Thank you rain for coming!

Tags

drought, postaday2016, rain

I have been hoping for rain for what feels like weeks, I’m fairly sure it hasn’t been weeks, but it sure feels like it’s been weeks since it has rained. The humidity is so high today, I had thought that the rain would have cooled us off, it didn’t, but I am not complaining, we have the fans on, so we’re comfortable.

My plants are probably having a dance party outside right now, jumping up and down, deliriously drunk with rain water. If I knew how to do high tech stuff I would create dancing flowers as a GIF and put it in my post, I don’t know how so I can’t, it would be cool though if I did. Lol.

We need more days like today, all of our gardens are so thirsty. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed.

In New York celebrating a quarter of a century

Tags

city, New York, postaday2015, rain

   
   
   
    
 
We are back in New York, right in the heart of the city,  at 44th and 8th Avenue, I took the perfunctory pictures from our room.  I love how New York City looks from up above, I especially get a kick at gazing down  onto rooftop gardens. My husband and I walked a bit  before sitting down for Sushi at this little place right off 8th Avenue and 50th Street. New York, no matter the weather, always has its sparkle,  but when you add rain, the streets light up in all of the hues that light up the billboards.

The celebratory quarter of a century mark is of our marriage, twenty five years ago, my husband and I said I do and we are in the city to mark the anniversary. A night in a nice hotel, reservations  at the Modern, the Museum of Modern Art’s restaurant, I have heard and read so many  good things about this restaurant, I can’t wait until  tonight, just imagining  how creative the  kitchen must be, it’s affiliated to the MOMA after all, I am so excited!!!

Then for tomorrow, we are meeting my mother at La Grenouille, a French culinary institution  from the era of the 1970’s, the good old days of the New York restaurant scene.. Ask any professional waiter and they will tell you that back in the 1970’s, that was when you made a living, especially at the famous French restaurants, it was the decade before credit cards so it was an all cash business, power lunches were the norm and the night life was  wild. It was a much different city back then, I’m glad that La Grenouille  is still around, it helps feed the nostalgia that sometimes  hits you when you look around the city and  parts of it don’t look like what you remember  growing up.

I am so very excited for these two days, yummy food and more yummy food. Hooray!

Beautiful, lazy, rainy day

Tags

postaday2015, rain

   

  

  
I think my title says it all, no added words necessary. 😀

Hydragea, the tree

Tags

hydragea, postaday2015, rain, sunny

   
    
 
What a difference a day makes. I am jealous of my mother’s hydragea tree, it is so gorgeous! I have my own hydragea in my backyard, but so far it hasn’t shown any indication of blooming anytime soon, maybe later on in August? I don’t know. My mother asked me to take pictures of her tree and send them to her, I was very happy to oblige, I fooled around with perspective, getting down low and in corners of her front yard, it’s a little tight so I didn’t have much room to maneuver but I like what I captured.

   

  

Deluge in New York

Tags

postaday2015, rain, weather

  
This is actually nothing really compared to what I was in, when I was driving from Boston down to New York, the rain was coming down in sheets, at one point it felt as if someone was throwing bucket after bucket of water at the windshield, blinding me despite having my windshield wipers on full speed.

I’m not complaining by any means, we have had just the right amount of rain, more than enough sun and not too much heat, aside from this past week which has been a scorcher, we have been lucky.

I look to my gardens and everyone is happy, the roses continue to bloom, my marigolds are getting thicker, I have cut back some other perennials and they got thicker and piut forth more buds, ready for round two of blooms. I am definitely having a great growing season.

   
 
   
 
  
Purple is doing phenomenally well this year. 

Back to the drawing board

Tags

annuals, postaday2015, rain, root bound

    

As you can see, there is a huge difference between the health of my annuals out in front from those in back, I don’t know why, I set them up the same way with the same amount of love and care; argh! frustrating but not insurmountable. The entire flat of annuals were all suffering from being root bound, I tried to pry the roots apart, flash forward to all of the rain we have had, they seem to have been almost drowned; meanwhile my annuals in the back, perhaps being set next to the house, benefitted from some protection, who knows. Gardening does have  its share of misses, alongside the hits, but all I can say, Thank Goodness for those hits. lol 

I am going to start over because I don’t think that these babies will come back from the brink, poor things. 😦

In other garden news, things are looking pretty good elsewhere in the backyard.

