Here it is! My outdoor bedroom. Jenica and I laughed a lot every time we looked at it--it's so big. She teases me that it's bigger than my indoor bedroom. Just about, just about.

This is one pot of pansies I planted. I have it on a birdbath pedestal in my shade garden. Right now it needs to dry out: we had incredible thunderstorms yesterday, with pea-sized hail. Some of my still-tender seedlings suffered pretty bad damage because I left them out to fend for themselves. Turned out that wasn't a good idea. The baby asters may not recover and one of the tiny tomatoes got broken off altogether. Even though I think it's time for these plants to grow up, they've just not had enough sunlight to grow much. 16 straight days of rain will do that to a seedling, I guess.

These are the last of the daffodils. I forget what they're called--"Ice" something. They're very delicate.


This is a cute little hummingbird feeder I found somewhere. I think the hummers are eating from it, though I've never witnessed it--the level of the liquid is dropping. I keep the screen door open so the dogs can go in and out, which they really love doing. Unfortunately it means the hummers fly into the house a lot, too. 4 times during the weekend this happened, and twice Tess got to the birds before I could catch them and release them outside. She's not as gentle as I am and she killed them both. The ones she killed were both males, which worried me. I was afraid there were no more males left around the house, but there is at least one more left. The 2 females who flew into the house were chirping mad when I caught them and freed them, but at least they lived to tell the tale.

Back in the saddle
Back at work, after my relaxing but not very productive hiatus. I had a grand time but was really only productive with Jenica. The rest of the time I spent reading, sitting on my deck, napping, fussing with my plants and visiting with my friends. Did not get home projects even started, much less completed. Oh well, Jenica and I accomplished three majorly important things: bought and installed a new screen door (this involved driving to the place, transporting the door in her CRV, sawing 2" off the bottom of the door so it would fit in my doorway, putting hinges, handle and 2 sets of eyes & hooks--but, SUCCESS!), opened boat house (and sat on b.h. porch for extended periods of time), and--really grand, erected my screened gazebo cum outdoor bedroom. This is way cool and I never, ever would have been able to do this without Jenica's amazing brain. I lost/threw away the instructions for putting it up, and it had a bunch of poles that needed to be put together, some plastic corners to join the poles together and the sides & roof. She puzzled over it for a while and voila! it all came together. What a grand structure it is.

I got to spend a lot of time with Linda and Erdvilas, including a nice visit with Linda alone yesterday morning when she came to use my phone. We had a nice, honest and open talk about our weight and general health, and I got to tell her how much she means to all of us. And how fat I am, so I made myself confront that yet again. All that aside we had a nice time. I had dinner with them, along with Bill on Monday night, then just me again last night. Nice times. Last night after dinner I stopped in to see the women from Baltimore and had a very nice late night visit with them. Their cabin is in a really wonderful spot, tucked away at the edge of a field in the woods. Very peaceful and isolated. They are fine and Tess behaved admirably while we were there, 3 adults and 2 dogs in a very small space. She also behaved well at Linda's, not fussing with the 3 pugs at all. She's matured quite a bit in the last year: in previous years she's nattered a lot at those poor little pugs.

Now I'm at work and--get this--my director is asking me to do things, assigning tasks. She's got nerve!

Visualize I'm at home today, the beginning of my 6 days off. It's sunny and beautiful, a real banner Adirondack day. The black flies are pleased, too. They're getting worse as the hours go by. I sat on the deck this morning, reading and drinking coffee: hog heaven. No bugs because it was cool and windy. It really doesn't get much better (except for sitting on the dock, of course). I got to spend a couple of hours doing that, then I made myself be productive, but in ways I wanted to. Got everything ready to start planting stuff. Planted my pansies, 2 sets, planted my grape tomatoes--only 2 plants, still have 2 more to plant, planted my N.G. impatients and got out my pots and started organizing all the little planties in prep. for their final planting. YAHOO! I love this part of the process, though I agonize over who will go with whom in which pot. I didn't dig in the ground, which really stirs up the bugs. By the time I finished gardening the bugs were pretty annoying. Tomorrow it's supposed to rain so I might dig then, plus do some indoor work. I don't seem to be able to use my Enter key with this set up so this will be a paragraph-less entry. I'll have Jenica work on this when she comes this weekend. This is my new laptop, with a dial-up connection from home. Yuck. It is what it is. The hummingbirds are busy and hungry. They've sucked out more than half of the sugar water I put in the feeder day before yesterday. There are at least 2 pairs and they are very territorial and aggressive, as usual. Dogs had a great day but are pooped right now, sleeping soundly. Chances is snoring softly in the cage, Tess in her favorite spot with her head on the threshold, half in, half out. Me, I'm in the best of all spots, watching tv and blogging, enjoying my fish and dogs. Life can be pretty sweet. I need to clean my bathroom and vacuum my rugs, wrap Linda's presents. But the great thing is that I have tomorrow to do that stuff, then I have days and days after that to do things as well. I don't go back to work until next Wednesday. Let's hear it for me!

This is what my lawn looks like when it has been mowed. I am thrilled to have been able to mow it las night. Cold enough to keep the bugs at bay, just dry enough to mow. I used Lin's 6 hp, self propelled mower, which tells you where you'll mow next and barely accepts hints of which direction you might want to go in. It took 1/3 the time it takes me with my mower--just half an hour, and I used my inhaler before mowing so my asthma was minimal. Man am I cool! The dogs waited patiently on the deck and did not run away. They hate the mower but are more mature (apparently) this year so did not disappear as they have in the past while I mowed. The whole thing was practically spiritual.


Ahhhhh.



And there is my house, looking proud in its spring glory. It will look better when I dig the gardens and plant the plants and containers, but for now, considering how much effort I've put into the outside it doesn't look bad. Not much going on in the world of wildflowers, there's been no sun and it's been cold. I'm expecting an explosion in the woods in the next few days, when it warms up and the sun comes out.

