Santa Fe, Saturday

In fact some petroglyphs at Tsankawi


image: Christie B. Cochrell

Santa Fe, Friday

The window of an art gallery (probably long gone) on Canyon Road


image: Christie B. Cochrell

Santa Fe, Thursday

Blue door on Canyon Road


image: Christie B. Cochrell

Thought for the Day

No money, no grovel!

(W.S. Gilbert, The Mikado)


image: Oil painting of the Grey Eminence, François Leclerc du Tremblay, the right-hand man of Cardinal Richelieu, 1873, Jean-Léon Gérôme

My Morning Mostly in Ls

low light, clouds
lopped leaves left lying
lots of lurid legs*
lurking Lexus
Lhasa Apso
lightbulbs (on list)
lilies**
lumbering Lippizan***
lemon llogurt


* the weekend bicyclists in their neon Spandex
** the color of a canteloupe, outside the synagogue
***entirely implausible, but I don't know of any other horses starting with an "l"


image: Christie B. Cochrell, Lake Como Flowers

Obsessions

Now that the weeds are momentarily quelled, I'm obsessing about menus for next week's family reunion.

Spanish sangria with citrus fruit and rum?
Margaritas, of course—but with silver agave tequila, reposado, or añejo? Or my current/currant favorites with purple Crème de Cassis and Key lime juice?

And then, a salad with pistachios and plums? The wild rice salad with chervil and watercress, or red potatoes with arugula, to go with rotisserie chicken? Would marinated eggplant be nice, Egyptian style, or would it be redundant with baba ghanoush? And will I have the energy to make an apricot tart or raspberry pie? Or even strawberry muffins, a long-ago favorite when sugar and butter weren't enemies?

I've also been reminded of this Limoncello Pound Cake, which is heaven; and a potato salad from Pantelleria with capers and black olives and oregano. Too many choices, for the indecisive and hungry!


image: Salade de tomates avec feta, MagnetiK

Fencing, Fountains

When I go to campus for an hour on the exercise bike reading Big Stone Gap, I find karate in the room that is all windows, mats, and floating balls; and downstairs tiny children learning to fence. (Which reminds me, circuitously, of a joke I enjoyed once before it became un-PC. See it here!)

After, iced tea in the courtyard at the alumni center with the fountain that is not quite a line of lions' mouths like that in Spili on its mountainside in Crete but with my eyes closed might just be, with Cretan women murmuring among themselves over laundry and filling pitchers in the midday sun.


image: View of the 25 Lionheads in Spili Crete, Dito Mueller

Summer Morning

The blessed coolness of a summer morning before the heat rises, puttering around the garden with a watering can and coffee cup; and maybe later heading for the lake at Shoreline Park to sit and read and watch shorebirds and drifting sails.

image:  Christie B. Cochrell, Shorebird

Weeds—Weeding—Weeded

The weeds are all whacked and pulled, ready to bag, and the garden looks as if someone has paid attention to it—the point, they say in Zen, of cleaning anything.

Other things have backed up in the meantime, like gophers popping up behind me when my back is turned.  But so it goes.  Onwards, ever onwards!

image:  Dandelions, 1889, Anders Zorn (oil on canvas)

Dandelions

These lessons are hard-learned.

Today I bought gardening gloves, heavy duty, up to the elbow—when before I've bought just pretty flowers, whatever catches my fancy and Romantic eye, whether or not the conditions in my garden suit their nature. Usually not (they suit nothing, it turns out), and so the only things alive are my lime tree, barely, and weeds. Thriving, mocking, defeating without a fair fight. We're caught in a thicket of monster dandelions, soon big as the house.

My Mother, good dauntless practical Norwegian, says "make dandelion wine." Lemonade from lemons, yes—it's charming to slice and squeeze the yellow citrus fruit. But the ongoing, ordinary work of keeping the garden clear (and all those other things inside and out) that get buried when one is not constantly vigilant) is too much, too little gratifying in the short run, too unpicturesque. Gardening as planting, harvesting, is one thing, and fighting to weed yet another. The philosophy—or religion—of cycles isn't persuasive, when I am up to my eyebrows in overgrown sow thistle.

With me it's all or nothing, now or never. So this month it will be the weeds or me!


image: Christie B. Cochrell, Seeds