Dooney'sWorld

Seize the light.

Do you recall that I mentioned that the tall white lilies were lying down in the grass?  They stayed down there for days, as if they were just done.  But then after one full day of sunshine they stood right up, and they have been predominantly upright ever since.  Well, maybe they got up to 120 degrees, maybe 150 in the morning, but they bend down to get the afternoon soon, when they are only at 90 to 100 degrees.  I am certain that I still need to move them. But they are standing.  

I am sure there is a lesson in that about seizing the bright things in life and just picking oneself up and making the most of whatever it is we have.

On another note, I got a couple of dozen roses from my darling step-son and his wife today.  Flowers always make me happy.  I had let the yellow roses dry out as they still had a heavenly aroma, but fresh flowers are even nicer.

It's a sunny birthday!

I couldn't ask for a nicer birthday weekend.  Oh, its a holiday? Well, that was nice too.

Most marvelous of all has been the weather.  It did not rain yesterday.  It was not necessarily sunny all day, but it was sunny enough that it was just a lovely day.

We swam, more than once, and I would love to say that we relaxed in the pool with gin and tonics, but we did not; I had Snapple Peach Green tea instead because I have chosen to clean out my closets this weekend so I can figure out what I have to wear, and better yet what I need so I can let myself sew again.  I was truly afraid that gin would cloud my judgement, and I was trying to be firm in my resolve that only the fabulous would survive.  

Sun, pool, playing with clothes and jewelry, food on the grill, tennis and fireworks.  What more could I ask?

Except that today is also sunny, sunnier than yesterday and it is not suppose to rain.  That makes two days in a row with no rain! Really I am thrilled, even though I have only looked at the sunshine through the windows this morning because I spent all morning watching the men's finals at Wimbledon.  

The remainder of the day promises to be just as relaxing:  some time in the pool, perhaps lounging in the shade with a book, and some more closet time as well.  After all, I have to find a space for the pretty new baubles G gave me.  But those will show up over at sewdistracted, which is where I used to talk about clothes and style and sewing, which is being resurrected in the next few days.

Happy Independence Day!

 

The Shade garden is thriving in the rain

It seems that one of the most frequent topics of conversation among my friends of late is about how terribly our gardens are doing, and for once I am happy that I haven't been out in the yard digging up new beds and planting tons of new plants because it is mostly the new plants and the annuals that are suffering this year, as well as some of those sun-loving basics.   

Luckily much of my garden is in the shade and those shade loving plants are just in garden heaven.

I may behind on the weeding, and I am certainly behind on clearing out and planting new flower beds, not that the constant rain has helped with that.

Even my black mondo grass, which rarely blooms for me here, as it really just barely manages to survive in my zone, is blooming:

And the Hellebores that I temporarily planted in pots by my front door in April are still there and still holding their blooms.  I didn't realize that they would retain their flowers for so long, or perhaps that is also a benefit of the cool wet weather.  I'm not complaining, and I am glad they are happy, because the space where they are supposed to go remains a mess of wet soggy, slippery clay, on a slope no less, impossible for me to dig and amend until the ground gets a chance to dry out a little bit .

The only things not doing well in my garden so far (besides the roses) who are plagued by the various ills that accompany weather that is too dark and damp, are my tall white lilies, which  have beaten down to the grass with the heavy rainstorms.  Of course they were already leaning over to reach the sun.  I need to move them.  Their original location gets fewer hours of sunlight as the neighbor-we-don't-like has let his slope get a bit overgrown, blocking more of the already negligible sunlight.  I really don't the problem is just this weather or the increasing shade from the neighboring woods, but the Irises continue to do well in the same flower bed.

