Eat Up! With Jesus!

 
We're finally, and at long last, getting some rain. It's certainly not a downpour but it's enough to green up the grass some, to perhaps give the beauty berries the fortitude to stand up a little straighter, and cheer the birds enough for them to talk about it in their own various bird languages. Do you suppose birds have different accents depending on where they live? Different dialects? Does a cardinal in Texas sound exactly like a cardinal in Florida? I'm sure someone's studied that. 

Glen and I are taking the credit for bringing on this rain. He's been watering those fruit trees as if their lives depended on it, and they do while I hung out the laundry this morning. Mainly sheets.

In fact, I barely got my sheets off the line before it started raining because we were on our way back home from Monticello when the sky began to bruise and the thunder began to clap. But I got them in, still dry, and all is well. They're back on the bed now. 
I'll be sleeping on them alone tonight as Glen has gone to the coast to get up early and go fish for gag grouper. Don't ask me what a gag grouper is or why it's called a gag grouper. I'm sure there's a reason but even if I found out, I would forget before two days had passed because my brain is only accepting important calls for retention and often not even those and I'm not really curious enough to just look it up to satisfy that sort of itch so what's the point? 
Well, I lied. I looked them up and I'm glad I did because there is a very interesting fact about them which is that all gag groupers are born female but some transition into males later on in life. And now I'm wondering whether or not the individuals who turn into males make a choice to do that or does it just happen randomly? Are the fish surprised when they wake up to realize they are now of the male gender? 
Probably not. I am far to quick to anthropomorphize, aren't I?

So Mr. Moon had some legal stuff he had to go to an official office of some sort to get prints and copies made and of course this involves Tom's estate. There's a little office in Monticello where he could get that done. I was eager for another shot at Wag the Dog and perhaps another place, too, if there was time. So we both got dressed in more socially acceptable clothing and I even put on a bra-like garment and off we went. He dropped me at Wag while he went to get the papers printed. 
Wag was very, very good to me today. I believe that anyone who thrifts realizes that going shopping at one of these places in hopes of finding a specific item is rarely rewarded by finding that item. I believe it's best to just go with open eyes and an open heart. As soon as I walked in the door I saw a display of glassware which included five nice martini glasses, all of different colors. Five of them for sixteen dollars. A steal! 
And no, of course I don't need any more martini glasses but I am fond of them and these looked to have never been used as the little stickers on the bottom that said, "Handwash Only" were still attached but in such a way that I think if they had been washed, even by hand, they would have peeled right off. And anyway, it doesn't matter. So I gathered the glasses up and took them to the register and the woman behind the counter said she'd wrap them for me while I was shopping. 
Monticello has some mighty sweet people in it. 
I looked through clothes, found nothing. There was a good selection of lamps but none I needed in the least, the cookware did not excite me, the sewing and crafts things were not treasure-worthy, and the placemats were nothing I'd use. However, I did find four Vera Wang napkins for $2.50 and they are quite nice. 
While I was going through the knickknacky china stuff, my eye fell on a tray that I was immediately drawn to. I couldn't tell if it was ceramic or plastic but it turned out to be made of a very heavy plastic, a resin? Yes. Resin I think. 
It wasn't the material the tray was made of that drew me to it though, it was the print of the woman's face on it. 

I've done some searching and the image on the platter may have been originally painted by a woman named Alja Horvat. 
Whoever, whatever, I picked it up, felt its heft, set it back down. It cost ten dollars which is pretty high for a plastic tray at Wag the Dog. 
When I'd finished up with my survey of the entire place though, my feet took me right back to this lady who knew without a doubt that I'd return and buy her. Her stare dared me not to. 
I did not have the strength to resist. 

So I bought my glasses and my tray and some lovely satin ribbon and then Mr. Moon and I went to lunch at place where I don't really enjoy eating because, once again, Jesus is prominent on all the walls via those plaques you can buy at the Dollar General that say things like, "In this place we shall worship Jesus Christ, our savior and redeemer." 
Talk about being eat up with that shit. You just can't avoid it in small towns in the south. 
The owner wore a t-shirt that said, "Redeemed" in case we didn't get the picture and it would appear that she did something in the entertainment world at one point as there were quite a few pictures of her with celebrities and near-celebrities on the wall when she was a lot younger. 
And possibly not yet redeemed. 
The funny and frustrating part about the restaurant for me was that everything I asked for from the menu they were out of. To begin with, they were out of iced tea. 
This is like going to a Waffle House and discovering they are out of Waffles. 
Sigh. Water was fine. 
They didn't have the chicken salad salad, they didn't have the Caprese salad, they didn't have the grilled chicken sandwich.
"Get a wrap!" the owner told me. It didn't sound like a suggestion but more of a command.
"I don't really like wraps," I said. And I don't. 
I finally ended up with a bacon, lettuce, tomato, and avocado sandwich with potato salad and they were all good but the bread on the sandwich was Wonder Bread and I shit you not. 
Still. Not bad. 
Glen ordered a club sandwich which they also had so all was not lost. That too, came on Wonder Bread. 
Here's a thing that was on the table:

I have to say that even for Monticello, this place was pushing it. 

