Hairbrained Act of Seed Planting Update

February 20

I’ve got a thing about seeds.  I love them for what they can become.  I hate that I have little power over them besides pokin’ ’em in the soil and hoping something comes of it.  Three weeks ago I committed what I called a Harebrained Act of Hope, planting seeds in little cells and putting them under a light.  Yesterday I transplanted the results of that shaky venture into slightly larger pots to give roots room to roam and to free up cells for more lettuce seeds.   In three weeks, I will plant the first batch outside, plant the second planting in the larger pots, and free up the whole seed starting kit and caboodle for tomatoes, peppers, eggplants and other warm season plants.

From that first planting I have a dozen broccoli plants, 18 lettuce plants (red leaf, buttercrunch, Speckled Trout Romaine), and four bok choi.  I have three tiny parsley plants and a handful of baby lettuces still in their cells, too small to transplant.

Next Stop: The Garden!

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Surprise! (Spring’s Coming)

Purple Spring Jewels

You’d think a 51 year-old gardener with lettuce and broccoli plantlings under grow lights in the front room would have an inkling that spring is on the way.  So why did that flash of purple, four perfect crocus plants blooming in the flower bed by the front door, come as such a surprise?  The weather had been warm this past week, true, but my heart was still in winter.  I must have thought my optimistic seed planting last week was a lark, an absurd and probably hopeless act of defiance.  Not only that, I tend to doubt the efficacy of any seed I plant.  How could that ever grow?  I’m sure I didn’t plant those seeds quite right.  But what if it was exactly the right thing to do and I did it just fine?  What if the moment to act is now, regardless of who says this thing or that can or can’t be done?  Continue reading

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Bombay Letters 2, March 1998

Date: March 12, 1998

Subject: A Bit About Food

Hello from India!

So glad to get a few messages from you via email.  My Hotmail address is still current and active but I do not have regular or easy access to the Internet yet.  To get online I need to go to the office early in the day (before work) because the local Internet provider gets sooo busy later in the day you can hardly use it.  Supposedly a few new providers are going to enter the market and so hopefully that will help the service.

Let me tell you about my lunches.  I order Indian food every day from the Consulate commissary.  I get a hot dish (either a vegetable, or fish, or mutton or chicken curry sort of dish, though it isn’t called curry here) along with plenty of rice and three chapati, the Indian equivalent to pita bread.  This satisfying and definitely not fattening  meal costs me anywhere from 12 to 17 rupees.  Since there are 40 rupees to the dollar, I pay about 30 cents or so for a great meal.  Our cook makes a wide variety of food at home, a lot of it Western, so the lunchroom at work is my only steady source of Indian food which I love.  Continue reading

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A Good Time Was Had By All

Here’s a note we got from my wife’s cousin and her husband.  They conducted their first annual Burns Supper last weekend.

Well, Gary and Anita, we did it.  We had our Burns Supper this
evening and it was fantastic.  Everyone had a good time--all 14 of us
including our 3 and 1/2 year-old grandson.  Amy made wonderful
haggis out of goat meat since she was unable to get lamb.  It was
delicious and would have remained so even without the
"gravy."   Aaron and our friend Don piped in the haggis which Amy
carried, followed by Carolyn and our friend Mac, the Scot, carrying
the "gravy."  Aaron played the guitar and Don played the recorder
and tin whistle.  We had roast beef, neeps, tatties, mashed peas and
Scottish flatbread dipped in olive oil with Guiness and sugar for the
meal, then a Scottish pudding for dessert.  We danced a jig to the
music after the meal and each of us took turns reading Burns
poems.  We didn't read Tam O'Shanter, however.  All wanted to have
another Burns supper next year.  We'll send you some pictures and
possibly a movie we made on the iPhone.  Thank you so much for
inspiring us to do this for, without your encouragement, we couldn't
have pulled it off.  Maurice and Carolyn

This is the point of The Life Literary: collecting, sharing and modeling scads of ideas for ways to live literarily.  My dream is that someday I’ll be able to post many and regular examples of how TLL readers have put ideas from this blog to use.  Living literarily is doable and fun.  It can be as simple as memorizing a poem or writing a sentence a day (or week) or as complex as organizing an event like a Burns Supper.  A literary (or more literary) life is available to anyone.

