old and familiar
This weekend we hilled the 2nd patch of potatoes (and Col and Dan entered the father-son matching shirt competition).
We harvested carrots.
~ pitchfork works best for harvesting carrots. Also, my au naturel legs. No time to shave when I’m cultivating all this great food ever~
Rose shuttled the carrots from carrot patch to washing station to table via bike. I’m predicting a new farming revolution involving Dora bikes.
Carrot harvesting is like pulling up secret prizes from the soil. Last week Col yanked one whose tip was all curled back on itself like a worm getting poked. This one we call: lovers dancing.
Yesterday we cooled off at the river with some friends. Col, Rose and their friend Tjarn climbed aboard this boy’s kayak that they didn’t even know. Kids are so funny and wonderful. The pursuit of fun trumps silly things like social convention or do I actually know you?
And even though it has been hot here, it cools off enough at night to snuggle under an elk hide (with Rammy, Sealy and Baby Sealy).
We also listened to a lot of Pandora this weekend. My default station is a quick mix of Rolling Stones, Emmylou Harris, Paul Simon and Neil Young (which is exactly what I’ve been listening to for oh, the past 20 years. When my high school boyfriend Eric and I were corresponding via Facebook recently he asked what music I listen to. Uh, the mixed tape you made me in 1989). I’m sure there’s plenty good new music out there but I still can’t help sweeping the kids into my arms for a slow dance when Imagine by John Lennon comes on, so moved that I might be crying just a little. Or belting out the melancholy words (which give me a sort of satisfying heartache) to American Tune along with Paul Simon. Also, you know how some people love new and exciting. Me? I love old and familiar. But I think you knew that.
Also, I was wondering how everyone on the east coast, the midwest and the south are doing? Holy heat wave! What’s it like to exist in 100F plus weather? (complaints and swears OK).
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Love that carrot. I’m thinking a photo to frame might be just perfect for the kitchen.
lucky you~ that carrot is beautiful and your kids delightful. I have just recently branched off from the mixed tape circa 1993. It’s been fun. I know what you mean about certain songs dancing with your kids though.
Surprisingly enough our section of the deep south has been pretty tolerable for late July. That and I’m getting acclimated despite my attempts to remain a northern girl to the core. I can sense a little bit of the south seeping under my skin as time passes….
Neil Young ~ Harvest Moon (moves my soul every time I hear it.)
xoxo
~s
ps – making MORE peach salsa today. I’m going to have to hide it under the bathroom sink where the husband and eldest daughter cannot find it. I wish I had a picture to share with you of my dirt covered husband in carhartt overalls, sans shirt eating it out of the jar with a SPOON!!!! “What?! I needed a snack… it was almost gone anyway” he tells me.
Heat, East Coast, as in Connecticut: it really sucks! But at least it isn’t winter and doesn’t need shoveling or plowing!
Jan
I don’t know what I’d do if it was 120 degrees. I pretty much melt when it’s 110. I think hairy legs help with keeping cool though! : )
“Uh, the mixed tape you made me in 1989” rofl…. yeah, that would be me, too. i have found some newer music i like, which mostly sounds like it is trying to be older… ha. but your quick mix sounds a heck of a lot like mine. i too get weepy when american tune comes on. if i could play those tricky chord changes on my guitar i’d like to sing that one around a campfire.
xo
I’m so glad to hear that about your musical tastes–my go-to Pandora is a mix of Shriekback, Oingo-Boingo, and The Chamelions UK, which brings out lots of yummy New Order and Echo and the Bunnymen, but a bit too much The Smiths and The Talking Heads for my taste (what, there are people currently recording NEW music as we speak? Blasphemy!). This morning it was downright chilly in our house, windows left on all night to a cool 50s-ish night (thermometer battery died overnight, so I’m not sure what the low was), and I got my first (OK, I admit it second–the first coming in the midst of the heatwave when I noticed the red maples in the bog down the road already starting to fade from green) “summer-is-over-and-now-we-have-to-face-the-long-cold-dark-dreadful-days-of-winter-for-eleven-months” freak-out. Enjoy the heat (and carrots) while it (and they) last(s).
Also, if anyone has some music they love that might not show up on my “flashback to the 60’s” Pandora mix, feel free to recommend, or better yet, send out a cassette tape, er…a CD.
when I was a teenager I loved listening to 3 tapes my father brought from Canada (to Poland) in the late 70’s. I knew I was listening to Joan Baez but the rest of the singers I didn’t even know the names of. Only recently did I find out that one of my favorites was Neil Young. He has the kind of voice you don’t forget.
Now I’m enchanted with Nick Drake’s and Piers Faccini’s voices.
wow, did you just give me permission to complain about the North Carolina weather? You’ve just taken all the fun out of it. But I’ll give you a hint: I bought 3 boxes of canning tomatoes today, as all of MY plants have grown in an inverse relationship to the heat. No really, they are smaller than they were when I put them in. Well, excluding the cherry tomatoes. They are hard to kill.
60’s add-ins: Cat Stevens? Lucinda Williams? (ok, she’s not 60’s, but if you like EmmyLou…),
I can tell you here in NC it’s smothering hot, the humidity makes it hard for me to breathe in it, so I stay in mostly.
100+ degrees in NJ is when you soak through your clothes and hit the shower the first time by 8:00 am – & it’s when you feel the sweat is dripping down the INSIDE of your eyeballs.
