Friday Five!

I have to say, though, that in the back of my mind I'm kinda worried at what Trump might do in response to these digs at him. He very often seems unhinged, and he has some really nasty, brutal people working for him.

Anything happens to Newsom and I'm booking the moving company and our flights.

And that doesn't even figure in the truly demented section of the MAGA faction, with their rifles.

1. Pouring rain.  We never had much of a summer.
2.  my tomato plants have lots of little green tomatoes on them, and my courgette plant has one little blossom about to open... i really hope they get a chance to ripen, but i think it's maybe too late.
3.  doing absolutely nothing this weekend... it's a long time till pay day.
4.  Catfish marathon on TV in the background while i've been working today.  Maybe it's just my age, but HOW ON EARTH can you claim to be 'dating' someone you have never met in person?  Does my head in. I understand you can have an emotional connection, but that's not the same as dating.  Dating means going on dates.
5.  A can of cider and 3 cans of Joker IPA in the fridge.  That's my exciting Friday night!

Well, on the good side, you can always pick the tomatoes green, before the vines die, if they have any color to them at all and they'll ripen on their own indoors over several days.
No, you can't "date" without dating!
Sounds like a good Friday night, all said. 


On my end:

1) It's Friday. My ice cream cone addiction requires action. The ice cream stands will be closing for the season in a month or so, so I need to enjoy them while they're open.

2) It was raining here earlier today, too. So no working in the garden today. Most of what was fully ripe has been picked, so it'll manage on its own for a couple of days. 

3) Heard a wing of geese flying over just before dawn, but they weren't heading off towards the garden so it's not my "usual" geese. (Although they all do look the same.) That's really very early for migration to be starting here.

4) Perpetually behind on the laundry. Probably will remain that way until maybe Monday, which is Labor Day here. Maybe longer.

5) Can't find anywhere local to study French for a reasonable cost. Guess I'll just watch the movies I know by heart, but put the French subtitles on. Would be better if the movies were in French, with English subtitles, though. I can read it a bit, it's hearing it pronounced that kills me. I have no hope of being able to speak more than a few phrases. Which is ok, if I can understand what people are saying to me.

Okay, I’ll play.

1. We did a Les Mills BodyBalance exercise class

2. Walked down to the Builders Merchant to buy 6 door latches. (Long story but got trapped in our bedroom last Sunday morning when the latch failed). None the right size in stock so ordered them.

3. Walked down to one of our favorite coffee shops and sat outside for a coffee (wife) and iced matcha (me) plus a warm cheese scone.

4. Did some gardening and picked more beans and tomatoes plus a couple corn cobs and some spring onions for our dinner.

5. Now sitting with my feet up watching Game of Thrones.

Les Mill?

Les Mill?

We did Les Mills workouts led by instructors at our gyms in Texas and England for many years then during Covid we discovered you can do them yourselves at home.

https://www.lesmills.com/

https://www.lesmills.com/uk/ondemand/

1) Drove down to the Tastee Treat and had a dipped swirled cone - they close for the season after next weekend, so we are enjoying them while we can. It's now dark here at 7pm, whereas just a few weeks ago it would have been light. The 7pm heavy freight train rumbled through on the tracks a little farther south, while lots of little kids were running amok and enjoying their Friday treats in the play area. But it was quite dark outside the circle of light from the ice cream stand - no moon. Sweater (jumper) weather here now, after dark. The cone was good and it dripped all over me when the chocolate cracked, of course. But that's part of the charm of a dipped cone.

2) The fox has mange, not rabies, hopefully. (See post elsewhere - I finally got the state biologist in the loop.) Hopefully also they're going to try to catch it and treat it. The poor thing is suffering.

3) It feels weird outside. If I was a superstitious person I'd say "things" were waking up out there in the dark. On the way back from Tastee Treat there were places along the drive where it was so dark that it was like light was being sucked into them. Ew. Still lots of cricket and frog noise though, so all is well.

4) Processed enough tomatoes to make 8 pints of a nice sauce, plus some really good tomato & butternut squash soup. Bulb blew in the fridge, which tripped the breaker, so I also made a pot roast out of the beef I had in the freezer that thawed before we knew the breaker was off. Used half a package of two-alarm chili spices and let it gurgle overnight in the crock pot. Made really nice burritos for lunch today from it.

5) Need to inventory all the pantry and replace what's needed before prices go much higher. Packages are getting smaller and prices are definitely climbing noticeably now.  We are well-stocked, but there's usually something I forget and then don't have it when it's needed.

