Turnips from Taos!

Turnips—beautiful ones!

This is a belated Thanksgiving post, but it’s no less thankful for the delay. We got a wonderful surprise on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving: a big bucket of gorgeous turnips on our doorstep!

I’d almost forgotten the conversation I had one afternoon this hot summer with one of the fellows working on the new-sidewalks project here along Broadway. It started when I learned he lived in Taos (Missouri) (of course) and asked if he could identify a fellow in a picture I took at a church supper there.

Well, he could! People are tight-knit in those communities. And then we got talking about the Taos harvest festival and how they always serve turnips there, along with the sausage and the turkey and dressing. Turnips! And he mentioned that he grows turnips himself. I told him how much I wish turnips at the store came with the greens still attached, because I like to cook the greens and turnips together, and anyway, how dare they throw away those lovely greens?

And—without any prompting from me, honest—he offered to bring me some turnips! With their greens on ’em! He said he’d just leave a box of them on our doorstep sometime this fall.

We weren’t home Wednesday afternoon when he must have left them, but when we returned in the evening, there they were! Lovely, lovely fresh turnips. Stuffed to overflowing in one of those enormous 5-gallon plastic construction buckets. The greens were as pretty as the creamy-smooth roots.

And I was wondering what sort of vegetable I could serve with Thanksgiving dinner, besides the sticky sweet potatoes and straight-ahead canned green bean casserole. Turnips cooked together with their greens! So lovely!

