Lovely walk, soup, thoughts of assumptions

 I finally got a walk today, cool and wet underfoot, and my neighbors in full bloom and art

 

This is a different rabbit, the one in the woods now having lost both ears 

Happy little elephant! I have the most cheerful neighbors.

Yesterday was cool enough to make stock

Then use it in a powerhouse soup of kale and celery with barley. Plenty of berbere seasoning and Old Bay, sprig of Italian basil on top.

The kale was easy to cut down, just had it frozen then hit the bag sharply, result small pieces, fine for purpose.

Last visit from Kira the Stringmaker last evening to thank me again, before she goes home, tell me she liked it, and is going to do it again, using the kit I gave her. 

She's teaching her Mom and aunt on Friday evening, all arranged! She not being big on talking, Gary filled in the details. So cool. The string going out into the world! Each one teach one.

The drawing of shrubs, no, people, reminded me of another couple of similar experiences, where the customer insisted I knew nothing!  

One was back when I was making a lot of paper beads and selling at festivals. One necklace made from shiny coated paper with a black and white abstract design was snapped up by a lady who said I'll take these porcelain beads, please. 

Not wishing to commit fraud I explained they were paper, and she swept that away with "No, they're clearly porcelain!" and went off with them, happy with her buy. 

Later I realized her knowledge of beaded jewelry extended to people who bought and strung beads for sale. The idea of making them didn't fit in there.

I also quickly found that when someone needs an artwork they are not interested in chatting with the artist. More than once I've been waved away from explaining the methods by the buyer saying none of that matters. I need this! Happened with  prints, drawings, miniature needlework, same thing.

I think this is probably quite right. The work matters, not the maker. In the best work you feel as if it was just out there waiting for you to make it, not something you thought up! You assist it into existence, rather than force it. 

And here's a lovely Maggie Rudy tribute to one of everyone's favorite destinations

And to the continuing brave struggle in Ukraine

Walking and meeting a friend

Yesterday was still a bit chilly, despite the temperature, because of stiff winds st the shore not so far away, but I went walking, and admiring the views of new foliage against the sky

Then turned a corner of the building to a waft of perfume. The honeysuckle, officially an invasive, still smells wonderful to me, on the first day it's open

Then an old friend, often buried in leaves, showed up

And here in closeup

I've often thought of bringing her home to sit in the groundcover, since the original owners probably left long ago, and she was tossed into the woods. But I think I'll leave her here. There may be other people who like seeing her.

Then home to a lunch of mushroom omelette with a green salad including garlic scapes.

And lengthy discussions with Gary about the rethinking of his patio since the fence changed it. His patio is more like a tool shed than a garden, because of all his projects. 

While we were at it, he obligingly did my Spring task of uncovering the condensation pipe from the air conditioner, and clearing out the winter build up of debris. 

The builders installed it several inches below grade, who knows why, and I have to crawl around every spring to clear it and replace the screening and rocks I put in to keep out leaves and soil. But it's hard to work that way, so I was glad of the help. 

Since we have humid summers the condensation is an issue. Neighbors who didn't realize where the pipe was, or even that there was one, have found water backing up and crashing through the living room ceiling.

We also unearthed a large S hook I'd lost to squirrels, so that's good. I use S hooks to hang plants, and now that I can't hang anything from the fence, it may as well be inside.

This week is also about lab work of various kinds, familiar annual stuff. And this afternoon is a movie, yay. At the library not the lab, I'm glad to say.

Happy day everyone.

Fight on!

From walking to pomegranates with tangents thrown in

 I've been walking outdoors most days as usual, but I haven't been doing much other exercise. Walking's fine, but it's just one form of movement, and it's good to have more.  I was getting bored with the Hasfit series, good as it is, and tried a couple of yoga ones, which were good, too, but today I thought I should do something involving not being in a chair.

So I found this mother and daughter channel.  Really good stuff.  And, instead of a young athletic person instructing older people how to go on, she has her mother working out alongside no, great illustration of what to look out for, how to pace it. I don't know the age of the mother -- often people are presented as seniors and turn out to be my son's age, but never mind.

I just did the ten minute walking workout this morning and I'll do more of these.  It's walking types of movement, but sideways, backwards, using arms, lifting alternate knees to touch, a variety of movements, punctuated by marching in place.  I think this is a great one for people who don't walk outside, too, especially when the weather gets a bit trickier, and there's ice.  And it exercises your thinking, too, to keep doing the actions without mixing yourself up.  At least for me it does.  Not gifted physically.

And then I needed some good music going while I was dressing and generally getting ready for the day.  This is Pinchas Zuckerman with a Korean prodigy, SoHyun Ko, when she was 12, playing Bach's Concerto in D minor, in Korea.  He's conducting baroque style, from his own instrument.   He's a great promoter of young musicians, offering opportunities, founding programs to help them get established.

He recorded this same piece with Midori when she was about ten.  When she was an adult, she performed locally and I got to see and hear her in person, unforgettable.

And while I was in search of more information, I came across a great don't miss it opportunity to add Samuel Pepys to my emergency Kindle reading.  He lived through the Great Plague, and the Fire of London, and various other disasters, and still kept on writing his diary.  Not the nicest of chaps, but an interesting writer to dip into. I doubt if he'd been happy at the price I paid, though.

Then, since food inevitably makes its way into everyday life at regular intervals, I thought I'd do something with the pomegranates from yesterday's Misfits box.  I looked at a few ideas online, found them way too elaborate for what I was looking for, and decided just to juice them.  

Way back in history, I made a peach curry, using canned peaches, and drained the syrup off the peaches thinking I could freeze that and use it one day.  Today turned out to be the day.  And I bust up the pomegranates and separated out the seeds, like little rubies, from the pith and the rind

and blended them briefly with the peach syrup.  I didn't want to blend too long, because each little ruby has a seed, which I didn't want to crush, probably bitter, just blend enough to get the jelly like part off the seeds. 

Then I strained it, with a lot of help from a spoon to push the material through leaving behind the seeds

Here's the debris from that operation, except there wasn't much waste, since the rinds on the plate are now in the freezer for future natural dyeing experiments.

And here's the result, two cups of the most wonderful juice, nothing better than fresh. Worth all the fiddling about that preceded it.  Not that I'm rushing to do it again very soon, I must admit.

But, having done all that prep, I can see why pomegranate juice is expensive, since I doubt whether there's a machine that can do all those stages without ruining something. It's very fiddly getting all the little bits of membrane separated after you remove the rind.

Like asparagus, which grows like a weed around here, but there's no machine that can harvest it successfully, since it has to be cut stem by stem at just the right place.  So the labor adds up and it sells as a luxury item.  I see the local farm family in spring patiently harvesting their field by hand.  It used to grow wild around here before development happened.  And I had a huge unruly bed of it in my backyard at the first house we had, used to invite neighbors to come and pick, since they were countryfolk and knew how to pick without damaging the plants.

Walking, to Bach, to Pepys, to pomegranates, to asparagus.  You can't say I stay too long on one topic!