Monday - One year ago today, I officially rebooted this blog, which I had started in 2011 and then all but abandoned later that same year. I'm not sure what triggered it, except my physical and emotional condition was deteriorating, and I felt the need to write. I was coming off a trial schedule that should have been damn near impossible, and 5 weeks before, my very favorite pet of all time, my sweet cat Ira, departed for the Rainbow Bridge after a long illness. (All I can say is thank God it was Judge Carsten, rather than Judge Shepard, on the bench the day I had to explain that I could not stay late to finish a trial because I had an appointment to take Ira to the vet for the last time.)
Speaking of judges, today is the first Monday in October, the day the United States Supreme Court begins the new session. Lawyers like that sort of thing for some dumb reason, although this is a very different Court than the one in existence when I attended law school. Sandra Day O'Connor, the first female Justice, had been on the Court for six years by then - a very far cry from the group that FDR referred to derisively as "The Nine Old Men." The makeup of the current Court would have been unimaginable at one time - what caught my attention was not the fact that there are now three women on the Court (including my all-time favorite, the Notorious R.B.G.), but that there are no Protestants.
From Wikipedia:
"The Court currently has six male and three female justices. One justice is African American, one is Latino, and two are Italian-Americans; six justices are Roman Catholics, and three are Jewish. The average age is 69 years, 10 months. Every current justice has an Ivy League background. Four justices are from the state of New York, two from New Jersey, two from California, and one from Georgia...
Most justices have been Protestants, including 35 Episcopalians, 19 Presbyterians, 10 Unitarians, five Methodists, and three Baptist." Apparently the Court has been without a Protestant Justice since 2010 which I find astonishing. The working world in which I became an adult was run by Protestants, and I think I must have been traumatized by my early years in marine insurance, when neither women nor Jews were really welcome except for clerical positions. A Supreme Court composed of only Roman Catholics and Jews sounds like every neighborhood I lived in before moving to Florida. Fascinating.
How did I get off on this tangent?
The past year has been one of the most - interesting - of my life. I find myself in a place I never expected to be; I was so sure that I would "die at my desk" that I never considered any other alternative. So here I am trying to reinvent myself again. (yeah right, how is that working for you?)
Today was about gardening. I should have done the potato gnocchi, but I didn't, and I hope the dough can be worked tomorrow. But I got so much done today (and am already starting to pay for it), building on the weed-pulling of the last few days and clearing the garden of everything, even my beloved okra, which sent me a sweet goodbye message just as I was getting ready to rip its roots from the garden soil:
Yes, hiding among the tomatoes was a single perfect okra pod. I thought I had harvested every last pod, but there was one just waiting for the perfect moment.
I also managed to salvage the last of the tomatoes and eggplant, which will probably end their short lives as bit players in a beef stew I am planning for later in the week. I transplanted the sage, rosemary, and Greek oregano to some of the long box planters on the porch rail, and moved those boxes with my pepper plants (still dropping flowers, damn it) to the west-facing rail.
I learned so much from my first gardening attempt - about the humanity of okra, the fickleness of squash, and how peppers really hate being overwatered. This new planting season is going to be all about making better use of the space I have, and locating each type of vegetable where it will be happiest. With that in mind, I grabbed my measurements from the other day, created a list of available herbs and vegetables from the photos I took at Home Depot and Lowe's, and made a preliminary graph.
Tomorrow may be all about sitting and knitting, although if James is available to start the heavy stuff, I may be out there waving my baton (or knitting needle). So if you are in the vicinity of the courthouse and see a little old lady in a big floppy straw hat waving a 14 inch bamboo knitting needle at a hardworking gent in a baseball cap, wave. I promise to wave back.
Today was about gardening. I should have done the potato gnocchi, but I didn't, and I hope the dough can be worked tomorrow. But I got so much done today (and am already starting to pay for it), building on the weed-pulling of the last few days and clearing the garden of everything, even my beloved okra, which sent me a sweet goodbye message just as I was getting ready to rip its roots from the garden soil:
Yes, hiding among the tomatoes was a single perfect okra pod. I thought I had harvested every last pod, but there was one just waiting for the perfect moment.
I also managed to salvage the last of the tomatoes and eggplant, which will probably end their short lives as bit players in a beef stew I am planning for later in the week. I transplanted the sage, rosemary, and Greek oregano to some of the long box planters on the porch rail, and moved those boxes with my pepper plants (still dropping flowers, damn it) to the west-facing rail.
Tomorrow may be all about sitting and knitting, although if James is available to start the heavy stuff, I may be out there waving my baton (or knitting needle). So if you are in the vicinity of the courthouse and see a little old lady in a big floppy straw hat waving a 14 inch bamboo knitting needle at a hardworking gent in a baseball cap, wave. I promise to wave back.
Cleared for take-off
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