1) we decided we fancied bagels for breakfast so thought we might try going to the Odd Socks launderette which is a new place where you can do your own laundry, leave stuff to be laundered or dry cleaned and also eat breakfast or lunch while waiting. It is even licensed so you can have beer or wine with your meal. It’s a 15-20 minute walk from our house so we went down and had coffees and bagels. The coffees were excellent but the the bagels were just “Okley Dokely”. (I had cream cheese and smoked salmon.

2) the launderette is opposite the Priory where we both volunteer- my wife is a gardener and I manage the 15 volunteer guides - so we popped in after breakfast to have a chat with the guide on duty.

3) every 2nd Friday the cleaners come and do our house so we chatted with them for a few minutes at 8:30 before setting off for breakfast. The main lady is off work with a lung infection which is very worrying because she hasn’t been off sick in many, many years so we hope she recovers quickly.

4) vegetable delivery is on Friday and we split it between ourselves and our daughter. This week it was sweet corn, carrots, kale,  salad leaves, butternut squash, onions, broccoli and leeks.

5) went to our daughters to deliver her vegetables, have a cup of tea and chat. Only 8 days now before she and her partner leave for Australia. They will be away for a month and we’ll be keeping an eye on her house, watering her plants etc.

I'm several hours late with this, but here goes:

1) It's been raining a lot this week. We were under a "surface streets" flood warning for quite a while. Sun came out this afternoon.

2) We drove down to Saugerties for the annual Garlic Festival, then over to Woodstock to play tourist. [It is such a "60s" tourist trap, too!]  It got to be a bit too warm for touristing, so we bailed after only a few minutes there, but it's always a pretty drive. Got some nice new varieties of garlic to plant this fall, and some of our favorite dark "Winter" honey from one of our favorite beekeepers, too.

3) There are times I wish I hadn't found the Pizza Intelligence page, but it is interesting watching to see when order spike up unusually. Like the middle of this afternoon, and now as well.  (323% more than normal at Dominoes, etc.)   But then, there's stuff going on. In a lot of places. A lot more than I had realized. The mainstream news here really is pretty filtered.

4) Heard from several of my friends on the West Coast today. All on the same day. That was nice, but surprising. I need to sit down and reply, but my brain is shutting down so it'll be tomorrow, I think. One is thinking of getting out of town for a few weeks. Might be nice if they came to visit!

5) The poor weathermen are chasing their tails over the impending not-hurricane, trying to forecast it in a very tricky weather situation. If it stalls out, which is the last I heard they were thinking might happen, and does so over land, than the Carolinas are going to be hammered. Again. They just got the Blue Ridge Parkway reopened from the last hurricane, I think? If it doesn't stall out, it may bring us a little rain a week or so from landfall, but nothing to worry about. (Famous Last Words.) I hope to have the garden prep for the fall either done or well underway by then.


Wondering who put that curse on us: "May you live in interesting times."

On Friday.

1. I was on guide duty at our Priory in the morning. Opening it up then greeting visitors as they arrive, handing out leaflets and maybe giving them a bit of the history if they are interested. 90 visitors which was pretty good for a weekday end of September.

2. Chatted online with my brother in Australia. He is finally going to retire, at age 68, at the end of October. His wife will take a long paid-for sabbatical and retire end of March. (She is a couple of years younger than him)

3. Our son walked over after lunch to pick some more of our sweetcorn - it’s the last of this year’s crop and it has been a bumper year. (He has been off work on holiday this week and we have done a couple of day trips out)

4. Before our son left my sister came over for a chat so the 4 of us sat for over an hour just shooting the breeze.

5. My cousin in Australia sent me photos of her recovering ankle which she broke a few weeks ago when she slipped in their garage.

You guys are living the good life!   

1) After much faff, I managed to get my Covid-19 and influenza vaccinations. It didn't help that I have an unreasonable fear of needles, and getting two jabs in one arm while standing up in the waiting area of the pharmacy because they don't have an injection room set up any longer, with all sorts of people with coughs and sniffles milling around within five feet of me, didn't help my mood. So now I'm a whiney little ... and my arm is already throbbing, and I'm starting to get "the headache" already. [wah! Insert the pout of a four-year-old here.]

But thank goodness the Governor signed an emergency proclamation, or else I'd have to have paid a few hundred dollars to get a GP to write a prescription for them, thanks to RFK's dicking around with the healthcare system. (Which would have meant I wouldn't have gotten the jabs.) Now we have to find a pharmacy that takes the Daughter's private insurance so she can have her jabs next weekend. Hopefully with less stress.

