What is Remembered. . .Lives

On a beautiful Halloween day, we made a cultural excursion to the first park cemetery in this country, Mount Auburn in Cambridge est. 1831. The foliage colors were still glorious, some of my favorite nineteenth century thinkers and doers have taken more or less permanent residence there and the various engraved and sculpted monuments had enough interest to keep us walking for a couple of hours. And then we swung by Harvard Square to a much older burial ground behind the First Parish. The monuments there were very different, but like Mount Auburn and I suppose cemeteries everywhere, erected with the hope that the names and the lives of those memorialized and interred there would not be forgotten. I believe that what is remembered can never be gone completely.

What is remembered . . .lives.

Sequins and Skulls

That's a particularly alluring title, isn't it? Makes you want to read more? Today I played with icing and assorted shinny shapes and sequined the sugar skulls I made last week, giving them some personality. No one is likely to eat them with sequins which is a good thing. The almost full moon is out and high in the sky tonight and Halloween is tomorrow. Of course I'm decorating skulls. What else would I be doing? Carving pumpkins? Yeah, but it's been so warm, they rot. So I desisted this year and just stuck with the ceramic jack o' lanterns and let my pumpkin stay nice and round and mold free this year.

Dregs

Of autumn - yesterday's rain has passed and along with it the vibrancy of the past couple of weeks. It's all gold and mahogany now - burnished, although as you can see in this picture there's still reflected color when the sun is going down, still some green tucked in low under the bare branches.

Eat More Kale

Our CSA ended this week and we finally got the farm fresh Kale I've been pining for all fall. Because tonight is cold and rainy and drear in that damp November kind of way, I went with the Portuguese Kale soup option for dinner. After trimming and washing the kale, I found I had too much to use in the soup so I tried a recipe that I encountered a while back. Crispy Kale. The kale's version of "back at ya french fries - take that". It's really good. Really. And, yes I know. It's time to put more meaning in my life.

Mist

Mist. Inside and out. Autumn is passing - it seems to creep along and suddenly it's peak color and just as suddenly everything turns mahogany and the year hinge turns to November's grey sky, grey trees, grey everything. It's also the week of Halloween and I get weird every year by now. I'm actually surprised how long it took me to get weird this year. Some years the weirdness creeps in by September 1st, most years Columbus day weekend is when I turn my gaze to the past and to my own ancestral roots. But maybe having a job I like and lots going on in other ways is keeping me less morose than usual this time of year. How refreshing for everyone around - particularly the ones who live with me, Steve and this season, Kate.

As I drove out this morning, after being stood up by yet another plumber - I'm ready to break out the freaking pipe wrench and do it myself, even though the vanity and sink look particularly attractive in the living room - I saw a wild turkey. We haven't had flocks of them in our yard this year, but that's probably because I haven't put out any vodka laced seeds for them to get drunk on in the compost bins. I wish I had the presence of mind to have taken pictures that morning. A flock of turkeys is a definite possibility with all our trees and good stuff to eat - but a flock of staggering drunken turkeys - that doesn't happen every day.

Famille

Cousin Kate has moved in for the next couple of months while she is on an internship at a Nashua hospital. Sounds like lots of work for her, but we're glad she's here with us, glad she's here to share dog duty (the sacred petting) and conversation over evening meals. With all the Morgan kids off living their lives it's kind of fun to fill up the empty nest for a few weeks with family, famille avec belle fille Kate. En Francais, it sounds lovely doesn't it.

And Sarah made the BBC website with her team mates from the Viet Celts. Now there's an interesting concept. And an equally interesting photo, a multinational team including the BBC reporter. Apparently the invitation to join the team goes something like "hello, anonymous and random young woman, come play on our team" And they placed! They made it up through the ranks to get what sounds like third place in their division. Not bad considering that most of them have never played the sport before this past few weeks. What's next for Sarah? I'm betting she joins an Asian girl band and wears cute clothing and glitter. And learns to play guitar.

Random

In the Eastern dry and high lands of Oregon, we came upon this shoe tree in the Middle of Nowhere, v.3.0. That's random.

