WTF-Beta

Green doesn't look good with my skin tone, so I wouldn't buy the green one for myself, but since I'm not actually going to buy any of then, I do like looking at it. If I wanted to spend stupid amounts of money on a diamond, I'd look seriously at a pink one, but I have other places to spend money foolishly.

One of my birthstones in blue zircon, which is naturally radioactive. You don't see it much any more, but it was popular in the early twentieth century and you see it in vintage jewelry. I think it's very pretty so, a number of years ago, I thought of buying myself a vintage blue zircon ring. Then I thought about the history of really aggressive cancers in my family and decided that my crappy DNA didn't need to be in contact for long periods of time with even a slightly radioactive stone.

When we bought my engagement ring, we were looking at the usual white diamonds to be set in a rose gold ring that I really liked. They had a couple of loose diamonds on display and one of them was blue. It was a pretty color, not unlike the blue zircons I'd admired, but the diamond had been irradiated to get it that color. I don't think there would be any residual radiation, but I just didn't want my engagement ring to be "fake."

Next to it, there was another colored diamond. This one was brown, which I would have never thought I would like, but something made me think it would look nice with the rose gold setting. It did. In fact, it looked so nice that the person waiting on us got a little excited. So that's what we got, and I'm still very happy with it.

There are mines in Australia that produce brown and pink diamonds, so I like to think that perhaps the labor practices are a little less oppressive there than at the blood diamond mines in South Africa and thereabouts. It's my understanding that some of the brown diamonds from those mines have desirable pink overtones. The official description calls it "fancy very light brown" and doesn't mention pink, but I see pink in it.

I want a Stitch and Bitch group!!!

That's glorious, Bernard!

We're seeing this phenomenon in our family. Muffin is doing a lot of knitting, and one of the Quirtlets enjoys crocheting. Muffin's brother is into woodworking, and his wife has a business selling her embroidery. They all enjoy cooking, with Muffin's Sister taking that to the nth degree by going to chef school.

Two Christmases ago, the crocheting Quirtlet made me a set of coasters. This past Christmas, Muffin and I (unknown to each other) crocheted each other Christmas ornaments. There's a yarn store around the corner, so we can usually find an excuse to go buy stuff when they visit.

@Steve-Miller said in What’s cookin’ good lookin?:

Apron or no? Towel hanging from apron?

My mother never understood why I didn't inherit her insistence on cooking in an apron. I've usually got a towel or two on the counter for when I need it.

Bench scraper? Or scrape cutting board with knife? Blade up or blade down?
Knife. Usually blade down.

Garlic in with the aromatics or just for the last minute for fear of burning?
With the aromatics. Since it's...you know...an aromatic. Right?

Jarlic? Frozen garlic?
No jarlic. It has a funky, musty taste and smell to me. I use fresh garlic when it matters and garlic powder when it's not so important. As long as there's not so much garlic powder that you can taste it as a separate ingredient, I think has its place. I've never tried frozen garlic.

Countertop trash bowl when chopping?
We have a pull-out cabinet for the trash. I just leave it open when I'm cooking.

Mis en place?
Not really. Before I start cooking, I chop what I'm going to need soon. Then I sorta cycle things through, chopping the next wave of stuff while the first wave is cooking.

Clean as you go or all at once?
Yes and no. I load the dishwasher while I'm working. When I'm still early in the process, I wash bowls and pots in the sink. When the meal's nearly ready, though, I need to focus on getting things done.

Where do you stand?
By the stove.

I did my time with psycho child men.

Maybe a Hawaiian adventure had its compensations? Sometimes, when the up sides and the down sides of a decision are all large, it's hard to know how to feel about it. Seeing that night sky on a regular basis must have been amazing.

I like the contender a lot, and the others all have good points.

Are these close to where you're living now? It always helps to know the neighborhood when you're talking about things like noise.

Having spent a lot of time in hot climates, I vote for insulation, if you have the option!

@Piano-Dad
You can find me at maryannaevans at the y-place.

I definitely cut back on one thing on that list--haircuts.