I was productive last night, did my laundry at the 'mat. 4 big loads. While it was washing I went to Pray's, the local wonder market where they have great produce and lots of plants. Their annuals tend to be very ordinary, with a few great things tucked in. I bought some stuff--snapdragons, white browallia, scarlet verbena and two deep red New Guinea impatiens for my shade garden. I'm too predictable, but did not buy the portulaca, which is what I have always put in the crock next to the stairs. I planned to put something completely different in that this year, but can't remember what it was. Perhaps it will come to me. Pray's portulaca was incredible. Their plants were cheaper, too. They had ugly petunias, though, so it's back to Lamoy's for those.

I also bought banana chips and chocolate covered raisins at Pray's. I ate too many of them all the way home. Yuck. This morning I tucked the dogs in and was taking plants out of the trunk and heard a thunk! in the house. I went back inside and found Chances, who had pulled the jacket I wore last night off the chair it was hanging on, with her nose in the pocket ferreting out one chocolate covered raisin. It's really too bad that dog has vision problems, she has a great nose and could be a great bird dog. Or maybe she could be used to sniff contraband food at airports.

Long meeting with automated/ing libraries this morning. These meetings sometimes go on for a long time. It's my opportunity to try to educate them in the importance of continuity when it comes to MARC records, format, etc. Nothing I seem to say sticks, though, plus the people who come to the meetings don't seem to be the people who input the crappy information. duh.

And it's my last day at work until next Wednesday. How did I get so lucky? Using up time I don't really have, but I have such a craving for time off, in my house, in my yard, cleaning, planting, digging, hanging out. Jenica is coming Saturday, and we haven't seen each other since summer. That's a very long time. My dogs will love seeing her--they absolutely adore her. I haven't told them she's coming, but when I say JENICA, Tess perks up her ears and looks around.

And now I'll entertain myself for an hour and a half until the meeting starts.

Lilacs
This is one of the biggest patches of lilac bushes I've ever seen in my life. There's a patch that's slightly bigger on Route 3, on my way to work in Saranac, but this patch in Wilmington (on the Bonnieview Road) is really magnificent. I love lilacs and don't have any on my property. I'm not sure I'd want something quite this grandiose--they hide the house for 5 months of the year, but maybe a few well-placed bushes would be nice. My grandmother had some special white French lilacs at the house in AuSable Forks and those bushes, though not thriving are still alive.

She wouldn't be pleased if she saw the grounds of that house today.

My mother was on national television last night. Her segment of Antiques Roadshow was on. There I was, in my living room, watching away while all these Rhode Islanders displayed their treasures and suddenly there was my mother nodding politely and talking about her mother and her grandmother and listening intently to what the nice man was saying about her piece of curly maple furniture. It was great. My friend Linda called me from Ann Arbor the minute it ended and said "I saw Liza on television!" Isn't it great to have people recognize your family like that? It was fun. Linda and I had a long conversation. I really miss her during the year and am looking forward to having her here. She'll be here for a week, starting Saturday. The women from Balto come Saturday as well, but they leave Thursday. Busy times in Hawkeye.

Raining again today, cold and miserable. I took Thursday off because the local meterologists promised sunshine. NOAA, however, says perhaps not. The long range forecast looks like a bad dream--a long bad dream.

I continue to monitor Barbaro the race horse's progress. So far he's doing well but it's still very uncertain whether he will survive or not. The owners have some old race horses on their farm that were never any good at the track but they kept them anyway, saying "We are their keepers," so I feel good that if this horse survives they will take good care of him, even if they can't use him for stud. He is nickering at the mares in the vet hospital where he is now. I love it when horses nicker, it's an incredibly sweet sound.

I bid on a tent on eBay but lost by $2.50. My maximum bid was $100, so at least the person outbidding me had to spend more than he wanted to (his initial bid was $25.00). I looked at a bunch of other tents like the one I didn't get and they all cost $95 plus $25 shipping, then I decided I would try putting up my screened gazebo on my deck with a sheet on the deck for a floor. We'll see how many bugs get in. I just want a screened-in place to sleep outside and I can't afford to build a screen porch. I bought a screen gazebo several years ago for $30 and have never, ever put it up. This must be the year it was meant to happen. If it ever warms up and stops raining.

Hay is for horses
Lin and I met for dinner Friday night and I got there early so I went to the pasture where there used to be mustangs rescued from the West. Instead of mustangs I found a small herd of beautiful draft horses, 2 foals, 2 mares and a stallion. It was raining and they were grazing pretty peacefully. First they ignored me, then I clucked at them and they sauntered over to me (picked up the pace when the foals showed some interest). This is the head of the stallion: he was huge. Once it became obvious that I had nothing to offer them they got bored with me and all I saw was a bunch of horse butts. I love the tails of draft horses, just these little swishy things. Why do draft horses have shorter tails? So they won't get tangled in the harnesses ("the works")? Anyway, these were neat horses. I love horses.

Saturday was the Preakness. I'd forgotten all about it. I hate to watch horse racing because it's cruel--they race these horses at far too young an age, their bodies are not mature enough for the work they make them do. I loved the Derby winner, Barbaro--had picked him during the post parade to win. Switched the channel at 6 to watch the news, and there was the post parade for the Preakness, so I decided to watch, finger on the OFF switch in case anything went wrong. Well, something went terribly wrong. First, Barbaro, while in the gate, in his hysteria heard something he mistook for the starting bell and bolted out of the gate in a false start. I empathized with him and felt horrible. Then, 15 strides into the race he broke 2 bones in his hind leg and was pulled from the race. I switched off the race immediately and started to cry. I cried hard for a long time. Does this mean I'm unstable? Or just that I really hate to see animals used so inappropriately by humans. These are spectacular animals, really beautiful, but they've been so overbred and their legs are so thin and bones so brittle, not even fully formed yet. Anyway, now the horse's life hangs by a thread after 5 hours of surgery to repair bones that were broken in 20 places. It's an awful story and this is a wonderful horse. But still I eat meat. So what does that make me? A hypocrite?

