Turned into a somewhat more hectic day than I’d planned.
Ohhh well. Got a lot done. In the staggeringly selfish department, while flying across the city I dropped in at what is now the last freestanding locally owned nursery in Phoenix’s once impeccably upscale North Central district. In addition to plants, they sell house and garden kitsch, and their owner apparently mainlines Mexican pottery. And so, how could I resist this?
Ohh, cute and silly-looking butter dish!!! How is it better than a clear glass butter dish from Corning or a knockoff thereof, purchased from Cost Plus? Let me count the ways…or not.
It’s so crudely painted as to be primitive. Outsider, even. I mean, seriously: most Mexican pottery artists are very skilled. This looks like it was made by the artist’s nine-year-old. And therein lies its charm. You can hear the conversation out in the studio:
NIÑO: Papà, how do you like this leaf?
HOMBRE: M’hijito, a rose leaf is nowhere near as large as a cantaloupe. Did you intend to draw a head of cabbage?
NIÑO: Rose leaf? Ay, no! This is a BANANA leaf. (NIÑO, nearing adolescence, rolls eyes heavenward with considerable expressive élan.)
HOMBRE: Uhm…claro que sì! How could I not recognize it: a banana leaf!
OMG! Puppy just made off with my slipper and now, having lost it to the raging human, is trying to reclaim it from my foot. It’s 6:00 p.m.—donde donde DONDE m’hijto mine?—and, as you might sense from the piles of paper pictured atop the desk, I must get back to work.
a. nominate 15 fellow bloggers; b. let them know; c. thank the person who nominated you; d. share 7 random things about yourself; and e. post the Versatile Blogger badge.
Well, let’s see… Most bloggers who hold forth at length about money matters are pretty versatile. These folks come to mind, in no particular order:
1. Secretly, I love country-Western music. 2. People scare me. I’m absolutely terrified of other human beings. All other human beings. 3. I grew up in the Middle East. 4. Having traveled over most of the globe except for China and the Indian subcontinent, I have a hard time viewing travel as a vacation activity. 5. I fancy pickled pig’s feet and chitlin’s with a cold Corona, and snails soaked in garlic butter with a decent Pinot noir. 6. I always wanted to be an astronomer. 7. But if I’d been born a boy, I would have gone to sea, just like my daddy.
{gronk!} Well, if it has to be a trade-off between shade and gunk in the pool, I’ll sacrifice the shade. And, to the tune of six Cs, that’s exactly what I just did: it cost almost $600 to get rid of the devil-pod tree and to score four plants and two 7½-foot trellises to fill in the vacant space.
To be fair, the guys also did a fair amount of trimming and thinning of the overgrown olive, palobrea, and vitex trees, too. They charged $465, when all was said and done, and then the bill from Home Depot was $111.
Well, I did pick up a few small things besides the garden stuff: a sanding block, a hose timer, some wire to tie the trellises to the wall.
Mike and Sidekick preparing to wrestle with the corpse
It took two men in climbing gear about three hours to pull down the monster. Really, I do feel bad about killing a tree, particularly a large shade tree. However, it’s nice to know I’ve hauled my last bushel of devil-pods and strap-like devil-pod leaves out of a ten-foot-deep pond of expensively chlorinated water.
The arboricide is a day late and a dollar short for Harvey the Hayward Pool Cleaner, though. The devil-pod tree killed him. One last massive blast of yellow polleny puffball stuff so clogged the pool’s system that the gunk broke apart both the pump pot basket and the skimmer basket. It also shattered the plastic filter on Harvey’s backside. He’s still staggering along, but not well. And that thing doesn’t look like a separate part: it appears to be one with his molded carapace. Tomorrow I’ll take him in to the Leslie’s guy but don’t have much hope of getting him fixed.
Cost for a new pool cleaner? $350, when it’s on sale.
So, that’s been one expensive goddamn devil-pod tree!
This operation left that corner of the yard pretty bare. The wall that borders the street, as you can see, is about five feet high on my side, but on the exterior, where people walk past on the sidewalk, it’s about six feet high (i.e., the grade inside the wall is a foot higher than the grade outside). The city forbids walls higher than six feet, a rule best honored in the flouting. However, because it’s right on the street and easy for prowling city employees to spot, I’m not willing to invite a citation and an order to tear down an added row of block. And as you may be able to tell, the neighbor across the street can see right into my backyard.
But I have a plan. The city does nothing to prevent you from growing tall shrubbery where it prohibits tall walls, and so the view-blocking tree needs only to be replaced by view-blocking shrubs. Preferably xeric, low-litter, cold-hardy shrubs.