We crossed the street after lunch and went to the antique/vintage store for a short run-through. Another extremely tall man began a conversation with Glen, asking him how tall he was and it went from there. This guy had been a football player, although he'd loved basketball. I take it he just didn't have the necessary skills. They traded stories about their glory days but I don't think either one of them is the kind of man to be stuck back there. Still, I have come to realize that people who spent a portion of their life playing a team sport and playing it well, will never forget the experience and can't help but look back on it with some wonder and also pride. I think Glen's basketball career had a lot to do with the sort of man he turned out to be. 
And hell, at least he got to go to Europe. 

I took a picture of myself upstairs in the vintage place, right down the hallway from where I found Dorothy Anne. 

I wore the Is He Dead shirt and I do not think one person actually noticed it. They were all too busy concentrating on their "Redeemed" shirts. 
Each to our own. 

Here's a picture I took because I wasn't sure if it was an art installation or just a temporary place to put a mannequin bust. 

Could be both. One never knows. 

We didn't buy a dang thing in the vintage place. I was hoping to find a string of pearls for Levon but did not. 

On our way out of town we stopped at the farmer's market.

Glen wanted a 25 pound bag of raw, jumbo peanuts to roast and of course, they can be crow food too. I got some peaches and some onions and a few sweet potatoes. 

When we got home I decided to do some culling and clearing of one part of my kitchen where I keep a lot of glassware and bowls and platters and trays and other things that I don't use from year to year. I wanted to do this so I could fit my new tray and martini glasses in and so, I have done that. 

Another art installation, I do believe. 

That area looks a little more tidy and perhaps, slowly, slowly, I shall get rid of even more. 

I already have several things promised to the children and in fact, my hallway is looking a bit like a yard sale staging area. 

It feels good to pass these things on to the next generation. 
They're going to get whatever of them they want eventually and I'd like to clear my spaces now and am feeling relatively unattached to a lot of it. Many of these things made me happy at an earlier time of my life and now, well, if I want a platter with a stern and beautiful woman on it, holding five martini glasses, so be it. 

As you can see, I still have a goodly plenty of bowls. But you know what? I am getting rid of a few of them. I can easily see getting rid of more.

The other end of the porch. It's stopped raining and according to the garden cart rain gauge, we did not get a lot. 
Still. Better than none. 

Can we comment yet on blogger blog comments? I hope they fix this situation. Please know that if I generally comment on your blog, I have no doubt read your post from today, I just couldn't leave my footprint. 

Oh well, probably does us all good to have a comment free day, both on the making and receiving ends of the deal. Really, there are no rules. 

Here's your weekly shot of joy, this time provided by The Boss and Little Stevie Van Zandt. 

Happy Friday, y'all. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Hot Pants

. 

The hurricane lily, the only one I've seen so far, has opened up entirely. They are such gaudy beauties. 

It's so, so dry here. The grass has gone crispy, the leaves are drooping, I can almost hear the earth panting, thirsty for a good, long drink of water. Our daily cruel rain tease happened early today and gave us just about enough moisture to dampen the back porch steps. Mr. Moon bought a new sprinkler in town today and he has it on as we speak, watering the fruit trees we planted a few months ago. Well, there was no "we" about it. He planted them. If we don't water them, we're going to lose them and they were not cheap and let's not forget his labor, getting them in the ground. 
Plus, I would just feel so very guilty if we let them die. You know how I am about plants. 

I stayed home all day and finished up my shirt project. I am not what we might call thrilled about the job I did but I could spend the rest of my life on it, trying for perfection but that ain't gonna happen. It is good enough. 

Now, speaking of embroidery, I discovered what I consider to be just about my favorite example of visible mending combined with embroidery and patchwork I've ever seen in my life. 

I am completely in love and blown away. You can find these glorious jeans at the Magnolia Pearl website. I knew nothing of Magnolia Pearl until Lily told me about the company. They have extremely unusual and very hippie/boho clothing. I get a sort of Helena Bonham Carter/Betsy Johnson vibe from them. Some of their things I like, some I don't, but they are all unbelievably expensive so it doesn't matter what I like or do not like of their collection because I won't be buying any of it. 
Those jeans cost $650. 
However. I think you'd be purchasing a work of art which, should you so choose, you could wear. 

The handwork is phenomenal in an extremely folk art way. 
And of course, the Virgin of Guadalupe is my girl and so I really feel that they should just send me a pair as obviously, they were made for me. 
Sigh. 
But what I'd really love is to take one of the shit-beat pairs of Levi's I have and make my own art jeans. Being a realist though, I know that the project would take me approximately twenty years. 
Still, my fingers are itching. I'm thinking about all the Virgin of Guadalupe images on fabric I have. Not as many as are represented on those britches, but a few. 
And other things that would make fabulous patches. The jeans are not especially holey and I have patched the places that are but the fabric is so thin in many places you can almost see through it so it wouldn't be exactly fake patching. I'm not going to start ripping up Levi's. 
That would be almost as much a sin as letting the fruit trees die. 