And yesterday my book club met. We had a great time. Everyone liked the book--Families and other accidents by I forget who. Male characters, which led to a really good discussion. Martha had to leave first, but the rest of us stayed for some intense "what's going on with you" conversation. Much talk about tragedies in our lives, which is comforting but certainly painful for all of us to talk about and listen to. The sun actually came out and I had great plans to mow my lawn when I got home. It was 7 when I got there, however, so instead I watched the interview with Princes Charles, Harry and William, then glided right into tv oblivion for the rest of the night. It was a cold night, 37 when I went to bed and 34 when I got up this morning. Snowing, just small flakes and spitting them just to be angry. This weather is not to be believed. 11 straight days of rain. 911 hours of sunshine out of a possible 9000 for the month so far. The sun is supposed to show up on Thursday so I've asked for the day off. If successful, I will have 6 days in a row off and I will be thrilled beyond belief.

I went to the cemetery last week. Checked on everyone. The bulbs Jenica planted around my brother's grave had come up but I missed their blooming. Crocuses and narcissus.



My grandparents had a nice patch of violets in front of their grave. I talked to my mother on Saturday and we agreed these are probably from the plants she put on my father's grave many, many years ago--they migrated. There are just a couple of plants now on my father's grave.

Each Memorial Day someone from town puts American flags on all the veterans' graves. I used to know the man who did this, but he died. It's nice that someone else has taken it over. Got a head start on it this year, too. My father's stone needs to be scrubbed. There's a lot of mud on it right now. He has just a few lilies of the valley left--there used to be a big bunch that my mother planted. This gravesite needs some attention.

My back pages
I left work early yesterday, did my grocery shopping, then took the back roads home. I went through the town of Peru, a farming community where we first lived, in 1984 and 1985 when I moved here. On the way to that house I drove past this sign:




I wonder if I should just give up and buy my fish from these people. I laughed when I saw the sign.

















The little house in the center of the picture is where we lived. We rented it for 2 years. The bigger house with the huge barn behind it belonged to a wonderful farmer who adored us. He is one of the nicest people I've ever met. When we lived there he had fewer than a hundred head of Holsteins he milked. Now I see he's got a gazillion and a huge new barn. He retired and was thrilled, but the person he had running the farm for him left so he had to go back into the business and was really upset. He's in his 60's now. It was from him that I learned exactly what a hard life farming is. One year he had 2 piglets who were incredibly cute and used to run back & forth among the stanchions while the cows were milking, as if they were playing tag. One of the neighbors had a really sweet Jersey cow who used to come visit and hang out at Jim's farm. She was an incredibly sweet and personable cow. Jim was very sad when we moved out. We liked living there but the house was really close to the road. Jim used to ride by on his tractor, look into our living room window and wave at us as we watched tv. We had a chicken coop with a red heat lamp on in the winter--it looked just like a little manger, down there in the hollow.



This place is called Frog Hollow. It's very pretty. Just up the hill from here is where the man who bought the "works" (the sawmill itself) that was our sawmill has it set up. He bought it from the bank: once Jamie left, of course the dork who bought it from us had no one who could saw so it went belly up and the bank took it over. A sad end to a sad endeavor. Which I ended up paying $13,000 for.



The sun was shining when I left Plattsburgh, but it was raining by the time I got home. Oh well. The birds were singing. My summer birds are back: the oven bird, who says teacherteacherteacher and builds a nest on the ground; the black-throated blue warbler (sounds like a made up name), which has a multi-syllabic and nice song; the white-throated sparrow, who's been around for a long time now. No sign of the hummingbirds yet but I have to put the feeder out this weekend.

The other event of note when I got home was that the pump was running AGAIN and no water came out of the faucet. Well was dry. I don't know if it's a pump thing or if my shower used up all the water in the morning. I shut everything off and used up the 4 gallons I had stashed. This morning I turned the pump on, flushed the toilet, washed my face & brushed my teeth all without incident. Then I shut the pump breaker off and skipped off to work. Stopped at the dump on my way, stopped at the bank, stopped twice for coffee, since it's a 9-5 day. Here I am, having accomplished absolutely nothing at all. I want to escape to the comfort of cataloging all day but must meet with my minions to discuss their goals. How do I tactful explain that "work with correctional facility librarians" is not a goal, but rather is her actual job? She is not one who will take this well. But that's what they pay me the big bucks for, to face the wrath.

Oh, and guess what? It's raining.

And we're just waiting for something to do
This is my new wood. I can't start stacking it until a few things happen: it stops raining, my old rotten box spring disappears from my wood shed so I can move the leftover wood from this year into the shed, and the bugs become bearable so I can work outside long enough to stack it. These are factors that must be met simultaneously, like having the planets line up perfectly. I can always think of obstacles when it comes to stacking firewood. I've never had to stack 6 cords at once before, I've always bought 4 cords at a time. This year I'll buy 12 cords, so I have to get this load stacked pretty quickly because the second load will need time to dry before temps settle below freezing. Once the temperature stays below 32 the sap freezes in the wood and it no longer dries. Or so I've been told.

I had a conversation with the dogs this morning at 6:15. I told them I'd like to stay in bed until 7 but that I had to get up because someone in the house has to have a job to make money to buy dog food, dog biscuits and Nylabones. Tess said she could work at Stewarts, the regional convenience store chain (one in every town of note--famous for their good ice cream, cheap gas and bad coffee). I agreed, she would be great with the customers and could run a cash register. As for Chances, we agreed that piecework was about all she could do, given her visual disability. Or she could sweep up hair at a beauty parlor. Then I really had to get up and let them out. It was pouring ran and they came in all wet and smelly and rubbed against me and the couch. My couch smells really bad and needs to be washed with my carpet steamer but it's not dry enough outside for it to dry inside. NOTHING CAN GET DONE UNTIL IT STOPS RAINING and it just won't stop raining. Now I guess it's supposed to rain until Monday.

