Autumn leaves of red and gold

Well, I may have to rake my yard after all.  I'm not sure my lawn mower will be able to mulch a carpet of leaves that is a good four inches deep.  Poo.  But that's a story for another day.

Today I will first tell you about my Dr. Seuss tree.  That's what Kathy calls it, and the name fits.  Here's a picture from earlier this summer.

See how it's all sticks at the top and leafy at the bottom?  The sticks are leftover from last year.  It was just sticks until end of June and I thought the wickedly cold winter had killed the whole tree.  No buds, no nothin'.  Then it started to leaf out at the bottom.  Here's another picture with a poodle for scale.

Those new sticks grew over a foot every week.  And the leaves?  Whoa.

THAT picture is from late July.  The previous owners called this an Elephant Ear tree, so I googled that and now I think it may be a paulownia tomentosa which, according to wikipedia, is the fastest-growing tree in the world.  Mine didn't have any flowers or any fruit, so maybe I have mis-diagnosed its species, but there were images online that look just like this one.  Look it up and let me know if you agree.  Here's a picture from mid-August.

The leafy sticks didn't grow as tall as last year's sticks, but those leaves were ginormous.  They still are.  We had a hard frost ... early last week?  It wrecked some of the top leaves, but the rest are still huge and green.  I would run outside and take a picture, but it's almost midnight and although the moon (bella luna!) is one day from being full, there's still not enough light.

So now let's talk Crime Rib.  Remember my friend Leslie's first mystery novel that was published last summer?  Crime Rib is the second in the series.  And remember how I begged Leslie to kill me off in one of her books?  Crime Rib is where that doesn't happen.  HA!  But I DO get introduced as a character.  I don't have my copy of the book in front of me because my mom borrowed it and now it is working its way through her bridge ladies (or her tennis ladies, I can't remember).  So here is the bookmark Leslie sent me with the book.

Now, there are SO MANY things to be excited about with this book.  First, an aside to Leslie:  I forgot to tell you that over the 4th of July weekend when I was in Connecticut with family, I was talking books with my cousin Jennifer who is a manager or an assistant manager at a Barnes & Noble somewhere in Connecticut.  I told her about Crime Rib and she said, "I know that book - I just shelved it yesterday!"

Okay, next, go here and take advantage of the "look inside" feature.  (Not that I want you to buy the book at Amazon - I would rather you find a local independent bookseller and support them.  In fact, buy seven copies from your local independent bookseller.  Just because.)  So anyway, scroll down to the cast of characters.  I'll wait.

...

Did you?

...

Who did you see?  I'll give you a hint, in case you were too lazy to hit that one hotlink and do the work yourself.  IT'S ME!  Leslie named the character after me.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!  She is awesome.  And I am famous.

So next click on THIS link and read the article in The Missoulian.  Seriously.  Do it.

HAHAHAHAHA!  Famous again.

Now, follow YET ANOTHER link to Leslie's blog, and click on the link SHE has in that post.  Not to spoil the surprise or anything, BUT I'M SO FAMOUS!

Rock and roll.

When I read Crime Rib this summer there was one spot in the book where Christine is described as wearing dorky black glasses and I thought, "Hey!  I've got dorky black glasses."  Refer back to my selfie with minion from the other day.  Then in another spot Christine was wearing purple glasses and I thought, "HEY!  I've got purple glasses!"  Refer to selfie below.

It's crazy being famous.  I can't wait until the third book comes out next year.  I would say it is tragic that I have to wait that long, but in reality it just means I get to have my 15 minutes of fame all over again.  Awe.  Some.

Speaking of minions, if you're my friend on Facebook you've already seen my new minion.

That's my girl.  Minion goggles.  Or doggles, as the case may be.

Float down like autumn leaves....

Kathy came over yesterday and we went to see "Kiss Me, Kate" in Stowe.  We were sitting in our seats, just before it started, and I leaned over and whispered, "I just realized I am still wearing the same shirt I wore yesterday and slept in last night."

Huh.  Senior moment?

The wall behind the gold couch has been temporarily accessorized.  I say temporarily because I suspect this wall will forever be a work in progress.