Speaking of INSIDE, an NJ woman baked two batches of cookies on the dashboard INSIDE of her car.
Thankfully, the heat wave has broken today, there are rumbles of thunder, and a gentle rain has been falling – blessed sound.
looks like a full weekend! you know oddly enough here in the south we’ve been having all this rain and so many overcast days that the last week or so it’s been in the high 80’s – that is a cool wave for the deep south!!!
It was soooo hot last week in SE Pennsylvania, that my daughter re-melted her son’s broken crayons, into new shapes, outside!!! They also tried to cook an egg on the sidewalk, didn’t turn out so well.
Our AC has been running constantly! And we haven’t had any rain in so long that the grass is dead and I’m watering the garden every night. My electric and water bill should be ridiculous. But I agree with Jan, NO shoveling!!! LOL
Oh well this to shall pass…….
Look at those puppies! Am I talking about the carrots, the kids, or the orange shirts?? I’ll never tell. It’s the heat, going to my head.
Love-ly carrots!!!! And pandora, what the heck would we do without pandora!!! I actually love Simon & garfunkel with “the only living boy in NY being a big fave! And the heat wave? One word- hell. Our “pool”, you know, the one that’s suppose to cool us off? Turned into a hot tub with temps around 98 degrees :(.
Oklahoma is absolutely stifling right now. Over the weekend, we topped out at 109. We’ve had 36 days of 100+ degree heat with little to NO rain, and those were almost all consecutive. My garden is suffering from the mandatory water conservation injunction as well as neglect (35 weeks pregnant with a two year old and just don’t feel like gardning when it is already 85 degrees at 8 a.m.).
We usually only have about 10 days of 100+ temps each summer. I look at the extended forecast juxtaposed against my extended belly and just get downright depressed. The water at the pool is around 87 to 88 degrees and even the lakes are lukewarm. Wow, that felt good. Thanks for letting me rant!
As far as music, you should check out Brandi Carlile as well as Gillian Welch.
I love Gillian Welch (more of that satisfying heartbreak).
it’s funny you mention music… my hubby spent hours yesterday categorizing and listening to playlists of music he found in the attic, much of it from his high school years. It was a little eerie to hear all those songs I haven’t heard in years but still know all the words to! Our tastes were very different! We even had some mutual “You listened to that!?” moments… lots of fun!
I am a heat loving creature and despise being cold BUT days of 100+ heat are getting….old. We actually had a break (hehe) here in north Arkansas yesterday do to overcast skies. As in “Wow, I’m picking okra at 11 am and it’s only 89 degrees, not 99. Yep, still dripping sweat but it feels almost balmy compared to last week!” And my confession: Last week picking green beans in the sweltering afternoon, sweat pouring off me, I was singing to myself, smiling, loving life. I think the garden bug hasn’t so much as bit me as ate me! ;) And I know here I have kindred souls who would totally get the feeling of bliss I get from looking at freshly canned food the I grew, harvested, and put up lined up on the counter.
And music. I am drawn to female singer/songwriters the most. Across the generas. But I always love Allison Krauss (love, love Lonely Runs Both Ways) and like A Fine Frenzy.
I just got back from a quick trip up to Truckee with the kids and I was musing about how great it feels that they love The Last Waltz cd from The Band–and that when my friend moved my car while we were up there and asked lovingly, “Was that Bob Dylan singing Forever Young in there?” when she emerged. Oh, yeah.
But I am married to a man who also keeps me somewhat current via All Songs Considered on NPR–they recommend some good stuff!
Love from Berkeley, where tonight, as I turned into our driveway with two sweaty kids asleep in their carseats, it is a lovely 59 F.
How hot is it in Virginia? So hot, that my family, who hates, HATES AC, broke down and turned it on last week. I gave up cooking, so we’ve existed off tomato sandwiches, peaches and melon. You take a shower to go somewhere and step outside and wonder why you bothered to take that shower, because the air outside is so moist. The reading on my car’s dashboard themometer said 113 at 3:00 Friday afternoon. My hair has not fully dried out in over a week.
That said, I really don’t mind the heat and now that it’s down to the low 90’s this week, we are back to having the house open and the AC off. And we are taking up every offer we’ve gotten from folks to come visit them at their lake/mountain/bay cabins to escape!
So did they win the matching shirts contest? That’s hilarious.
I love listening to Pandora too. I mix old and familiar with the strange and new, so I find myself sighing to the former and my fingers tapping to the latter.
Oh I so miss the era of the mixed tapes. I don’t know if it’s you I said this to but the last time someone made me a mixed tape (CD, in this case), I gave him two children :)
The kayak picture is priceless. How awesome is it that Col and Rose will climb onto a stranger’s boat, and how awesome is Durango that they can do so without you having to worry?
(Answer: Very awesome!)
I think I might be with you re: old and familiar, too. I don’t think I’ve listened to anything new since Annabelle was born!
Those carrots are so vibrant! Just like those shirts!
Pandora is on all the time at my house. I have been listening to some newer folks (Loving The Civil Wars, Colbie Callait (Sp?), and Alison Krauss.) I do have a station of John Denver though, and they play a lot of the oldies, including Neil Young and Peter, Paul and Mary. Love it! But I like the new stuff, too.
No heat here, we’re having a cold, grey summer. :(