I got a tax refund from NY State yesterday. I thought it would be a refund for my 2005 taxes, about $150. Noooo, it was for 2004, which I filed in April 2005, having filed an extension on in 2004. I paid $250, they refunded $500 to me yesterday. They refigured my taxes and did something really strange which I think is wrong but all they send you is a listing of what lines they changed, no rationale for the changes. Argue with the government? Has never made sense to me. What to do with my newfound riches is the question. I should either put it in a savings account or get the front bumper of the car fixed or replace the 2 seatbelts in the back seat that new Stewarts employee Tess chewed. I can only make one of the repairs to the car with the money: each of those things will cost $500. I also want to buy a tent of some sort to sleep in this summer in my yard. This sounds like a very strange thing, but there are a lot of nights when it's just really, really nice at my house--warm and still, and I want to sleep outside. I don't have a screened-in porch, so I want to get a tent of some sort, one with a floor that I can sleep in. Sometimes I think I am turning into a very strange person, that eccentric woman who lives on the hill with her dogs and plants. But as long as I continue to have relatively normal human contact I think I'll be ok.

I had dinner with Ken last night at the Redford Diner (I'm debating whether that qualifies as normal human contact--you should see the tattooed waitress). I had a tasty cheeseburger and he had a hot pork sandwich with the most vile looking gravy I've ever seen. They served the World's Worst Cole Slaw, a huge disappointment. Cole slaw is one of my favorite foods, and usually diner cole slaw is wonderful. This cole slaw was pink, however, and was mostly tangy mayonnaise with tiny bits of cabbage. Oh it was awful. We both ended up dumping our cole slaw into the doggie box I took home to the chocolates. They loved it: pronounced it the World's Best Cole Slaw.

I just got back a bunch of stuff from one of the member libraries with notes written all over it explaining why the MARC records I did or did not provide are wrong. A two volume copy of The complete Sherlock Holmes should have 2 separate records? No, I don't think so--any more than a 32-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica should have 32 records. But I will examine each record and each note to see if her comments have merit, then I will humble myself and kiss her member library director ass. It's raining, I have a sinus headache and I have to leave early to get to the AuSable Forks post office to pick up my plants because they weren't delivered to the right address. But I think I'll make an afternoon of it, get some money and go grocery shopping with reckless abandon. That will give me time tomorrow after work to buy a new fish. Mrs. Guppy died. I think Mr. Guppy hounded her to death. Or she died because of a difficult pregnancy (they're live-bearers). Or she was a geriatric fish. Everyone else is perfectly healthy, including Mr. Guppy, who mourned for a night but is now perky and looking for someone else to focus his romantic attention on. I don't think I'll get another guppy, I'll get a danio to keep cute little single danio company. But first I must get a disguise to wear so the fish salespeople won't recognize me. She was actually still covered under warranty, but I can't be bothered to collect $1.29. Maybe I should investigate fish life insurance.

Your Political Profile:

Overall: 10% Conservative, 90% Liberal

Social Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Personal Responsibility: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

Fiscal Issues: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Ethics: 0% Conservative, 100% Liberal

Defense and Crime: 25% Conservative, 75% Liberal

How Liberal Or Conservative Are You?

Where did the conservatism come from? Defense and crime? Huh? That's pretty scary, I'd better take another look at the questions. I have to say I'm pretty disappointed in the answers here, I thought I was pretty liberal about defense and crime, and I don't really believe in any kind of responsibilty so that's a shocking answer. sigh I guess this all comes with age.

Ladies, start your engines
I stopped at Lamoys last night and spent up a storm. I got a medical reimbursement check and was sure all the good plants would be gone soon so I rushed right over there and spent $50 on annuals (and $2.29 on 4 grape tomato plants). Some years I have tried to limit my spending--one year I said I wouldn't spend more than $100 on plants and it almost worked. I think I've spent that much so far and have barely started. Next to shoes, garden plants are my big vice. Who can resist the little darlings? There they sit in their new home, ready to go into the ground or into their lovely pots with their new neighbors.

Things are getting back to normal at my house. When I got home Friday night, after stopping at Ken's my pump was running--a very bad sign. I knew what it meant but had to turn on the faucet anyway, hoping against hope. Of course no water came out because the well had run dry. I don't know how long the pump had been running but I'm lucky it didn't burn out. I shut the pump off and didn't use any water until Saturday afternoon. My well and I are very well acquainted, and it's been a wet enough spring so I was confident there would be water in it and of course I was right. Now there's water for flushing, doing dishes and showering, but I went to the laundromat Monday night and washed 3 loads. It's not bad when you only have to wash, that only takes 25 minutes or so.

I tried a new laundromat--a few years ago I was going to one regularly and had one I really liked, they had a couch and tv set up just for me--no one else used the room. Bill suggested I try this one, but he drops his clothes off there and has the woman do his laundry for him. I marched in with my overloaded basket, looked at the machines and said, "How much does it cost to do a load?" She sized me up and said, "Those are dryers." Huh. She pointed at the washers, at the other end of the room. OK, OK, it's been a while and I thought they were front end loaders. I explained to her that, in spite of all this rain my well still ran dry. That made her sympathetic but I'm sure she still thought I was dumber than a box of hair. I asked if there were a place to sit and wait and she pointed to 2 folding chairs and a card table. Not what I had in mind, but I read for longer than it took for my clothes to wash. The really nice thing about that place is that there was no one else in there.

I only stood on my deck for a few minutes last night and the black flies were thick and hungry. Good, let's get this over with! I doubt they'll be gone completely by next weekend (Memorial Day), but if we could at least get started with black fly season we could move on.

Work is really slow right now. I guess I should be working on the collection development policy. Or more important, my goals for 2006, one of which is to work on the collection development policy. And I should finish weeding the holiday collection and start the professional collection. Another goal. I'm on hiatus from anything more serious than cataloging, I don't have the energy.

