So, 2024, despite being numerologically pleasing (to me, based on my own private superstitious preferences, which involve even numbers in general and the number four in particular), sucked.

As in any terrible year, there was plenty that was wonderful, including moments woven into (and even intrinsically part of) the horrible parts — the terrible/beautiful of it all. (But not the politically horrible stuff, that was 100 percent rotten). I thought I'd make a list of some highlights from the year:

• Further development of my positive relationships with crows in my neighborhood (ask me about my peanut budget).
• 2024, Year of the Rabbit(s), aka Year of the Backyard Bun.
• The Northern Lights at last!
• I read 97 books — in 2023 I only read 37 — and watched 38 movies.
• Countless beautiful loaves of sourdough bread were created in my kitchen.
• I got marginally braver about flying? (at least very short flights!) I flew to North Carolina eight times in 2024, which means I got myself on an airplane SIXTEEN times.
• Puffins, little cartoon birds as seen through binoculars from a boat bobbing wildly in the churning ocean, with Stella and Ben and Mark: none of us seasick.
• I dug so many holes in the ground and planted so many plants in the holes, and saw tiny seedlings turn into green, leafy, gloriously flowering plants.

Some of my plans for 2025:

• I intend to wash my windows this year. They are so grubby.
• Plant more plants!
• Bake more bread.
• Keep getting on airplanes.
• Visit Canada.
• Replace more Instagram time with book-reading time.
• Cook biryani and yakisoba and okonomiyaki and tiramisu and pupusas.

Also keep taking deep breaths.

Flooded with gracious light

"Too busy" to write on this blorg. 

I keep intending to call my dancer friend, but unfortunately she is in Spain and it always seems to be midnight there. The fact that she slept through that fabulous comet chunk makes me feel a little better about the fact that I slept through the northern lights.

We are piecing our back yard back together, slowly slowly, after losing two huge, stately trees. It looks less like an empty rectangle, bleakly immense, than it did two weeks ago. There are birds, and a faded forsythia, and bleeding hearts, forget-me-nots, rascally strawberries everywhere, violets, lilies-of-the-valley snuck over from next door. A bed of herbs growing inches overnight, especially after rain. We bought a serviceberry we'll pick up next week, and we're contemplating a dogwood. We're planning a pea stone patio, another garden bed, planning and planning as we sit on the dirty back steps with our morning coffee.

My "notes": 

Sweaty season commences, as evidenced by how everyone in Hannaford smells today.

"To pay attention is to love everything. To see the future as brightness." - Sarah Manguso

"It was early summer; everything was fresh and fair. The grass was green green; the sky was blue, immensely blue; the world was flooded with gracious light." - William Steig

Agree with these synonyms.

Be careful out there. I love you.

Rabbit rabbit!

I have been younger in October than in all the months of spring.

 

 

If you could take the day by the hand

Yesterday we accomplished so much and yet still managed not to cross off several top items on our to-do list, including removing the last air conditioner from the window and hauling all three to the basement. Imagining it still there on Thanksgiving is bringing to mind the time Mark brought home an old metal desk he found and left in in the back yard, as I pestered him for weeks about bringing it indoors. "Snow is going to fall on that thing,"  I predicted, and Reader, it did. 

I hacked mercilessly at the enormous patch of beach roses in the front yard in my new quest to tame them to a small, manageable shrub. I want to replace most of them with native stuff — maybe bayberry and blueberry and elderberry bushes. There's also a rose species that would be a nice substitute, Virginia Rose. 

Okay, off to have a Monday now. The sky is smoky gray at 7 am, very November. 

The capability to grow and bloom in a weightless environment

• Last night, as I walked the dogs past the house in my neighborhood where the professional musicians live, I heard the sound of music — loud, symphonic, and coming from a parked car in front of their house. Both dogs growled low (it was 10pm and we don't normally hear classical music blasting on this street at night). I hurried them along and wished I knew enough to recognize the piece, averting my gaze so the person in the car could have some privacy.
• Did you know about vanitas? I didn't! "A still life artwork which includes various symbolic objects designed to remind the viewer of their mortality and of the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures." So, not merely a reminder of mortality. ALSO, the worthlessness of worldly goods and pleasures! So good!
• As of 2016 there was a zinnia in bloom on the International Space Station.* There is a whole Wikipedia entry for plants in space!**

Zinnia in zero gravity. That's us in the background.

