Averygoodun's Personal File

Despite the copious amounts of honeyed tea, coconut-milk ice cream, and other borderline (or outright) naughty foods, I am detoxing like mad here. I think it's the (copious amounts of) milk thistle I've been having. And the vegetable extravaganza. Oh, and the truly clean sea air. (That would be a check mark for applying to Harvard next year - Cambridge is damned close to the shoreline, though not nearly as clean a shoreline.)

One of these days I'm going to start working on the (everlasting) mural, though I have to do some studies on the lady's mantle beforehand. Hopefully it'll be sunny on Friday. We'll be car-less and nephew-less that day, so it's possible I'll be able to find the time and energy.

(Page must be enjoying not being the nagged one. His cousin is an order of magnitude louder and more active, which directs all the attention (deliberately, I think) to him. My god, I do not envy my brother. Granted, both my brother and SIL have an order of magnitude more energy than Geoff and I do, so it all evens out, doesn't it?

Fortunately, as long as the boys are rested and fed, they play extraordinarily well together, considering they're both wannabe alphas. Their mutual obsession with all things explody helps, of course.)

Right. Should go wash my feet. Then I can lie around and read some more. Or solve another crossword.

I love vacations.

And my garden rather overfloweth. Especially with kale and salad greens. However, the chard I picked for dinner tonight was truly outstanding, so much yayness there. And the 2 pound zucchini I picked ain't bad, either. Doesn't compare with the five pound zucchini I picked up at the CSA today, but then, I wasn't around to nurture it, was I?

It was kinda nice making dinner only from things that were super fresh. Even the beef was freshly ground.

It's also neat to notice the difference regions have on produce. Like my chard, for instance. I had fresh, fresh chard in BC while I was there - one night it was picked right before cooking. But it wasn't as good as my chard. Their strawberries, however, beat ours hands down. Their butternut squash is almost to die for, while ours is meh, but our acorn squash is da bomb.

Granted, this year it's unfair to compare produce because they haven't had summer yet. God, that was wonderful... (Did I gloat about mention I missed that horrible heat wave? Yeah. It was 60 degrees and raining where I was. Fabulous!)

But it's good to be home. ( Although I did have an interesting revelation due to the trip... )

Anyway, I am glad to be home. I don't know how long we will be here in New England, though it's likely to be for the next couple of years at least, but it is nice to finally feel free to make this my home, fully and completely.

Scenery this time. I'm not sure how to divide it, though, so I'll just pick what suits my fancy.

( Read more... )

I never did do a post on my trip, did I? Hum. I don't think I will ever get around to it, so here are photos of the highlights.


( Flowers first. )


And, because the scene made me think of Annie:

This place has an odd effect on me. Last time I was here, I was beset by poems pressing themselves into fruition. That was winter. This trip, summer, has me humming nonsense and taking a recorder out to find my breath. I've also been dreaming of singing.

No desire to paint, though. Still.

Odd, that.

So, after a too-long trip (a four hour delay in Chicago (meaning we didn't get in the door here till 2 am) was oh-so-much fun!), and a day pretty much at rest, I am more or less back. 'More or less' because I'm still tired, my last session with the bodyworker left me sore, once again, and I've a TONNE (more than a ton, that is) of stuff to catch up on, very little of it fun. Like food shopping. Fortunately, Geoff had gone emergency provisions shopping, so we had eggs for a nice frittata tonight, but... Yeah. I would like to subsist on more than eggs alone.

But, Geoff came home relatively early tonight and we were able to have our second Christmas, which was fun. Well, I say that in the past tense, but Babe still hasn't opened all of his presents. It's only taken a few hours this time (unlike CHristmas, when it took till mid-afternoon Boxing Day for the last present to be opened). Okay, he's now opened the last one (a toy garbage truck... he loves it), so his enthusiasm for gifts is obviously on the up.

Anyway, the point of this post wasn't to blab. It was to post pictures! So, without further ado...

( Five pics of my parents' place )


More pics are to come very soon.

( Things going as they have make me realize I need to revise my wish list. )


We put up the Christmas tree today. It looks very nice. The pictures also look nice.

It started snowing about dawn this morning. Great big, fluffy flakes were trying their best to cover the lawn, even though it wasn't cold enough to really stick. It tried hard, and, for a couple of hours, it succeeded in coating the grass and hemlocks with a lacy white coat. The cedars just shrugged it off, as teenagers do.

In the protected shadow of one of the cedars, a leaf turned itself over. At first, I thought it was a mouse or mole, sticking it's head out to observe the snow, but then another leaf moved, this time preceded by a small hop. It was a bird, almost invisible with its markings of dead leaves. Orange on one side, brownish gray on the other, it was invisible until it turned over another leaf, searching for food.

I never had considered robins being so well concealed before.

The snow tried valiantly, but by mid-afternoon it had given in to the temperate air and changed to rain. A gentle rain, though. Out front, the bare branches of a deciduous were decorated with droplets, shining white against the gray day. The slight traces of snow on the spruce changed to a gray misting.

And as I went to the kitchen for something to keep the chill at bay, the cedars drew my eyes again. The paintings are coalescing. I will need paint. Soon. Tomorrow, though, the sketchbook will do.


Oh, and today, my mum and I went to the library. Mum accidentally locked the keys in the car, but instead of having to wait around for ages either for my dad to bicycle over or for the road service to appear, the librarian gave my mum and me a ride home to fetch the spare key (it being closing time, anyway). It was incredibly nice of her. Above and beyond, really.

My mum gave her a bottle of wine.