Rolling On One

On Sunday morning we walked up the road past the gate (it’s closed this time of year) to look at the stream three houses away. With all the rain, I wondered how much water would be in it. It wasn’t the torrent I expected, but there was plenty of water.

Sure looks different from a couple of months ago!

Two weekends ago we brought a hummingbird feeder up to Casco. I used to be skeptical about hummingbird feeders until we rented a house on Moose Pond, Denmark, Maine, for a week once about six summers ago. There was a hummingbird feeder on one of its windows that had birds at it every day that week. So we had great hopes for this one. Anne and Matt put this one up and filled it last weekend. Sometime early Saturday I looked out the kitchen window and there, big as life and moving as fast as you expected (which is to say, its wings were just a blur), was a male ruby-throated hummingbird. They’re something we rarely see in the Boston area. It’s not that they’re that scarce, just that they’re tiny and move very fast. You just don’t see them if they’re any distance away, or maybe you see something out of the corner of your eye and wonder if it was a hummingbird, but you don’t often get a good look; so it’s a real treat for us to have one coming to a feeder, where you can see it for several seconds at a time at a distance of two arm’s lengths.

One of the times the hummingbird was at the feeder something else swooped up to the feeder as if to chase it away. The bigger bird was black and white with a red cap and red on the upper part of its breast — a yellow-bellied sapsucker. We saw them three or four weeks ago but didn’t realize they were still hanging around. It was on the apple tree near the kitchen window, eating suet from the feeder there. I got a picture —

Later Saturday we drove out to Gray just for the sake of exploring. On our way around the southern end of Thompson Lake Arlene saw a couple of large birds on the water and asked me to stop. They were loons, the first ones we’ve seen on the lake, close enough for a really good look. A motorboat went by, leaving the little marina there, and didn’t seem to bother them.

Sunday when I was on the deck grillling hot dogs Arlene called out to say that a rose-breasted grosbeak was on our feeder. Sure enough! That’s another bird that we don’t get to see as often as we’d like, a chunky black-and-white bird with an electric pink patch on the breast. We can hope it sticks around for the summer, too. So, four good birds for the weekend.

Oh, and the phoebe was back, sitting on the wheelbarrow handle for a while. Goodness knows there are enough black flies out now for it to make a good living.

I glued up most of the table top. I say “most” because it’s going to have crosswise boards at the ends and I haven’t started those at all. The six boards that make up the top, except for the ends, are all assembled.

First step was cutting slits with the biscuit joiner. Since the boards are five quarters of an inch thick, I cut pairs of slits directly in line with each other, 1/4 inch from each face of the board. Or, rather, 1/4 inch down from the top and 7/8 down from the top, because the main point of the biscuit joiner is always to measure from the same side of the joint, in case the boards you’re joining aren’t precisely the same thickness (and of course if you measure carefully enough, they never are). There were two slits in each of nine places along the length of five joints, and each joint has two sides, so that’s 180 slits. No wonder it took a while to do.

I glued two boards together (with 18 biscuits in the joint), let them dry, and glued up another two. That was all for Saturday evening. Sunday I added a third to one of those pieces, put glue on the edge of the other piece and the one that was supposed to match it — oh no! That was the other side of the single board. I couldn’t let the glue dry there (and be lumpy and get in the way of the remaining biscuits and joint, so I put the whole table top together at that point rather than having two pieces with three boards each and one more joint to glue. Here’s the whole shebang clamped together on top of the workbench. Those are big pipe clamps that used to be my father’s, weighing over five pounds each, holding it all together (and believe me, you need strong clamps to get a joint with 18 biscuits to close up tight).

Note my empty bottle of biscuits. There are exactly three left. The container was supposed to have 100 when I got it. I used several, probably eight, in putting the table legs together, and ninety in the table top.