It's been raining since Thursday and is supposed to rain through at least Saturday. I should be pleased--my sump pump is running and my well must be filling, but I'm really sick of this. By the time I'll be able to mow my lawn it will be knee high and the bugs will be as thick as ticks on a sow. Complain complain complain. And my director just told me I should be adding the awards field to records for Pulitzer Prize winners, Newberry & Caldecott winners, and any other winners I come across. GIVE ME A BREAK! I told her the sys admin doesn't display those fields in our public access catalog and she told me "You're the cataloger, you tell her which fields to display." AS IF!!! This should be interesting. The admin doesn't think any 500 (descriptive) fields should show because "that's just too much information for the public and it confuses them." Silly me I continue to add those fields to the records, believing in what I do. Maybe it's time to call those chickens in to roost.

For now I'll just stare out my window (which faces the brick wall of the public library next door) into the gloom and rain and dream of dirt.

Every day I drive past a deer farm. Sometimes months will go by before I see any deer. Last night lo and behold there were a bunch of them, fawns and does, with one buck hiding in the woods. They also have little white deer, which I think are fallow deer but I'm not sure. Of course these deer are raised for their meat, but at least they have a nice life. For now we don't have to worry about Chronic Wasting Disease, but I'm sure it will get here sometime, like avian flu. For now I'll just enjoy the deer--they're very pretty and graceful.

The tamarack leaves are coming along. They're a really pretty color, and they're getting bigger and bushier. This is my leaning tree, which is now tied to another tree in an attempt to straighten it out. I'll have to talk to Ralph about how long it has to be tied up for.

You have to admire a tree that wants to grow so badly that it does this. How did it know, when it first started growing from a seed that there was a way out from under the step? How did it survive in the darkness until it was tall enough to reach the light between the steps. Sadly, I will have to cut it down. I feel like George Bush calling out the National Guard, all because the poor cherry tree is in the wrong place.

This is what the cherry blossoms look like. Not as spectacular as the ones in Washington, but ours are pretty nevertheless. From a distance it's hard to tell the shad from the cherry, but up close they're very different.

Take me to the river
My drive to work takes me along the Saranac River, first along the east branch, then across the bridge in Clayburg at the confluence of the east and west branches, then along the river to Cadyville, where the river goes one way and the road goes another. Every few years when we were kids we would take a canoe trip down the Saranac. It was a big dramatic event involving my 80-90 year old grandfather (we must have done it for 10 years). We used our wood and canvas canoes, which weighed a ton. My grandfather's man-servant (jack of all trades: butler, chauffeur, carpenter, gardener, etc.) would load the canoes in his truck, on the cars, wherever, and we'd have two cars--one at the beginning of the trip and one at the end. We'd paddle merrily downstream, stopping for a picnic lunch along the way. I can remember spots where the river was so shallow we couldn't really paddle. We never hit rapids, my grandfather knew exactly the part of the river we could travel. So there we'd go, the same place over & over. But for a kid it was an adventure. The river is brown and not very clear, and we were used to the crystal clear water of Silver Lake. It was sort of a shock to me that water could be like that.

The last time I took that trip I was just out of college, so that was 30 years ago. We went with my cousin that I can't stand, the man who became my husband, my mother and my father, and my red haired cousin (who was in my canoe and didn't want to paddle). It was pretty much as I remembered it, but there were a lot of cows along the way that I didn't remember from my youth. In between that trip and the trips of my youth I had done canoeing in the Midwest, where the rivers are much wider and in some ways prettier; and in Connecticut, where there's whitewater. The Saranac seemed rather dull.

This is the view from the doorway where I usually get my coffee in the morning. Once the trees have all of their leaves the river won't be quite as visible, but I get to see it all winter. This morning someone had made a mess at the coffee counter (it's self-serve) and I reported that (tattle tale) to the woman when I paid. "Must have been one of those men," is of course what she said. I have to admit I thought the same thing. Our culture will never change its attitudes or behavior as long as we keep projecting and having the same expectations. Of course, as long as people keep behaving the same, our culture will remain the same, no?
Anyway, this is the river in Redford.

This section of the river is flat and lazy, like the rivers in the Midwest. There are often really good reflections. The autumn reflections are really magnificent because the colors are wonderful. This is just before we hit the last leg of the journey, Route 374, which is a fast and straight road, built more recently (only 40 years ago) as a more direct route to Plattsburgh. It's also called the Cadyville Expressway, which is really funny.
Aren't these spring colors amazing? They get greener and brighter as you get into the Champlain Valley, which is at least half a gardening zone warmer than I am at Silver Lake. This is truly Obscene Green.

Driving conditions
It's nice to drive around these days because there are things in bloom and the woods are greening up incredibly fast. The shad trees are in bloom, but the rain of this weekend knocked nearly all the petals off of the trees around my house. The ground is littered with little white petals, as if we had a wedding and the bride and groom walked down the road. When we were growing up my father used to use Latin names for some (many) plants. He really liked shad trees. "Look children, amalachia canendensis." I say that to myself when I see shad in bloom and it makes me smile. Shad are good trees to have--they're pretty in the spring when they bloom, then they have these great berries that the birds really like. Along the lake shore there are shad and cedar waxwings congregate in them, chirping and flitting the way they do as they eat the berreis.

I like knowing the generic names of flowers, and I owe a debt of gratitude to my father for this. It's pretty queer, though, when everyone else knows that it's called columbine and I only know it as aquilegia.

The yellow flowers are marsh marigolds. They grow along the roadside, in wet spots, sometimes right in the water. They're really pretty and are a definite sign of spring. They are really, really bright and sometimes you'll see a huge patch of them.

