Turkey. Of Course

Over the last several years I have come to be the host of Thanksgiving dinners for a regular group of my friends whom I think of as “The Children.”  As in “The Children are coming to dinner.”  Mostly because they are all young enough to actually be my offspring, were I wacky enough to spring off, but also because, as in the case of providing the traditional Thanksgiving, I have somehow morphed into a mother figure. To be more accurate, a grandmother figure.

Four of the Children are out of town this holiday and I was remarking to Super Agent Fred (the only one who would be around) how I was looking forward to taking drugs and sleeping all day instead of cooking.  Fred looked absolutely stricken and protested that he was looking forward to turkey.  And gravy.  And mashed potatoes.  And dressing.

Of course I relented and thus wound up slinging a menu that exactly reproduced what my grannies would have knocked out 80 years ago.  And it was delicious, thank you very much, so I guess I’m glad I did, but the dinner did leave behind a refrigerator full of left overs because it turns out scaling down a celebratory dinner for 10 to one for 2 does not work.  I just don’t know how to make my granny’s cornbread dressing  in a size smaller than what could be described as a vat.  We will be dining on that fucking turkey all week.  Turkey salad, Turkey Tetrazini, turkey sammiches.  OK by me.

Also in other domestic news, the garden always looks sort of shaggy around this time of year.  Most thing suddenly green from the rain finally starting, but also quietly revving up for the burst of flowers spring will have.  The most appealing contradictions are the Australian Tea Trees, brilliant rose and pink and crimson right now.  The two in the picture are about 20 years old and have taken that long to really get established and turn out such show off blooming.  I see them from my bathroom window every time I go pee.  That is not what the average garden planning book would consider, but I’m glad I planted them where I did.

The view from the toilet.

The Sweetest Pea

Sweet peas are the Birth Month Flower for April and thus, my own.  According to the infallible Google, they symbolize “good-bye,or blissful pleasure.”  I like that odd little comma sort of dropped in there and the combination of “good bye” and “blissful pleasure” may seem peculiar at first glance, but I think back on how many times at sex venues like bathhouses when I’ve announced “Oh dear baby jesus, that was blissful.  Now get out” and I know there’s some profundity there.

I don’t know why April wound up with sweet peas, they don’t bloom then, at least in America.  It does serve as a reminder that April’s about the time to plant the seeds, a fact I usually recall in June when they should be at the peak of their bloom.  As usual, I forgot again this year and wound up with a bunch of seeds hanging around in July looking reproachful.  So I decided what the hell, and planted them.  It’s San Francisco, the distinction between April and July is kind of arbitrary anyway.

And they came up, amazingly.  They were much slower than previous batches I’ve grown.  Pea and bean vines both tend to shoot right up, it’s the basis for the Jack and the Beanstalk stories.  Blooms finally came on, with their delicate, old lady scent and now here’s the very last one, on the first of December.  Amazing.

I have diligently been harvesting the pods to have seeds for next April (if I remember,) but now I don’t know where I put them.  Well, I have four months to find them and even I don’t, I’ll just put them in whenever they do show up.

Also, I know Monday was the so-called Cyber Monday, a shameless attempt by online retailers to latch onto the whole Black Friday shitstorm, but I like to think of it as “Throw Out the Goddam Leftovers Already Monday.”  No turkey is so delicious you need to eat it more than four days running.

 

This is How mrpeenee’s Brain Works

Space here on earth is a finite thing, you know, and I say if your reproductive system forces you to use one of those stupid double wide baby strollers, you are taking up too much of it.  Sell at least one of those squalling snot machines you’ve popped out and make room in the grocery store aisle for the rest of us.

My garden, the result of two decades of grubbing and ruined manicures, looks swell this year, despite a statewide drought.  Purple seems to be the overriding theme with irises that I transplanted loving their new home

“City Light” iris. Wowza.

Limonium, taking no prisoners and kicking horticultural ass.

and a tough ass piece called limonium, the dried purple flowers of which, statice, are the filler of choice for florists around the world.  It does fine every year, but occasionally decides that this is going to be a “Say-Something” season and this year is just that.  The lily looking plants next to it are crocosmia, which bloom with bright orange flowers that look splendid with the purple statice on those years when they both bloom simultaneously, but this is not one of those years.  That’s how gardens roll.

Springtime in the French Quarter

My favorite neon in New Orleans.

I breezed down to New Orleans to check on the renovation of my house there and to check in on our old chum Magda.   The house is doing fine; Magda less so.  He will shortly have been incarcerated in the hospital system for a month and the doctors still have no clear idea about what’s causing his blood pressure and blood chemistry to roller coaster up and down and seem to regard this ignorance with a jaunty insouciance.

I was not much help while there; I was sort of unprepared for how much the whole experience of visiting the hospital would drag up visions of  R Man’s last uncomfortable days.  I know that’s selfish, but it was a very visceral reaction and one I could not get on top of.  I am ashamed.

The front porch of my soon-to-be ex-house. I would weep, but I have no tears.

Less traumatic than an old friend’s fragile health, but still pretty upsetting, is the news from my tax guy and my financial guy that my merry eviscerating of the IRAs I was living off of in order to finance the New Orleans’ renovation has actually moved me into a higher tax bracket, the rapacious taxes of which mean I will have to sell the house in order to pay the bill.  Irony.  I hate it.