Still Life with Camera

Putting a seed into some good dirt and watering it faithfully for a few days and then watching a plant emerge is one of those simple everyday miracles for me.  I planted these beans a few days ago.  Yesterday morning there was one little sprout uncurling itself from the dirt. Last night when I went out to cut some parsley and basil for dinner, the whole row was up and had grown at least an inch during the day. If that's not a miracle, I don't know what is.

We finally had our last frost pretty much on schedule during the second week of May.  I timed my last day at the University of Illinois (May 7) to go with the frost date so I could get started on a vegetable garden at our new house.  Robert, hub, offered to make cedar garden boxes for me like he did at our last place, but he's so busy and his 'honey do' list is so long, that I decided I had to be self-sufficient.  I ordered a couple of 4' x 8' kits from CostCo.  They're made out of recycled plastic and wood flour from sustainable sources so no bad chemicals and they were pretty easy to put together .  The hard part for me is filling the boxes with dirt.  And why is it hard?  Because every year early in the spring, I try to do more than my back is able to and I end up in agony for a few weeks.  Notice I said, 'every year.' My psychologist friend ( Dr. Smith when she's in that mode) asked me HOW MANY years it would take until I either remember...

Weezie and I had a nice walk this morning in the fog and mist. The geese were leaving Lake Aldo Leopold in small groups and heading for the stubble of the cornfield for a snack. The picture below is in color not black and white although it's really hard to tell. Just that kind of day. We're moving in a few weeks so I tried to get some last pictures of our house and the general atmosphere of this community which I'm going to miss very much. Living in the Midwest encourages you to develop a palate for very subtle coloration. A friend of mine from the Bahamas who arrived here for the first time in the winter thought that some awful plague had killed all the vegetation. On the other hand when I used to travel to Puerto Rico, I had the opposite reaction: everything seemed too gaudy...but not for very long. There are a million shades of brown, russet, taupe, yellow, green that you would never notice if they weren't the main event. We walk by a couple of small lakes on th...