We officially topped 90 degrees today, so summer temperatures are here--just in time for Memorial Day! Since we've at least had some rain, the garden is doing okay for now.
The planter is more colorful than ever. The geraniums have really gained momentum, and the petunias are spreading like crazy. The poor marigolds, alas, are sort of getting swamped under. But, the little cardinal vines have discovered the trellis and almost instantaneously shot up to the top.
A riot of flowers!
Taking the trellis by storm....
Last weekend, I actually found some portulacas. They only had pink, but the flowers were sweet anyway.
All sorts of pink!
I actually found one lone sprout that self-seeded from last year's batch. I was a bit surprised to see it, since finches and other birds had a bonanza eating the seeds last summer. Evidently, one managed to hide and find itself in the right sort of place to sprout.
The trees are all doing well, but by this next weekend I'll probably be needing to water them again.
Anyhow, that's about all the news from the Great Outdoors. Now back to relaxing in the Air-Conditioning!
It has been busy lately! The good news is, lots of great things are getting done. The less good news is that it has meant less blogging. However, today I hope to remedy that.
Yesterday was especially jam-packed on account of I was due for a haircut, it was a workout day, AND the in-town orchestra group started rehearsals again. We're planning a patriotic concert on July 1st. It should be a fun program. My fellow viola player and I are not especially fond of the two Sousa marches--not because the marches themselves aren't stirring and wonderfully composed, because they are--but because we violas are relegated to playing offbeats almost the whole time. For those without musical experience, offbeats are the "two" part of the traditional march rhythm, which goes one, two, one, two--like tramping feet. So we don't get any of the nice melody, we're just sitting there keeping the rhythm, which is very important but also very boring. Oh, well. We can't all be stars.
Other than that, though, we do get some good parts, which cheered us up immensely. The biggest challenge in this program is going to be the fact that a number of our pieces are "medleys", which consist of a bunch of songs linked together. Individually, they are easy enough, but each one has a different rhythm, and goes at a different speed, and is in a different key, and having to switch on the fly can be quite a feat of mental agility. They also tend to have a lot of pauses and held notes which are probably the most challenging thing of all for amateur musicians, because you have to really pay attention so that everybody pauses, holds and releases together, or the effect is ruined. This is doubly true if, like our local group, the conductor is also relatively inexperienced. Our director is actually very good, all things considered, and she is just about the world's nicest person, which makes rehearsals quite pleasant, but by profession she is a trumpet player, so she spends most of her time on the other end of the conductor's baton. Therefore, holds and pauses have always been a bit tricky for us. To date, however, we have always managed to make them work right in time for the concert.
To honor this little quirk of ours--and all in a spirit of good fun--I'll leave us with a little video. The piece being performed in this video is "The Dance of the Comedians" by Bedřich Smetana. Our local orchestra group has actually performed this piece, and it was delightful to play, but this video is not of us. It is, rather, an actual, professional group directed by the great Viktor Borge. I think you will enjoy it.
I just glanced out my porch door/window, and I saw something that is still almost as fascinating as the first time I noticed it: bats in flight.
It turns out a small (as far as I can tell) colony of them live somewhere in the immediate vicinity of my house. I do not know where exactly they live, but when the seasons grow warmer, and I am lucky, I can sometimes catch sight of them. The first time, I just happened to look outside right at sunset, and it took a moment to realize what I was seeing when a silhouette when flashing past my field of view. While our neighborhood is home to a very healthy community of swallows, who sometimes fill the air, their peak time is about an hour before sunset. They were long abed, and their swooping flight is quite distinct from the flight of my sunset visitors. It was a sort of flittering motion, combined with instant, on-a-wingtip changes of direction, and that was my big clue: anything flying like that had to be an insectivore, and there's only one creature that comes right to mind when one is thinking about insectivores that come out as night falls. So I was seeing a bat! That was a real first for me.
I could hardly believe it, but once seen, they are kind of unmistakeable. I have never seen them well enough to tell their exact species, given how they are zipping about in near darkness, but they are small and I assume that if there are some near my house they must be from a species that is pretty common.
My only other encounter with a bat, besides the occasional glimpse of my neighborhood colony, was one at my mom and dad's house. They have a lovely porch, with all the usual patio furnishings, including the table with an umbrella for providing shade. Well, one day while I was there on a visit, a little black bat had apparently decided that the table umbrella (folded down at the time) was a perfect, cozy spot to sleep away the daylight hours. Alas for the bat, we elected to go out to the porch to relax, and when dad opened the umbrella out, there was the poor little bat hanging there--and probably wondering what had happened to its great napping-spot. Dad quickly called us all out so we could see it, and we were privileged to get a really close look at it.
It wasn't long before it flew crossly off to a nearby tree, but I managed to snap this picture:
Just look at those adorable ears and nose!