But if I started doing one little patch and embroidery border at a time, that might be doable, right?  

Not much else happened here today. I gave myself permission to not do any yard work after I got bitten by at least three different yellow flies. I'm still itching. Those things are the pets of Satan. 

I tried something new with the crows today. Along with their mealworms, I put three raw-in-the-shell peanuts on each tree stump. They came in and seemed to do a lot of discussing about this new development. I truly wish I knew how and what they think, and what they're saying to each other in these discussions because I would bet the ranch they are saying things to each other which they can and do understand. Anyway, all of the mealworms and the peanuts have disappeared so I guess the updated menu was approved. 

I also wish I knew what Maurice was thinking. I hate to say this but she is becoming seemingly more and more...mentally ill? 
Her fear of Glen is becoming worse. She hasn't gone to sit and nap on his lap in weeks and that hurts him. They really had such a cozy relationship. If she's on the back porch and he opens the door she bolts off into the yard. 
I don't know what to do. Perhaps she has a kidney issue. Can UTI's cause cats to display behavior that mimics dementia like it can in humans? I just looked it up and the answer is that they can. So perhaps that's it although she isn't displaying signs of discomfort and is eating and drinking water as usual. 
Let's face it. She's never in her life been "right." 

And that's enough chatter. I don't want to be like the lady in the Aldi who wouldn't stop talking. 
But first- I forgot to tell you about the best thing that happened to me today. 
Yesterday I realized I didn't know where one of my favorite blouses is. It's got the colors of almost everything I wear in it and it has pockets which makes it perfect to wear over t-shirts or whatever, with dresses or skirts that don't. I went through my closet twice. I looked on the floor. I checked the closet where I hang the un-ironed garments. 
I could not find it. I decided I must have left it somewhere after shedding it when I got too hot to need it.  
But this morning I thought I'd just do a double-check in that ironing closet and by golly- it was indeed there. 

It needs ironing. So does everything else in over half that closet. 
La-di-dah. La-di-dah. It was here all along. 
I am so happy. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Tickets To Fire!

This is a cockeyed picture of how my caladium platter fit on the shelf of squares. Sorry. Jessie placed it for me on a higher shelf than I would have put it on so I was holding the phone at a clumsy angle to take the picture. As you can see, I slid my little fishy under the leaf and Gail, our teacher, said that would be fine. So. Four squares for the one platter. Not so bad. I am honestly excited to see how this turns out. I hope it colors up and shines up during the firing. It should. 

And...I finally started working on the fish platter. 

It has begun! As I painted her eye she whispered that her name was Francis. Francis the Blue-Eyed Fish. 
I have never named anything I've made in pottery before unless you count, "Failure" or "Sigh" as names. 
I'm excited. I do love to paint fish. 

It was a big day for our pottery class as we celebrated Gail, our friend and teacher, and Shelly, our joyful friend who loves festivals and has a beautiful son she's raising by herself. And she's doing a damn fine job. The lemon bars I brought and the cookies Jessie made were hugely enjoyed. I am so glad. It was nice to make today's class a little special for Gail and Shelly. The lemon bars were delicious. I'm not going to lie. And Jessie's cookies- well, I have to get that recipe. It's gluten-free and has peanut butter, oatmeal, chocolate chips, butter, and flax seed in them. There may be other things. I think I like them better than the life-sustaining cookies I make for Glen when he goes off on one of his manly adventures. When I get it, I will share it. 

There was some serious pottery-making going on today, too. It wasn't all cookie eating and birthday celebrating. Jessie's trying to figure out how to make August a dragon pot for the plant she got him. He has requested that. She'll do it. 
And Gentleman Caller™ came in for a quick visit. He looked especially spiffy today. I bet I'm one of the last ten people to use the word "spiffy." Perhaps I should use the "sartorial" instead. It is far more sophisticated, don't you think? Lizzie sent me this picture which she took this morning. 

Takes a real man to wear a pink jacket and a tie to go with. 
It really is amusing how the class responds to his presence when he comes in for one of his quick visits. Let us just say we all have a fondness for the Gentleman Caller™. 

I think he looks a little like my own Gentleman Caller™, don't you? 
And by the way, he gave his permission for his photo to be posted here. I thank him for that. I believe people like to see what the folks I talk about look like sometimes. Generally, I am shy about asking anyone if I can take their picture to use on my blog but I don't think it's fair not to get permission. I mean- someone could be in the Witness Protection Program and one of the ones and ones of people who visit here might recognize and wish them harm! 
You never know. We are a pretty wild and possibly dangerous community here at the Church of the Batshit Crazy. I mean- look at me. I attempted to steal a cart with unpaid for foodstuffs in it today. 
Not on purpose. Let us be clear. Read on for that story.