There are holes to patch and paint to choose, but for now it's good.  Notice how my spray-painted-in-my-new-favorite-color telephone table that I found out in the garage this summer works with my color scheme?  Clever, I am.

Also in the ever-evolving interiors department is the orange room.  Kathy brought me a keyboard that has spent the last million years living under her guest room bed.  This keyboard used to be in the church.  That was TWO million years ago.  I think it was retired when there was a fire in the church.  Dad made the boxes for it to rest on and I think he even made the cover for it, from the hyde of a wild New England Nauga.  After I took these pictures I moved my guitar and my ukulele into the orange room, which I'm now going to call the music room.

Those walls seriously need some new paint, except my wee small desk matches so nicely....

Outside the sun was shining for a good part of the day, unlike yesterday when we spent the entire day inside drawing up plans for an ark.  Yowza.  Here's another picture of the trees in my front yard.

And here's a beauty in my backyard:

These are the last of my summer flowers, holding on with everything they've got:

They even make a white plastic fence look good.  And here's the side of my house that is crying out for a deck.  That's part of Phase II, which is a project for another day.

I live at the base of Elmore Mountain, which looked like this when poodle and I were driving home from playing b-a-l-l this evening:

Lovely, even in a quickie pic on my phone.

Tomorrow, I'm serving up some long overdue Crime Rib.  Stay tuned....

Sunshine all the while....

I was driving down the road on my way to Hinesburg today, and it was so flipping beautiful outside I thought my heart was going to burst.  Truly.  It was just that beautiful.

And then I thought I'm getting way too sentimental in my old age.  Yikes.

Then I saw some cows.

Hola vacas.

There's a spot just up at the top of the hill where some mysterious person(s) planted a cairn field.

So awesome.  In the dead of night I think I will go hide a garden gnome out there.  Seems like the right thing to do.

The foliage in Hinesburg wasn't perfect, but we did our photo shoot anyway.  Here's a contender for Delaney's senior portrait:

YES!  Winner.  I LOVE this one.  All three of the kids are very photogenic - although they don't believe it - even with green hair.  Or long blonde hair.  I want to post THAT picture of Johan, but he's already worried about a random twerking video of him that may be floating around the interwebs and ruin any future chance he's got at becoming Prime Minister, so I won't add to his stress.  Heh heh.

Lastly, here is my new painting.  I put the first coat of varnish on it this morning, then proceeded to practically drop it on its face.  *sigh*  Wouldn't be the first time....

The colors are the most accurate in the top picture.  It's yummy.

Poodle is giving me the hairy eyeball -- I'm singing along with John Denver and that requires some volume.  Oh the joys of not having close neighbors.

And lastly, again, here is my selfie with the minion Eletra sent me.  Jerry.  He came in the mail today.  It was a good day all around.

'Neath the Cover of October Skies

These bad boys are in my front yard:

The light was crap when I got home from work yesterday, but the trees were mighty fine.  Thank goodness my lawn mower mulches leaves nicely.

The weather has been absolutely glorious the last few days.  Tomorrow I'm heading back to Hinesburg for another round of photos with Delaney, her friend Maddie and Johan.  We are hoping I can take decent enough pictures for their senior portraits.  Last weekend, when we had our first roving photo shoot, the foliage at my house was incredible, but it hadn't really hit in Hinesburg.  We shall see if a week has made a difference.  Here are three of my favorite pictures from near my house last week; I'm hoping to find this kind of crazy nonsense with Delaney tomorrow:

All this color has inspired me and I started a new painting last night.

I know, right?  I will show you the whole thing after I varnish it -- you know how I am about shiny things.  The color has inspired me in another way, too.  When it comes to interior accents I have decided to subscribe to that old standby theory:  go big or go home.  Ergo, to dress up a 100" long gold couch that is older than I am, we went here:

My new favorite color.  I might paint the wall that color.  It goes with everything.  Poodle agrees.

Cake. Yep, I said cake.

