Socializing

One day walking to the gym before 7 a.m. it looks like this.

And the next morning like this…all the mowing has been baled up.

I went to another birthday party in the neighborhood Thursday and took these interesting and quite yummy appetizers.

You soften 8 oz. cream cheese and add a generous tablespoon of fresh chopped rosemary, salt and pepper to taste. Shape into small balls and poke a hole in the center. Fill with softened red pepper jelly and close over the hole. A bit fiddly here. Then roll the ball in a bowl of more chopped rosemary and chopped pecans or almond slices…you pick. Refrigerate and just before walking through the back yard to a party, you stick a pretzel stick into each one. Easy to eat and delicious.

Note: Where I used to live there were many large bushes of mature rosemary plants. The smell and flavor was wonderful. All I have here are a couple of bought plants from the nurseries. The flavor is not near so strong…so use more rosemary than called for and only use fresh chopped rosemary.

And my trip with a friend to a small town to shop and eat out went well. Some Christmas shopping done and a new slightly stronger pair of reading glasses. These even take the glare off computer and Iphone screens. They help with one eye set for distance and the other for close up.

I have ordered the latest book from Amazon’s self publishing division and this next week will have all the poems in some type of order. Then I will work on sorting out essays and writing more.

The fun part was going through so many photos of my artwork over the years and cropping/sizing the original images to fit the content of the books. It has been two days of losing myself in what provoked the making of the work in the first place. Now I will need to play with Publisher to find the right fonts for the title, subtitles, and author. Speaking of which, I am not so keen on Sandy Webster. Doesn’t that sound like it could be a guy? Little Orphan Annie’s dog? Someone who might be tapping their toes on Broadway?

I think my author name should simply be S. Webster. And my real name is Sandra…Sandra Sue no less! (I think my mother was bored with naming children when I came along). Put that on a book cover and you have a romance writer for sure.

No. S. Webster is fine.

It has been a good week for ordering things on Amazon. Besides their book on publishing, I have ordered pens…a lovely set of six Sakura assorted .4 roller ball in nice earth tones. I am thinking these will help me finish off the Burke and Wills illustrations. And just this morning a double hinged waiter’s corkscrew and a wooden handled zester/grater. A new package of assorted colors of felt has arrived from Amazon to continue my revival of the politically driven mess-makers reviled for their damages done to our country. First I think will be four shoulder to shoulder conservative Supreme Court Justices taking us backwards.

All the new ones will be sporting stick pins like their predecessors. They make the best pincushions!

All for now….til later

 

 

It Has Been A Lovely Few Days

The early walks to the the gym have been full of dewy grass, fog, and buttercups.

Then later in the afternoon going to the river. The meadow is filled with such green and yellow. The first wild daisies popped through.

And in my yard the first of three bamboo fences have been made and placed.

The flagstone has yet to arrive at the stone shop. But when it comes and is delivered, it will line the mulch beds and the stoned areas out back. Then I can say it is finished when that and the bamboo bits are in place.

Twice this past few days I have been invited to stop and have wine on the porch of neighbors. It has been very nice to visit with them. Today one of them is coming here to read some of the books I have made over the years. She is a writer who is in the poetry group and has been quite encouraging.

I also spent a bit of time getting the poetry located and organized for a book. Now just to figure out how to do that so I am not handling the mailing part. I would like to look at Amazon self publishing as a possibility but need to do much more research to see how that is done.

This weekend I am going to get back into my sketchbooks. I am missing the drawing. And going through the books I think my neighbor would like to look at today, makes me miss it even more.  How fun it was to do The Fairy Book and The Stoat Story. I need to feel the pencil in my hand more often!

Yesterday there was a box on the bench out front from UPS shipping. I opened it to find a bag full of fresh-picked white lilacs from my friend, Marla, in Michigan. It was so exciting to unwrap them and quickly get them into a vase.

So many blooms have fallen off but I scoop them into a ceramic tray on the counter. Isn’t that a wonderful thing to do? Send flowers from your yard through the mail! I used to send my mother all the wildflowers I could pick along our road so she could hold my place in her hands and then put them in a vase.

My dragon scale book still waits all rolled up, wanting me to decide what comes next. Is it words or another drawing of what is under the river water….still not sure.

I baked more savoury scones for the freezer this morning. It is a necessary thing to do when you know the spinach is going to go bad, scallions are wilting and the ham and cheese want to be used.

Next week there is a birthday party at a restaurant for a neighbor turning ninety. She used to stop and visit Lee and I when we had a place in town to work while we were building houses and moving from one to another. I love that she and I now live in the same neighborhood. Then there is that shopping trip back to the town I rediscovered over Mother’s Day. And the following day is lunch out with a group of women artists and another party that evening in the neighborhood. I have been asked to bring an appetizer. I can do that plus take along some champagne. We are celebrating something, so why not.

I almost forgot about this…yesterday I took some Anzac cookies (biscuits) to a new young fellow from Australia who opened a bike shop here in town. I wanted to hear him talk. I miss the sound of an Aussie speaking. His accent he and his American wife said has faded but his parents are visiting next month. And they have thick accents. I said I would be back then with more Anzacs. Very nice couple and a good addition to the town.

More later….

Moving On

This photo is from walking through the meadow to get to the gym. I like this early walk and having to change shoes when I get there because my hole-less Crocs are covered with sticky wet buttercup petals.

They are such a lovely yellow.

And more blooms of asters and blackberries.

And the trees at Spikebuck Indian Mound are finally leafing out.

At last week’s poetry meeting I was again encouraged to send work for publication.  It all seems so ego-involved, and I am getting older. But it did get me to thinking that maybe I need to organize poetry into a book that can be read by family later when I am gone. And then there are the short stories and essays that need to be somewhere beside the blog and website. So the last few days have been locating and organizing my writings.