After class Jessie and I met Lily at the Indian buffet which was excellent, as always. We talked and laughed and then laughed some more, again, as always. And then I dropped Jessie off at her house so she could get a nap before her shift tonight and I went to Costco and Publix. Are we surprised? 
I had an experience at Publix. 
I should be embarrassed to tell this story but for some reason I am not. Perhaps because this was not the first time this experience has happened to me. Well, I made it happen. But that was a long time ago back when I didn't worry about my brain and its functioning. So that is reassuring. 
What happened was that while I was shopping I felt the need to visit the restroom. I parked my cart near the restroom doors, went in to one of them, did what one does in a restroom, came out, saw only one cart, grabbed the handle and pushed it down the aisle. 
It wasn't until I was about two aisles over that I looked down at the basket where I stash some of the things I'm going to buy and thought, "I am not buying bread. Or grated cheese. WTF? Goddammit! I grabbed the wrong cart!" 
And indeed I had. 
I found the guy whose basket I had stolen and he was NOT WELL PLEASED. Turns out I'd parked my own cart a little bit away from the restroom doors, sort of in the floral section, and had blithely taken possession of his cart, which was parked much closer to the doors. 
Sigh. 
I apologized and he sort of glared at me but I was feeling feisty and refused to be shamed. Are you not proud of me? I thought, What the fuck, man? Shit happens. 
He took possession of his groceries and sort of huffed off and I went back to the floral section to collect my own which was sitting there, waiting patiently for me to realize my mistake and come back to retrieve it. Which I did, and off we went. I finished up my shopping and then went to pick up Mr. Moon who had taken one of his cars to a body shop to get something done and that's a long story but there were no dents, scratches, or tragedies involved so, whatever. 
I was was vastly relieved that the place he'd taken the Camry was very near to the Publix I'd been shopping at and not twenty miles away which is often the case when he needs a ride. 

And home we came where everything is so very, very dry. The beauty berries are not as fat this year and the clusters are smaller too. 

Everything looks tired and somewhat sad. 

These years happen. We were doing so well there for awhile, getting daily rain, and a good amount of it. 
And now, well, we're not.

I'm tired. Wednesdays are long days for me. But they are generally good days, as this one was. And tomorrow, I can gather my energy back around me. Perhaps I will even finish my shirt. 
And oh, wouldn't I love to put a little more color on Francis? 
Yes. Yes I would. 

I hope you've had a good day too. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Back In My Own Sweet Little World

Look at the pollen on that bee. 
Oh wait. I just looked it up and it's not a bee. It's a mason wasp. But it's a pollinator and as such, welcome in my garden any day of the year. Hell, I'd welcome it just for those blue wings. 
Now this guy? 

Not so much. It's more of a terminator than a pollinator. 
I know I've posted too many pictures of these things but I'm not sure I've ever seen as many in the years previously as I have this year. I just let this one be. I really cannot stand to smash them. At this point they can pretty much eat what they want of the garden but I do realize that every one I don't kill could represent literally hundreds of offspring. 

It's been feeling a little different here in the mornings when I get up. Perhaps a bit cooler, a little less humid, and the sky is taking on that blue which fall brings. The trees are still very much leafed but if you've lived here a long time, you can feel it. A very, very subtle change. Quite possibly so subtle in fact, that you can't consciously name what the change feels like. And yet, it's there. 
This morning I was tossing a dead roach wrapped in the ghost spider webs out the back porch door and I saw this.

The first hurricane lily I've seen this year. Usually, I start thinking about them right before they shoot up but this one came as a complete surprise to me. 
Well. There you are. Hello! 
I've never seen one growing in that particular place so it was a little disconcerting to find it there. That bed, which is between the house and the little pathway under the wisteria arbor is one that I am yearning to clear out. I mean, it's almost a physical need to get on my knees in there and pull out that nasty crocosmia which never blooms and the border grass gone wild and the random weeds. But right now I'm working on that bed beside the kitchen and the library. 

I try to think of the work as resistance strength training as the chenille plant and border grass definitely resist my efforts to pull it up. I can handle about an hour there while it's still in shade and I think a few more days of work will be enough to get it done and then I can move on around the corner to that other mess that I so yearn to get my trowel on. 
A little bit at a time. 

Maybe it was the way the air felt or maybe it was seeing that hurricane lily but I suddenly felt the impulse to plant a few greens seeds. I went through my last year's seeds and collected a very few collard seeds, along with kale and turnips. I cleaned out some of the grow bags and worked some sort of organic fertilizer in them and then did a casual pressing down of the seeds into the dirt. And then I turned on the water and wished them luck. I need to buy more collard seeds and I will. I just wanted to get some in the ground now.
The okra seeds I planted are up and looking pretty happy although I still have my doubts about whether there will be time for them to mature enough to make pods before they die back. I did the tiniest amount of thinning of the arugula, but enough to go into tonight's salad. 

It just felt good to be out there, getting something in the ground. Oh, how I would love to have enough greens to cook a big pot for Thanksgiving! 

I had great plans to do the outside work and then come in and finish up the neckline of my shirt and also do some more painting on my leaf platter and we all know how that turned out. 
Eh. Not quite. 
Before I got started on that I made some lemon bars to take to pottery tomorrow. It's Shelly's and teacher Gail's birthday and I think a few treats are called for. Somehow I don't think I'd ever made lemon bars before and I have no idea if these will be any good. I used a recipe I found online from The Pioneer Woman's blog. They were easy and pretty fast to make but still, I had to give some time to it. And for the first time ever, I used Glen's mama's citrus juicer which I've had on the shelf in the kitchen for the 22 years we've lived here. It's such a pretty thing, and functional too. 