I read two interesting things on Facebook today.  The first was this:

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive;

and to do so with some passion, some compassion,

some humor, and some style.” -- Maya Angelou

I have been following Maya Angelou's page for quite some time because she always has good words to share.  It was a sad day indeed when she passed away, but her family has kept up with her page and today the Angelou Johnsons really came through for me.  See, Saturday was the one year anniversary of my dad's death.   Instead of marking the day in a way that would make my dad proud, I did nothing.  Absolutely nothing.   I read a book. I may have read two books.   I left the house long enough for my weekly trip to the post office, then sat my ass on the futon and didn't move the rest of the day.  Actually, dad might be okay with me up to my elbows in my Kindle for hours on end since he was a voracious reader himself, but I certainly did not get to the end of the day feeling like I honored him in any way.   I had a whole list of things I wanted to do so I could go to bed that night and for once feel good about myself and my accomplishments - I wanted to do that on a day when I was thinking about my dad - but no.   Didn't happen.

Remember way back at the beginning of the year when I said I was going to give up sloth for Lent? Yeah, I forgot, too, until just now when I started this sentence.  Looks like I'm due to slough off my sloth again.   (Heh heh, that was good.)   Enter stage left that Maya Angelou quote.   She is speaking to me from the grave.   In a moment of absolute weird, twisted clarity it made perfect sense that the best way to honor my dad is to live by the words of someone who is speaking to me from the grave. So I wrote that quote on a sticky note with my last remaining pink Bigfork UPS Store pen, and I'm going to look at it first thing every day when I wake up.   Maya Angelou took one of my favorite Oscar Wilde quotes - To live is the rarest thing in the world.  Most people exist, that is all - and gave it substance.  To live, we must thrive.  And on the days when all I feel like doing is existing, I will read that quote and remind myself there is a difference.

Now all of that sounds a bit maudlin, which was not my intent, so I will confess to you how I have met these four tenets of thriving today.   Passion. Well, that's a bit awkward, so here is the confession.   I'm reading 50 Shades of Grey.   I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Compassion.  I feel compassion for entire populations every day when I listen to All Things Considered.  How can you not?  But today specifically, I watched a video online that made me cry. I'm not sure this qualifies as thriving with compassion, but take a look here and tell me what you think.  I'm going to watch it again right now.

Okay, next up is humor which brings us to the second thing I saw on Facebook today.   I copied it to my wall and said it was the story of my life.

Indeed.  Finally, we've got style.  I'm gonna rock this one because I bought myself some new boots last week and although I have yet to wear them out in public, I'm wearing them right now.  With my fleece pajamas.

Oh yeah, baby.  I know I won't be able to thrive Maya Angelou style every day, but you can be damn sure I will have a smile on my face every time I wear these boots.

Poodle thrives with passion, compassion, humor and style as often as she can, even when she puts herself to bed with all her little friends.

That's my girl.

Minor Interruption

I know you are on the edge of your seat (and considering how long you have been waiting there, your rear probably fell asleep weeks ago) waiting for info on my Dr. Seuss tree and Leslie's latest book, but I must post a quick interruption because it is very important.

The dahlias are blooming.

Someone gave me two dahlias a few months ago.  They looked like a pile of dirty, dead roots wrapped in a newspaper and if I take care of them the way I am supposed to, at the end of this season they will once again look like a pile of dirty, dead roots wrapped in newspaper.

Also, in the this-is-very-important department, there is poodle with her big stick.

The end.

Long time no see

Heh.  I almost missed the entire month of July.  So much has happened, I can't even remember what I wanted to tell you.  There was the giant, icky, pointy spider; a field trip to Rock of Ages; a 4th of July road trip to Connecticut while poodle stayed home with a babysitter; marauding cows; Leslie's new book; other stuff.  For now, I will just mention the cows.