As it develops the green hopseed bush fits that description handsomely. It does make some papery seed pods, but they don’t look any more menacing that bougainvillea blossoms, which do litter the pool but which the cleaning system handles easily. These things get to be 12 to 15 feet high and are said to grow fast. So within a year or so, the foliage privacy screen should be back, only this time with a fraction of the pool litter.
I bought three of them (maybe one too many…), and then to brighten up the corner, a Texas yellowbell, which also gets to be a good-sized plant and is very pretty. These freeze back in the winter here, and so it probably won’t get out of hand unless we go several years without a hard freeze.
That naked shrub on the left in the backyard snapshot above is a vitex. It’s deciduous. In the summer it develops pretty blue flowers, which will contrast nicely with the yellowbells, which seem to bloom all the time. The yellowbell is going in front of the tree stump, which I couldn’t afford to have taken out. Soon enough it should hide that thing.
The vitex was quite a handsome specimen tree when I had it planted at the time I moved in here. However, over the past five years or so, the devil-pod tree, which grows as fast as a eucalyptus, has shaded it so much it quit growing and became all distorted. Mike (arborist) thinks it will recover now that it can get some light.
The one in the front yard has grown into a full-sized tree, and so presumably when this stunted one in back takes ahold, it will provide some nice shade to the pool and help to block the view in back. Although it does drop its leaves in winter, they’re small enough not to clog Harvey (or his descendant…) but large enough to be caught by the skimmer and pump pot filters.
And speaking of blocking the view of passers-by and nosy neighbors, that’s what the 14 feet of trellises are for. I’m going to wire them horizontally to the top row of decorative blocks and staple shade cloth to them. They can come down after the plants get big enough to do their job, but until then, they should protect my privacy a little.
First thing Charley did after the men left was attempt to excavate the tree stump. My god that animal can dig! And he’s fast, very very fast.
Couldn’t get very annoyed with him, though, because he unearthed a long-lost irrigation hose. I thought there was a dripper somewhere near that tree, but it’s been hidden under the debris for years. This is good. Very, very good.
It’ll make it easy for me to run water to all four new plants and to rejigger the water for the vitex. So I won’t have to worry too much about forgetting to water all this new foliage, which you can bet I will do.
Tomorrow’s project: pull this thing apart, connect it to lengths of hosing, and attach a half-dozen emitters. Then dig holes and plant shrubs!
On New Year’s Day I was lurking in the baking aisle at the Safeway, where I came across a handsome mid-thirtyish man (born 30 years too late, darn it!) searching the shelves frantically. “Do you see any cornbread mix?” he asked.
Well, no. Neither of us could see any cornbread mix.
“We always have black-eyed peas and cornbread for New Year’s, and my two kids are looking forward to it. I’ve been to two other stores and can’t find any cornbread mix!”
“Cornbread is pretty easy to make from scratch,” I suggested.
“No, no,” said he. “They can tell the difference. They won’t eat it unless it’s made from a mix.”
OMG! Poor babies!
We found a box of corn muffin mix. “Look,” said I. “This has got to be the same stuff. Just mix it up and pour it in a baking pan. They’ll never figure it out.”
He studied the corn muffin mix box. “Oh, they’ll figure this one out, all right. Somewhere I’ve gotta get actual, real, cornbread mix.”
He went off in search of another grocery store. I picked up a package of flour and went off in search of dinner.
LOL! During all of this anxious study, neither of us thought about the Marie Callendar’s just up the road. They surely would have sold him some cornbread, already cooked and hot. And no doubt it comes from a box.
Given half a chance, I’d have shared this recipe with him, adapted slightly from James Beard (mine has no cream but more sugar):
Breakfast...
Extremely Good Cornbread
1¼ cups milk
1/3 cup melted butter
More butter to grease the pan
1/2 cup flour
1½ cups yellow cornmeal
1 tsp salt
1 Tbsp sugar (the crunchy turbinado type is very good)
1 Tbsp baking powder
3 eggs
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
Combine the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Melt the butter. Generously grease an 8½ x 11 baking pan with some more butter, and leave a teaspoon or more of butter on the bottom of the pan.
Pour the milk into a 2-cup measuring vessel. Add the eggs. Using a fork or wire whip, beat the eggs thoroughly into the milk.
Place the greased pan, empty, into the oven to preheat. This should melt the chunk of butter you left in the pan.
While the pan preheats, pour the egg-milk liquid into the dry ingredients. Add the 1/3 cup melted butter. Mix together well using a wire whip or wooden spoon.