I do however have a new Lily blooming on the slope.  I did plant lilies there years ago, but never managed to keep the blooms on them, despite spraying with Deer Away.  This year I sprayed the last of my Bobbex on the one lily plant I saw that seems to have survived the continuous feasting and it is growing straight and tall and blooming lustily.   It is the first year in nearly 10 that I have seen this lily bloom. I am amazed that it has survived. This yellow Oriental lily is in an overgrown area that I want to fill in with flowers, and I am now thinking of moving the tall Asiatic lilies to this area.  I would think they would do just as well even though they are taller, 6 feet versus 4 1/2.  But I can see they get get sun over a broader swath of the day.  I am already thinking about what can go in the iris bed in their place.  

Kitty Pictures

Moises is growing to big for his mother's slippers

and Tori, is slowly learning to share a room, and perhaps even a sofa, but she still believes she has first dibs on laps.

Yellow Roses for My Birthday

These beautiful roses came on Saturday for my Birthday.  Unfortunately, my birthday was not this past weekend, it is next weekend.

When G went to order the roses, he told them the date and was informed that they aren't open on Sunday so they would deliver them on Saturday.  He said that was fine.

This past weekend the phone rang and someone said she needed to speak to G, it was important, and she couldn't tell me what it was about.  From his end of the phone conversation, and the subsequent arrival of a delivery person at our front door, it quickly became evident what had occurred.

G had told the florist that my birthday was the 5th.  He was told they would deliver the previous day. Apparently no one thought to mention that they would not be open on the 4th, as it is a holiday.

When they called, they told him that since they weren't open on the 4th, they thought they would deliver the roses this past Saturday instead.  He said it was okay.  I might not have been so generous.

Now I think there was a double mistake here.  If the florist was going to be closed on Saturday the 4th, they could deliver the flowers on Friday the 3rd, and that would have been acceptable.  Having a birthday next to a major holiday, I have long since learned to accept these minor inconveniences.  But I think someone messed up again, and ordered the roses early.  If they weren't able to order the flowers for the proper time, they should have told him before they placed the order. Since they had the flowers in the store, and they obviously could not hold them another week, they tried to cover-up their mistake and deliver them early.

What if I needed flowers for a party, getting them a week early would not be acceptable.I used to love this particular florist, until the proprietor decided to retire and sold the shop to one of her employees.  Since then this kind of mistake has become far too common.  G thinks he will have to be finding another florist.

But I love having the flowers anyway, they are large and glorious and fill my office/sewing room with their perfume.

Terror in the makeup aisle

I needed to replace a lipstick and I went to the mall yesterday.  I was thrilled to have a couple of hours available to myself just to wander around, although the local mall is mostly disappointing.  I did need to stop in Macy's to replace a favorite lipstick (Chanel Sirocco) but they were out of stock.  Still I am admittedly rather fond of lipstick and took the opportunity to look at other colors. I had noticed the sales representative when I asked for the desired shade, but really wasn't paying attention to her (mistake #1).  She came over with two new colors, that she said would be lovely on me.  She convinced me to try both on my hand, telling me that I really needed more warmth on my face and the colors I was wearing were all wrong for me.  I liked the both, but I worried that one was a little two warm, it looked very orange in the glaring yellow light of the cosmetic counter, so I said I needed to go outside to look at  them in the sun.  I probably should have used this opportunity to escape, but I really did like both colors, she was right about the warmer one, and I will wear it with certain things, but the one with more pink is the one I will wear the most, so like a fool I went back.

I don't know what it is about the cosmetic counters that brings any lurking feelings of inferiority to the fore, but I should have seen it coming.  I went back, and I tried to ignore the chatter about what the sales rep had for lunch; I wasn't really interested in whether she should drink a caffeinated diet soda on afternoon break or try diet green tea, or decaf soda.  Apparently she is trying to get off caffeine (why?) but feels a slump in the afternoon (don't we all?).  I don't know what it is about my face that makes me so approachable, that everyone I meet thinks they can just come right up and start telling me about the chicken mcnuggets they had for lunch and what-have you, it must be the wide silly smile and the big round cheeks,  the hollow eyes.  Really my smile is more like Ronald McDonald's than just about any chic elegant role model you can name.  