I worked one day last weekend to get a project done on time, and took this Friday off instead. I went in to Israeli dance class with Arlene (it’s her class, not mine, because I’m usually working that time, see) this morning, and was completely tired out after an hour of dancing. After going home and paying some bills, etc, we packed up the car and headed north. We stopped at Charrette in Woburn to get some foamcore board for her prints for open studios next weekend, got on the highway going the wrong way (not because we didn’t know, but because I didn’t know to be in the left lane immediately after turning off Olympia Ave) and doubled back, and finally around 2:15 got off I-95 in Rowley to look for some lunch. We stopped at a general store that I expected would have sandwiches, but all we found (that didn’t look as though it could have been in the cooler for two or three days) was the ice cream section. We got one dove bar each, plus a cup of coffee, and sat down in the car on the side of the store to eat them. Arlene bit on something hard that turned out not to be part of the chocolate coating of the dove bar, but a piece of tooth. She’s got a temporary crown on a rear tooth at the moment, and this seems to be a piece of the tooth from under the temporary. We rummaged around for the dentist’s phone number, called from her cell phone, left a message with my cell phone number (because Arlene’s list of phone numbers includes my cell number but not her own), and waited for the dentist to return the call. After ten minutes with no response we continued north, figuring we could at least stop at the Aububon place at Joppa Flats in Newburyport, where there are bathrooms. Just as we got off I-95 in Newburyport the dentist phoned back. He said that it could probably wait until Monday, unless it started hurting a lot. We turned around and got back on the road towards Maine.

We had been thinking about stopping at the Portland art museum, but by that point it was obvious that the museum would be closing half an hour after we would get there. We opted for the lowbrow solution, shopping in Kittery. The Crate and Barrel outlet had a whole barrel of Marimekko remnants, which they sell by the pound. We took eight pounds. Then we checked out KTP, the Kittery Trading Post, a big outdoor outfitting place with a selection of boots, boats, and fishing gear that’s fair competition with L.L. Bean’s. We got a Thule roof rack system for our Forester so we’ll be able to transport the canoe more reliably and bring the aluminum rowboat up here on our next trip, and Arlene found Muck Boots, slip-on rubber boots that are totally waterproof, washable, and insulated, just what we want for a rainy weekend and wet woods. I also got a book on basic fly tying, that is, making fly-fishing flies. I used to do that when I was a kid, but I haven’t in years and years. I have no idea where any old books or booklets about it that I used to have might be, and the whole craft must be substantially different by now. After stops in Windham at Big Lots and Hannaford’s supermarket, we got to Casco still in daylight.

I’m not sure what date this belongs under. Two trips to Maine ago, that would be three weeks ago I think, we were in Hannaford’s supermarket food shopping when I saw something that looked like pancake mix on the shelf. The name, which I took for a brand name was Ployes. Buckwheat flavor. It said it was a traditional Maine recipe from the Acadians. I got a package.

It turns out to be a fat-free, sugar-free, sort of crepe. Ployes is not the brand, but the name of the dish. I think you have to have grown up with them, probably as an Acadian kid from Fort Kent, to appreciate them properly. Or maybe you need to cook them on the right kind of griddle at the right temperature. I’m happy to have had a batch, just as an experience in traditional Maine cookery, but the second time I made them I used less liquid, added egg, milk, and oil to the mix, and treated them more as pancakes than crepes. I like them better that way.

Carol (our director) is constantly trying to get the chorus members to get their eyes off the music and watch her, for tempo, entrances, dynamics, etc, all the things that a musical group has a director for. Her appeal tonight was, “This is music, people! It happens in real time. Not so many things do nowadays, so let’s make it work.”

I planted my garden in Newton this evening. It’s going to specialize in legumes this year, because they have a pretty good record of working. Maybe there will be some tomatos later, but I didn’t start any seeds this year so if there are any, they will have to be from a flat of plants.

Anyway, for my records, here’s what went in. Starting from the side closest to the house:

Oregon Sugar Pod snow peas, one double row
Sugar snap peas, one double row

It’s late to plant snow peas (or any peas, really), but maybe not too late. Snow peas in particular are perfectly happy to have a couple of inches of snow fall on them when they’re six inches or a foot high, and everything I’ve read about peas says they like drizzly early spring weather. They do grow faster in slightly warmer weather than really cold weather, so I’m hoping to get something from this planting.

Now, on the other hand, it may be a little bit early to plant snap beans. They are supposed to go in after the soil is warm. If the sun is shining, I think the soil will warm up pretty quickly, so I’m willing to take my chances on them. Most years I’ve put in string beans after the snow peas are gone by. I guess I can still do that with the first two rows of the garden anyway.

Last weekend we were buying a few flats of flowers in Maine. When we asked when it was safe to put most plants out there, the woman said, “Let’s see, when will the last full moon in May be?” She says that’s considered to be the time to set plants outdoors. I’ve heard of planting by the moon, but I didn’t know it applied to setting plants out also. But the season should be a week earlier in Newton than Casco, and the moon is waxing gibbous now, so the full moon is very soon anyway.