*I haven't been able to determine whether or not it's still in bloom, or if it's figured out how to reseed itself in a weightless environment.

**Of course I'm thinking PLANTS...IN...SPACE.

Rabbit rabbit!

Rabbit rabbit!

Hola friends! Hey, it's April, if you can believe it!

Vernal

Some green, in honor of spring (although we're about two months behind the official beginning of spring here in Maine, of course). I'm spending this equinox drinking tea, sitting close to the stove, with my hot rabbit-shaped bag of corn on my lap, while I work. Outside, all is cold and gray, tinged with brown.

We have plenty of pellets for the stove, plenty of black tea bags and coffee beans, plenty of dogs and hot water and crows in the sky, plenty of ice left to crack, shows to watch, pies to make and buy and eat with and without slightly sweetened whipped cream, plenty of college kids whose company to savor, all to get us by this short season of not-spring.

Smiling at Me

Outside, it was blue skies, long shadows, plenty of dogs, choppy waves, puffy clouds, and gusts of wind.

Inside, it was new little plants and a curious cat, and cups of tea,* and history homework, and cheesy quesadillas on rice tortillas, and the death of Hugo Chavez on the BBC, and words like "rollicking" and "wacky."


*Made with my brand new fancy electric kettle, a belated birthday gift from David and Ellen!

Nemesis

No, it's not poison ivy (my true nemesis*), it's just the weed-which-shall-not-be-named (because I don't know what it's called). So let's just agree to call it NEMESIS WEED. It's everywhere in my yard, underneath everything, creeping under the fence and up in between the plants. I dream about this weed. I spend all summer battling it, and it is always victorious. The early spring this year is giving me an opportunity to get the upper hand, and I swear I will come out ahead this time.

We are working in the yard before it starts raining for forty four days and nights. Here's a typical yard work conversation:

Me: "Ooh, sorry!"
Mark: "What?"
Me: "I was talking to a worm."


*I have been known to get a poison ivy rash all over my face just from being in proximity to it, no exaggeration.


**Edited to add: Isaac is doing really well! If you are my Book-of-Faces friend, you have seen some gruesome photos of the blisters that rose on his hand over the past several days, enormous enough that I named them (Blisty and Mister Squishy). He has been back to the doctor twice for a change of dressings, and he'll have to go back at least once more, although after that first day the pain really subsided and he did not have to become addicted to oxycodone. Yay!

he bring of the chocolate

i completely forgot to mention that the rabbit of easter came by last weekend. he brought of the chocolate and the jelly beans, and he also brought a little cactus, and then he stayed awake all night worrying that it was a terrible idea to leave a cactus on the floor, and imagining isaac waking up and stepping on it in his bare feet.*

he also brought a handsome old-fashioned wax mustache.

*he didn't.

burns another, brighter life

look, the christmas cactus (which i had forgotten about and woefully neglected for a time) is blooming! don't you think that means i should be allowed to start listening to christmas music?

also, here is some more minnow for you, since kg insists he's never gratuitous.

fiddleheads

boo's beautiful pasta, above.



below, among the not-so ugly sights in my overgrown yard:



















i can't remember what this big plant is, but it loves the shady spots in our yard and its foliage is really nice.


our forget-me-nots go crazy every spring, and they don't care if we weed or water or totally ignore. a good quality in a plant.
























this morning i walked over to the farmer's market for the first time this year. i bought three basil plants from an organic farmer -- our plan is to plant almost all of our pots with basil and consume copious amounts of pesto this summer. in the foreground, note the bowl of fiddleheads, also purchased at the farmer's market. after living in maine for nine years, i am proud to say that i have finally eaten fiddleheads! i mean to buy some every spring, but the season is always over before i get organized...the same thing has happened year after year with my intention to pick strawberries. just about this time last year, i watched ms. hannah barnes eat a bowl of freshly steamed fiddleheads, and they looked awfully tasty. i cooked these by boiling them for ten minutes and then quickly sauteeing them with earth balance and lots of garlic. they were delicious.