There is a farm on our running route.  Wait, back up a minute.  In the interests of full disclosure I will say that when poodle and I "go for a run" we may cover five miles of road, but it is slow going.  My neighbor George?  Now THAT GUY runs.  Poodle and I run/walk.  Sometimes it's a full-on run/stop.  But we've got strict SOP's we adhere to (quick tangent - notwithstanding these SOP's we still almost bit it on another run recently because a woman driving a blazer was not paying attention) and, you know, safety first and all that.  Anyway, this farm has cows that often hang out by the road, so we stop and say hello.  Actually, we say, "Hola, vacas."  Roxie knows them as vacas, not as cows.  So here we were, chatting up the vacas, when one of them started walking over to us.  Then a couple more came.  Keep in mind the electric fence around this field of cows is comprised of exactly one lonely strand of wire.  So we started running again, and damn if those cows didn't start running with us.  Do you know how disconcerting it is to know the only thing separating you from a thundering herd of cattle is one lousy strand of wire?  Got my heart pounding, that's for sure.

Okay.  Anyway.  Moving on.  Recognizing I said in my last post that in the NEXT post I would tell you about my new job, I will start out with a re-cap of the flora situation around here because it changes so fast I can barely keep up.  All of the following happened in the last two weeks of June:

Okay, I generally bump up the contrast in all of my photos, but I TOTALLY upped it on that last one.  It looks cool.

That whole section where the pink flamingos are growing (I'm quite sure they are perennials) is currently swamped with bee balm, and soon to be populated with black-eyed Susans (or, as I keep calling them, lazy Susans).  The peony is also over there, and of the five peonies I've got this is the only one that had more than one flower.  All the others were pink, this one was white.

All kinds of crazy nonsense grew along the front of my house, like those fuzzy pink things I liked.  And what the heck is this:

That bugger was about five feet tall when I took the picture.  Here is the top bit, up close and personal:

Seriously, what is this thing?  I just ran outside and took updated pictures so you can see how it has progressed in the last few weeks:

Poodle butt for scale in that last picture.  If those things would stand up straight they would be way taller than I am.  Ann was saying the other day she wishes there were something like "photopedia" - a way to take a picture of something and put it online to find a match so you can figure out what it is.  Would come in handy right about now.  Eletra?  Gigi?  Diane?  Any clue about this weird thing?

I've got loads more in the flora department, including the white peonies, but we will save it for later.  Now on to the job.

Hmmm.  The job.

It's not new anymore, as I've been there for over two months, but I work for a company called Euro Decals.  Although the website is old and due for a serious overhaul, you can find it here.  We make, among other things, those oval shaped auto decals.  Check out the website, you will see what I mean.  A lot of our clients are schools, retail shops, ski areas and resorts from here to South Carolina.   I work for some great people, and my office is at their house in Stowe, halfway up the Mountain Road.  I talk on the phone, spend quite a bit of time emailing with clients, fill and ship orders, do some graphic design work, and generally make myself useful.  It was an interesting first couple of weeks, because although my boss did his best to train me, the only reason he was hiring an assistant is because his last one passed away from cancer in March.  Her name was Autumn and she had been working for him for over six years.  Her cancer was diagnosed last fall, and it progressed rapidly; any death from a disease like cancer is a blow but hers was extra bitter because she was only 31 years old.  Cancer sucks.  Autumn was a huge part of the business, and there was a bit of a steep learning curve figuring out what needed to be done when there was nobody who knew exactly how she had been doing everything that she had done.  Get it?  I'm still learning as I go, and I will be playing the "new girl" card for a while, but so far so good.  It's not rocket surgery, but it is fun and laid back and interesting, and I'm all over that.  Plus, I only work four days a week.  Extra plus, I can wear flip flops to work.  This is a huge change, coming off 16 years of no open-toed shoes at work.  It was kinda weird.  Extra extra plus, I take poodle to work with me some days.  That's awesome.

So there you go, in a nutshell.  I was in the right place at the right time, and it has been good for both me and for the company.  Kathy told me since I only work four days a week (Monday - Thursday) I need to consider Friday a work day at home and paint all day.  So far that has not happened.  In fact, I haven't painted a thing in ages except the beginning of an outdoor art installation for the side of my garage.  That's if you don't count all the turquoise spray paint I've been slinging around here.  I'm thinking I might slap some of that on the window trim on the front of my house.  Just because I can.

Next up, Crime Rib and my Dr. Seuss tree!

Stay tuned.