Gardens come in

I got quite carried away with the houseplant rescue thing this year. I buy the "nearly dead" at the local nurseries for pennies, bring them home and give them a dose of TLC and a sunny place to rest.

Now I have more healthy patients than I know what to do with. Two pots of lavender that need wheels, several tropical plants of unknown species that are now over four feet tall.  This little Swedish Ivy was a gift from my sister Kitty. It's a descendant of a plant at Bill W's place in Katonah.

It's getting nippy at night so I'll have to move some furniture around to  accommodate everyone.

And you can be sure that no matter how carefully I inspect everything, there will be at least one lizard or tree frog coming along for the ride. Never fails.

Wishful thinking

I brought this with me today and remembered to find my spare sewing glasses. Notice there's almost no stitching on this, just some hasty basting.

That's how it is and I remember it well.

Thankfully for Jake and Missy, Charlie is figuring out that sleeping through the night, or at least a good chunk of it, is the civilized way to go.

Of course, this means that while the sun is shining he's looking to interact with his world and me. Today we read aloud from John Sandford's latest crime novel, listened to a bunch of good music. No stitching.


Charlie flung a bunch of bodily fluids around, tried to eat a stuffed frog and worked hard at turning over. He  likes Ben Webster and Frank Sinatra. He's almost eleven weeks old and he is planning on stealing my earrings any day now. I better switch these hoops for posts.

These thoughts founded the day.

the odd day

Anyone taking selfies will tell you that you have to take more to get a good one as you get older. Looks like my phone camera has some kind of built in sensor to pop on a lovely filter when the person using it turns sixty-five. Or maybe I need to clean the lens.

We've been having monsoon like rain all day and it was somber inside and out today, but lightened by a visit from Jake,  and Colin returned home from being in NY for a week.

I spent the morning focusing on a dreaded editing/rewriting task - you may have heard the writing expression "kill your darlings"? Well, there was figurative blood all over the place this morning, but it was needful.

I did go over  and look in the river basket was too distracted to sit with the stitch today. restless. Having lost something.  Someone.

I just remembered. The very first birthday gift Jimmy every gave me was a sewing machine. Sear Kenmore Free-Arm. Innovative in its day and a workhorse for over twenty-five years. The man knew what I was all about.

sleeper

A cloth sketch, not even a work in progress yet, just a little something to hang on to.

Charlie doesn't sleep all day anymore, but he is starting to nap pretty predictably.

Hands free time..maybe.

Course correction

Today was shaping up to be a rocky one, emotionally. They still come, unannounced. I have chosen to surrender from time to time, but nothing is accomplished, no purpose seems to be served. I prefer to be the architect of my own emotional state, thanks, so today I thought I'd try some cloth and stitch, put up my own sails. But you can't always get what you want.

Dumping out and restocking the river basket had to come first, fresh palette and all. I sat in the late day light in my winter stitching chair and started a new vigil cloth.  

Looks like it's been a year since I've started something that was non-functional. This is just a sketch for the moment, but that's where I always start. 

Congratulations to all the stalwarts who have been called to Quilt National...a hard row to hoe.

Will work for smiles

I had the  amazing blessing of seeing Charlie's first smile today.  A real smile, not that gas nonsense.

 He was propped up in his little doughnut, calmly surveying his realm when I  came around to  the opposite side of the crib.

He looked at me,  made eye contact and smiled.  I laughed and said
"Are you smiling at me?"

To reward me for being so smart, he gave me another one, broader this time.
I did not capture the moment electronically..I soaked it into my very soul. This picture was taken a moment later and I think a good caption would be. "Well, that worked just the way I planned it. She's mine now."


Back in July of 1980 I scored another first smile from Colin (Jake saved his for his Dad) ...this time Jimmy grabbed the moment.

feels like Sunday

It's amazing just how vulnerable I am to external influences like the weather and the new big one - baby love.

It's a super perfect late summer day.  I got to put in a hot mile at the park and came back with some very strong revisions for the novel and a better wrap up. Oh! the Violence!

There was food shopping, housework, time  for a nap even !! There is still an eight hour shift coming up for the day job, but now that my commitment to watching Charlie has doubled (due to another family member's inability to participate) days like this one become even more precious.
Tomorrow Charlie and I will be discovering Miles Davis and I wouldn't have it any other way. The job is too important!

details, details

A slew of details and one still cannot perceive the whole.

The plan was a couple of quick and dirty macro shots of Karma I.

Well, you get what you pay for. If the light permits tomorrow, I'm going to work at getting some better pictures of these.

Life has been upended and my "free" time has been cut in half.  I've always done my best work under the gun, so what the hell. Bring it on.

more changes

No matter which way the Wheel of Fortune throws you, it's impossible to try and change it, so you might as well try to live with it. If a crisis seems inevitable, recall that in every crisis lies opportunity. When you've been swept in a new direction, know that every path leads somewhere, even if you don't know where it is. 

When times are bad, or when times are good, always keep in mind that they won't last forever. Such events are just out of your control, and if you can accept that then the ride gets a lot easier. If you struggle against the Wheel it will crush you. So roll along with it!  (James Rioux)

No kidding!  



Look. The angels are all reading a book!                              

spoiled (not him, me)

Yep. This it how it went today and I can expect there will be many more days like this  when nothing else will do but loving arms.

He zonked out because we spent the morning finding out what kind of music he likes and he has great taste.
He likes everything from  Springsteen to Chopin with a lot of 50's era jazz.



This one got looped..Ashokan Farewell, by Jay Ungar performed by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra

A sea change

I should probably bite my tongue for saying so, but my grandson looks like he's going to be an easy keeper.

It's my own time management that's going to need some re-adjustment. For some time now I've been luxuriating in having all the time I needed to do most of the things I wanted to. That time has just been cut in half, but I'll just find a different way of getting things done. I've always done better under the gun.

I'm going to stock the river basket with this and hang a few more stars in the sky.

Charlie,  gives a master class in power-napping and I was right there with him and still got a few pages of notes typed up and read for a while.

I know this easy-to-please and portable phase of babyhood is brief so I'm going to take full advantage.

It was cloudy here so I missed the last supermoon. Here's my version. The moon flower bloom lasts about twenty hours. I stood inches from this one and stoned my self breathing in it's fragrance until I was dizzy.