It has to be made for lemons and limes, because it's way too small to hold the juice of an orange half. Even an entire lemon filled it to capacity. I realized that what looks like a decorative feature around the center part is a seed trap. How cool! 
I just hope the bars can be cut and transported tomorrow morning and that they taste good, of course. They're in the refrigerator now. 

By the time I got around to my shirt, it was already getting late but I got some more done. Here's what it's looking like. 

Now you know I only showed you the part that looks best. All hail the feather stitch which is so easy and as I said yesterday, does not require absolute consistency. It's...feathery. Right? And I'm having a good time with it. 
I didn't even have time to think about my caladium but that will happen tomorrow. Hopefully, my brain has been thinking about it all week and has some ideas as to colors. 

Overall though, I have felt rather cheerfully grateful today for the time and energy to do things that please me. That's a good way to feel, isn't it? Gratefulness can be a therapeutic tool, or so I hear (I wonder how many gratefulness journals Oprah sold?) but that sort of gratefulness, dredged up when your heart is closed and tight and your mind is raging and roaring, can feel like painting on a lipsticked smile to try and make yourself believe that DAMMIT, I AM HAPPY! JUST LOOK AT ME! 
I mean, okay. I get the idea but for me, counting all the things I feel grateful for when I am trying to keep my head above water only adds to the general guilt and shame I feel about myself for somehow managing to be so unhappy when I am obviously the luckiest woman in the world. 
And I have just found the most perfect video in the world to show exactly how genuine this feels to me. I beg of you, do not watch more than perhaps 20-30 seconds of this dreck because I fear it may cause brain damage to go any further. We used to sing this song in school when I was a child, especially at Thanksgiving. Even then, I tried so hard to believe. 
Even then, it never worked. 

But when the gratefulness comes easily and freely from the heart- well, that's one of the very best things in the world. 
Or at least it's pretty damn good. 
In my opinion. 

And as we all know, I have as many opinions as I have theories. 

See you tomorrow, should you choose to come back and hear more of both. 

Love...Ms. Moon

It Was Great! It Was Weird

I woke up this morning and thought to myself that if I did not get out of my house, out of my yard today, I was going to probably die. 
 I haven't left the yard since last Wednesday except to go to the dump. 
That's pathetic. 

But Jessie saved my life, as my children so often have, texting to see if I wanted to go to Monticello today. We'd been talking about taking a little jaunt over there for awhile and she'd found an outdoor table and chairs on FB Marketplace not far from my house and on the way to Monticello which she wanted to buy. The funny thing was, was that I'd seen the same listing and thought, "I should buy those. I need an outdoor table." And then I reminded myself I have too much shit already so I didn't. But Jessie did!

She picked me up in Vergil's truck and off we went to buy a table and chairs and the road we went down to get to the house is a road I've passed gozillion times, both in the last twenty years I've lived here and the five or six years (I think), I lived in Lloyd with my first husband and Hank and May, and never once turned on to it. What I discovered is that there is still a whole lot of undeveloped land in that area, just woods and more woods. It was sort of reassuring. 
We found the house where the table and chairs were waiting for us and a very nice man and woman were waiting too. The guy helped Jessie get the table in the truck and tied down and Jessie put the stacked chairs in the back seat of the truck. And then off we went to Monticello. I asked her if she'd mind driving down the little road my house had been on when I lived in Lloyd before and she said she would.
That was interesting. Someone has done a lot of work on the house and yard but again, the woods behind the house are still...woods.
A lot of memories, I tell you. 

We knew most things are closed in Monticello on Mondays but we found two places open that we stopped in. One was called Faith Full Refillery and one was The Monticello Soap Company. 
It too, is a sort of refillery where you can buy or bring your own containers to fill with their laundry detergents and housecleaning liquids and body washes and shampoo and so on. You know. 

Is "refillery" a name now? A real word? I guess so. 
The first shop we went to, the Faith Full Refillery, has jars and jars of spices and herbs and teas, etc., along with a few olive oils and some local honeys. They have a refrigerated section with somehow-legal unpasteurized milk and sour cream and so forth. They also sell sourdough starter and give classes on bread making. The shop is as clean as it could possibly be and everything is incredibly neat and tidy, as is the soap shop. 
What in the name of holy, hippie hell is going on in Monticello? And need I mention that the Faith Full Refillery's business model is based on the owners' Christianity? 
I swear. I don't get it. The woman is a nurse. Has been forever. She's still working. And yet, here we are. 
The soap lady didn't seem to have have any obvious religious proclivities but was rather jolly and I discovered that she lives about half a mile away from me. 
I just find it so hard to believe that shops like these can survive in Monticello, Florida. I think there may be a growing tourist situation going on there for day shoppers who want to buy antiques and vintage stuff and get delicious coffee and pastries and so more and more businesses are opening up. 
Still. It's just so hard to fathom. There are wellness places that offer massages and who the hell knows what, clothing boutiques, knick-knack purveyors, a store that sells plants (not to be confused with a nursery), all mixed in with Wag the Dog and the barber shop which makes no pretensions at all about being anything more than a place to sit down and get your ears lowered. As they say around here. 

