, spirit- crushing paperwork and those god-forsaken plug ugly forms. But thanks to the helpful ministrations of our good friend John the Artist/Photographer/Accountant (quite the impressive abilities avalanche!) who held the hands of Bob and myself last year, walking us through the Valley of the Shadow of Taxes, I only screamed out loud six times while doing this year's installment. Thank you John! (You know who you are, and I dutifully used the pen with your name on it to fill out those evil forms.) Can't wait for my refund check!
And referencing another kind of green stuff, I am also happy that little green things are emerging as if on cue. It's been a long, cold winter into spring but this week saw warmer temperatures and a bit of rain that caused garden eruptions. Witness the above miracle! Last year, I started Delphinium from seeds, specifically the variety "Blue Bird" (a bright mid-blue with a white center.) I was worried as the bloomed modestly last year and I find far and away the trickiest thing with Delphinium is wintering them over. They really hate freezing and thawing and tend to succumb to crown rot and all sorts of other pestilence. But my wondering eyes spied seven or eight of my seedlings robustly popping out of Terra Firma just this week. Huzzah.
At the opposite end of life's cycle, Bob and our friend Joe felled a mighty maple this past week.

It was a very tall tree. I'm glad that Bob had help as these things can be tricky. (Joe had a close call with a mid-sized tree that decided to shed a shed a sudden branch, square on his head. He wound up in the hospital, lucky to be alive and kicking.) This one stopped falling half way into it's descent, at a rakish angle. I looked out our kitchen window and witnessed a stuck diagonal. Several minutes later, there was a resounding boom as it hit the ground, finally relenting to be timber. It is a beginning on next winter's fire wood. Here's another shot:

Tea for Two

Yes, here I am standing in front of the kitchen garbage can, in preparation for plunging my arm down and in.  Several days ago, we had gotten food from a Chinese restaurant and they had included two complimentary tea bags. As we hadn't drank the tea with dinner, Bob suggested that we have the tea today. Without thinking, I tossed the tea bags in the trash. Then I recalled that it was labelled "Fortune Tea" and I assumed that- much like fortune cookies (or even domestic Salada tea) there was a fortune on the little piece of paper that secured the bag. Of course I documented my dumpster dive before impact. The punchline is that I pulled the still warm tea bag out (now decorated with all kinds of nastiness), and there was no fortune... just the name to the company. Hahahaha.
This morning, Bob went to prepare our morning coffee. I hear him opening and shutting what sounded like every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen. A few minutes later, Bob comes back up stairs, swearing that he cannot find the black plastic basket that fits into Mr. Coffee's mechanism. I descend to have a look. I re-searched every possible hiding place; I even looked in the downstairs bathroom and laundry area and my studio. I'm just about to give up, thinking aliens or Elvis impersonators have snuck in under cover of dark and pulled a prank, when I remember that I had had a coffee ground accident the morning before. Sure enough, there's the coffee basket in the garbage can. A popular place! Next time I can't find my car keys or my gloves- or my mind!- I'll know where to look.

Sharin' the Ills

I'm certain that all of my followers have tuned in this morning to hear my phlegmatic updates on the state of my health. Thankfully, my cold seems to have tacked a gentle course and I recovered enough to go to work yesterday. Other contributing factors have conspired to make a muscle in my neck and shoulders be spasmodic and twinge-y and then I pulled a back muscle while twistin' and liftin' (not recommended) a bucket of horse slops... Not having a good week, physical being-wise!
Yesterday while gathered around the communal luncheon table at work, I expressed the idea that I believe being ill- whether with some major affliction like consumption or pleurisy or some temporary malaise such as my cold- should make one more beautiful. 'Cause you know how that goes: you wake up (wishing you hadn't) and then you look in the mirror and your skin is grey and there are bags the size of a Texas airport beneath your eyes and then you really feel ill! (How's that for mixing metaphors; I really must still be sick!) And why, I asked my worker colleagues, does entertaining a cold make you stupid? I haven't felt especially sharp, barely up to the task of blogging.

On an entirely different note, there was an incident- as yet un-elaborated- at the end of our driveway last night. As I progressed up the road on my way home from work, I couldn't help but notice flashing lights and many cars- police and otherwise. Our driveway was partially blocked by a Southbury cruiser so I initially had images of Bob being hauled away to the hoosegau for art theft or home appliance murder...

