remember the fifth of november

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bank_Transfer_Day  image used by means of creative commons

Remember to close your account with a big bank that is.

Kristen Christiansen, a gallery owner in LA, has organized tens of thousands of people on Facebook to close their accounts with Too Big To Fail banks  and open accounts with credit unions or small banks on what has been named bank transfer day.

make me laugh & get a free birch tree

yes _you_ could win this fabulous new birch tree.  see below for details.

I have this beautiful little birch tree in a 10 gallon pot sitting in my back yard.  It's about 12 feet tall and maybe an inch and a half across at the base.  I planted it three growing seasons ago, as a little 3-foot twig with some roots at the bottom.  It has been the focal point of the western side of the rain garden for a few years now, just starting to get some white bark, turning from the coppery color that the new bark usually is, starting to get some character.  Everything was going fine until...

ides of october

Leaves are falling, wind is blowing, our compost pile is overflowing.

We raked leaves today, piling all of them up, from our front and back yards into one huge pile, taller than either of the kids, and let them jump into it, slide into it from their play slide, bury themselves in leaves.  I forget how much I loved jumping into leaves and getting lost in leaf piles that seemed so so big when I was so little.

getting fleeced at the apple orchard

the little guy insisted that i put him up in the tree so he could pick his own apples

It seems like my wish for the global economic system to collapse already is coming true this week.  Europe is coming apart at the seams, and at home Americans are occupying Wall Street.  The mass media is even covering it now, so it must really be happening.

all the little things that make life good

zucchini, hot peppers, grape tomatoes and a surprise purple bell pepper

Picking little veggies in the garden, playing with little kids.  Those are the little things, but only physically.

I walked my son and daughter home from preschool today, which is now in its second week.  We stroll slowly home, kids finding things along the way to be interested in, a stick to poke things with, or each other.  A little vacant lot covered with grass-- my daughter lingered at the edge of it, looking at me as if to find out if it was OK to run on it.  Yes- I nodded- and she ran out maybe a third of the way into the lot and ran back, giggling the whole time.  My son and I had to do the same then, and we would have kept it up, but then he found a stick, and wanted me to hold him up so that he could try to hit the branch of the tree with his new stick and see if he could make leaves fall down.

dear global economic system: please collapse already.

this week's harvest from the community garden plot

 Every morning these days I get up before dawn, shower, then go downstairs to make myself a cup of coffee, a cup of tea for Gita, and some cups of 'kid chai' for the kids- warm milk with some brown sugar added, in a kid sized 'coffee cup'.  When I went to the fridge this morning to get milk, the one essential ingredient in each beverage, I came up empty.  So, as the sun was coming up, I was driving to the grocery store a few blocks away to get a gallon of milk.

I was pre-caffienated and barely capable of driving at that hour.

beginning of the fall

today's harvest from our community garden plot

On my way home from work today, I stopped at our community garden plot (or allotment as they'd call it in the UK).  I got off the bus one stop early and walked over.  It's only two blocks from home, so it's an easy side trip.

Still I hadn't been there for over a week and I wasn't sure what I'd find.

good advice for homemade winemakers

photo by Renee Wilkinson of hipchickdigs.com

This is the time of year when you either do or you procrastinate and you don't do.

We have been doing so much lately- but little that's relevant to this blog.  Our adventure into the world of purchasing foreclosed property and landlordship has drained most of our resources for other more enjoyable pursuits. The kids get our spare time, then there's not a lot left.

my cylinder count: five

merriam park on a summer evening.

Our 'cylinder count' went up by one this week.  We own a small rental property, and since the caretaker has moved on, I've mowed exactly once with our reel mower.

I love the reel mower, but it's not the easiest thing to load into the car, and it's not the best at mowing the tough weeds that have grown up in the rental building's yard over the years.

dog days

garlic from the garden

It's been a quiet week.  The heat and humidity have gone away.  The nights are getting cooler, the sun lower.

Gita and I took a walk last night.  The air was cool- almost cool enough for a jacket.  The katydids and crickets sang for us.  I could smell the scent of flowers- maybe datura, maybe mockorange, maybe the last of the oriental lilies- I wasn't sure.  I could smell them, but not see the source.