So it was interesting and we went to the Mexican restaurant. That was excellent, as always. And I had to take a picture of the ladies' room. As always. 

You just can't beat that for decor. 
And I am being serious. 

So. Refilleries, lunch, a little stroll around, and then, to round out the experience, we hit the new Aldi's. 
Now some of you may know and some of you no doubt do NOT know because, why should you? that Aldi's has bought out Winn Dixie which was the only large grocery store in Monticello. Winn Dixie is a well-known chain of grocery stores but for whatever reason (probably Publix and Walmart), they are closing store after store and many are being reopened as Aldi's. 
There is at least one Aldi's in Tallahassee and I have been there exactly once. So this was going to be a big adventure for me but it turned out to be the best and the worst of going out in public. 
First of all, the store was empty. I mean- flat-out empty. 

Except for us and maybe three other people and one of those people grabbed on to us (she literally held on to my arm) and kept us in an aisle for at least twenty minutes, maybe more. 
She was one of those people who simply cannot not talk. They talk so much that there's no break in it long enough for you to say, "Oh my. Look at the time. I think I need an emergency appendectomy. Must run!" 
She may have been Chinese. I really don't know but she did tell us she was Mongolian and Hungarian, I think. Her English was pretty darn good and just about the first thing she said to us, after she'd grabbed my arm and determined that I was Jessie's mother, was, "Oh, you're so beautiful!" And to Jessie, "Your mother is so beautiful!" 
Well, who doesn't want to hear THAT? 
However. After about the thirteenth time she'd said it, I was growing weary of hearing how beautiful I was. She did ask questions about us and probably knows more about us and our families now than most of our pottery friends, but we know things about her that I wouldn't even repeat here because they are so private. But she was so happy to share! And she would say, right before she gave us another tidbit of her life, "You are cool. Like my family is! I can tell you this!"
So not only were we beautiful (she'd told Jessie she was too), we were cool! I think she's been in Florida for a very long time. She's married to an American and she works at a nursery and her one daughter lives in Alaska (I wonder why). She has no grandchildren and wanted them so much and now her daughter is too old (she's thirty-seven, I think) although she's getting married a year from this November.
As she talked, I grew more and more anxious. I broke out in a sweat. She held onto my arm and she stood very close to me and I am sure that's a cultural thing and that's fine but after awhile, my American culture-brain started saying things like, "Warning, Warning, Will Robinson." And finally, I felt a drop of liquid running down my leg and it was neither pee or amniotic fluid. It was sweat. 
I have never experienced anything quite like that before. 
I kept looking at Jessie for some way out of this but she was so calm and so patient and answered all of the woman's questions so graciously and I tried to do so as well. 
I've known one other person in my life who had whatever this inability to understand that conversations need to come to an end after a certain amount of time is and I kept thinking about her. You had to simply walk away while she was talking because there was going to be no end. 
Finally, finally, I said something like, "Well, we need to get on with our shopping so Jessie can get back to town to pick up her children," and although I had to repeat it twice, she finally got it and I pulled away from her and felt as if I was just this side of madness. 

The thing is, I liked her. She was darling. She showed interest in our lives. Obviously she is lonely. She didn't talk about religion. And we did not want to be rude to such a darling person and yet, if I hadn't said what I said, we'd still be there in that aisle in Aldi's. I can guarantee that. 

So I got out of the house today. I got out of Lloyd. I got to hang out with Jessie. I had fajitas. I bought a little tiny bit of organic nutmeg. 
On the other hand...Lord have mercy and save me from encounters like that in the future. I do not have the mental fortitude to handle them. 

When I got home I picked up my t-shirt embroidery project, realized what I needed to do which was to use a feather stitch as a hem border, ripped out everything I'd already done, and got started on that. The feather stitch is forgiving and does not require exact spacing. I could quite possibly finish up with it tomorrow. 
And I can tell you right now that I do not plan on going anywhere tomorrow. Jessie probably saved my life and my mental health by getting me out of the house today but I need a whole day to recover. And Wednesday is pottery. 

We're having our daily fake-promise of rain and I am growing weary of this. I'm going to have to water the fruit trees again tomorrow. For the first time, the crows did now show up at all to eat their mealworms. Mr. Moon fed them because I was in Monticello and he claims they don't come and eat if he feeds them. 
I hope they're okay and haven't decided to take off for south America or something. But if they have, they have and I think will eventually return. 

Remember to establish boundaries with family, friends, AND strangers. Weird things can happen in the bare aisles of Aldi if you don't. 

Is there a refillery in your neck of the woods? I'd like to hear about it if there is. 

