Sidetracked Charley

Walking the high bridge Time Magazine in the mid 1980's had a lead article on stress and consequences of it. Some research facility had assigned points to various events in life; so many points for losing a job, moving, getting a divorce, etc.  Those were the big ones.  At the time the list appeared I had been moved by the company I was working for, was going through filing for divorce from an alcoholic husband, visiting a dying parent in a hospital, while temporarily living with my mother facing the eminent death of her husband. The last was not on the list but should have been. Oh, and I was less than a year clean and sober and had a sponsor who said I should not be doing any of those things. If you tallied up just those life events on the list I should have checked myself into a mental institution. Or committed suicide. But I come from a long line of troupers. We keep on keeping on. And are the perfect model of decorum while doing it. There was a t-shirt I saw duri...

Distant Promise by J. Binford-Bell Supposedly for a good black and white landscape you need a noisy sky. I feel as if my life this winter and spring has been a noisy sky. So much going on around me. Some things I have written about like the tenant situation and some not. Some things I have actually not been aware of myself. It is like not noticing the clouds until a dark one shuts out the sun. And some nagging little things I ignore because to acknowledge them might give them power. Denial is a God given survival skill after all. The bad tenants and the things I had to do in order to rent the apartment to get a good tenant of course caused financial issues. And it takes a while to catch up once you get behind. And that of course causes stress. And then some years back I committed support to my neighbor when her husband was diagnosed with a fatal cancer. At the time I made that commitment she and I figured months. It has been years. Not all of them critical. But since Good Frid...

Garden August 2012 Oh, no, not another garden blog!! Yes, another. But this one is in response to a question which came up during a conversation with a new gardener: Why do I garden? And that is a really, really good question, because I have always been bad at it. Or at least that is my conception of my ability. Mother was the perfect gardener. Never a weed to be seen and nothing dared not grow. I can remember gardens back to preschool days when we had a truck garden that covered a whole acre of land. And sold veggies at a road side stand in the summer and fall. We also sold eggs and puppies but that is another story. My first garden of my own was in 1972. I was being earth mother. I raised goats, angora rabbits, geese and zucchini. I had never eaten a zucchini in my life but it was the only plant that survived Solomon and Sheba my two angora goats. Friends sent me cookbooks and recipes for zucchini and my collection of "Goats Don't Eat Zucchini" recipes for a fu...