Green Dreams

Spending all my spare time reading the huuuuuge pile of garden books  you can see in the photo above, that A and I brought home from the library. There are little stacks of them all over the house...dinner table...floor....bed...end table....everywhere! And my nursing/book time is all green. This means that I'm spending all slow moments problem solving or imagining or chuckling over garden thoughts. I am having dreams filled with Latin names, people.

Tonight I thought I'd share a little video of an urban farmer I admire. I hope she's not too edgy for the audience. Please no flaming me because she makes you cringe. *wince wince wince* I think she's really cool, although admittedly what she's doing is a bit beyond the pale.



I used to dream of doing something like her, but now I think we'll probly stop at bees for livestock and not get a whole lot wilder than a few fruit trees and a small water feature in the garden department. Um...I think. Heh.

Time to get brave and go measure our plot so I can draw up the blueprints and get this garden hacked out. I am being a total wimp about the numbers. Drawing to scale w/ a million measurements? Enough to make a green thumb quake in her boots.

Now what page was I on?

Chocolate Consolation Cake

So, instead of having a baby today, I decided we'd have chocolate cake. Really good, Julia Child, chocolate cake. If I am not going to go into serious labor, I might as well be consoled by some serious dessert. I'm serving it for breakfast in the morning, bathed in whipped cream.

Spent a couple of hours earlier today folding laundry (getting caught up on everything suddenly seems like a good idea) and watching Julie and Julia while I did it. I am a big fan of Julia Child and enjoyed both her book "My Life In France" and Julie's book "Julie and Julia" and I'm a massive, massive Meryl Streep fan (really, who isn't, truly that woman is amazing) so, this movie was rather highly anticipated. I have been waiting with baited breath to see it for so long but, now that it has made its way to Instant Netflix I finally have found a way to work it in. People. I loved it. In some ways its a bit of a ridiculously easy sell. I love to eat and cook as much as the ideal audience possibly could, I'm a blogger myself, I loved Paris when we were there, I love my set of vintage pearls dearly, I work to cultivate joie de vivre and I'm a big fan of the film's stars and director (Nora Ephron of You've Got Mail fame for those who wonder). Its kind of a shoe-in. And then I'm excessively hormonal anyway.

And that's how you found me, snuggling the boys, curled up on the couch, sniffling away at the incredible beauty of Julia and Paul's deep love, laughing out-loud at the impossible rage you can feel at a destroyed dish and telling myself over and over that I must see this again with A. Its a wonderful date movie. At least its a great date movie for those who love food...or travel...or for those who love a writer or a blogger. We fit all those categories pretty firmly. I can't wait to see it again.

How can you not love Julia's crazy enthusiasm. Her optimistic, fervor and her blustering sense of persistence. She was a lovely person and its so beautiful to watch her life unfolding under Meryl's skillful fingers. I aspire. Really, I do.

So, for now, the baby is still not finished and while I wait for God to put on the finishing touches, you'll find me in the kitchen nibbling on my fabulous, glorious La Glorieux (the name of that chocolate cake) and maybe making honey locust fritters (on my list for tomorrow) and then possibly picking up three of my finished watercolors from the framer's. I'm entering an art show...just a small affair our church is putting on but, still...its me, in an art show. The world is amazing...you never know where you'll find yourself.

Filmography Beauty

Two videos to share today that have nothing in common except a link to tragedy (floods and car accidents) but a focus on beauty. Both are sort of dreamy and poignant.

The first film is a flooded May field in Austria which, I stumbled on and was just kind of open-mouthed over. It looks like this European footage was taken during flooding last year in the spring. Because we're having floods here at the moment and lots and lots of rain this spring (I heard it was a record for wettest spring in New York) I have floods on the mind. Mostly floods are scary or at least debilitating but this flood is so pretty. Hope you enjoy. Love the apple tree in bloom and the dandelion, stinging nettles and other meadow plants at the end.



And then this next film is one of the most poignant and beautiful commercials I've ever seen. Regardless of what you think of seatbelts you have to admit there is beauty here and genius of the artistic and yet low budget kind. Love the emotion and symbolism.

The Boys Have It

I love how inspiring the Internet can be. Check out this brilliant use of boy-style tinkering and play that was shown to me by the esteemed Melissa Wiley, one of the home-schooling mothers who most impresses me and fills me with hope about my own teaching future.This sort of thing makes me happy to have small boys with active minds and makes me think happily of the real life application for such fabulous books as How Tom Beat Captain Njork And His Hired Sportsmen, proving yet again that fooling around, tinkery play and the sort of silly fiddling stuff boys do to amuse themselves are not for naught.