That definitely ranks as my closest-ever encounter with these fascinating creatures.
Well, the weather man said that our glorious stretch of perfect weather was not going to last, and he was right. By the time I was up and around this morning, rain had moved in. On the plus side, it's providing some welcome water to all the trees and plants, and we'll be missing the rain when the hot, dry days of true summer settle in. Of course, it was still a soggy experience running Saturday morning errands, which I got through as quickly as possible. Fortunately, I didn't have too many stops I had to make.
Alas, no outside-play for the cats today, since the back yard currently looks like this:
Glub, glub
With the weather as it is, what I really feel like doing is curling up with some tea, wrapping myself in my cozy sweatshirt, even though it's not really cold, opening up my book and snuggling in with the kitties. In fact, other than having some laundry to run, things are in pretty good shape, so I might just go and do precisely that.
I hope everyone is dry and warm wherever you are. 'Till later.
After a round of rain--which we sorely needed--we have been enjoying several days worth of nearly perfect weather. There have been balmy temperatures, low humidity, and plenty of gorgeous sunshine. Of course, that round of rain turned our office space into a dark, dripping cave again (yes, we still have no roof) but right now that seems to be a small price to pay for our current lovely conditions.
We've been going full-tilt at work, but between the lovely weather outside and the fact that I seem to have hit a nice peak with my workouts where I am gaining energy rather than being worn out by my workouts, I am feeling really good right now. It has also been really nice to get to spend some time in the back yard and enjoy the green, growing things. The cats, of course, naturally insisted on enjoying the lovely outdoors, too:
Elegant kitty is elegant.
The planter basket is doing extremely well. Everything I planted is still green and generally blooming up a storm:
Some very happy flowers.....
Also, the cardinal vine seeds I planted have sprouted...along with about fifty "volunteers" that sprang up after last year's vines (evidently) self-seeded. Alas, in the interest of not having the little surprise sprouts take over and strangle everything, I had to pull most of the volunteer vine-lets, but the ones where I am wanting them have of course been left in and are doing well. They're the ferny, feathery-looking plants, and they're growing fast:
Cardinal vines making their debut.
I don't think it will take long before these find the trellis and totally take off. The baby fig is also doing well, budding out a couple of new little leaves on its growth tips. It also appears to me that it has a miniature hitchhiker that arrived with it in its pot:
Can you see the eeeeensy violet?
It's hard to see, but if you look next to the trunk on the side opposite the fig leaves, there is a mystery sprout with suspiciously heart-shaped tiny leaves. I have a feeling that this is yet another violet. Of course, this seems to be a tradition given the very healthy violet that came with my bigger redbud tree:
Not the best picture, I am afraid, with the lighting throwing it off, but it's a very good-sized plant with deep-green, heart-shaped leaves. This, readers may recall, is the one which has begun to colonize my yard and has an offspring currently doing pretty well in my flower bed. Could it be that the famous Bible verse was actually meant to read "the violets shall inherit the Earth"? Inquiring minds want to know!
My name is Laura, and I am a bookaholic. Seriously, I am. I cannot bear to be without some book I am currently reading. This love of reading surely started very early, with a Mom who would read to my brother and me every day (I still have fond memories of how we used to fill the time waiting for the schoolbus by reading from various stories).
Well, I just lately found my self in need of my next book to read, and after so admiring Stephen King's open letter, I was put in the mood to revisit a book of his that I have especially liked. Actually, it is a collaboration between King and Peter Straub, called The Talisman. It is the tale of a boy who finds himself on a quest to save his mother, and who must cross worlds to do so. This other world, a sort of alternate version of ours, is beautifully constructed in itself, but even more interesting are the ways this other world compares with our own. The contrasts highlight the differences between our "modern" life and simpler modes of living, but there is more to it than that. Certain things endure across the worlds, and these illuminate the authors' perceptions of which truths are universal, which symbols carry deeper meaning, and which things in life are really the most important, and this is done often in very subtle and fascinating ways.
That is why I am giving this book a re-read. Also, to my delight, I have discovered that a sequel now exists (which, if I recall, was not yet published when I first read The Talisman). I am very much looking forward to reading that one, too, which is entitled Black House.
This is, alas, a short post...but I must get back to reading!
Like many Saturdays, today has mainly been about getting things done around the house. Along with stowing groceries and starting the laundry, I took the time to water everything outside on account of how hot it has been. I even watered the bigger trees, because if the summer is half as hot and dry as it feels like it is planning to be, I figured it would be a good idea to fortify everything against it as much as I can. So the planter box got some water, the fig got some water, the redbuds got some water, the kitty got some water....
Hold on a second....
The real main event of the day, however, is an event that has been in the works for a while.