I was going to a high-end salon solely because I could walk there, but the price to just touch up my roots without even blowing it dry was insane. I was rationing cuts to a quarterly schedule, trying to stop the money hemorrhage.

A friend told me about a cosmetology school fifteen minutes away. I've been twice and the student did just a good a job with the color and the cost for that, a cut, styling, and the tip was a third what it was at the fancy place.

I'm sure I'll spend my savings on chocolate.

@Jodi said in hi chat I need your help writing an essay:

@Mary-Anna said in hi chat I need your help writing an essay:

would allow students to type their work and relieve the poor instructor from the need to read their handwriting.

An old fashioned typewriter or work processor at every desk? Seriously - wouldn’t be hard to have something like that set up for student desks in the classroom that was not connected to the internet. We had computer labs in college that we did assignments on.

I think it may come to that, Jodi.

@Piano-Dad That would be fun!

Do you have my yahoo email? (I'm not sure when my ou.edu account will turn into a pumpkin.)

@rustyfingers said in What are you reading?:

@Mary-Anna @Piano-Dad #booksky #BannedBookSkyClub over on Blue Sky is reading The Left Hand of Darkness in June. I might use that as an excuse motivation.

Ooh! Good to know!

And it sounds like tai chi is not for you! I had that experience with karate, but so far tai chi is good.

@AdagioM said in What are you reading?:

@Mary-Anna Are you enjoying the tai chi?

I am!

My experience with Tai Chi was near zero. I've been doing some videos that are more fitness-oriented than true to the practice, I think, which I think of as more like fitness club yoga than like the yoga you'd do at an ashram. By contrast, this class is being taught by someone who's been practicing under a master for something like twenty years. Some of his more advanced students attend the beginners class with us, and even they have studied for quite a few years. Anyway, it seems pretty authentic.

I also find it challenging to follow, not least because of my regrettable tendency to confuse left and right, and I agree that it helps tamp down the chatter in my head that never goes away. It doesn't feel all that challenging yet physically, other than to my balance, but I suspect that I'm working harder than I realize. I'm also meeting people in my new town, which is a big bonus for me.

@Piano-Dad said in What are you reading?:

I have never read any of Ursula K. Le Guin, so I'm starting the Left Hand of Darkness.

I've had that one on my bedside table for a while. I read and admired The Dispossessed many years ago, and I've taught from her book on writing, Steering the Craft, but The Left Hand of Darkness is her most famous book, so I really want to read it and The Wizard of Earthsea.

Also, I've started taking Tai Chi and my teacher recommended her interpretation of the Tao Te Ching, so I just grabbed the ebook.

I just got an up-close look at a new-to-me invasive plant. We spent the day at Tony's mom's house and there was a ton of rosa multiflora in her yard.

I'm 99% sure there's another new-to-me pest in that yard in the form of trees of heaven surrounding her pool.

As for the other weeds? Heck if I know.

On the plus size, there are magnificent two-story-high rhododendrons in full bloom all over the property. We agreed with the realtor who thinks we should take pics right now and call it The Rhododendron House in the sales material.

We lived in the country, sort of. It was the best of both worlds, in that our house sat on four acres, but we were ten or fifteen minutes from town. My parents kept more over an acre of that land as the yard, which Daddy mowed with an old Cub Cadet tractor that came with the house, so Mama gardened with a big canvas. She planted roses and small flowers that you had to get close to see in the back yard. In the front yard, if it couldn't be seen from a car hurrying down a country road, it wouldn't do. Under some truly massive pine trees, she planted tons of azaleas, which grow to the size of a minivan (maybe a school bus) in that climate. They were honestly spectacular. She also moved azaleas and some redbud and dogwood trees out of the woods behind the house into the front yard, and she had a behemoth of a wisteria climbing up one of those pines and a yellow jessamine climbing up another. I remember daylilies, too, and nandinas and a pyracantha and masses of orange cosmos in the fall.

This happened over years, so I don't remember her as being one of those people who was always out in the garden. I think she tended it a little at a time while we were at school, and also she planted things that didn't need much tending.

