early thursday morning

chanda was busy going over a math problem with greg on the phone this morning when i came home after nighttime babysitting, though it's calculus so he said she needs to teach him about it. (he went out to the house last night for a furnace chimney inspection this afternoon.)

these two greeted me with their usual ruckus.

what i'm reading

janet gave me this book for christmas, and i finally started reading it last week. it's incredibly inspiring and uplifting, and actually very eye-opening. it's a different way of looking at our place on this earth, and the relationship we have with every living being on it. i'd love to believe that we can make changes to our society and live more holistically and inclusively.  robin wall kimmerer writes from a scientific standpoint with personal stories and native american principles woven throughout.

on growing corn, beans and squash:

 

without the corn's support, the beans would be an unruly tangle on the ground, vulnerable to bean-hungry predators. it might seem as if she is taking a free ride in this garden, benefiting from the corn's height and the squash's shade, but by the rules of reciprocity none can take more than she gives. the corn takes care of making light available; the squash reduces weeds. what about the beans? to see her gift you have to look underground.

she then goes on to explain how the beans have the ability to take nitrogen from the atmosphere and turn it into usable nutrients with the help of rhizobium bacteria, which house themselves in an oxygen free nodule that the bean grows on the tips of its roots.

she also goes on to explain how they complement each other nutritionally:

all summer, the corn turns sunshine into carbohydrate, so that all winter, people can have food energy. but a human cannot subsist on corn alone; it is not nutritionally complete. just as the bean complements the corn in the garden, it collaborates in the diet as well. by virtue of their nitrogen-fixing capacity, beans are high in protein and fill in the nutritional gaps left by corn. a person can live well on a diet of beans and corn; neither alone would suffice. but neither beans nor corn have the vitamins that squash provide in their carotene-rich flesh. together, they are once again greater than alone.

she also explains in detail the plants' structure, reproduction and growth in a very clear and understandable way. it's all about our relationships and the gifts we bring to each other; not just to people, but to all living beings (for the corn, beans and squash don't grow alone in this respect, they are dependent on someone tending to them).

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greg helped chanda with some schoolwork today . . 

pluto wanted to help too.

rainy shopping day

i went out today for groceries for us and for kendall . . and ran into chanda and emily during my walk downtown (stopping at the library before visiting the health food store). i'm always amazed when i run into family and friends on the street . . what are the chances in terms of timing and streets taken? 

 

it was drizzly at first, but then just grey and wet. i was glad not to have to open the umbrella.

a quiet sunday afternoon, and spring seems to be arriving in london

greg is almost finished with reading his book, the adventures of huckleberry finn.
 

and these two creatures are very good at taking the afternoon nice and easy . . 

 

and morgan texted these lovely photos of the bush in bloom outside the apartment door.

 

 

 

 ----

 

in the morning greg and i had helped kendall check out of the hotel where she had stayed to rest for a few nights after the surgery . . 

 

i had always wanted to see inside this place, so it was fun for me to visit.

sunday poem

 

ocean water

the ocean pushes back

alive and vigorous

the heritage of habitat

leans against expectation

muscles its due respect

without regard

without warning

without reorienting the ones

with swimming pool perspectives

limitations of consistent temperatures

and painted cement walls

 

the ocean rumbles its sovereignty

full weight of freedom on my

skin.

 

by dasha kelly hamilton

thursday errands

i went uptown to help kendall with some errands, and was able to run over in the rain to the migrant kitchen for some empanadas and a carnitas shawarma wrap, and a free coffee (we shared it and all was sooo good!).

a little waiting room time . . 

a room with a view of the river and the whitney museum on the left from the hotel kendall will rest at, pre-surgery.

aurélien is really enjoying looking at his books these days!

candlemas

it does feel like a new year around here . . all the christmas decorations have been put away and the apartment has been vacuumed and dusted and cleaned. chanda has begun a new semester and i'm finishing up two knitting projects. we've also moved greg's desk back to where the christmas tree had been placed, and the reading chair is once again sitting next to the window. figaro is no longer a little kitten and has been pushing his boundaries by jumping up on higher and higher shelves. sometimes if pluto is lying down on the bed with his ears twitching, he'll pounce on pluto. he eats a ton of food and is getting quite big. chanda thinks he'll be as big as mert, the tuxedo cat who lives with the young girl she sometimes babysits for . . i'm not sure . . mert is a big cat.

anyway, the sun was shining earlier, but now it's very grey outside . . it's not raining, however . .

paperwhites and dumplings

i finally took the old paperwhites off the windowsill and placed the new three bulbs i bought in december in glass jars with stones. i planted last year's paperwhites in montauk. i'm hoping they bloom this spring. 

it's lunar new year. we ordered dumplings from red farm to celebrate. i've never had their food before, and these were delicious (very fancy presentation!). we had the crunchy peanut, three vegetable, and pork and crab soup dumplings. the three of us shared them (don't worry, we also had some soup) as they were quite pricey.

i also went back and finished a post from 2016. it had been sitting open on my desktop whenever i opened firefox along with twenty other tabs. this morning firefox opened to just two tabs, and this old, unfinished post was one of them. it's a very long post as it's not broken up into days, just one long entry about a week's vacation. i also realized that i had posted during the vacation from either my cell phone or greg's laptop or someone else's laptop, so i guess it's a many layered account. 

as to all the other tabs . . i suppose i could find them in the browser's history . . but maybe the ones i can't remember aren't all that important. sometimes i can't keep all my thoughts in their proper drawers in my mind, and some slip out an open window . . in my imagination it's a clear blue sky.

a cape cod vacation post.