Love...Ms. Moon

 

Gather 'Round, My Sweeties. It's Story Time

This is a Turk's Cap that Ellen Abbott sent me. Ellen and I have traded recipes and seeds and plant cuttings for quite awhile now. Although in some ways, Ellen and I are quite different, in others, we are much the same. I think the main difference is that she's an artist and spent her entire adult life as a working artist whereas I am, was... a lot of different stuff that didn't involve art although as I look back, I have always been a writer if by that you mean a person who writes. Also, she lives in Texas whereas I live in North Florida but there again, there are quite a few commonalities. We both live near the Gulf of Mexico, just on different sides, and our weather is much the same. So are the plants we can grow. 
And, by the way, I was born in El Paso, Texas. My father was in the Army I guess, and I was born in a quonset hut hospital, I do believe. In fact, I believe that particular hospital was an Air Force facility because there was something going around the Army hospital or perhaps there was another reason but the fact remains- I was born in Texas. 
I do not remember a thing about it. I think my parents moved when I was still a baby. My brother, who is two and a half years younger than I am, was born in Lebanon, Tennessee. I believe that had something to do with my father studying law but I can't swear it. Point being, I can hardly claim Texas as a big influence on me but I have always wondered if perhaps that didn't have something to do with my affinity for Mexico. 
So the Turk's Cap is part of the hibiscus, okra, Rose of Sharon, swamp mallow family. There are many more but those are a few. The flower looks very much like a hibiscus which never opens, but stays folded in on itself.

I grew up around Turk's Caps in Roseland where they were a popular and prolific yard plant. That variety though, had a longer bloom. It looked like this.

As a child, those things pissed me off. Why the hell wouldn't the flowers open? I was told by those who knew that opening was not the Turk's Cap way. 

But I love Ellen's Turk's Cap and this fall or winter I am going to take it out of its pot and plant it in the yard because I think it'll do just fine. It is a strong and hardy plant. 

I made what is probably a big mistake last week when I decided to cut the neck out of my beautiful "Is He Dead Yet?" shirt. I cannot stand a shirt that strangles me and that one did. I wanted to make a sort of decorative embroidered hem on the neckline that I'd cut and I am having one hell of a time with this project. I've never been an excellent embroider but not a really bad one either. 
I taught myself to do it with a small blue booklet I bought somewhere in Denver. I wanted to embroider a blue workshirt, as one does, for the boy back home who had broken my heart. So I sat on the floor of my dorm room and listened to Joni Mitchell's "Blue" (need I say more?) and I embroidered the hell out of that shirt and it was beautiful. 
This, I think, was my first major bout of depression. And although it sounds so funny, it really wasn't. I was eighteen, in a cold place with people who all seemed to be from New York which fascinated me but also made me feel like a bumbling, stumbling yee-haw from the south. They mocked my accent. They had all gone to prep school and I, bumpkin that I was, did not even know what a prep school was. 
"Do southerners really like watermelon?" they would ask. 
"Do southerners really like fried chicken?" they queried me. 
I got a tiny taste of what Black folks went through, still go through, but of course not the same. Not the same at all. 
I did give the shirt to that boyfriend and I am still rather shocked and very embarrassed to realize that he gave it to his new girlfriend. 
I swear to god. He did. 
Well. That was a story. 

Anyway, my needlework skills are diminishing by the moment. My hands go numb, especially the left one which is forever fucked due to breaking it by falling off a roof while trying to reroof a garage when I was seventeen with that same boyfriend. 
Sigh. 
And I look up different videos of stitches that would work for an interesting hem-trim and I'm just not capable of following them very well. These are just videos of people doing the stitches, not actually instructing you on how to do the stitches and y'all- my brain function is dimishing. That's all there is to it. 
So I thread my needle, which is an entire process in and of itself, and I attempt to copy the stitch I've decided to use and okay, it looks fine here and there but there are also places where it looks like an insane and inept four-year old took over and I just hate this. 
But it is what it is. 
So I worked on that for some time today, not even watching "The Bear" because that is too distracting, but sitting on the back porch where the light is very good and this is going to reach a point where I have to just say say, "Good enough!" 
I remember back in the eighties when ripped and cut t-shirts were all the thing and my friend Julianne and I would dye white t-shirts and then cut them up and tie them in very interesting and varied ways. We joked about starting a business, and calling it "Tough Titties." That was mainly because you couldn't really wear a bra with these creations of ours and also because we loved the phrase "tough titties" and I still do. Titties are why our species has survived and why we are called mammals. 

And there you go. 

I'm making a soup from the bones and what meat was left on them from the roast chicken I made last week. We had a meal of it just out of the oven and then another meal of chicken enchiladas made from some of the meat and tonight we're having the soup. I've made another loaf of bread, this one all about the protein with no real regard to the fiber. Greek yogurt and eggs, flour, yeast, and a little honey. Salt. Water. 
We shall return to our regularly scheduled baking very soon. But for now- what the hell? 

Spicebush Swallowtail if you believe google. 

Love...Ms. Moon

Trying

This partially opened pumpkin blossom reminds me of a witch's hand, grasping at something with her skinny, wrinkled fingers, her long, sharp nails. What is she trying to hold on to? I imagine the shoulder of a child in the dark woods, lost and afraid. I see time, fleeing so swiftly as it does in our aging years, the witchy hand attempting to hold on to it, to stop it from escaping entirely. 

