Fleur-de-ToDo

The iPhone generation loves to take photos of food.  Marina sent me one of her garden creations, a still life of borage and chive blossoms, sorrel leaves, and dill atop a luscious quiche:

Richard sent me a photo of a fruit drink served in a simple jar with a stunning wedge of pomegranate and a mint sprig that gave me an unquenchable thirst:

Why is it that when I try to do the same thing, I get a To Do List?

My dinner, a simple bowl of pasta from Fasta and Ravioli Co. of Pleasant Gap (best pasta this side of Milan), with grated Asiago cheese and home-grown green onions.

But picture the sides:

A stack of seeds to plant

A borrowed Makita sander to prep a roadside castoff

The label from my flex-hose to purchase another for our community garden

Leftover strip from the backsplash of my very first gas stove

A book to drop off at my favorite Little Library

Sam’s Club renewal form

The packaging from curtains to buy a matching set

Lipstick plant cuttings from my mom’s house to root for a friend 

A cracked dryer vent to replace

A $5 Ace Rewards card

And yes, a glass of wine, much needed with a list like that. Laurie Lynch

Name Game:  Spotted from abroad, Dr. McClean, an immunologist in Dublin, Ireland.

Cold Brew:  Every other day I put 4 scoops of ground coffee beans from Café Lemont in a quart jar, fill it with water, and stick it in the refrigerator. The next morning, I filter the cold brew in my French press, and fill my Yeti coffee mug with a pour of chilled-brew coffee with a sprig of slightly crushed chocolate mint, ice, and half-and-half.  The rest is saved for day No. 2. Try it, you will fall in love. 

Written on Slate:  I don’t need an inspirational quote, I need an iced coffee! 

Fleur-de-Settled

I’m less than 10 miles from where I grew up, but in many ways, it is another world.

The clouds are closer here. They throw shadows on the mountains, sometimes sliding down to tickle the treetops. There is less foreground.  Mountains frame every view.

I walk below pines and oaks and maples on the mountainside.  I smell the glorious Russian olive (Elaeagnus angustifolia) in bloom, its fragrance transporting me to Eagle Point Road, driving the kids to school, windows down on warm spring mornings. My brain knows it is an invasive pest, crowding out the natives, but my nose does not.

On the trails above my house, Sandy the Mop picks up tufts of white fuzz, dragging them with his rear haunches. I remember a fellow telling me that scientists are fairly unimaginative when it comes to naming nature’s cast of characters.  A fall webworm is the wormy, larval stage of a moth that hatches in webs in the fall.  The red spotted newt is a red newt with spots. Peach leaf curl is a fungal disease that curls peach leaves. There must be 100 species of trees on this Nittany Mountain range but I knew we were walking under cottonwood (Populus deltoides) trees once I spied the cottony clumps hitchhiking on Sandy.

Walking around my neighborhood of cozy bungalows, Sixties ranches, and Victorian painted ladies, the blossoms of redbud, dogwood, and rhododendron give way to lilac, rose, and bearded iris.  Temptation at every corner.  Visions of what to do with my front yard, a grassy, treeless plot fenced in by white picket and a lonely boxwood.   

Prints and paintings are finally hanging on the walls. A mix of mine and my parents’. Photographs of Marina at the Palace of Versailles, Richard floating on a river in Brazil, Lais’ first birthday portrait (she turns 7 next month).  A pastel of Marie in a pink and ferny gown, and the wicker loveseat she posed on. Projects from Kutztown high school art classes and a flock of sewing roosters and hens.  My neighbor’s peonies burst in bloom in a vase blown in a Fleetwood glass studio—color echoes.

The raised vegetable beds in my side yard, hidden in snow when I bought the house, are already producing.  Spinach and radishes sown Easter weekend fill the refrigerator bin. Garlic buried in pots at 101 are sprouting with scapes at 110.  It is starting to feel like my home.  Laurie Lynch

Newest discovery:  Expandable hoses made of flexible latex, not hard rubber, are all I talk about these days of temps nearing 90.  The hoses are lightweight, compact (they expand when filled with water), and they don’t kink or tangle.  Do yourself a favor and buy one today. 

Good Read:  Buzz, The Nature and Necessity of Bees by Thor Hanson.

Written on Slate: “My grandfather always said that living is like licking honey off a thorn.”Louis Adamic, an author born in Blato (what is now Slovenia) in 1899. He came from a family of farmers and immigrated to the U.S. as a teen-ager. Books:  The Native’s Return, Cradle of Life and Two-WayPassage

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