Ah yes, that leads to the fact that I'm not the only sick member of the household. Our washing machine is on the fritz. Yesterday, Bob dumped the towels soiled during our friends recent weekend visit into the machine. The machine (of uncertain vintage) proceeded to fill and fill and fill with a Sorcerer's Apprentice volume of dirty soapy water and promptly overflow. We scooped and bucketed and scooped and bucketed some more, thinking perhaps it had simply become jammed with too many soggy bath sheets. But the machine again began to belch forth copious gallons of water so Bob unplugged and we bailed anew. We are awaiting a voltage tester (being delivered by a friend) to see exactly which switch or sensor is out of sorts. I wouldn't have blamed Bob (or me!) for shooting the machine. There are now ten or so soaked and filthy towels lumped in the shower and on the bathroom floor. We didn't need this excitement.

The above shot of Hell is exactly what my throat feels like. I don't often fall ill but recently I think I've been suffering from stress on top of a few sleepless nights and now I'm fighting off a cold.
I am actually home from work, too, as I correctly figured that my co-workers would not appreciate my sharing germs and malaise. I rarely take sick days, but I am hoping that lying around the house dozing and blogging will knock out whatever small viral invader I am currently entertaining.
And speaking of entertaining, our good friends Don and Elizabeth visited from Massachusetts this weekend. They hadn't been down together in quite a while and we had a good time, talking art and politics and movies and mob connections. (Not personal mob ties; tangential ones!) I am hoping they didn't personally deliver- or leave with!- my illness. I am thinking I picked this little bugger up from (another) visit to the Yale Art Galleries. Bob and Don and Elizabeth and I were so tired from staying up late talking and imbibing adult beverages that we yawned and lurched from one thoughtfully provided bench to another. It was a congenial way to spend the day: an eyeful of art and nothing to do but look.

This may look like a shot of our dirty carpeted stairs, but to my sick eyes, it was a pleasing zigzag abstracted  shape. A minute before I impelled myself up those stairs to get my camera to document this, the light had been more dramatic, with a sharp golden wiggle coursing along the edge of the zigzag. Wasn't there when I came back, but hey! indulge a suffering artist. My neck hurts, too.

Then I saw this. Maybe I'm hallucinating. See if you can figure out what this is. In the meantime, I think I'll go back to bed.

A Drive Down Memory Lane

I recently had occasion to drive past several "houses" that Bob and I looked at prior to landing in real estate nirvana (in the location of our present address at the BauHaus Chicken Coop). Above is all that remains from a truly decrepit barn- and a smaller, not too bad barn. This is sad to see! When we toured this property, yes, it was bad (Our real estate agent ran back to his car) but there were cows living there. And the property itself is nice: still rural and rolling and in a very pretty area. I guess no one else was crazy enough to even look. We actually dragged a carpenter friend along with us; he was polite enough to tell us we were out of our minds! We'd never have gotten a mortgage on this place.
And then there was this place:

This house has really come up in the world! When we toured this location, they wouldn't even let us in the house. I believe there was a small issue involving the structural state of the floors and the staircase.It was pretty old, possibly spook-ridden and there was definitely a grave stone in the back yard. There was also a huge boat (!?) that someone had been constructing and several barns. One barn- a rambling, lop- sided affair is gone but the smaller barn was also nicely redone.

I think quite a few trees were removed, too, as I remember a row of evergreens that don't seem to be there anymore. I'm glad to see that this place got the attention it deserved. It was interesting to happen on a couple of these "Coulda been Ours" (or more like: My God! What were we thinking!) I'm still eternally grateful that Bob and I wound up where we are: it really is home.

Neigh Sayer

Poor Maggie was so distraught at the cold and continuing unpleasant weather. She seemed most unhappy so I made her morning grain cheerful in attempts to start her day off right. Hey! She has company in feeling that this winter will not end, even if it is "officially" spring. But no one put a smiley face in my breakfast cereal.
I hear there was a movement afoot to decapitate Punxatawny Phil or Pete the Ground Hog. I think his credibility is in the toilet.
On the other hand, I was forced into the bizarre task of shoveling snow into a wheelbarrow (from the still huge pile at the end of our driveway) and wheeling in to the back yard so that the ever enthusiastic Jules had snow ball material. (This was before that most recent awful storm dropped snow and slush last weekend.)

Only for the dog would I do that! Jules stand at the fence and supervises to make sure I get enough snow to keep him busy. Check out the picture below.

Jules is incorrigible! He doesn't care if it's cold, or snowing or wet or miserable, he wants to play ball. I was in my studio attempting to create masterworks and he's begging me to come out and throw his nasty ice-encrusted toys around. But he is cute and pretty hard to ignore. And look at this last picture:

He took off after another ball I had tossed and left a perfect negative print; sort of a canine Andy Goldsworthy. He probably has a career as an environmental artist waiting for him. I hope he remembers who got him started when he gets a show at the Whitney!