I was listening to a radio "news" article on my way home from work (now this was on NPR mind you, not FOX). It was a show with several vignettes about health care and insurance reform in the U.S. Warning: abbreviated rant ahead. Barack is not doing so well with this one and our government is failing at it's most basic task - to govern. The (mostly) white (mostly) boys are not doing their jobs - too busy taking shots at each other and trying to solidify their electoral base for the next election. Time for another revolution? Maybe. Back to the radio show, though. One of the segments covered veterinary medical insurance. Medical insurance for the four legged members of the family. It's very affordable and it makes cost of service for treating sundry ailments a lot more reasonable when the day comes that Fluffy needs joint replacement surgery or Rover , chemotherapy. One of the interviewees described her experiences when Harriet was treated for cancer. The cancer treatment was fairly uneventful, surgery to remove a lump and some followup. Unfortunately Harriet kept digging at the surgical site. So now, Harriet, is on antipsychotic drugs to calm her down and return her to her "snuggly self". Harriet is a hedgehog. With quills. Snuggly? Random.

Dinner with Yankees

Or correctly stated, Yankee fans. The local Fordham tribe joined Steve and I for dinner. I have a certain amount of shame when I disclose the fact that I offered warm hospitality to enemy combatant fans. Shhhhh, don't tell Steve's Bo-Sox proud brothers in-law.

Dinner was fabulous by the way. I made butterflied pork tenderloin. Brined all afternoon long, it roasted to perfection stuffed with apples, cranberries and garden sage. Hungry yet? There's more. Rosemary potatoes, bitter greens, caponata and an amazing turnip dish I have just discovered. We had to use up our CSA swag, so it was a veggie rich dinner. Oh, and fruit rich with homemade apple pie for desert.

Local food. Seasonal food. Local friends. Friends for all seasons. I doubt it gets better than this.

Martha Goes Goth

Martha Stewart. And maybe not quite so goth as all that. My friend and I got together today to make sugar skulls. In Mexico the day of the dead is celebrated on November 1st with a festival of food and music and folk art, starring skulls, skeletons and and all the things they might like - music, food, laughter. In Andover, the sugar skulls are a lately acquired taste for me (not literally of course, they taste nasty and they get handled by everyone who wants to be a disease vector). I made up a bunch last year, and found it so satisfying, that I decided to do it again this year. They're just plain white molded skull faces right now, but I think I will take my art cues from the Mexican folk artists and lively them up with sequins and foil.

No Unecessary Drama

I've been absent from blogging a bit - I'll go back and put up some pretty fall pictures, because I have been doing that - taking photos when we aren't housebound in the rain and snow - but my silence has more to do with the fact that I'm pretty whinny these days. It's bad enough to whine to myself or to Steve or really to anyone within earshot but to whine on a blog and put out into the ethers all my aches and pains and annoyances is just . . .wrong. So, as Thumper said to Bambi in the Disney classic "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all". So I will refrain from saying anything. At. All.

Lessons from Swans

Swans do this thing of appearing so serene but you know that underneath that placid graceful surface their feet are going like mad. Just to keep them in the same place. There's a metaphor for life there, trying to look calm while madly maneuvering to stay in one place.

Warming Trend

It's warm again. I came out of my office, and really why is it that I only work in places where I'm too hot or too cold? Anyhow, I came out of my office and felt stupidly overdressed for the day. It is sunny and breezy and beautiful. Everything is yellow, even the hosta which often just decay in the autumn rains before they get anywhere near this gorgeous. Steve and I are heading out to Indian Ridge to see the swans and walk around inside the gold tunnels that the trees have created for late October.

Pretty Pictures

Because I've already lived my day. My 12 hour work day. And I don't want to talk about it.

Madness, just Madness

We had more snow today. It dawned cloudy and cold but I wasn't prepared to be driving in the snow most of the day. Early on it was sort of interesting to see the rain drops thicken and eventually become real, if very wet, snow. Daylight driving was okay (I had an off site meeting and then was back at work until about 6:30) but night, at which point it was snowing in earnest, was a completely different matter. It looked like December - if you could ignore the still green foliage and all the pumpkins and Halloween decor. Madness, I say. Madness.