Flowers flowers everywhere
I went for a nature walk last night and was really surprised by how much has bloomed since I last went out. It's rained for the last 4 days and I guess that's really influenced the calendar of wildflowers. This is a puddle rimmed by pine pollen. The pine pollen doesn't usually come out until later in the month or early June. Pine pollen is a fine yellow powder that's kind of greasy and hard to clean up that gets on everything--your car, your deck, your house. It doesn't usually come out until after Memorial Day, so if we open camp Mem. Day weekend all the furniture on the porches gets covered with it and your sinuses get really irritated when you sit down on it.

This looks like a puddle that's been polluted by something, doesn't it. It's funny to me when things that are completely natural look as if humankind has made the mess. Once there was a picture of Silver Lake in the publication of NY State's Dept. of Environmental Conservation, a color aerial photo that showed a huge amount of brown foam where the creek on my land flowed into the lake. The creek is full of tannic acid because it runs near the bog (the campers called it Coca Cola Creek when they were in camp). The caption beneath the photo said the foam was evidence of pollution caused by man. They had to run a retraction in the next issue

These are violets that grow wild in the field next to Ken and Bill's camp (it's really Bill's camp--Ken gave it to him several years ago, but we all think of it as Ken's). There used to be this huge patch of purple when the violets were more prolific, but they seem to have calmed down a lot and the patch is now much smaller. There was a small patch of the tiniest white violets next to these, but the flowers were so small I couldn't really get a good picture of them. Most people don't like violets in their lawns, they think of them as weeds. I can understand that, but we had fun with violets when we were little girls, tying them into chains and wearing them like jewelry. We did that with clover too. I think we did that with just about any kind of blossom we could find that we were allowed to pick.

I was really surprised to see trillium in the woods, it seems early for them. I found painted trillium (the white ones, with reddish-purple in the center), which are really common where I live, and a purple one, less common but still around where I live. The purple ones are also called Purple Benjamin or Stinking Benjamin. I've never stuck my nose in them to see what they smell like. Some springs there are huge patches of trillum, but it's so wet right now I'm not sure what effect that will have on them. They move around a lot so you never know where they'll show up--there will be a big patch in one place one year and it'll be bare of them the next year.
One time I was driving home from Canton (near where Jenica lives) in the spring and I took a back road for variety and came across a patch in the woods that was white trillium, all white, and stretched into the woods as far as the eye could see. It was really magical. You see huge patches like that along Route 81 going towards Syracuse, too.

These trilliums (trillia?) have company. The one on top is next to an Indian cucumber (on the right, a two-tiered, very fancy looking plant), though it's a very blurry shot. Supposedly the root of this plant is edible, hence the name. The one on bottom is next to a wild oats plant (on the right, a droopy looking thing).

This is how the Holts' house looks now. The cellar walls have been poured. One of the things Rush is insistent upon having is a silo-type feature that he can have a place to sit in and look out over the lake, mountains, etc. You can sort of see it in this picture, on the lake side of the foundation to the right a little. I think it has six sides and it's on the lake side of the building, sticking out just a little. It will be pretty cool when it's done.

In the Rogers family, as well as the Silver Lake community (and lots of others) you commemorate an experience by writing or drawing on this type of fungus, which grows on dead or dying trees. Some people do very intricate designs or pictures. My friend Linda has some beautiful pictures on her fungi. I'm very poor at this and have a collection in my house that's very similar to this one. Sometimes when I look them all over I can remember the walk, the evening, the afternoon when I found them, other times I have no real recollection of the time. Maybe, because I took so many pictures this time I'll remember the evening's stroll.

The spiritual
I'm listening to non-fiction now, which is atypical. It's about a woman who spends a year traveling after her divorce, looking for who knows what, spending time in Rome, India (at an ashram) and is now in Bali finding the meaning of life with a medicine man who 2 years prior told her to return to him but when she returned of course he didn't remember her at all. Anyway, this morning's quote was "Happiness is the consequence of personal effort." I thought about this for a long time, especially after an experience I had Wednesday night.

Wednesday night when I got home from dinner with Ken I realized that there was no sound around my house except for the birds--mainly white-throated sparrows, which have a long, drawn-out and beautiful song, one busy woodcock, and the spring peepers (tree frogs) not far from me in the bog. There are just the tiny leaves of the poplars and there was no wind so it was absolutely still. It was just dusk, so the birds were busy putting their world to bed for the night. I sat on my steps, listening and taking it all in. It was magnificent. The first thing I thought of was my brother, because this is just the sort of thing he did, and I wanted to tell him about it. That made me cry, but only briefly.

Then I started to walk, quietly and slowly, as if drawn, to the bog, where the sound of the peepers originated. As it got darker the sparrows stopped singing completely but the woodcock continued to call for his mate. It was one of the most serene, spiritual and intense times I've ever experienced in my life. I walked part way into the bog, the dogs trotting ahead of me. I didn't really want them there, but it only seems fair to share these things with them, they are so kind to me. I knew that if we got too close to the peepers' territory they would stop singing so I stopped long before we got to them. The bog was silent, totally silent. There is no sense of human habitation there. When I came out of the woods, the woodcock was still desperately--or maybe he was enjoying himself, who am I to judge--flying high into the sky, flapping his wings furiously, then plummeting back to the ground. As we approached him, he moved farther into the field, away from us. We all want our space, our private part of the world for at least a short time.

I don't believe in god, or a higher power. I would love to, it would make my life easier. I have looked for a religion I could embrace--though not very hard, I admit. I am at peace with my spiritual life. This was one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had, though. I loved it, every second of it. I was at peace, and I felt as if I belonged where I was, in the middle of it all. I felt as if I was there because of the generosity of the animals, the birds, the plants--they were sharing their world with me, but I belonged there, in that spot. I'm not talking about belonging on the planet, in the universe, communing with nature, or anything grandiose--I'm just saying that where I live, in that world surrounding my house is the place where I feel I truly belong for this time in my life. It's the best I've ever felt about where I live, about fitting in. How lucky am I? I feel really fortunate.