Taverna classy french-style snap beans, one double row. These are some of the thinnest bean seeds you’ve ever seen. I guess if the pods are going to be extra-thin, the beans inside will have to be thin to fit.

Contender snap beans, the near side of a double row

Blue Lake snap beans, the far side of the double row that has the Contenders in it, the near side of another double row, and a sparse far side of that double row.

I just started singing to myself this silly song that I must have learned while I was studying French in high school — (sorry for the spelling, lack of accents where they belong, etc)
C’etait un roi Merovingian
Q’allait souvent a la chasse
Chassait avec beaucoup de grace,
Tuait surtout ses copains …

… and it occurred to me that there’s a precedent for Cheney’s hunting accident.

Was that song widely mentioned in the Francophone blogosphere a couple of months ago? Anybody know? Inquiring minds… Or of course I could ask Google. Think I will.

At our rehearsal last Thursday one of the other basses in Koleinu was wearing the brightest red silk yarmulke you’ve ever seen. “Ron,” I said, “your kippah looks as if you stole it from Sean O’Malley!”

I’ve been thinking about whether or not I want to be in Koleinu next year. There just aren’t enough evenings left over in a week with klezmer band on Tuesday, Koleinu on Thursday, and a Koleinu board meeting one Monday a month. Then we started to practice a modern Israeli song, “Shir Eretz”, “Song of the Land” (and of course that means the land of Israel), which has a beautifully lyrical tune with the tenors and basses having the melody, and wonderful lyrics about the passing seasons and wildflowers. I was just singing there, listening to all the harmony around me, and thinking, how can I give this up?

Well, inasmuch as I’ve been tagged with a CD image game I’m playing along. I didn’t find the hotfreelayouts music site totally thrilling, probably because the first two CDs I looked for weren’t there.

Here are three that were, just to have a little variety:

Create your own Music List @ HotFreeLayouts!

I don’t actually have the Leeway CD, I have it on vinyl from the ’60s. I LOVE that first tune on it, in fact just the first trumpet riff is enough to justify the album.
The Ditty Bops album — I heard one song, “Walk or Ride” on WZBC, the Boston College student radio station, and decided I wanted the CD.

Pete Seeger — I probably don’t have that particular recording on CD nor vinyl, but we have several of his on vinyl so that’s representative.

The first thing I searched for that wasn’t there was “Berryman”. Lou and Peter Berryman are two friends (a long friendship interrupted by a brief marriage) from Madison, Wisconsin, who sing some of the funniest songs you’ve ever heard. A couple of their CDs are in the HotFreeLayouts database, but without pictures, so what fun is that? Perhaps the Berrymans’ best song is “When did we have sauerkraut?” It’s about nuclear disarmament and cleaning the refrigerator. When you’ve listened to the song several times you start to realize that those two topics aren’t so different after all. But that’s why I think it’s such a good song. It doesn’t hit you over the head with the analogy, you have to listen several times and think about it for a while, and meanwhile it’s a very funny song. Two other classics of theirs are “A Chat With Your Mother (the F-word song)” and “Squalor”.
The other that wasn’t there was Pat Donohue’s “Two Hand Band”. Again, the CD was in the database but without a picture. Pat is a regular on Prarie Home Companion. We heard him live at a WUMB, UMass/Boston radio station, member concert once. He said he learned to play from recordings, and one he tried to copy had two people playing guitar at once. It was hard to learn, but he didn’t realize that it was supposed to be impossible, so he went ahead and learned to do it. He is a phenomenal guitarist.

I don’t really listen to much music  from recordings these days. I live so close to work that if I remember to turn on the radio in the car at all I just hear three or four songs, and even that’s only an option if I’m not bicycling to work. No, no iPod on the bicycle, I want to be able to hear cars coming up behind me, and to hear any Carolina wrens that happen to be singing along the way.

I do practice trumpet for a few minutes every morning. Mostly I work on a range-building exercise from the Lip Flexibilities book and then practice a song or two for the klezmer band. I’ve been concentrating on one song that’s at the extreme upper limit of my range (it goes up to C sharp and D above the treble staff, and I have to rest my lip in the middle of the song) for a few weeks now. Playing nothing but very high notes has been helping my endurance with the medium-high range greatly. I’d better get back to practicing some songs I can do, just to keep them memorized.