Poor impulse control

This is why I shouldn't go to rummage sales. But with all this pigeon talk lately, I couldn't resist. It just made me laugh. And I found the perfect place for it. We'll see how many people notice it.

Summer pasta

I keep buying produce at the farmers market with no clear idea of what I'll do with it, and after a couple days I realize I'd better just toss it all together in something.

Purple onions are so pretty:

And fresh garden tomatoes, blanched ...

... and then chilled to remove the skins.

While pasta is boiling in the tomato water, in which beans have been similarly cooked (no sense in dirtying another pot or wasting energy boiling more water), the tomatoes are added to sauteed onions, garlic, oregano, some cumin seeds, red pepper flakes, a smoosh of sundried tomato paste, some dehydrated bell peppers ... whatever's handy and sounds good. Cook it all down into a sauce and add the beans and some squash.
Toss the pasta in when it's done and voilà, summer pasta!

(Thanks to Smitten Kitchen for the inspiration!)

Morning stroll

Walking by this plant, I noticed the bees first, then realized it's the most ginormous dill plant I've ever seen. They don't call it dill weed for nothing!
Not just bees, but wasps and hornets were all going to town on it. It made me a little nervous to get really close because unlike bees, wasps and hornets can get really pissy about being disturbed. There were so many, I thought there might even be a nest in the ground right there, but no, it was just the lure of the dill.
Then I walked by a house that's been under construction for a long time, and is finally close to being finished. It's not hideous but wow, guess how much they want for it? $1.15 million! Holy shit.

There's a newer house like this around the corner from me that is also priced at over $1 million, and is quite spectacular inside (I saw it on the home tour), but it's been on the market for more than a year.
I also saw some creative repurposing of patio awning supports that would be a little less obvious if they took the top bits off. And then there's the creative repurposing of lawn as driveway. I'm sure the neighbors are appreciative.

Pigeon pie

Debra over at Cashmere Dreams posted about "pigeon prints" ... the rather horrifying result of failing to note that office window glass is a solid. I thought I'd share another example of an urban hazard for those rats with wings. This was taken by my friend Jenny out her office window downtown a few years ago.

Right on

Another McMonster planned, among the many going up in my neighborhood. And a small note of righteous protest against the inconsiderate developers. My own beef is the lack of cleanup around the job sites. Some builders put down boards where the sidewalks were, but most just let all the dirt spread out, and don't care that it turns to deep, gooey gumbo whenever it rains, forcing passers-by to detour to the street or risk losing their shoes.

They're everywhere

Of course, now that I've noticed hibiscus once, I'm seeing them all over the place. I think conditions must be just right for them this year, since they are so very spectacular. I love the flower-within-the-flower, though I don't see that they are attracting much in the way of bees. There's even one as tall as a house!

I'm very fond of red-hot poker:The bees are, too. See that little bee butt poking out?
And the neighbors have gorgeous peaches. It's a shame they're not picking them.Kris at Gardens on the Lake (Minnesota) had pictures of balloon flowers. It's not very common here, but I did notice one today. Maybe it likes more shade and moisture than we generally have. We went from drought and temps in the 90s to a week of cloudy mornings and afternoon rains, which may have helped. It's very nice for early morning and late evening walks.

What I'm Reading:"Heat" by Bill Buford, and"Uncommon Carriers" by John McPhee

I actually read John McPhee's "Uncommon Carriers" a couple weeks back. It's a series of long-ish essays on (mostly) goods transport in the U.S.: long-haul trucking, coal trains, river barges. It's worth it for the peek inside UPS's sorting facility alone. I confess I did skip over his account of retracing a historical river journey with a buddy, but enjoyed the rest of the book quite a bit.