   
 

Today was a day for cooking

Tags

cooking, postaday2015, rain

            

We had a cloudy day with rain off and on, the perfect day to spend one’s time in the kitchen, I looked in on my vegetable garden and 4 days away isn’t enough to see any difference in growth, I shouldn’t be surprised, what was I thinking, getting all excited, I am like a child waiting for Christmas. lol

One of my favorite cookbooks is the Bistro Cookbook by Patricia Wells, the vegetable dish I made today comes from the book, it’s called a Tian de Legumes or a vegetable terrine, with the cool day we had today, it was safe to turn on the oven to 350, I didn’t have to worry about making the kitchen hot, it only got up to 70 degrees here in Blandford. The ingredients are as you see in the picture; onions, tomatoes, leeks and zuchinni, all sliced into thin rounds and layered, each with a sprinkling of salt, pepper, thyme and drizzled with olive oil. I smashed a few cloves of garlic and alternated them in between the layers, I also tore up a few slices of swiss cheese and put them on the bottom layers and crumbled goat cheese on the top layers. This terrine is something that you can make your own, the original recipe didn’t call for leeks, it called for eggplant, my husband picked the leeks up at the store so in they went; the same with the cheeses, that was my husband’s idea, cheese makes everything good.

Our son adores veal, my father used to make it both at home and at his restaurant, so when I make it, I do as my father did, pound the veal as thin as possible, lightly dust them with seasoned flour and saute them in olive oil and butter. Once sauteed, I made the sauce, which by sauce means deglazing the pan with chicken stock, 2 tablespoons of white wine vinegar, squeezing a half of a lemon and turning up the heat so that the liquid reduces a bit and then I added a tablespoon of butter.

My husband had asked our daughter to make a bunch of Jasmine rice in the rice cooker and after spooning the lemon butter sauce over the veal, I ladled the rest of the sauce over the rice.

I wasn’t alone in the kitchen as I was cooking, I had very interested company alongside my feet.

  
They are pooped right now, they are lounging next to their Papa. 

I enjoyed dinner, the dogs didn’t get any so maybe that’s why they are laying there looking a little dejected or are they really that tired? I’m not sure.

Raindrops keep falling on my head

Tags

gardens, nourishing, postaday2015, rain

    

Thank goodness for the rain, I was starting to get worried about our lack of rain lately. We had forecasts of 20% or 30% probability for rain over the past several weeks, but unfortunately the rain clouds refused to let loose until today. I am so happy for this much needed rain, all of my plants are hopefully luxuriating in this nourishing moisture. 

The ground has been bone dry so we will need more then just one day of rain. I hope that we won’t have to wait too long for the next day of drenching rain.

What if we piped our excess water to California?

Tags

drought, garden, postaday2015, rain

I’m not complaining about the rain, rain is vital to spring and plant life, every gardener understands this, but we are experiencing an overabundance of rain and I am more than happy to share our rainy bounty. My sister had a brilliant idea, why not pipe our water over west to California and if the pipes leak, no worries, it’s only water.

   

     

Daily prompt: Free association

Tags

Home, postaday2015, rain, soil, word association

Write down the first words that comes to mind when we say . . .

. . . home.

. . . soil.

. . . rain.

Use those words in the title of your post.

Already I am not following directions; my title is free association, just what the daily prompt said it was all about. I do that sometimes, not often, but it does happen when I rapidly scan, because scanning isn’t really reading and I get ahead of myself and then I don’t follow directions.

Anyway I got off track. When I think of home, the words family, safe, comfort, mine, love, refuge come to my mind. The saying that home is where the heart is may be true, but having a physical structure that keeps you warm and safe with your loved ones is a very special place indeed.

When I think of soil; I think of wealth, clean, nurturing, chemistry, nutrients, growth, worms, even the term black gold comes to mind. I love soil and I firmly believe that healthy soil means a healthy planet. When you nurture your soil, you nurture life and nature.

Rain makes me think of words such as clean, thirst, melting, cool, cold and acid rain. I remember during the 1980’s there was an outcry in environmental circles over acid rain and we don’t hear about that anymore. The reason why I think of melting when the word rain comes into my head is because rain shouldn’t dissuade me from walking, it isn’t as if I am the wicked witch of the West and I’ll melt from being rained on, so when it rains I tell myself it is only water, I won’t melt; though the thought of acid rain does cross my mind every now and then. I wonder why we don’t speak of acid rain anymore.

If I was going to rename this post and I took the first words from my word association, the title would be family wealth clean, if I arranged the words properly then it would be clean family wealth, I like it.