Satisfaction
There's nothing quite as satisfying as a brand new Nylabone. Nylabones are hard plastic/rubber and are rumored to be the only safe thing for a dog to chew on. Bones--no, they splinter and can puncture the intestine. Rawhide--no, they can clog and block the intestine. So I give them Nylabones, which are expensive but which they love. Eventually they gnaw their Nylabones down to nubs which are 3" long and I throw them away, convinced they will choke on them. But when they're new and shiny, and shaped like a bone: WOWIE JET! Is there anything more soothing, more satisfying than settling in with a new Nylabone? That's Chances on the left and Tess on the right.

Road trip
We're going on a road trip, so buckle up. First stop is Lamoys, where I pick out my pansies. These are all pansies, so you can understand the torture it is for me each year to decide what color I'll get to fill the big white bowl. SO MANY COLORS! Pansies everywhere! I love pansies. We played with pansies when we were little girls--my father showed us the lady with a big skirt in the center of the blossom. He grew pansies for us. What color did I finally settle on? Stay tuned.

These are all geraniums. Americans are truly a people of excess. By the end of the season this greenhouse will be nearly empty. An amazing transformation. This place has 6 greenhouses, all currently full of plants. Some are incredibly fragrant, all are like big magical tents to me. I love going there and will go there at least 4 times in the next 2 months. I try to get geraniums for the cemetery: 1 each for my grandparents (sometimes 2 for my grandfather), several for my father and now my brother (though they deserve better than geraniums--but the graves just bake in the sun and it's hard to find something that will survive without being deadheaded and watered regularly), several for my aunts and uncles (at my mother's insistence--I do not like honoring these people, they were not nice to me or my family when they were alive, but my mother is right, others would notice if I did not put geraniums on their graves), some for my father's favorite cousin, and sometimes one for her mother. I usually buy 15 or 16 geraniums. This year geraniums cost $2.49 each at Lamoys. I will shop around.

This duck was taking a walk along the side of the road, then crossed the road and went up the driveway of a house. It was as if the duck had been to visit a neighbor and was walking home. Ducks walk with this labored, side to side waddle that I love to watch. My father loved ducks and when he retired and they moved to RI my mother got him two Muscovy ducks. She got Muscovys because they don't quack. He had a lot of fun watching them in the pen in the back yard. They got the ducks a kiddie pool to swim in. They brought them here and the ducks spent the summer swimming in Silver Lake. Two ducks never had a better vacation. They would return to the shore next to the boat house where my father (or probably my mother) left corn for them every day. When it was time to return to RI my sainted sister, along with the man who later became my husband had the great duck round-up. It was then that we discovered that Muscovys do quack and my sister named the ducks Quick and Quack. The ducks were caught and my sister had to share the back seat with them. They (the ducks) pooped a lot, their digestive tracts deeply disturbed by the trauma of the round-up. That was when it took 7 hours to get to RI.

These are the roads I take to get to my house from Lin's. The one on top is the Guideboard Road, which is what the Peasleeville Road becomes. Remember the signpost in M*A*S*H that had names of cities and how many miles away they were? A guideboard is similar to that. They are a thing of the past, but when I was a kid there was a real live guideboard that was huge and official on one of the roads we traveled (not this one). It had two posts with boards nailed to both of them and names of towns painted by the Town of Black Brook and arrows pointing to which fork you should take to get to them. Forestdale, Bloomingdale, Silver Lake, Union Falls. Way cool.

The road on the bottom is one we used to call the North Hill Road but has been renamed the Turnpike Road. It was paved about 7 or 8 years ago. It is really desolate and in the 13 years I've been driving it to Lin's house I've never encountered another car. I know how close I am to to the few houses on the road so that, in the winter if my car breaks down or runs off the road (by itself?) I will know how far I have to walk. The red trees in these pictures are maples--they're just starting to get their leaves. Sounds as if I'm describing small children just starting to walk, doesn't it.

These are bluffs which people in my family will recognize--they are the back of Silver Lake Mountain. It's amazing that a mountain can look so different from the front, side and back. There's a new $375,000 house across the road (behind me) from this view. It's a beautiful house but everyone in the neighborhood agrees it sold for way too much money. It was pretty funny how many of my friends who don't live around here checked it out, toying with the idea of buying it. There are a lot of people who would love to have this view. A lot of spring has happened during the past few warm days.

And in our forest nursery at home the hobble bush is in bloom. The leaves are big and the blossoms are made up of lots of little florets. The blossoms sort of float in the forest, very pretty. The shad is blooming now, too, but that's for another day.

Green haze
has settled on the far shore, but only where the poplars are. The maples remain bare. Interesting to see the pattern on Silver Lake Mountain. It's barely visible, but there's a stand of poplars in about the center of the photo of the mountain, which I zeroed in on as best I could. Anyway, this is the far shore from the boat house. Not much leaf activity at Silver Lake, though the rest of the world is greening up with reckless abandon at breakneck speed. Metaphors ahoy!

Last night I got my guppies. I bought a fancy female, then I broke my cardinal rule about fish investment and spent $3 on a blue male. He has a huge, showy tale and is the horniest fish imaginable. The poor female, he follows her, tags her with his nose and will not leave her alone. The rest of the fish wonder what the hell is going one. The two orange plays hide from the whole show--he's far too boisterous for my tank. Someone told me that guppies breed, well, like guppies, but I find it difficult to believe that anything could breed in the hostile environment that is my tank. If anyone can do it, it's this male. I now have 7 fish in my tank, which is too many but unless someone dies on its own I'm not sure what to do. Julie lost 2 fish from her tank here at work so I was contemplating bringing in a platy to her, but when they're feeling good they swim together in a really nice way. Isn't it great that the most complicated thing I contemplated this morning was what to do about my fish?