I'm in the middle of Bill Buford's "Heat," which mixes a profile of Mario Batalli with Buford's own experience learning to work as a line cook in Batalli's restaurant, Babbo. I've never seen Mario's show (no cable; and currently no TV at all, for that matter), but I've heard enough about him. This is a fascinating peek inside a successful restaurant kitchen and an interesting examination of a chef's rise to stardom. If nothing else, I'm going to try Buford's "recipe" for linguini with clams. It's a couple of paragraphs in the middle of the book, just part of the narrative, but he makes it sound perfect and easy.

Five dollah!

One stand at the farmers market was swarmed this morning: $5 for a "half-bag" of mixed produce you chose yourself. Which really meant an entire plastic shopping bag. I don't know what they considered a full bag; I couldn't carry more than this. It's sufficient for me, that's for sure. I like being able to get a mix of a little of this and a little of that instead of paying a lot more for more than I need.

Irresistible

Hand over the cookie, lady, and no one gets hurt:

I'll save your fingers for later, thanks.

I am so lame

I never went to Home Depot. I made a half-assed stab at my home improvement project with the materials at hand and failed miserably. I spent all afternoon reading food-related stuff, then ordered pizza. I am still in my pajamas.

Procrastination

I'm putting off going to Home Depot. The thought of battling Saturday afternoon do-it-yourselfers (yes, I'm one), makes me think Sophie has a better plan for the afternoon.

Meanwhile, here are some ancestral photos that are enjoying their new Victorian abode:

My great-grandmother, Evelyn Tindall, also known as Nanabanana.	My grandmother, Mildred "Nid" Willson, also known as Nana, when she was a little girl
Nana with my mom, Jane	Mom
And a couple photos of unknown origin that I love. The little girl looks very solemn, and her photo is matted with swatches of the dress she was wearing. The family shot delights me with the girl's unusually candid and mischievous grin. All presumably ancestors, but I don't know who.

Swamp cooler installed

I opted for the larger unit, which presented some logistical problems for installation in a tight space, but is capable of cooling the whole house, not just the upstairs. As a bonus, the guys discovered they could tie into the upstairs furnace ductwork, so now instead of one big vent in the hall, I have cool air flowing into all the upstairs rooms! To cool the downstairs, I just shut all the upstairs windows and the coolness cascades down the stairwell into the living room. I love swamp coolers!

New security door

One down, two to go!

Seven bits of garden randomness

Karen over at Breezy Break tagged me last week, and I've been mulling it over.

1. My favorite vegetables all start with the letter "A,": Avocado, Asparagus and Artichoke. Yet I've never managed to grow them. Tried artichoke once, but it never flowered (file under manmade drought; I was not good about giving it extra water). Asparagus requires a special sandy bed and at least three years until you get a crop. Never got around to that project. Avocados, well, those come from pits that live in a little vase on your window sill until they shrivel up and get moldy (see manmade drought, above).

2.Houseplants hate me. (See manmade drought, above.)

3. My gardening mantra: Plants want to grow. If they fail to thrive, they're not doing so out of spite.

4. Gardening is a lesson in patience. Bulbs in particular teach this. You spend all this time digging holes in the fall, getting dirty and tired, and you have nothing to show for it until months and months later. But what a payoff!

5. A corollary of the above is a comforting phrase to remember when planting perennials: First year sleep, second year creep, third year leap!

6. In college in the South, I had this crazy plan to plant kudzu in my dorm room and get it to cover an entire wall with the help of some netting. This plan failed miserably, as the kudzu failed to thrive indoors. Who says you can't kill kudzu?

7. I kind of like weeding, especially after it rains.

I am not going to tag seven people, just five: Kris at Gardens on the Lake, Szarka at Front Step Design, Meresy at Edge Effect, Lisa at Mappa Mundi and Barb at Moonbeam's Poodles.

As if we didn't have enough to worry about

If you are going to worry about stuff when you're driving, it's usually other drivers doing something stupid, having a flat tire or mechanical breakdown, running out of gas (if you push the gauge close to empty like I do), running into heavy or slow traffic when you're already late.

And these days, no one's discounting the possibility of terrorism, which sucks.

But really, how does this happen?