Been awhile....

I haven't posted in almost a month?? Well, not like I lead an exciting life, so you haven't missed anything.

It's leaf-peeper season around here as I'm sure it is in many other places. It really is pretty to walk these days, though. Lots of color. But I don't like what it means. I dread winter, and then it's never as bad as I think it's going to be. At this time of year, with winter coming on, I'm all for global warming. (NOT.) I heard and saw my first flock of geese yesterday, and as late as they are, wouldn't you know they were heading west and not south? It looked like they were following the Saranac River, but as you follow it west you get into the High Peaks region of the Adirondacks. I hope someone spoke to their slightly misguided leader! I do love the sound and sight of those flights.

And it's apple season here too. I bought a new type of apple, maybe not new to you but it was to me. It's an early ripener, either Golden Ginger or Ginger Gold. GREAT eating apples. I'll wait with the Macintoshes until after we get back from Nova Scotia.

Ah, yes, Nova Scotia. I'll post about that when we get back. This trip is a aberration of one that Stan has been taking for 19 years. This, the 20th, would have been a bust since his fishing partner has to go to L.A. for the arrival of a grandchild. ("Has to" is important in that sentence.) So Stan was trying to figure out how to go alone and I offered to go along. I'm not going as a fishing partner, believe me, but rather as a spouse. (I'm way better at that role than the other!) We'll leave on Oct.4 and leave Cape Breton about 10 days later. It's the time of year for an island-wide celebration of all things Scottish and Cape-Bretonish so I should be able to go to art fairs and music performances. The concerts are all sold out, but the wander-in kind of stuff seems to be accessible. While Stan is wading in the rivers, I'll wade in the culture. That should be fun. We're taking the dog along and that should be an adventure in itself. I'm pretty sure I'll take her harness-leash. It keeps her from pulling while we walk and I'll need it because I can't trust her off a leash with bear and in-rut moose everywhere there. I'm told to pack for 90-degree days and 30-degree nights, as well as some temps in between. A challenge for this fashionista. I'll supply pictures, for sure.

All for now. My big excitement this week is going to FL to babysit Kyrin, who apparently now has four teeth and is about ready to crawl. I cannot wait to see her, and oh yes, her parents too.

"The Body"

Yesterday I went to the Montreal Science Center to see the "Bodyworlds 2" exhibit. It's one that shows a number of real human bodies (dead, of course!) that have had their skin removed so you can see all the stuff you usually only see in a biology course or if you watch "Operation" (if that's even on anymore). The bodies have been "plastinated," a patented process by which the body is actually turned into a plastic-like substance, looking sort of like those models of the body from that biology course. It was amazingly impressive. There must have been a dozen or more whole bodies and then a whole lot of body parts on display. AMAZING. My Best of Show piece was the circulation system in the hand and arm. That's all. No skin, nerves, bones, muscles. Just the whole venous/arterial system from just below the elbow to the fingertips, suspended in a clear liquid and lit from below (or above?). Beautiful, simply or rather, complexly (if there is such a word) stunning. If it hasn't already passed through your nearest metropolis and it comes there, GO TO IT. I was so glad I had. Here's the link to the Science Center's info on it: http://www.centredessciencesdemontreal.com/BW2/en/index.html. (It looks like I can't put a live link here, probably because of copyright and patent limitations.)

I don't think I could say the word amazing too often to describe it. As for the controversy that the exhibit apparently engendered in some of the cities it visited, with conservatives arguing that it disrespected the body, I can say with absolute certainty that I came out if the exhibit with more respect than ever for the beauty and complexity of the human. Period.

Wow.

Mid-August and not much happenin'

It's pretty quiet around here these days. I don't have too many projects on any burners so I'm doing little stuff, deciding what my cold-weather projects will be. The first one is to catalog Stan's fishing books. And then to maybe begin on his fiction, but I'd love to weed that collection! He thinks weeding is a sin. We shall see.

I am working on making a pillow out of my very first piece of needlepoint. It's a monarch butterfly that has hung on a wall for 30 years or more. I needed the wall space and decided to make it into the pillow it was intended to be. I've had to do several partial steps twice so I'm taking my time. I'll post a picture here when I've finished--it should be pretty and it'll go very well in my living room.

Wow. I have NPR's All Things Considered on right now and it just reported that Antioch College in Ohio is closing, terminating all faculty & staff by fall 2008. The best man at my first wedding is a grad of Antioch. It's hard to picture a whole college just going away. I remember when a late college--just buildings and grounds by that time--was sold in Iowa. I think it had been Parson's College and I know for sure it became Maharishi International University, home of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) movement. I can't remember if I was still in Iowa or had just moved to NY when it built its levitation dome. Far out, right?

I'm trying to gear myself up to start writing ... anything. I can't have writer's block because I'm not yet a writer, but I'm a little fearful of not liking what I'll do. So I'm using my usual and highly developed avoidance behavior technique. If I write here I don't have to try fiction. Hmmmmm. Maybe I should try fiction here and it won't be so scary. I'll now have to take a little time to think about that!

The Outfit with Kyrin in It

Just to complete the picture of the outfit in the last post, here's Kyrin IN it:

End of July

Boy is July going out well. It's about a month late but we're getting July weather as we move into August. Tomorrow Stan & I are going to Parc Safari in Hemingford, Quebec, about 30 miles from here. He's never been there & I haven't been since the mid-'80s so it should be interesting. Parc Safari is an amusement park on the order of Busch Gardens, of course nowhere near as big, but a zoo and water park and rides, etc. Stan didn't even balk at the $35 Can. ticket price! It should be fun.

Last week we went to Malone, NY and then to lovely Bombay, NY to fabric shop and to take Stan's antique clock in for repair. It's really criminal that I have to travel 50 miles to go to a fabric store. JoAnn Fabrics closed here last summer--the company is only keeping superstore open, I think was the reason given. That leaves me with WalMart and don't even get me started on that. But the trip is a lovely one, up past Chazy Lake, through Chateauguay, NY, almost to Canada. The clock man is very close to the casino run by the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation, and since we have to go back to pick up the clock I'm going to see about Stan driving the extra mile, literally, to the casino. We went once before and were both underwhelmed since neither of us is really a gambler. But I'd do it again just to do it!

Mr. Emery, the clock repairman, reminded me of a ditzy version of Stan, only he works on clocks instead of antique fishing rods. We actually picked out a "new" clock, an antique for the fireplace mantel, only to get home and discover that because of the way the infinitely UNwise builder of this house did the wall above the mantel, it's only 3" deep. No clock there. So we called and said we couldn't buy that clock but we're going to look at hanging clocks instead.

And as for the fabric shopping, it was definitely successful. One result is a new outfit for Kyrin that's the picture at the top of this post.

Color My Garden

I guess the title should be Color IN My Garden but I just like the looks of the title the way it is. I took a few pictures just now because so many things are flowering. The problem is that the garden is kind of big and the flowers aren't in clumps like they are in magazines. So this is the best I could do. But I think it's very nice. So here it is from the front.


And here's a shot where I tried to catch some of the color.



And this last one is a pretty nice one of the way I covered up the old well.


I still haven't remembered to check to see if the the gazing globe's swirls do really glow at dusk!

This is my garden in early July. Things are blooming but it's hard to capture how nice it really looks. The big pot is a new addition--found in the basement, moved out to this house from my old house and forgotten. Now it's a perfect cover for the defunct well and a great place for a gazing globe. I'll be out to get a new photo tomorrow, probably between thunderstorms. Weather right now is more like August: very cool nights and days that aren't as hot as August but not as hot as they should be in July either. And WE certainly aren't suffering drought conditions!