There seems to be much more than I thought…and on a broad range of subjects. I get lost in remembering what caused the words to be written down in the first place. Especially the Australian inspired poems/stories.

Last night my builder asked me to come to the early wine tasting along with the two young girls from the bank, that he usually has at his table. The sommelier chose wines from the Southern Hemisphere. A nice Pinot Grigio from New Zealand and a couple reds from the Yarra Valley in Australia. Then two more reds from Argentina. I ordered some of each. I will sit and sip from Australia and New Zealand as I do some final editing on the stories inspired from down under.

I wonder if I should illustrate the two books. Why not? There is research to be done on how to take on this project, but I can get there. So many self-made books appear to be done on some site where they can be ordered or where I can just buy a bunch myself. I will ask my new poet friends if any of them have undertaken such a job. Mostly I think they look for recognition in poetry publications. I am going to be seventy-nine next month and don’t much think I want to wait for the nod from editors/publishing houses. I will be on my own with this.

In the meantime I think it is time to start sewing again. The clothing choices out there are dismal at best with the clingy knits that grab onto body parts as they find their way to hanging freely. So here is my 100% linen, washed up and waiting to be cut out.

The rich tealy-blue in the back and the lotus green in the front are a medium weight for pants and the white in the middle, a lighter weight for an asymmetrical top.  I will start cutting tomorrow and look for threads. I also feel like getting out some hand sewing again. Maybe add to the shirts in the closet I have been ignoring. Sure wish I had half the sewing knowledge of my friend, Jude, in Tasmania. But she did help me make a pattern of my favorite shirt that I have used many times.

I put the river dragon scale book aside for a bit until I come up with what goes on the opposite side. Still thinking of a writing about the river and time. Need a good think on that. but at least I have my work table back to get to drawing in the various sketchbooks.

Til later….

Plants, Porch and Picking the Right Rabbits

Seems I have been “fluffing” about these past few days. I spent so much time on the internet looking for rabbit statues for the garden. Did you know there are one heck of a lot of rather “not quite right” rabbits to choose from?

The shop in town where I had been admiring a pair from their rear ends finally was open when I went shopping. “Yes” they were for outside as well as inside. One that had all four feet on the ground was $52…his mate, sitting on his bum and back feet was $75. I told the lady that I thought about her rabbits every night because I could find nothing else that seemed so right. I also said that the price difference was rather odd. She went to get the owner who claimed since I was giving them a good home, having trouble sleeping, etc., I could have them at the lower price each. I could not wait to get them home.

So many rabbits for the garden are very English looking, meaning they are a choice if you can’t find a subtle garden gnome. Is there such a thing? All the others looked cartoonish…cute but cartoonish, or like oversized jack rabbits waiting to pounce. And yes, I did see plenty of the “moon gazing” posed rabbit that seemed to be sort of ridiculous in broad daylight.

So, first came the new pots. The tall white ones. They needed planting. So off to the garden center.

It didn’t seem quite right, so back to the garden center to buy two more pots of various colored calla lillys. The young girl assured me that they would politely die at the end of the year so I would not have to “winter them over”. Once those were in place, I put those perfect Japanese-looking garden rabbits where I could see them.

Then I added my stone partridge to a pot to give him something to do besides Christmas duty. I love seeing them all from the porch.

The neighbor across the way has many bird feeders and therefore many birds. But they fly over here to have a bath or get a drink. Yesterday beautiful blue birds showed up.

After settling the pots and rabbits, I decided to give myself more privacy on the porch and also get the neighbor’s gas tank out of view. I took one of the two shoji screens that were around my jacuzzi in the old place and popped it in the corner after pulling the shade halfway down. A very cozy corner for reading.

My neighbor across the road gave me a jar of her freshly made strawberry jam and told me of the market here near town where I could buy not only strawberries but all sorts of produce grown there. It is just outside of town but in a direction I have never been. Tomorrow I am going there to ask about the berries and Roma tomatoes. All the ones I roasted with my herb salt and froze have been eaten.

In anticipation I made up more herb salt today using rosemary, thyme, parsley from my pots and garlic and green onions. All finely chopped fresh with coarse salt.

When it has completely dried out I will jar it for those tomatoes when they come in. Also today I made up 12 more savoury scones with ham, spinach, green onion, and parmesan cheese. One for lunch before freezing the rest.

One of those with a glass of vegetable juice makes a perfect lunch.

This large, and not so attractive, iron sculpture was something I did not want to burden new owners with. Certainly the people who bought our house had a different aesthetic. So I convinced Patrick to take it north with him. It bounced around in the back of his truck to the point that he named it “The Free Radical”. I have asked him to bring it back. It will be perfect facing the Japanese garden from between the two sets of windows out back. I will put a pot in its head to give it a bit of “hair” during the growing season. It was a gift from Philip Kuznicki, an artist from California that Lee and I rented a house to several years ago. I loved it more for having come from Philip, whose work I have in my house. It needs to come home and not be a burden to Patrick as he wonders what in the heck to do with a welded, rusted, ceremonial looking head.

Patrick and Marla will be here in July and I will post a picture of The Free Radical back with me.

But I will say, looking back through the pictures of our old place to find this picture, was not easy for me. So many sounds and smells and memories come through those images. I am happy here with kind neighbors and arranging things to my liking. But we sure did have a full on life at that place we came from. It is now in the hands of the perfect people to care for it. Hopefully I will be able to see what all they have added and taken away. At least The Free Radical was not something they had to deal with.

Til later…I am going to have another glass of Aussie red…