For the first Sunday in a month I went to the bagel store to buy breakfast. It was pretty late and they were out of bialys, or I would have got one of those too.
Speaking of food, did I mention that on the way back from the caning shoppe on Saturday we stopped off at Sevan Bakery in Watertown? No, I know I didn’t. Well, we did stop there, anyway, and stocked up on string cheese, hot pepper and cheese bread, preserved green walnuts, halvah, and, mostly, oil-cured olives. Not to mention the pastries — tahini bread, a very rich heavy spiral of flour, honey, sesame paste, and sesame seeds which I uncoil in two-inch chunks and pretend to leave the rest for later, but usually come back to in five or ten minutes, and date cookies, something like industrial-strength fig newtons with big big date filling centers.
But the title of the post, and if I were going to be honest with you I’d probably change the title and split the post in two or three pieces, is because we went walking in Dunback Meadows in Lexington looking for an owl, or more than one owl, that’s been reported from there. Apparently Dunback Meadows has one of the biggest pine woods in the Boston area, and owls that like to hang out in pines find it a congenial spot. We found a barred owl there all by ourselves several years ago, well, nobody pointed it out to us, though we were following written directions as best we could. This one was a very unsatisfactory view, just something that was probably feathers visible high up in a pine tree. The people who were already there looking at it said, “Saw-whet owl is the only owl that small.” Other than that, there was no real way to know what it was. I wouldn’t even have been sure it was an owl. But if the good birders in the area are convinced that’s what it was, we saw one.
Also, I spent a lot of time working on a woodworking project, a little fold-up oak step stool. We saw such a thing at the Home Coming store in Newton Centre that closed back in November or early December, but it wasn’t for sale. It looked easy to make. We bought lumber for it three or four weeks ago, I bet it was the week of December 11. I finally said, “If I’m going to say I’m going to build a kitchen table, I ought to do something with that lumber I have here,” and got going. I have the sides of the thing cut to shape now. I’m not setting speed records building it or anything.
We stopped at Russo’s on the way home and gots lots and lots of fruit and vegetables, and two big plates of salad from the salad bar for supper.
Also, we went Israeli dancing at Temple Emanuel in the evening. This is the first time we’ve gone in months and months, probably since the early summer. I remembered just a little, but liked it anyway.