One thing about having my first real job post Grad School has been coming to grips with the fact that I am no longer a lowly student living in a grad pad. It was a nice grad pad, really, and perfect for my circumstances at the time, but it was pretty clearly intended for the rental market, and I furnished it on a pretty tight budget. The few nicer things I had in it were either the furnishings that had been in my room for years growing up, or were pieces my parents had to spare and were kind enough to pass along. (I don't recall ever thinking such things, but if, at any time, I ever was so foolish as to think that it was "lame" having parents who spent so much time in antique stores, I have long since realized my folly.)
So, I had a lot of work to do when I moved into my new place. There were only a couple of things to do to the house itself; one room had previously been a nursery, and was painted ohmigosh PIIIIIIINK, so that had to be fixed, and the back door to the patio was originally a (really ugly, cheap-looking, ill-fitted) set of French doors, so a much nicer sliding door had to be acquired and installed. Also at the top of the list was a washer and drier set with more than two cycle settings between them. (The set that sold with the old house were on the simpleminded side. Their general settings were Harsh and Harsher. The Washernator and Dryzilla got the job done, but they were not kind to clothes.)
Once these items were taken care of, however, I was still left with two empty rooms, one half-empty room, and a totally tasteful collection of Walmart Special particle-board furniture that desperately Needed To Die. This whole process of furnishing my new place has taken quite a while (is it still a "new" place at almost three years?) but after a long journey the place is really looking great. I picked up a set of office furniture for the first guestroom/home office/den (the ex-nursery), and bought some nice living room furnishings from a colleague who was nearing retirement and looking to downsize (that worked out well for both of us). Then came the super-classy particleboard entertainment center. That turned into quite a project. After all, if I was replacing the furniture, it might be time to think of upgrading the serviceable but now way too small TV that sat on said furniture. And if I was going to get a really nice TV, it was going to need some sound to go with it.... The people at Best Buy loved me that day.
All this, of course, has been the work of a couple of years (no hurry, right?). With the Great TV Upgrade, the last piece of particleboard was finally dead, and I felt quite accomplished if I do say so myself. The one thing really remaining was the dining room--or, more accurately, the space intended to be a dining room but which has gone unused because of a complete lack of dining furniture to dine on. Well, a little while back on a particularly pleasant Saturday I hopped into the faithful car and took a road trip up to a great little antiques place my Mom and Dad discovered on the route between their place and mine. They had exactly what I was looking for: there was a cute drop-leaf table with Queen Anne feet which would fold nicely out of the way if/when I need the space for orchestra practices, and a set of really neat chairs with a kind of unique design to their backs.
The biggest hitch was getting them all back home, since my car--as awesome as it is and all--definitely did not have enough room. So I had to arrange for shipping, which was not cheap, but it was the only feasible way for me to manage things. It also meant having to wait for a while until the shipping folks could arrange the pickup. Well, after all of that, today was Delivery Day, and I can now proudly say I have a proper dining room--and a fully furnished house!
The dining room is a small space, but a nice one. Here it is "before," ready and waiting:
And finally:
An actual dining room! The pictures on the wall are hung thanks to my parents, who took time to help put them up before heading home last week. Only one thing was needed to properly complete the whole ensemble:
There! Is perfect.
Leo got to spend a little time in "kitty jail" while everything was being brought in, as he apparently thinks he's part of the cast of The Great Escape, making it his mission in life to find a way out the front door. However, he clearly held no grudge against the new arrivals, finding the table to be an excellent vantage point from which to survey his Vast Domain. The chairs were also objects of great interest:
Does this mean he gets Fancy Feast....?
So! It was a very exciting day, and it really feels nice to have finished (more or less) putting together my home. Now to decide how to celebrate....
My intention in starting this blog was not--and is not--to create a political soapbox. To that end, my plan was to steer clear of anything blatantly political for some time yet. Well, a couple of things came together, pressed my buttons, and got the juices flowing. So today, gentle readers, this blogger must inform you that you are about to be treated to a Major Political Rant, complete with widespread and gratuitous use of italics.
To kick off my rant, perhaps I may be permitted to begin by referring to another rant composed by someone far more talented than myself.
Those who spend a lot of time online may have heard in one way or another about an open letter published by author Stephen King. The main topic is taxation of the rich, why it needs to happen, and why arguments against taxing the rich are, to put it bluntly, bunk. Actually, King uses harsher words throughout the letter (fair warning, there is foul language) I honestly think it is well worth the read. The whole can be found here. To get at an important point, however, here is a (free-of-bad-words) quote:
It’s true that some rich folks put at least some of their tax savings into charitable contributions. My wife and I give away roughly $4 million a year to libraries, local fire departments that need updated lifesaving equipment (Jaws of Life tools are always a popular request), schools, and a scattering of organizations that underwrite the arts. Warren Buffett does the same; so does Bill Gates; so does Steven Spielberg; so do the Koch brothers; so did the late Steve Jobs. All fine as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough.