2) *Ahem* It's been a lovely day out. We had our first freeze last night, and a cool breeze with clear blue skies today. Went to the allotment early to let a bee out of the little greenhouse tent and needed a light jacket. We'd been over there yesterday evening to pick flowers and it was already so cool that some of the bees were going into torpor and falling off the flowers. The Daughter warmed one up in her hands until it was moving again, and put it under the plastic with a bunch of flowers and a little cap of fresh water for the night, since we'd had the freeze warning on the phone by that time. The bee was fine and sitting on the flowers when I got there, and flew happily away when I took the plastic up.

3) The carrots in the greenhouse tent seem to be germinating. Now we wait to see if the tent will keep them warm enough to keep them alive long enough to make actual carrot roots before the ground freezes. (It's an experiment.)

4) "The Herd", as the daughter calls the general public, seems restless today. People at the grocery store, post office, gas station, etc., were acting oddly - distracted, frazzled, mentally somewhere-else. And they are driving like lunatics - one guy came shooting out of a side street while we were stopped at a light and cut across both lanes full of cars that were stopped in the lanes heading west (there was a large enough gap between the cars for him to shoot through) without stopping at his stop sign, moving at speed, and turning left into the eastbound lanes. Which he couldn't possibly have seen into to know if anyone was coming or not. Thank goodness there was not a horrific wreck. Lots of weird lane-changes without signaling, people pulling u-turns across several lanes of traffic (with the attendant blaring horns). It's like they've all lost their marbles! We are both glad to be safely at home and don't plan to go back out of the house for a few days, except possibly over to the allotment to pick some leeks and fennel for soup Saturday morning when hopefully everyone else is still sleeping and not out on the roads. I'll have the groceries sent in.

5) Cornell Veterinary Hospital in Ithaca is having a classical music concert in a few weeks for the families of pets that they have served. They asked for a photo of our little guinea pig to show in their slide show.  It's amazing how a guinea pig that can sit seemingly for hours without moving a muscle absolutely cannot sit still long enough for a non-blurry photo to be taken!  It's like she knows. The Daughter had a good one taken some time ago on her camera, so we sent them that one. (Cornell cured her of mammary cancer. A really great hospital.)


If things go as they have with past Covid-19 vaccines I will be out of it in bed for a few days. Hopefully WWIII won't start before I get back to complain about that, too.    You guys take care.

1) My wife had her flu shot at 08:30. No covid jabs for us this year. Not old enough (<75) and no health issues. (My sister got a Covid jab as she has Lupus). It is available privately and our son and/or daughter may decide to go get one.

2) We went to Asda for a big grocery shop. It’s a very large store about 3 miles away and we usually go every 6 weeks or so. On Sunday we have friends from Scotland (Ayr) coming to stay for a few days so it’s good timing.

3) cleaned the spare room and made up the bed in readiness for our friends arrival.

4) I was on duty at the Priory in the afternoon and the first named storm of the season came blowing through. Expected winds of over 40mph Friday evening and all day Saturday. The wind and rain had picked up to over 30mph by 3 so myself and new volunteer closed off the woodland gardens, putting up stakes with barrier tape in high winds and rain was “fun”.

5) By the time we had closed off the woodland gardens the wind was up to 40mph+ so we closed down the whole site.  This was the volunteer’s first time on duty. She had been through all the training and was into the practical sessions. I don’t think she was put off fortunately and will be a good addition to the team.

On Sunday I’ll be going down to meet up with the scheduled guide where we will do a storm damage survey before opening….

Yep, good idea on the C19 vaccination. The biochemists & microbiologists (and infectious disease specialists) I know say it's like an iceberg. You may seem to have only a mild case on the surface, but the virus can be wreaking havoc internally. And the more times you have it, both the more damage and the more likelihood of long covid.  If I had to pay for the jab I would have, but I couldn't really justify the cost of the jab (a few hundred) with the cost of getting a prescription (another few hundred)since it would only be really protective for a few months, so if the governor had not signed her proclamation I would simply have gone back to "Year 1" covid precautions - mask and avoid people and being in public places. Which, as an old retired lady, I have the luxury of doing. If I did not want to go out of the house, it would be possible for me to never leave it and still do nicely. (Albeit going stir crazy.) I don't go out a whole lot (other than for walks and to the library & allotment), but it's nice to have that option.

I saw the news broadcasts about the storm. Yoiks! That looked bad. Was watching the news out of Glasgow and it looked like (as tends to happen there) buildings had been tumbled and/or partially dismantled and a lot of trees down with power outages.  Hope all was well there where you are and the gardens at the Priory are not too chewed up.  Hope your new volunteer comes back, too!