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Hitting Bottom

I put it off for nearly a year and a half, but in the end, I had to go through with it.  I’m talking about my colonoscopy.  I’m so glad it’s behind me now.  Before the procedure I didn’t think I would write about it, but afterward in those first, precious moments as the anesthesia wore off I realized: how could I not tell the tail?  I think in hindsight, I’ll be glad I did.

My family doctor mentioned it at my physical shortly before my fiftieth birthday a year and a half ago.  He said 50 is when you have your first colonoscopy.  I wasn’t thrilled.  The idea of sneaking a camera in through the back door wasn’t appealing.  Maybe it was a deep-seated fear.  I didn’t want to be the butt of jokes even though I knew colonoscopies are routine and fairly safe.  During my next physical soon after 51, the doc asked about it again.  “Don’t be a bum,” he said,  “Get it done.”  I didn’t want to be asinine.  The point of the procedure is cancer prevention.  What was at the bottom of my hesitance?  Why was I scared about this evaluation of my: colon.

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From the Bride’s Father’s Notebook – Day 3

From the Bride’s Father’s Notebook – Day 2

December 22, 2009

Wedding License

Kate and David are filling out the marriage license application.  We all want to make sure it’s done just right, so everyone contributes a word.  Second guessing a bureaucratic form is usually pretty fruitless, but it seems vital to each of us right about now.  Of course the stakes are high, or at least our desire to get it right is high.  Humorous seeing first David, then Katie, fill it out, speaking each question aloud.  And the details: should I write dad’s middle name or keep it just an initial?  I think the final decision was neither.  At the stroke of a pen my middle name, which I don’t much like anyway: gone.  Could I get a whole new name this way?  Continue reading

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Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

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More Wanton Optimism: Spring Garden 2010

March 7, 2010

I committed a random act of optimism today.  Barely a week after the end of February I planted seeds in my gardens.  The day was perfect for such behavior, the warm sun sowing its own seeds in people’s brains, sprouting late winter ideas: “Shed coats and hats, put on shorts and tee-shirts.  Go run, go bike, go play a vigorous sport with others newly emerged from hibernation.  And you, Gare:  Go plant something!”  And so, garden fork in hand, seeds in pocket, wife at side, I set off for the nearer of my two gardens.

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We’re in the same bed…

…dreaming different dreams.

(I did not come up with this Daily Sentence.  I heard it at work today, mentioned in the context of conducting negotiations.  It’s when two sides want the same outcome but differ on the way to get there.  Struck me as equally apropos for negotiating matters of state or matters of the heart.  I jotted it down in my Family Journal until I had time to transcribe it here.)

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Retiring a Family Journal

Recording Life's Tossed Salad

I’ve reached the end of my current family journal.  I started it in August, 2010 and finished it in February, 2011.  Its dog-eared pages are full of things I’ve jotted down, real ink on real paper, over the last several months.  Today, oh boy!, it’s time to bring out a nice, clean new one.  I love doing that.

Here’s a sampling of what I write in a family journal:

1.  Ideas for blog posts, essays and magnum opuses, 2.  Shopping lists, 3. Telephone numbers, 4. Word plays that entertain me, 5. Notes I take while doing family business (dealing with doctors, insurance, bills, mechanics, and so forth), 6. Insights on life and love and God, 7. Garden notes (seeds to order, garden planning schematics), 8. Rhymes and poetic phrases, 9. Smart alec thoughts that occur to me during meetings,  10.  An interesting epitaph copied from a tombstone, 11. Travel plans and itineraries, 12. Whatever else I want to jot down.

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