Not so yesterday, however. I had an appointment with my psychiatrist, with whom I shared the events of the past several weeks. I've been suffering from my version of a manic episode, which is pretty mild compared to other bipolars, but still is manic for me. Since I'm not really Bipolar II, but more the not-yet established Bipolar III (which is a milder form), my episodes are not the Save the World type. I got teary and said how much I mind that these are not things I can solve myself and he very gently and kindly said, "Yes, but you can always call me." Of course he's right and I should have done that a while ago, but we are always in denial about some things in our lives, and it wasn't until I was sitting there, facing him, that it all came together and the patterns fell into place. I could describe what I'd been doing and thinking and it truly, clearly was my version of mania. So we came up with a solution--2, actually, and I'm trying the first one. Nothing major, changing how I take one of my meds before increasing the dose. He pointed out how important it is to take care of this now because, as we know, a manic episode is usually followed by depression, and that is really nasty. So here we go, wish me luck.

My mother wasn't on Antiques Roadshow last night. The most exciting thing, which they saved for last, was a woman who had her great great great great grandfather's rifle and powder horn. Turned how he was a famous gunmaker and it was incredibly rare to have both the rifle & powder horn, which his name on them no less. They were worth $100,000-$125,000. Then the show ended. So we watch again next week.

I left my seedlings out last night: their first night alone in the dark. It only got down to 40 so I figured they'd be fine. They looked quite perky this morning. I left them out today but will bring them in tonight because we're supposed to get rain and they are too tender to withstand that--it would flatten them. I'm thinking of stopping for pansies tonight. Yum. The place I get them has this lawn that's just covered with pansies in all colors, too many to choose from. I've been trying to decide what color to go with this year.

Did my book order yesterday. What's up for today? Clearing my desk, I think. Some DVD's for us that aren't in OCLC, some videos for Upper Jay, figuring out whose names go on the bookplates for the bookmobile books I selected. Doesn't really sound like a very stimulating day, does it.

Little darlings
These are my seedlings. There are cosmos (2 kinds), zinnias (2 kinds), cucumbers (picklers), nasturtiums (2 kinds), asters (3 kinds), tomatoes (for Ken) and maybe something else I'm forgetting. There are only 3 cleome plants; for some reason those seeds did not germinate. I planted old morning glory seeds and only a few of them germinated. Since then I found seeds from 2003 for lavender morning glories which are soaking in preparation of planting. The cosmos are big and bushy, everyone else is sort of leggy, which is why they're all outside during the day. I can't leave them out overnight because it gets too cold and they're still very tender little things. I hope they'll be ok today, it was very chilly (33 in the shade) when I moved them this morning.

Things to notice about the picture: that's Tess' tail on the left, sticking up next to the flats. She of course had to walk under the sawhorses while I was putting the flats on top of them. Notice the daffodils lying on the ground, heavy with frost. They don't really recover from this, they just sort of lie there all day in the sunshine. Note that each of the 4 flats holds 72 plugs and each plug that has plants in it has more than one plant (I can't stand to thin my seedlings: killing innocent plants that aren't weeds or undesirables is just not in me). Let's not count how many that means I have to plant, potentially. But just think of the flowers, tomatoes and cukes! I always have just grandiose garden plans, but I like that about myself, it means I have faith in the future.

I had a good weekend, though not terribly productive. When the black flies are out it limits my outdoor activities. I planted 10 plants in the early morning on Sat.: things I ordered, dianthus and sedum. The sedum will bloom in the fall and is something I've been eyeballing for a long time. The dianthus is a relative of the carnation and is something I used to have a huge patch of but it got crowded out and just died off, as I read Sat. it is want to do. I still have 10 lily bulbs to plant and found out today that my creeping phlox is on its way (creeping here from the supplier). I will stop at my favorite nursery this week and get a mega-supply of pansies for my big white bowl and doubtless will buy some annuals as well.

Friday night I cleaned the fish tank. I won't tell you what the death toll was, but I will tell you it's algae free and was filthy. Let's just say that now I can get that pair of guppies I've wanted for a long time.

Sat. evening I surfed my way to the Country Music channel, which sometimes has great stuff, and sure enough, there was Bruce Springsteen's Seeger Sessions, rehearsals for his latest album, which is Pete Seeger's music. It was all acoustic, 3 horns, a piano, guitars, a bass, 2 fiddles, Peter Seeger's son, Bruce and of course Patti. It was wonderful. The music was fine and songs from my youth--John Henry, Shenandoah and other folk songs, and Bruce was at his finest. He's pretty full of himself, but wouldn't you be if you were Bruce Springsteen? CMT was going to broadcast a Van Morrison concert at 10 but I fell asleep and missed it. It'll be on again.

My mother's segment on Antiques Roadshow is coming up. The first installment of the Providence filmings is on tonight on PBS. Anyone out there who's interested should watch. She thinks she might be on tonight, I guess, but there are 3 segments of the Providence filmings. She's the one with a tiger stripe highboy that's been in her family for several generations. It was made in eastern Conn. in the 1700's. I don't know what she's wearing. It'll be on tonight and will be repeated at least once later in the week, then segment 2 will be on next Mon. and seg. 3 the following Mon. We're pretty excited, but of course we're not even sure she'll be on, they might have cut her.

Yesterday I was able to spend some time in the sun doing crossword puzzles, one of my favorite activities, because it was too cold in the morning for the bugs. It was 29 when I walked down to Holts, and only got up to the 50's by lunch time. The sun was warm, though, and I had a really nice morning in the sun. Dinner was quiet, just Bill and Ken. I left a little early, since I kept dozing off while Ken and I were reading the paper. Bill had gone to check on his camp and there was one point when both Ken and I were sleeping, me on the couch and him in his chair. I thought that was pretty funny.

Today I have to attack a "small collection" of French books from Chazy. YUCKA PUCKA! Foreign language books are sure not a favorite part of my job. Once Lake Placid sent me some Chinese stuff--as if! We don't have the characters on our keyboards, you fools, and even if we did: what the hell is the book about? These books are children's books with lots of pictures. I see one of them has Jesus in the title. That should help, no?