Barn

It’s hot. Have a gin and tonic.

/ wvfurandroot / 6 Comments

Hot Summer Nights

There are some who might say, perhaps rightly so, that I’m just a malcontent. And there’s no use trying to make or keep me happy. I might be one of those people who might, perhaps rightly so, describe myself as such.

However, I’ve been right proud of myself.

In spite of vexatious challenges, I have, mostly, kept last winter’s vow that I would not complain about the heat.

Now it was touch and go here for a couple of days, but I neutralized the pressure of pent-up whining by talking about the pent-up whining and what might be the imminent danger of my spontaneously combusting.

Still and all, other than a few Lawsy, Miz Scarlett, it sure be hot, I have not let the Inner Brat run free with her tantrums.

I hadn't noticed it left.

It is hot. It’s all over the news. Millions of us have become very learned about the heat index which for those of you not sweltering is summer’s version of wind chill. [I have been cogitating on whether damp and cold feels colder than dry and cold and wondering if there’s a corresponding cold index and also wondering about wind chill as it relates to stagnant, putrefying air versus summer breezes, but Lawsy, Miz Scarlett it be too hot for heavy thinking.]

The primary reason I haven’t volleyed a heat-induced rant on the topic of heat is that the Pied-a-Terre has air conditioning.

The sounds and sights of summer nights.

Now back to that malcontent descriptor. I have lived for so long now without air conditioning in my abode, I find it disconcerting. With air conditioning, I lose the white noise of fans and the flutter of my hair. I lose the fragrance of night-blooming lovelies. But mostly, it’s the sound of summer nights that I miss. In the cool confines of the apartment, I cannot hear the peepers or the breeze ruffling the tree canopies or the cat knocking over the pot of mint (again). It’s unnatural. And sort of creepy.

While it’s true, air conditioning at the apartment has probably kept me sane, I have very much enjoyed the past few days here at the barn. As long as one doesn’t move too fast, wears a minimum of clothes, and keeps an iced drink at hand at all times, it really hasn’t been that bad.

The iced drink thing leads me to my next topic. Chef Boy R’ Mine has made a liar out of me again. It’s a long boring story, but years ago I tried some alcoholic libations made with gin. Ack. Spit. Yuck! [gag]

Tangueray 10

Online, somewhere, somebody said something like, “gin is like sipping last year’s Christmas tree through rubbing alcohol.” Prior to reading that analogy, I ran around saying gin tastes like juniper-infused kerosene. I like the Christmas tree thing better – there’s pathos embedded that kerosene doesn’t invoke.

Child of Mine has been waxing rhapsodic about gin and fine wines for a time now. The sommelier at his club has been sharing some Truly Great Vin and, once in awhile (far too infrequently), I get to partake of some wines that I can’t envision ever being able to afford.

The gin thing I pooh-poohed as youthful indiscretion.

T10 and Lime

On his latest trip home, The Boy came bearing Tanqueray 10. We were here at The Barn. There was a heat index of 115F. He was cooking. We were talking. One thing led to another and I was fishing rocks glasses out of the china cabinet. [I’m a stickler for the right glass for the drink.]

I was prepared to be a good sport.

Oh my. OH MY.

I was astonished. I’m not much for mixed drinks – particularly those involving carbonated mixers. I had, once again, to admit I hadn’t known what I was talking about when I threw around descriptors like kerosene.

Chef Boy R’ Mine tells me that Hendricks gin is even better and that if I try it, I must garnish it with cucumber rather than lime. The cucumber thing rather intrigued me given that one of my favorite summer meals is tomato-cucumber-avocado salad with fresh ground pepper and sea salt.

Yes. I do like a little tomato, cucumber and avocado with my salt and pepper.

Still and all, I was kind of puzzled. I honestly don’t like juniper which is the flavoring that makes gin gin. I went web-surfing and found a host of folks, including the Christmas tree guy, that weren’t fond of traditional gin, but liked T-10.

It seems this “premium” gin is made not only with juniper, but also with Florida oranges, Mexican limes, grapefruits and coriander. Mixed with tonic, these beautiful botanicals combine with the quinine to protect me from malaria and the quinine also acts as an analgesic and anti-inflammatory. As I ponder whether to have a third gin and tonic, I tell myself it’s medicinal.

Lime and Cucumber

So. I’ve had two gin and tonics this evening and am pondering a third. One with lime. And one with lime and cucumber. The latter is a real winner. It’s pretty in the glass, it’s tasty on the tongue, and it’s refreshing like a scented summer breeze in the cool of the evening after a blazing hot day.

[Aw, hell, hang on, it’s not like it takes a long time to make one of these things. And it is medicinal.]

I still haven’t whined.

Damn, this is a fine drink.