And I suppose that is precisely the problem.  It doesn't matter what I wear, and I've done the whole uptown-girl, polished thing, I just can't pull it off.  As soon as I smile it is all over, and I always smile, or laugh, or (even worse) just plop myself down on the floor when there is no chair readily available.  Whatever it is chic is not my number, but that doesn't mean that I am not secretly a little intimidated by those who seem polished and pulled together.

And I looked up at her face while she returned my credit card and I realized that she looked like she had replaced her head with a life-sized Barbie doll.  Despite this, despite the fact that I would rather look like a person than a plastic doll, I left the mall thinking that the deep circles under my eyes were far to noticeable even as I acknowledged this was because they put the mirrors so low that you have to look down at them, all the better for seeing any sagging under the chin and bagging under the eyes.  And although I started out thinking my new messy haircut with the wonderful layers was just perfect and cool and hip and I left thinking it was sad and messy, just as I was sad and messy.  I was ready to go home and bury my sorrows in a vanilla latte.  But I did not go home.  

I went to another boutique, not in that mall, one where the lighting in the dressing rooms is much more flattering, to try on a blouse I had ordered.  The blouse was awful.  It looked great but it itched like crazy, I felt myself shrinking up inside trying to pull away from the fabric the instant I put it on, as if my skin was trying to withdraw into my body just to avoid contact with that fabric.  I am not sensitive to wool or most things, but give me cheap silk organza, actually any kind of  silk organza but the finest tightest weave, and it drives me crazy, just crazy.  However I tried on a jacket that I saw in the store, and it was perfect.  The style was perfect the fit was perfect, it made my hair look good again.  In short that jacket was just right for me.  Technically it is for the fall season, although I could have worn it out of the store yesterday and been perfectly comfortable.  

By the time I got home I was myself again, and I knew that my intentionally mussed hair was perfect for me and my intentionally mussed personality and silly, wide-eyed smile.  Sam and Tori greeted me at the door, and as I walked in the house, G rose from his chair and Moises came barrellling across the room and took a flying leap at my knees.  I happily sank to to the floor and greeted my family and realized I had found perfection.

Chocolate and Coffee for Breakfast

I had chocolate and coffee for breakfast this morning.  It is the antithesis of everything I know about a good breakfast but it certainly works for me today.  

I was up at 1 AM, 3 AM, 4 AM, and again, finally, at 6 AM.  The air-conditioning service team has just pulled into the driveway; we always have our annual maintenance after cottonwood season rather than in the early spring.

I think it is going to be a long, long day.

It seems I use my Ipod mostly to listen to new music

One day last week I was listening to a friend's music collection as she shuffled it from her Ipod and I wondered why I never managed to get around to ripping my CD's to disk so that I could play my own music.  But when I got home and started to re-examine this idea I got all bogged down in my own conflicted feelings about music formats and the what, when, where, and why of my own interests in music.

And then it struck me that although I like the idea of having my music available on an ipod, what has really happened is that it has become a tool for me to use to explore, download, and listen to new music and that this has become very important to me.  I've never been good at making a decision about music, of whatever genre, and the ipod has provided a fabulous tool for exploring whatever music may capture my fancy.

Most played in the past week:

Conor Oberst and the Mystic Valley Band:  Outer South

Josh Ritter:  The Historical Conquests of Josh Ritter

Metric:  Fantasies

Simone Dinnerstein:  Bach Goldberg Variations

Reading Update

It has been a long time since I did a book update:

The House of Dimon by Patricia Crisafulli.  Was not particularly good but I gave it an okay rating on Goodreads because it was a quick reading and interesting reminder that all is not what it seems on the news and from the mouths of our legislators.  Ms. Crisafulli writes with almost breathless adoration and there is little in this book that is not available from clippings in the WSJ, other papers, and company reports.  Still it is timely, a quick read, and a  reminder that not everyone was so caught up in the finance bubble that they were blind to the risks and excesses taking place. 

