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Faces at the Bodleian

Faces outside the Bodleian

I particularly like this one because it reminds me of my dad.

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The prettiest garbage in the world is at Chelsea Physic Garden

The prettiest garbage in the world is at Chelsea Physic Garden.

Posted in 50 Things Before 50, London.


Proof of Londonness

Proof of Londonness.

I’m in London until early August for a bit of research. So far, I can report that Camden is pretty, the Brits are generally sympathetic to my bumbling, fry ups are still tasty, and that if you want something done, you should give it to an archivist. Archivists are hardcore.

(Thanks, Fresca, for recommending Casa Nostra!)

Posted in 50 Things Before 50, London.


50 Before 50 Progress: #15 Keep a kitchen garden

Kitchen Garden, arial view

I’ve wanted a potager since sometime in my very late teens. (Not a normal thing for a teenager to decide they want to do, I know.) After my grandma, a prolific gardener, died when I was 20, I started a garden on the side of my parents’ house. It was never very coherent, though, and I abandoned it after a couple of years because I was spending most of my gardening time with the then-boyfriend. (I was too unformed and uninformed then to realize that your partner should support your projects and dreams, not drag you away from them.) And then I worked a bunch and went to grad school and lived in little apartments and didn’t really garden at all, except for in my kitchen window. I did fairly well with that little window, though, and kept a carnivore garden going the whole time we lived in Minnesota:

Currently my favorite corner of the house.

I also grew basil there for a bit, but mostly I just grew plants. And that was enough for the time being. Now I have a house and a yard. We both cook constantly, and I need some form of manual labor to balance out my job. And I just plain missed gardening. So I started an herb garden on the deck back in May. The housesitter did a great job of keeping it alive while we were gone, and since we’ve been back home it’s been producing really well. (No more $2.99 bundles of herbs for us, at least until frost!) There, we have both Thai and sweet basil, two kinds of chives, cilantro, rosemary, oregano, thyme, sage, dill, spearmint, and a couple kinds of strawberries. I water every morning and we cook from it at least twice a day.

Over the week surrounding the 4th, I had nine yards of topsoil and compost hauled in, along with two yards of hardwood mulch. It took about a week to haul it all around to the back of the house (and thank God Justin and Wade hauled the very last of it, because that final yard just kept replenishing itself every time my back was turned.) At the end of it, the east garden bed has been stripped and regraded, and we have a kitchen garden just out the basement walk-out. The long bed and side bed are waiting until next year for tilling and planting, but I’ve started growing things in the raised beds now: Early Girl tomato, a Black Russian cherry tomato, Patio tomato, 3 more Thai basil plants, a row of scallion seeds, and 70 basil seedlings that I got for $10 at the Regional Market. (They’ll have to be thinned, but such delicious thinning it will be!)

This makes me very happy. And more relaxed, and also more productive. When I hit a hard space with the research, it’s easy to bang down a couple of flights of stairs, step out the basement door, and mess around in the garden for a bit. It’s fairly private down there, so the neighbors don’t see me muttering to myself the way they would if I was working in the front yard. And pretty soon, my head is clear and I’m back upstairs in my study, tapping away at the keyboard.

I’m not counting this goal as done, because it’s still very much in progress and the space really isn’t operationalized yet. But I feel really good about the way it’s coming along.

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50 Before 50 Progress: #6 Set Foot in All 50 States



create your own personalized map of the USA
or check out ourCalifornia travel guide

Thus far: 42 states (82%)

Posted in 50 Things Before 50.


Toad Palace

Toad house, installed.

Posted in Uncategorized.


Everything I Do Gohn Be Funky (from now on)

Lee Dorsey

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Word St.

Word Street

Bauxite, AR

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Aggregation of Highest Merit

Aggregation of Highest Merit

Detail from side of an Engford Family Shows circus wagon.
Circus World, Baraboo, WI. May 2010

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Day 19: Gina!

With Gina

Gina and I met ten years ago in a writing class and she’s been one of my dearest friends ever since. It’s one of those lovely, enduring friendships that just picks up wherever we left off. So much in our lives has changed in the past decade , but this has been one of the few constants. Since I don’t usually do a particularly good job of keeping friends, this makes me feel especially lucky.

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