Here's what else I see- I see myself on a bad day, attempting to fold in on myself, to protect myself from whatever the hell it is I think I need protection from. I can see the way I try to present as dangerous and sharp when really, I am just afraid. Or maybe sad. Or perhaps tired. 

Then again I see that flower simply as a sign we need rain. 
I don't know. 
The older I get, the more I know that I do not know much. Not much at all. 

I spent some time in the garden today. There's very little to pick except for Tabasco peppers which are still growing like crazy. The bush is getting close to being as tall as I am and it reminds me of a Christmas tree whose lights are almost but not quite, lined up neatly. 

Their tiny blooms keep their heads down, quite literally, not raising them to the sun but facing the ground, as if they are too shy to show their faces. 
I held this one up to take its picture. 

It was good for me to just be in the garden. To slow down and look carefully enough to see those tiny flowers, to stand in front of the basil and concentrate on the constant blur of bees, darting from bloom to bloom, stopping barely long enough to capture the images with my eyes, much less my camera.

I am not good at that. Not the iPhone's fault, my own inability to coordinate eyes and hands. 

It looked like something had been dragged through the ground where the peas had been planted, the mulch disturbed in what were almost ruts. I asked Glen to go and look and see what he thought and he said it was an armadillo, looking for worms under that mulch. 
Aha. Of course. Armadillos are like tanks, heavy and clumsy, uncaring about leaving the signs of their snuffling and digging. 
Have you ever seen one? They are prehistoric looking. Here's a picture of one that I grabbed off the internet. 

Armored mammals. They nurse their young. That cannot be easy. They are not pretty and they can do a lot of damage. They, like so many things around here, are invasive, having traveled from South America to here over the course of many, many years. I am not sure about this but I think and believe that their main threat is cars. The odds of seeing a dead armadillo on the road are about five hundred times greater than seeing one waddling around the yard. I made up that fact but again, I believe it's true. They sleep mostly in the daytime in the burrows they make. Around here they are often referred to as "possums on the half-shell." 
Until around 12,000 years ago, there were armadillos the size of Volkswagens. I think I would die if I saw one that big. 

I seriously did not set out here to write about armadillos. 

Anyway, I'm glad I spent that time in the garden. It soothed me. 

It was the day to water the porch plants and so I did that. I've mentioned the fact that I need to get some of my plants into bigger pots and since Mr. Moon wasn't here to help me with the giant pots on the swing porch, I did a hermit crab shell swap sort of thing with plants and pots instead of crabs and shells. If you don't know what I'm talking about, here's an explanation. As applies to hermit crabs, not plants but same idea. 

I have posted this video at least two other times but hey! It's extremely cool. 

I had four plants I wanted to transplant into roomier pots and that involved a fairly complex process which was hot and tiring and not easy.
I pulled a very dead-looking plant out of a pot on the front porch and because I don't like to give up on a plant without giving it every chance in the world to come back, I planted it directly into the dirt of the kitchen bed, thus freeing up the pot which is an extremely heavy pot and so I had to use the garden cart to haul it and to get the cart where it needed to be for me to put the pot in it I had to trim some sego (murder) palm fronds and so that was a little process. Then I dug out a hydrangea I've had in a pot under the wisteria arbor for years which is just barely making it and has certainly never bloomed there. And of course I replanted that with the other hydrangea and watered all of them. So I had two pots at that point. 

I transplanted a sage plant into a pot that already had oregano in it because...why not? 
Three pots. As for the fourth- I took out a giant begonia rootling that wasn't doing much at all and stuck it in with another giant begonia which is...giant. 
 
And so I finally accomplished what I'd set out to do. 

The Cuban oregano I bought last week. 

My pineapple plant which I started from a pineapple top that had been in a too-small pot that then got broken anyway. It looks about six times bigger now in that one. 

Part of the kalancho that had gotten way out of hand. Don't worry. It won't look like that for long. I cut the long stem into three separate pieces and stuck all the pieces in the dirt. I have a strong feeling all three stem parts will be standing to attention in a short while. 
And what went in the fourth pot? 
A very small piece of a jade plant that I've been keeping alive and not much more in the laundry room for way too long. It needed to get outside in more sun and now it is. 

I did what I could to improve my mood, to lift my spirits. I spent time in the garden, I got a lot of dirt under my fingernails. I planted, I trimmed, I watered. I made executive decisions about things like digging up pinecone lilies to make more room in the kitchen bed. I did not overthink my decision. Mainly because I have a million pinecone lilies.
I took the garbage to the dump. 
I discovered that crows do not care in the least for raisins. 
Oh well. More for me. 

I grieved Dolly Parton some more and did a lot of pondering on why she was so universally loved, how she got so much accomplished, and how she managed to seemingly perform at least once with every musician in the world with joy and respect and perfect make-up and nails.  
I wished for rain. We did not get any. 

I used my wrinkled fingers to grab onto what I could and at the same time, tried to release what I should. 

This is life. 

Love...Ms. Moon