My Partly Edible Garden

Inspired by Zack's big garden in a box I have small peppers in pots. As they ripen they will turn from purple to red to orange to pale yellow, all colors existing at once on a late-summer plant. Watching them will be a friendly companion from the world of nature and summer as I'm drawn feet first into the vortex of The School Year, the 180 Days.

You can eat the nasturtiums and the bronze fennel that shields my chair from the street. I've shown Phaedra and Eilonwy which flowers they can eat, and told them that you Have to Ask Someone who Knows, a Grownup. They're old enough for this nature lesson.

Okay,I'll jump on the merry-go-round at a random spot where I can grab a pole, and see if I'm near my favorite horse, the white stallion, rearing (of course, an up-and-down horse, not a standstill one, they're for the babies, we're the big kids, who ride on the outside and finally, finally, are big enough, tall-enough, long-armed and secure in the stirrups enough to grab the ring, and it has to be EVERY ring, give or take a jammed spot missed, because if you miss ONE ring it might be the GOLD RING, the gleaming prize of every ride) and bearing on his back behind my saddle a freshly-killed pinkish-tan rabbit -- but this is not about the merry-go-round but about the recent random GOLD RING on the web-go-round of now-life: www.popcap.com and go to Games -- Bookworm. Jen Robinson, the brilliant youngish librarian and webmistress, has pointed the way to this well-described "addiction."

Whoops, I have a game going on the free trial, I'm on Level 4 and l*o*v*i*n*g it and have just signed up for more....

You'll be hearing from me later, Jen....

~~~ Jane

robot six - blue man





He is one of my sister-in-law Mimi's creations http://mimikirchner.com
Closeups reveal his details: dear little hooks and eyes, tiny stitches, tiny colored bars (batteries?). He looks to me as though he would get along with a couple of other people I've met here and there: Wallace and Gromit's robot acquaintance on the moon, and wide-eyed girl up in Barrington, RI, at the fine public library there.
http://thelibraryblog.blogspot.com

Rainy June Day

It's a great day to stay in, the house wrapped in a silvery green grey veil of rain and wet butterfly bushes, lilacs, vines, tomato plants, and flowers. Three napping cats circle my chair, warding off mice, birds, moths, should any get in. Rain falls steadily and moderately outside the window, a straight down steady shower, a good soaking for all the plants.

But soon, my guardians will disappear like quicksilver, when bigger intruders arrive -- there's a hint above...

June 25, 1945

On June 25, 1945, my father came home from India, and we saw each other for the first time. He and my mother were reunited after a year and a half of daily letters on onion skin paper from him to her. I have his letters, but not hers. I want to read all of my father's letters through from beginning to end. So far my starts have been stalled my both too much sameness and too much emotion. Of them, more later. Today I mark our family's reunion with this image composed of his dogtags and a sentimental but evocative picture from the album of letters. It was clearly torn out of a magazine.