That Lovely Month

May 1st already?  Time for Occupy Gazebo.

The bundle on the table is my painting stuff. The bundle under the table is a filthy corgi.

At the risk of repeating myself, these roll-up blinds were a brilliant idea. Sometimes I like to do this half-way thing and let the lookyloos get only a partial glimpse. The blinds have helped me to understand that it’s not so much them seeing me that bothers me – it’s me seeing them that disturbs me. So halfway is good enough for privacy purposes. They go all the way down when the sun makes it unbearable to sit there.

I was going to work from the official office today instead of  from my extra bedroom, but why should I waste my time driving up and down the parkway? I can have lunch on the deck and then go buy bright red geraniums for the stoopscape.

Question: Do the commies still parade on May 1st? Related: little known fact about Suzette: I have an obsession with an Al Stewart CD called  Between The Wars which *deep breath* is  themed around of world events from 1918 to 1939. Each piece is done in a different style but one that suits the particular subject matter of the track. I am amazed at how much history I knew and forgot and remembered again when I first listened to this. Listen to any part of this work and see if the brilliance doesn’t take your breath away. Where else are you going to find a pop music piece meant for general audience that makes a quiet allusion to how the Japanese takeover of southeast Asian rubber tree plantations away from the French and the resulting global shortage impacted  European supply? I just reread that sentence and it sounds so dry but it’s not. It’s brilliant. I just used 4 times as many words as the complete reference in the song lyric:

“Far away, figures bend to tap the
Endless seas of rubber trees
To coat the wheels of Paris taxis”

I know the hipper parts of the interwebs are busy today with Jonathan Colton’s First Of May but they don’t even know. And so for May 1st, I present to you Joe the Georgian.

lyrics here

[Editor's note: If only I could think of a post that would include a reference to A League of Notions, even though I do not care for that cheap shot at the Pope at the end.]

Rear Window

This picture was taken from my second floor bathroom.

These yews – taller than they look here – are all that’s left between my yard and the gen pop  on the next street. They’ve stood thick and magnificently dark green at the edge of the wild tangle of feral trees and volunteer grapevines and poison ivy stems as thick as a baseball bat. When I looked out the window today, I see that they are sort of sickly yellow in some places and kind of sparse. This isn’t good.

So this is what it’s come to:

Now maybe that looks tacky to you but I have to tell you that I am thrilled to death by the addition of an inexpensive vinyl reed roll up shade to the gazebo. I have two more for the sides. It might look like a cobbled together poor man’s sweat lodge from the outside, but from the inside it is a lovely cabana – ca BAN ya! – that positively glows when the sun shines.

Right now the stupid orange bench is on top of the the picnic table. I should get a grip on myself and finish painting it even though the thrill is gone. I might not have trees, I might not have any actual grass, but by God I’ve got a cabana and I’m going to maximize its usage.

Deck Prep

Although we had a only a small amount of snow and not too many really cold days and nights here,  we sure have had every other weather event here since last we were out on the summertime deck. And save for a few gone but not forgotten trees, nothing has suffered more than my beloved Jack ‘n Jill chair.

here it is in its former summertime glory (l) compared to what we see today (r)

I love this piece of furniture beyond reason and it just can’t last another summer. Sami said he’d replace the  bad parts but when he started to look it over, he discovered that all the parts are bad. The green stain might look good in places but underneath it’s all rot. So we’re talking a complete re-build. Probably No. 2 pine. Probably red cedar arms and table. Probably going to take all summer to do it.

There was a moment a week or two ago when we were sitting transfixed in front of the TV watching a vendor on QVC sing out the merits of a zero-gravity recliner. We almost pushed the button on ordering two of them but in the end, I said we didn’t really have room for them out on the deck. So now maybe that’s a real option. (I don’t know – they look a little awkward for an unsteady gimp to get into.) But then we’d have to get a thing for the umbrella and now it’s a bigger deal.

And then what about the Jack and Jill?  Maybe we’ll get lucky and we’ll find another one out on the curb for garbage pick up but chances for that are really slim. I will entertain the notion that perhaps I am overly involved in this stuff, but who will even remember them if we just let them go? The way it is now, for all of it’s millions of arcane offering -most of which are outright junk – you can’t even find these on eBay. Do a google image search and my own photos are numbers 2 and 3 in the results and then you will see nothing ever again.

I consider this a personal triumph

I can’t be the only one who loves this stuff. I know it’s from the 40′s 50′s and 60′s and the likelihood that even though it may have been beloved by someone, most of it is just a splintered, rotted memory now.

So I don’t know. I’m going to spend the next day or so painting up a 26 year old wood and iron bench for the front stoopscape and that will occupy me and make me less sad. The stoopscape, by the way, has kind of wandered away from the original  Happy Hour In a Mexican Restaurant On Second Avenue theme and is now leaning towards Gypsy Caravan. I hope it won’t interpreted as a sign of welcome for those maverick driveway pavers who come around knocking on suburban doors offering to lay down aspahlt.

Containers

Baby containers. I did a lot of driving over the weekend in fog, drizzle and rain. And everyplace I went,  at least twice a day, I saw babies being pushed around in strollers that were encased in a clear plastic shield. While I’m all for kids on leashes, I’m not sure about the plastic bubble thing. While all of the babies that I saw this weekend were just sitting thee doing their placid baby thing, I can’t help wondering if they’ll grow up with unexplained fear of being walled off in a place they can’t escape from.

I found this picture of my actual strawberry pot on an older version of this blog. It must have been Day One after potting since my recollection is that some hen n chicks died off and others zoomed upwards in a rudely phallic and unattractive manner.

Plant containers. (Cabin fever alert, exhibited as talking about gardening.) I have two lovely terra cotta strawberry pots. When I first got them, I actually tried to grow strawberries in them – I got about 4 edible  berries over the course of three years. So I moved onto herbs, portulaca and begonias each with their own miserable result. Despite the fact that everything I attempt lately ends up as crap and I was never successful with these pots even back when I was good, I’m thinking about resurrecting the pots and trying it again.

Maybe i’ll try cactus this time.

No. Really I have this vision of filling all the openings with red begonias and placing it on a block right in the flower bed. Or maybe in an assortment of impatiens and putting it at the back end of the bed where tree roots insist on ruining everything.

I tired googling “flowers in strawberry pots” or what to plant in strawberry pots” and I get generic returns that say Don’t limit your strawberry pots to just strawberries! You can plant herbs, annual flowers or succulents!” Obviously, this is advice from people who are paid to produce words and haven’t ever actually tried to grow anything in a strawberry pot.

So I don’t know. I know its the winter blues taking but IF YOU FAIL TO PLAN THAN YOU PLAN TO FAIL and I already have enough fail garden-wise than I can handle.

For Pickle Lovers In General and The Cocktail Crowd In Specific

Not only do I not participate at Facebook, I avoid even going there unless there’s some life altering reason to do so. Today, such an occasion presented itself: I found out that the Vlasic Stork has a Facebook page.

And it’s funny. It’s kind of an on-line support group for people who like to drink pickle juice. I admit that there have been times that once the pickles were gone, I’ve re-used the juice by sticking  suitable vegetables [carrots, cucumbers, cauliflower, peppers] into the jar. I’m not that much into outright drinking pickle juice, this is an idea I can get behind:

List of possible applications:

• Bloody Marys
• Dirty Martinis
• Tomatotinis
• Tumbler Full of Gin On The Pickle Rocks

I’m tagging this in 101 Views of My Deck because as soon s it gets warm again – only 5 short months away – I’m going to be out there with the pickle juice ice cubes.

UPDATE: Pickle Cocktails. Thank you, Shecky.