Nurture and Nature

/ wvfurandroot / 3 Comments

With all the busy-ness, drama, peril, stress and discombobulation of the past weeks, months, years, I’ve been out of sync with my universe. This statement is probably one of the biggest understatements of my life.

Places to live usually just fall on me.

Three things ground and root me: friends and family, nesting and gardening, writing and creating. This great triumvirate of my life has been stripped of power for far too long and it is with great joy that HMO’Keefe’s arrival in West Virginia has put them back into office.

He and I have had separate lives that intersected too infrequently. We anticipated that blending our lives would create some flash points in terms of turf wars. My beloved barn is so much mine, we both feared the time it would take for it to feel like his while I adjusted to what might feel like his encroachment into my space would be uncomfortable for us both. This is one of the perils of independent, old folks moving in together. For this reason and several others which are actually more important, HMOKeefe and I have taken a pied-a-terre in town where we will live during the work week retiring to the country estate on the weekends.  🙂

[I find it completely ridiculous that I have a home in the “city” and a “country house” – I have yet to refer to either without feeling pretentious.]

Pied-a-Terre

I had great fun and great stress finding an apartment. I have never looked for a place to live before. Like the Wicked Witch of the East, houses just seemed to fall on me. I started this project eager and anticipating the process to be a big bunch of fun.

I approached the task of finding the pied-a-terre in a logical fashion. I created a wish list which included the neighborhood I wanted. Then I stalked that neighborhood, classified ads, real estate magazines, and Craigslist.

What people pay for rental property in Hooterville was a great shock to me. My optimism plummeted with every phone call not returned by a landlord, with every walk-through a roach motel and every apartment with no laundry facilities. [We are too old to be schlepping to the laundromat.] Finding a place for grownups to live in a college town is pretty damn difficult.

And, yet, my timing was perfect. I opened Craigslist at the very right second. I called the landlord at the very right second. I raced over to see the apartment at the very right second. And within 10 minutes of walking in the door, I was shouting “It’s mine, it’s mine, it’s perfect, I’ll take it!”

The apartment hit every bullet point on the wish list except one (ground floor). It is just beeee-youuuuuuuuuuuuu-tiiiiiiiii-fullllllllllllllllllllll. I’ve been consumed with ideas for decorating, furniture arrangements, and color schemes while simultaneously restoring order to the Barn. I have been up to my neck in domestic nesting.

I love BOGO!

The garden, alas, was neglected. The harsh winter, endless spring rains and real estate flitting translated into an eyesore of a garden.

Yesterday and today I ran around home improvement centers and nurseries buying bedraggled, late-season annuals to effect a quick aesthetic fix. I ran into a buy-one-get-one sale that went a long way to improving the garden. I ran out of time to get all the little (some of them sad) plants into the ground, but my equanimity has the warm fuzzies with the little bit I have done. I neeeeeeeeddddddddd to have my hands in dirt.

Instant Garden

Now that HMOKeefe is here and is a tiny bit settled in (we have yet to begin the task of moving into the apartment), I’ve had some time to reconnect with friends. Last night, I sat in a dear friend’s garden with more dear friends. We played with twinkle lights, ate good food, drank cheap wine and had a fine time. These gatherings are dubbed “sisterings” and more than a decade ago, I helped to establish sisterings as a Friday night tradition. The craziness of my life has been such that I haven’t been able to attend with any regularity for years now. That sad state of affairs is coming to an end.

Twinkle Lights and Wine

So, I’ve had time with my True Love, time with my friends, and tomorrow I trundle off to Charlotte to take my Baby Boy to dinner to celebrate his birthday. Throughout this week and weekend I have taken photos to bear witness. I’ve come to really enjoy the creative aspect of photo editing. I’ve written blog posts this week. I’ve nested, gardened, nurtured and created. I’ve hit all of my pulse points and life is good.

I had intended on posting way back in January that the slogan for this year was Almost Heaven in 2011. We’re about half-way through the year and things are on track.

I’ve also been remiss in acknowledging an award. Back in April (more than a month after my last blog post), I received email telling me my blog had been named one of the best West Virginia sites. In bestowing the award, The Very Best Sites wrote,

W.Va. Fur and Root is a self-proclaimed “hillbilly diva’s” blog (or, as she says, “blatherings”). Connie writes about whatever she wants, thank-you-very-much, and the title of her website comes from a sign that came with her old home, which she says is pretty much an old barn. She talks about nesting in that great old structure, but also talks about current events, TV, music, and pretty much whatever comes to mind. With terms like “Agog-O-Meter” I find her particularly fun to read, and so will you. She hasn’t posted in about a month, which I guess is because she is busy gardening, but read her older posts for a taste of something special.

As I think I’ve explained, I haven’t been busy gardening, but I have been busy. I’m very honored to have been listed as one of the best particularly in light of the other sites listed – many of them are favorites of mine and have characteristics that are goals for my blog.