I’m not sure of this fellow’s name, so I’m asking the concrete contractor to tell me, so I can write and thank him. What a sweetheart, for him to remember, and to be so generous!

~~~Such beautiful turnips! Thank you, kind sir, for now, until I can write you a thank-you letter directly!

A note: I took these pictures this morning, so the greens have wilted somewhat. And there were lots more; remember I cooked some on Thanksgiving!

October Twenty-Fourth

Greetings, everyone! Once again, I must apologize for my absences. As in the past, absence from blogging means that I've been preoccupied with something else. For the past month, in particular, Sue and I have been busy with one of our cats, Genji, who is struggling. Actually, he's doing pretty well, considering that his illness will eventually (and possibly soon) mean the end of him, but his relative comfort these days is due in large part to the efforts of Sue and me. We use a miniblender to liquify canned food, and we try to feed him just about whenever he's hungry. Then, we wipe his mouth, shirt front, and the kitchen floor. There is pain medicine twice a day. And well, you know . . . we're simply keeping an eye on him, and offering him a lap when he wants it, and trying to make sure he knows he's cared for, and that we love him.

When I get behind in my "journal-journal" (the real one, that's made of paper), I have traditionally used a technique I call "Newsflashes." It's a silly but effective way for me to cover as many subjects as possible, giving myself permission to treat each subject as a "headline." (I'm really not fitted for this Internet-Twitter-ADHD-cursory-shallow style of writing.) So maybe I ought to try that today. I'll omit the silly little lightning-bolt "icon" I would draw beside each statement, if I were writing in my actual journal. Here goes.

TODAY IT'S MY BIRTHDAY. Forty-seven! As Rose O'Neill remarked on her sixtieth, "How roguish!" Well, I'm just glad we have nice weather, that water flows out of the tap today, and that we're going out somewhere for dinner. I don't even know where yet! (I get to decide!)

GREAT NEWS ABOUT THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI PRESS. All summer long, people have been outraged about the efforts by a few at the University of Missouri to hijack and dismantle Missouri's number-one book publisher, which happens to belong to the people of the State of Missouri. Fortunately, after months of receiving all kinds of public pressure, the administrators have--amazingly!--reversed their decision. But a great deal of damage was done. Press staff numbers are at an all-time low, and the disturbance in operations means that they're scrambling to rebuild their forthcoming list of titles.

I was looking to see if I had any pictures of the press or its staff to share with you. Most people don't know what "book publishing" looks like. Really, it's a bunch of people staring at computers. But to give you an idea of the change in the press in the past few years, here's a picture of the staff as of 2008, before nearly all the layoffs and downsizing began (copied from p. ix of University of Missouri Press: 50 Years of Excellence, 1958-2008). As far as I can tell, the total staff today numbers seven. Seven!!

But yes, the most recent news about the press has been particularly encouraging, so I'd like to encourage you to contribute to the press's future. Here's a link for making a tax-deductible donation. (Yes: My birthday wish is that you'd send a check to the University of Missouri Press!)

Also, browse their catalog and buy a book! Indeed, the books are available in print or electronic formats, and have been for years.

YARD WORK: MOVING THE IRIS. This has been my project the last few weekends. The catalyst was that my dad gave me a bushel of surprise lily bulbs: "If you can't find places for them, just throw them in a compost pile." (As if.) Back when Sue and I got our beloved privacy fence, we moved a bunch of iris to a less-than-optimal place under a tree, right on the corner. (I told you about our hardy heirloom irises.)

My plan was to remove the irises from under the tree and put the surprise lilies there. Those irises, then, could go into an expanded existing (more appropriate) iris bed. (It was expanded because of our new sidewalks and driveway--remember?) The iris, I think, will do well in their new location.

I also rescued some poor little iris bulbs from one of the local nonresident landlord's properties. They'd been mowed off regularly by his "lawn-scalper," but I think they should strengthen and revive. I look forward to seeing what color they are, once they're able to bloom again!

And you know how bulbs are--they always take up more space than you think they will. So I ended up digging up about a half of one of our backyard beds, too, and--sort of--reorganizing it, including some of the extra bulbs: Regular irises go "here," surprise lilies go "here," and Siberian (or are they Japanese?--oh, whatever!) irises go "here." And I made an attempt to segregate that variegated "bishop's weed" stuff (Aegopodium podagraria). We'll see how that goes!

THE NEW SIDEWALKS: UPDATE. Yep, they're lovely, all up and down Broadway. Despite the months of bare dirt due to the construction, heat, and drought, the grass they planted (once it started raining again) has taken off. It's looking really good! Compare the pictures below to the ones I posted earlier!

BREAKING NEWS: PHIDIPPUS AUDAX OBSERVED IN HOME OFFICE! Or, as they say in the guidebooks, a "bold jumping spider." I love the scientific name, though. Phidippus sounds like some Classical Greek playwright, and audax stands for "audacious." And these little characters are audacious! I get the idea they're as curious about us as we are about them. Naturally, I carefully trapped him with a cup and a piece of junkmail and escorted him outside. Below are a few pictures of a P. audax I took in 2008, while it perched on the hood of my car. Aren't the iridescent green chelicerae nifty? What a cool little fella!

If you're a regular reader, you know how I've grown to love spiders!

Well, that's enough "updating" for now--I have plenty more I want to write about, but I have a bunch of other stuff I want to do today!

New Sidewalks!

Thanks to the Old Munichburg Association’s CID (Community Improvement District), the 500 and 600 blocks of Broadway are getting new sidewalks, curbs, and gutters this year!

It’s all happening very quickly, and it’s just grand.

They tore out the busted-up old sidewalks on our part of Broadway on Monday; built the frame for the new sidewalk Tuesday, and Wednesday they poured the concrete.

When they left that day, the new sidewalks were set enough we could walk on them!

While the contractor’s in the area, we’ve had our front sidewalk (which is not part of the CID) and our driveway replaced, too!

They put in our new driveway this morning!

It’s been hard to work this week, with all the commotion out the windows!

We’ve owned this house for more than a decade, now, and although I had spent a lot of time at first picking weeds out of the cracks or spraying Roundup, I finally gave up on that. Instead, whenever I finished cutting the grass, I’d set the mower on its lowest setting and mow the sidewalks.

Yes, I’d mow the sidewalks. The driveway, too!

But I can scratch that off my list now! We will always remember 2012!

To celebrate, I want to share with you the song I’ve had stuck in my head all week.

Enjoy!

Goodbye Sycamore

Dramatic changes in Munichburg are beginning. Today, the city's contractors have started the work for new sidewalks, curbs, and gutters on the two blocks of Broadway between the 50/63 Expressway and Dunklin Street.

The first order of business is to trim or cut down trees, some of which were interfering with power lines, or wrecking the sidewalks with their surface roots, or both.

Today I witnessed the demise of a big old sycamore that stood on the northwest corner of Broadway and W. Elm (right across the street from me, so I had good views).

My heart and my head are at war over this--my heart cries for the lovely tree, its long life, it's surviving the ice storm of 2007, and the shade it's given us all these years, particularly the shade it's given our neighbor's front porch over there. And besides, sycamores are one of my favorite kinds of trees. I love sycamores. They're gorgeous, tall, and strong. A little messy, but they make up for it in wonder and grace.

But my head knows that this tree was doomed from the minute it was planted. Indeed, my dad told me that when the then-neighbor-lady put it in the ground and still had the shovel in her hands, my grandma had walked across the street to tell her it was absolutely the wrong kind of tree in the wrong place: "That sycamore's going to get too tall! The electric company's going to come and butcher it because it will interfere with the power lines!"

And yes, it is--it was--right there on the corner, getting butchered and hacked at nearly every other year by those coarse fellows the electric company brings in from out of town to do their quick, sloppy work.

But today a local tree trimming company made short, careful, elegant work of taking it apart and turning it into mulch. I wonder what they do with the biggest limbs and the massive chunks of bole?

It was really something to see. But my heart does ache today.

It's true, we're excited to get new sidewalks and gutters--but anytime a big ol' tree has to be felled in the prime of life, it's sad.

Following are a series of pictures I took from our top window. They started about 1:30 this afternoon, and it was all over by about 4:15.