When the batter is mixed and the pan is hot, lift the pan out and place it on a heat-proof surface. Quickly pour the cornbread batter into the pan and immediately return the pan to the oven. Bake the cornbread about 15 to 18 minutes.
Cut in squares. Serve hot with butter and honey.
Now, if that weren’t bad enough for your health, I’ve come up with something that is truly suicidal. You’ve heard of fried polenta? Well…why stop with mere fried cornmeal mush? Go for
Fried Cornbread
...Dinner
Leftover cornbread
Olive oil
A little butter
Herbs to your taste (I used some herbes de Provence)
Salt and pepper to taste
Slice a few squares or oblongs of cornbread. Now cut them in half horizontally, so one side is baked and the other is the inside of the cornbread.
Skim the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil. To ensure that the cornbread browns, add a teaspoon or so of butter…or more, according to gluttony taste. Preheat the pan over medium heat.
When the pan is hot enough to melt the butter into the olive oil, set the pieces of cornbread in the pan, baked side down. Sprinkle some herbs over the top surface of the bread. Go on about your business while the bread fries…but pay attention, because this happens surprisingly fast.
When the bottom side is browned, gently flip the bread over and brown on the other side. Season as desired with salt and pepper.
Et voilà! A hearty and tasty side dish. You could probably sprinkle a little Parmesan over it, if desired. It’s very good. Indeed. This may be the highest and best use of cornbread.
Except for entertaining small children, of course.
This is worth knowing about: William J. Broad, a science writer at the New York Times, reports that some yoga poses, far from soothing your achin’ back while spiriting you to meditative nirvana, can do some serious damage, ranging from the very painful to the fatal. Take a look at his report. If you do yoga at all, you’ve probably been in at least some of the poses he describes.
Personally, I’ve never felt inclined to stand on my head, nor have I attempted the upward bow. But most of the others—the vajrsana, the extended side-angle pose, downward-facing dog, the cobra pose, the shoulder stand—are things I used to do all the time and still do occasionally. Broad describes neck, back, tendon and vascular injuries and even strokes (among very young people) as direct results of overdoing these basic, simple postures.
Our yoga instructor, who used to conduct classes in my home, often said that if you feel even the slightest pain, you should stop immediately. She urged the budding yogini to avoid poses that were painful or uncomfortable.
Looks like she was right.
So be careful on that yoga mat. Stay out of poses, such as standing on your head or shoulders, that inflict pressure on your spinal column. Don’t push yourself, and don’t get any egotistical ideas about “working through the pain.” The gratification is hardly worth a year or two of physical rehab—or a permanent disability.
Just bought a ticket to a chamber music performance that will include Karen Knudsen, one of the choir’s professional altos. I love listening to these talented artists perform—they all have lovely voices (one has a magnificent voice, IMHO). Next Tuesday’s concert, part of the annual Bach Festival, will feature Bach cantatas and include oboist Marian Buswell, organist Scott Youngs, violinist Stephen Redfield, and cellist Jan Simiz.
If you’re in central Arizona, you should consider attending one or more of the Bach Festival performances. They’re really top-flight, and a ticket for a concert is only $25 ($20 if you’re in your dotage). Five concerts will take place over a week, from January 8 to 14. Here’s a list of the events.
{sigh} Wish I could afford to go to all of them. As it is, though, one twenty-dollah hit means no meals out for me this month. Twenty bucks blows my “entertainment” (hah!) budget direct to Hell.
Had an interesting insight over the weekend, as I was setting up a Quickbooks Online account for my personal accounts. Between the $2100 drawdown from savings and the $1080 Social Security benefit, net inflow to my checking account is actually just about what it was when I was working full-time for GDU.
So…why do I live in a constant state of penury?
Because I’m paying my share of the mortgage on the downtown house out of pocket, instead of out of long-term savings as I was doing when I had a job and when the stock market was whaling along magnificently, and because I’m having to pay over $130 a month for Medigap and Medicare Part D.
So my available income (if you can call drawdowns from savings “income”) is $865 a month less than what it was in 2009.
No wonder I feel pinched all the time. And no wonder going to one inexpensive concert means I can’t go out to lunch for an entire month.
Explains a lot, doesn’t it? There’s a reason I’m working like an animal but still feeling like I have to live like an anchorite. Dang. All an anchorite has to do is tend his garden and pray all the time.
Welp, speaking of working like an animal, I agreed to spend a day with friend KJG, whose house is way to heck and gone out at the White Tanks. Will have to leave by 9:00 a.m., but I still have a project to do for a client that has to get done this morning.