It’s going to be a good summer. I’m sure of it.

Rain on Roses

/ wvfurandroot / 4 Comments

Well, the vinca is doing great!

Well, it’s no Gardenpalooza – more like Gardenpifflefizzle, but it feels good. I finally got Quality Time in the garden this weekend. Quality Time being less than an accurate description. More later.

After having disappeared for so long, it’s a bit difficult to try and figure out where to begin.

In January, HMOKeefe decided to finally consolidate zip codes and he began the process of early retirement. He has some health issues related to a bone marrow transplant for leukemia (CML, to be exact) and the preparation for the move was, um, involved.

The man really does deserve a closet, but what am I going to do with all this stuff?

Besides trying to find a closet for him to put his togs in, I have been busier than a one-armed paper hanger on a unicycle in a tornado at my job. Frequently during the past few months, I have muttered, declared and yelled, “Hell’s bells, we don’t have to schedule everything for the same time. There are 12 months in the year.

He still doesn’t have a closet.

[Speaking of tornados, boy, do I have a story.]

HMOKeefe has been ensconced in Chez Barn for a little more than a week. Well, sort of.  Following the VERY EVENTFUL move from Massachusetts to West Virginia, I contracted a nasty something that turned into viral pneumonia. At present, I am quarantined and he is staying with my folks. Is it a big ol’ goofy world or what?

I'm sick.

My doctor tut-tutted and reminded me that if I don’t slow myself down, my body will do it for me. And then she prescribed prednisone which winds me up like caffeine-laced cocaine. I’m supposed to be resting, sucking on one of my two inhalers (yes, two!) and drinking lots of fluids.

I still feel like the nasty crud at the bottom of the garbage can, but I’m strangely energized. I’ve restored some order to the house, processed a few loads of laundry, unpacked suitcases from the Massachusetts sojourn as well as those used for attendance at a conference last week.

[Oh, yes, I bring HMOKeefe to West Virginia and then abandon him. And then I arrive home with news that I’m contagious with a nasty and he’s got to go stay elsewhere due to the immune suppressants he takes. He had viral pneumonia years and years and years ago. It took little to persuade him to go stay with people he doesn’t know that well.]

And as if restoring order to the abode wasn’t enough, I summoned the wherewithal to finally mow the backyard.

The harsh winter, rainy spring and summer heat has not been kind.

I’ve been so flipping busy and it’s rained every weekend for months, I couldn’t get the lawn mowed. Folks tell me it’s been kind of dry the past couple of weeks, but my yard still squelches when I walk on it. Nonetheless, enough is enough. I tackled the (small) yard with a temperamental lawn mower yesterday. While hacking through the jungle that arose with the wild, wet spring, I hacked, coughed, sneezed and gagged – sometimes all at once.  Viral pneumonia, even tempered with prednisone, is no fun.

Today, I weeded, cleaned up debris and finished chopping up last fall’s leaves with mower.  [I was busy last fall, too.]

The one rose bloom I got to see. Is that pitiful or what?

The garden is in a sad state. We had a late freeze that seriously damaged some of the newer perennials. Then we had nonstop rain. And then we had sudden deluges punctuated with high heat that effectively boiled a bunch of stuff. The stuff that did well – some of the roses, the wisteria, the peonies, the mock orange and the vinca all decided to bloom and blow while I was conducting a move worthy of a David Lynch film.

I feel cheated. But I also feel as if my equanimity is returning. Mucking about in dirt is a very effective antidepressant for me. And gardens do provide immediate gratification at times. After a harsh winter and soggy spring, the before and after of a couple days of prednisone driven frenzy is a sight to behold.

The hostas are happy. But they're always happy.

If you don’t look too close.

The garden is in a state and I’ll be the rest of the season nurturing and repairing damage.  There’s nothing left to bloom, except maybe the peony.  It’s a new one and I can’t tell if it’s bloomed or not.  The buds don’t quite look like buds and might be what’s left after a bloom.  I can’t quite figure it out.

Anyway, I need annuals.  Lots of annuals. Petunias.  Impatiens.  Shasta Daisies.  Morning Glory.  Moonflowers. And some creeping juniper to replace that which died.  And Boston ferns to hang by the door.   Chocolate mint to grace the table.  So much to do. But, damn, it’s good to be back in the garden..

Blogging, too, is an emotional balm for me.  Damn, it’s good to be back.

Rain on Roses

[Did I mention the laptop hard drive crashed spectacularly and I’ve been without the little darling for nearly 4 weeks?  HMOKeefe put in a new hard drive.  I finished loading software and copying backup files and things are almost normal.  Since I don’t have a picture of this spring’s roses, I’m using an older one for my desktop.  Rain on roses seemed a fitting metaphor for the past few months.]