What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility—America’s national responsibilities: the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Charity from the rich can’t fix global warming or lower the price of gasoline by one single red penny. That kind of salvation does not come from Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Ballmer saying, “OK, I’ll write a $2 million bonus check to the IRS.” That annoying responsibility stuff comes from three words that are anathema to the Tea Partiers: United American citizenry.
In sum? Our society has responsibilities. As citizens, those responsibilities are our responsibilities, and in its most direct form that means that those with the money pay taxes to fund public programs. In other words (insert scary music here) government doing stuff. But, some skeptics ask, isn't that just "asking the government to do everything for us"? Because, hey, who really needs the government, anyway? To begin the rebuttal, the defense calls to the witness stand the sheer brilliance that is Monty Python:
The message here is that, being part of a society, a civilization, confers a plethory of important benefits upon individuals, including physical protection, access to resources and information, and adjudication of conflicts. These benefits are often so fundamental and pervasive as to be taken for granted (like they are in the video clip). But being part of a society is also an implicit agreement--an agreement share not just the benefits of being in society, but also the resources and responsibilities that are the foundation of those benefits. The building of roads and schools, the equipping, training and staffing of Police and Fire stations, the commissioning of necessary but long-running scientific research--all these things take effort. All these things require money. None of these things, when done right, produce the sort of fast profits that provate companies are lookng for, so the private sector is not going to do these things. Even if the private sector tries, it will never be able to do so on the proper scale or in a way that keeps the whole nation's needs in mind. Therefore all these things require an entity, not for profit, empowered to act in the name of the public and charged to act for the public good. That entity is the government.
Don't believe me? Here's another quote for us:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
In other words, if "the people" wanted to have something that could take care of their needs as a whole, then the thing to do...was set up a government. Yes, this is according to the Constitution. Can a government become unhealthy and function in a way that is harmful to the public it governs? It can. Does that mean that the answer is to not have a government, or to negate any role of the government in our lives? The Founding Fathers clearly thought not--their answer was to take the positive role of Government as a given, and use that as the basis to build a government properly. And, really, it's not necessarily the form of the government that makes it a good one or a bad one; a monarch can be a wise and thoughtful statesman who governs his people fairly and well; a democracy or republic can become corrupt. A government can be so large that it becomes inefficient (see the origin of the descriptor "Byzantine") or so small that it becomes driven by personalities or a few individuals' greed.
No, the deeper issue is not the form of a government, or what "size" it is. Nor is it so simplistic as "how much" it collects in taxes. The issue is when a government loses sight of its role looking out for the common good (or "general Welfare" as the Founders put it). And that is what is so wrong about the rabid cries to "get the government out of our lives," suggesting that the answer to everything lies in the private sector and that the government should basically sit there and do nothing. That's what is so wrong with reviling the very notion of taxation or government aid programs. That is what is wrong with "letting the private sector take care of it". The government exists for a reason. It has a purpose. If the government does not seem to be doing a good job of fulfilling that purpose, then by all means hold it accountable. In a democracy, that's what a ballot box is for. But by saying the government has no purpose, that it can do no good, you are letting the government (and by extension society) off the hook and inviting the very corruption and failure you are claiming to despise.
As unique and indivudual as we may be, let's be honest with ourselves: we also exist as part of a whole. When we are threatened, or when we suffer misfortune, we expect that whole to protect us. It's not always perfect, but by and large it does its job. The firemen will arrive to douse the flames. The police will respond to the scene of an accident. The schools will continue to produce doctors to treat our ailments, and lawyers to defend us against our accusers. The research that will bring us tomorrow's technologies is being done. No matter how much you consider yourself a great, rugged individual, no matter how much you cry "freedom!" you do count on your fellow man and your nation. They'll come for you when you are in need, and it is your job to be there for them when they suffer. In layman's terms, that could be called "fairness'. It could also be called by the shorthand preferred by eighteenth and ninteenth century philosophers (whose thinking, incidentally, heavily informed our Constitution's Framers): they called it the Social Compact (a.k.a Social Contract).
Everybody is taken care of by their fellow man, and everybody takes a turn caring for their fellow man. If you want to grumble when it's your turn--your turn to do jury duty, your turn to pay taxes, your turn to respect someone else's space--well, I can't stop you from grumbling. But I can expect you to do it anyway, and expect you to acknowlege that it is your responsibility, and I can call people like the Tea-Partiers out on it when they put forth their false--and supremely selfish--notions.
So just who does need a government, anyway? We all do. It's time we said so.
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