Morning Snow

This morning was the Museum Science field trip that I agreed to chaperone at Callahan School, which meant Steve and I got up before daylight, and since I complicated matters by scheduling an all day service appointment for my car, which meant that we had to leave earlier than usual. So as we tromped out in the falled leaves, behold - snow. Large wet flakes of it, gathering on the grass (thankfully not the driveway) and staying with us all the way to Danvers. October 16th for crying out loud. This does not fill me with confidence about the upcoming winter months. Glad we got the girly snowblower last winter. And that we have small cars to park at the top o' the driveway, because it's really not about global warming, just more of that global weirding. The planet appears to be experiencing weather hiccups on a frequent basis. October snow isn't a first, I have memories of jogging in several inches on October 19th in Andover, and I grew up with October snow every few years in Northern Maine. But this feels different somehow. Winter will come ready or not, so I guess I might as well brace myself for whatever it brings. Its ironic that the big 350 global warming day is next Thursday - less than a week after an early snow. Hard to take global warming seriously when we're watching the October baseball play offs in near freezing temperatures. And wondering how anyone can pitch seven innings with numb fingers. . .but oh well. P.S. Not that I care or anything - but since I live with someone who does and am surrounded by neurotic ball fans - the Red Sox blew it this year. Got a wild card berth in the post season and very quickly lost three games to boot them out of the series early on. I can't say I'm sorry. We'll just have to find something else to talk about around the greater Boston area.

Falling Falling

More leaves on the path, more colors on the trees. My goal this month was to visit Indian Ridge and Baker's meadow a couple of times a week to observe the changes of the season. It's been stunning. Unfortunately there are so many off leash dogs and I think Rascal and Steve and I have PTSS after her mauling, that I've been finding other places to walk. Unfortuntely around here the minute you get in the woods, the big dogs go off leash. The owners of little dogs know better. Terriers are not to be trusted.

Happy Homeowners

Liana and Jess have owned their home for a while. Since late July, but with travel and work and schedules this was my first visit - last night. I got a dinner to go along with the tour, and it was worth the wait. Dinner was lovely, the condo delightful, nicely decorated and a perfect setting for their lives. The best picture of the two of them is the up close one, but I had to post the one of their brick wine "cellar" and the ghostly Steve in the mirror. This was after butternut squash lasagna with bechamel and sage. Yummmmmm.

I Have to Leave for Logan WHEN????????

Five thirty. A.M. Sorry honey. James goes home in the morning. In the meantime, we've had a rather lazy afternoon - it's pouring out and there was making of soup and making of pie to keep me occupied in the kitchen, while Steve and Gloria bonded over the Lord of the Rings, Epic three. The Return of the King - the FINAL - thank G*D march of the Orcs. "The time of man is over. The time of the Orc is nigh." Or something like that. Guess what? I don't care.

Walking

With my biggest kid. No, not Steve, James. Before he returns to the sun and glare of LA, time for some autumn New England woodlands. We even took the dog. And she stuck with it the entire time. Except for when I carried her past scary dogs and over rough terrain. We saw the swans, up close today, just hanging out and fishing for the good stuff at the bottom of a quiet little pool in a corner of the marsh that we call Baker's Meadow. The kids are almost the same size as the adults, but still brownish. They will be snow white by midwinter I think. Or maybe by the time they migrate in November. They gave a good long look until we got too noisy and then we got the Swan Butt salute as they found a more serene part of the meadow to patrol.

For dinner then we went out to Helmands, which is an Afghani restaurant in Cambridge. The food is deceptively simple and good. It was our good night evening out with James and Gloria, James flies back very early Sunday morning and Gloria will be around for a couple more weeks subbing for her mom - a locally noted piano teacher for all the type A's children in the area. I wish my kids didn't live so far away. It's nice to see them. Maybe this is the year we fly out there at Christmas. And then again maybe not. ..it is LA after all.

October

The best month. My favorite month. An outdoors to savor before the snow comes. And everything is in soft focus in the light, it looks like a smudge on my camera. Oh wait a minute. . .It IS a smudge on my camera.