I found it timely just as a reminder that intelligent people don't have to believe what is coming out of the mouths of businessmen whose companies are in trouble, or in fact, the Government, which thinks it is doing the country a favor and covering its own ass.

I had been waiting to read Elizabeth George's Careless in Red, waiting for the mass market paperback so that I could add it to the collected Thomas Lynley stories on the shelf, and I snapped it up as soon as possible and plunged right in.   First off, I can only say that Elizabeth George's portrayal of Lynley's grief is spot on.  It seems that she has a good handle on how people experience grief, and also on the personality of her character, because Inspector Lynley's grief over the death of his wife, and the way he experiences it and copes (or fails to cope) is so completely sympathetic and convincing.  

I found this novel very satisfying and well researched and quite fun to read.  I had a few quibbles with some of the characters, but there are many characters, and the main ones were beautifully realized.  An enjoyable read that I am happy to have added to my collection.

I reread two books in May, Jane Brocket's The Gentle Art of Domesticity is always a favorite for dipping into when I have a few moments and is still enjoyable.  I also used her recipe for flapjacks although I had to modify it slightly to work with the type of gluten-free oats I am able to find locally.  I now have a yummy sweet treat for those moments when I just am overcome with a need for something sweet.  For my purposes, her variation on the classic worked better than those I found on the recipes I found on the web.  I wasn't looking for the recipe, it just cropped up at the right time, and I am grateful.

My copy of Peter Gay's Weimar Culture was given to me by my father when I was in high school.  I read it at the time, but it was perhaps a little more scholarly and dense than what I was looking for at that time.  I read it again in college and then I appreciated the fact that it although it is quite scholarly there are times in the book when it is quite imaginative and gripping, unlike many historical tracts I had to read for coursework.  I read it again this time after encountering a quote from Mr. Gay in Alex Ross's The Rest is Noise which I am still reading.  I was happy  to read the book again and it reminded me of aspects of Weimar culture that I had forgotten, or missed the first time around.  Well worth rereading.

Most recently, I finished reading Sarah Water's The Night Watch.  I truly enjoyed this book. The writing is precise and perceptive and the dialo g is just beautifully done. Too many "period" novels end up sounding like a set piece or a play but these characters just sound like themselves, the worn, sad even, marginal characters they are. It is not a novel filled with lush melodramatic scenes and prose, and although the slow revelation of the characters works like a mystery, opening with the sad aftermath and then revealing the beginnings, it does not have the pace of a mystery novel. The writing is rather austere, fitting for the period, and the characters, and reminds me more of Elizabeth Taylor and Elizabeth Bowen, although the comparison is not direct, more in the general attitude of the prose.

The plotting is beautifully done, and the technique of having the story move backward in time, works because the author is master of a tightly rendered plot. It all seems to work, and slowly, as one reads the book, beginning in 1947 with the characters that seem normal and yet also so tentative, as if they haven't quite found their bearings, one moves backward to 1944 and 1941, and the characters are further revealed, peeling away the layers of trauma and connection. The story opens with Kay, and one doesn't really realize how much of the story centers around her, that she is the one character that touches everyone, for what one sees initially is an almost empty shell of a woman, a butch dyke who had found her perfect element in the war, acting as a man, driving an ambulance, and now founds herself unappreciated and out of touch with society. The story ends with Duncan, and his story is the weakest of the lot, especially in its beginnings. Much is hinted at and never explained. I felt frustrated at the end, thinking "Is this all that happened?" and thought something more was needed. But I also think that this is precisely the story of Duncan, all potential and promise, and lack of execution. Duncan can never live up to anyone's expectations, including his own, just as the horrors of the war brought opportunities that can never be repeated, where for a moment people can throw off their inhibitions and the role society deems appropriate, but it is only for a moment and then the moment is lost, leaving only the aftermath.