The subsequent owner clearcut the lot and bulldozed the azaleas early in this century. Nevertheless, this is what people from my hometown still think of when they see me. They say, "I drove by your house and thought of your Mama and her azaleas."

Spring flowers are in full swing here.

Iris, rhododendrons, azaleas, peonies, columbine, kousa dogwoods, roses, clematis are blooming. Daffodils and tulips are finishing up. Hydrangeas and daylilies are budding.

It's really gorgeous out there.

I didn't buy any bishop's weed. Yay! Who knows what might have come with my friends' plants, but I didn't see any bishop's weed in her yard.

I knew which plants tended to be invasive in Florida. Well, mostly. Now I'm really curious about rose of sharon, because I've never seen it on a list of invasive plants, but I don't think it's heat-sensitive, so maybe it throws off all those seedlings there. Crape myrtle would do that, but I had a big yard when I had crape myrtle, so I just moved the seedlings someplace where I wanted color six or eight months of the year. My next-door neighbor at that time was really into gardening and she loved invasive plants the best. I counted five flowering plants in my yard that had come over from hers, and her four o'clocks looked like an invading army heading out into the common area behind our houses.

My mother is also the reason I got the lilies of the valley, wtg. She loved it, but it wouldn't grow in Mississippi. She did have something that looked similar. It may have been summer snowdrop.

I didn't know that rose of sharon was invasive. I put them in an area that would be mowed around. (Around which will be mown?) Will that contain them? They do grow in the South, but I've never had one. I don't remember them being invasive there, but I do know that they have a reputation for being unkillable, which is what I need in a plant.

I see Solomon seals in neighborhoods around here, so they seem like a good bet for a native that will do well and be pretty. I also see bleeding heart, which I've always loved and never lived in the right place to grow. My neighbors have the exotic variety, but I see on the New York native websites that there are native bleeding hearts, so I'll look for those. And maybe some of the exotics, too, since they don't seem to be invasive.

I love it!

Virtually everything in this market is multistory with basements that raise the entry six or eight steps above grade, which makes me wonder what the Victorians did when they got old or broke a leg.

On the plus side, all these stairs may keep us fit longer, but we're pragmatic enough to think about the problem they present. A ramp or wheelchair lift will get us in the house, if need be. Once in, there's a full bath and bedroom on the first floor, so if one of us were disabled on the short term, we could manage pretty easily. If it were both of us, we'd have to farm out the laundry.

If it were long-term, we'd want to be able to access the second floor. There's a spot where one of those new small-footprint elevators will fit if we decide to go maximal. The less maximal approach would be a chair lift on the stairs, which we know will work because we're told that a previous owner had one. That would get us to the laundry and our bedroom. If the time comes when none of these things work, it will be our cue to find some kind of independent or assisted living situation.

The positive aspect of this house in terms of aging is its location. If we can still get around but aren't able to drive, we can walk to the necessities of life and to public transportation. That has the potential to keep us independent longer, and perhaps as importantly, keep us from being too isolated in our old age.

The ones I've seen in people's yards around here look like red Columbine, so I may have gotten a native plant. I have my eye on some other plants native to New York, since they fit into my current gardening scheme which is, "Hey! I'm in a new-to-me growing zone. Let's plant some things I've never been able to grow before!"

This house has a very small yard, but it seems that it has been inhabited for 140 years by people who weren't very interested in flowers. Most yards in this part of town have a lightly tended Victorian-cottage-garden-packed-with-flowers look that I just love. Ours had some untended foundation plantings, three huge trees, a couple of patches of hostas and a hydrangea bush. The church plant sale was held by people thinning out those gardens full of things that are easy to propagate and hard to kill, and I kinda love the continuity of that.

So I got some lilies-of-the-valley, even though I know they're thugs in the garden, so I planted them in a bed bounded with a wide sidewalk. (Most of this stuff is going there, actually.) I also got some hellebores, because I have a lot of shade, some foxgloves, and some iris. A friend gave me some daylilies, rose of sharon, and Montauk daisies, too. Quirt is correct when he says I need to take a break from planting before I put in more than I can take care of, but as I read that list I think I should go get some native plants to balance out the exotics. Gardening is an illness.