Can you imagine how much patience this required??

Applique quilt by Ernestine Eberhardt Zaumzeil, c. 1865
from The Quilt Engagement Calendar Treasury

Today is our Bastille Day celebration at work.  Above, you will see the guillotine artist Eric Breeden built for the occasion (and local hero J Mascis lurking in the background).  I guess I am supposed to dress up as a French character, so I’m trying to pull together a last minute Francoise Hardy costume.  Should be easy enough with bangs, winged eyeliner, and a monochrome outfit, right?

I love a good sci-fi! 

What r u eating?

“Do we shape cities?  Or do cities shape us?” – Sounds like a writing prompt from Bard’s L&T (my class was assigned Calvino’s Invisible Cities)

At Community Garden, an entire plot plundered.
Hmm…sounds like it was personal.

Here are some recent photos of my unharmed garden:

I am working on bordering all the paths with rocks from Hadley.

Nasturtiums, Lettuces, and Sunflowers. Broccoli and thyme in the background.

Leeks, cucumber, bell peppers, and a cosmo that came back from last year

One of my beautiful peonies!

And a few views of other areas at the Community Gardens:

For Father’s Day, Katie made Tim B. his two favorite foods: ribs and coleslaw. The BBQ sauce (from scratch) was phenomenal, so I’m including the recipe.

Ina Garten’s Barbeque Sauce (from Barefoot Contessa Recipes Cookbook)

1 1/2 cups chopped yellow onion
1 T minced garlic (~3 cloves)
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 cup tomato paste (10 oz)
1 cup cider vinegar
1 cup honey
1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce
1 cup Dijon mustard
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 cup hoisin sauce
2 T chili powder
1 T ground cumin
1/2 T crushed red pepper flakes

1. In a large saucepan on low heat, saute the onions and garlic with the vegetable oil for 10 to 15 minutes, until the onions are translucent but not browned.

2. Add the tomato paste, vinegar, honey, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, soy sauce, hoisin sauce, chili powder, cumin, and red pepper flakes. Simmer uncovered on low heat for 30 minutes.

3. Use immediately or store in the refrigerator.

I got my dad one of these. Appropriate for a regional planner, no?

Another perk at Keith’s job:

Sweet sampler from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Saturday, I attended the 16th Annual Friends of Forbes Library Northampton Garden Tour with Katie, Mom, and Grammie.  This year’s only tying theme appeared to be Goshen stone work.  We made it to 7/8 residential gardens before I had to report to work.  I learned some new vocabulary along the way:

potager – a French kitchen garden

espalier – to train a (usually fruit) tree to grow on one flat plane, often against a wall in a symmetrical pattern, with careful pruning

bosquet - a formal planting of trees in a gravel court

One of my favorites on the tour belonged to a chic gay couple and their four year-old son.  The first thing I noticed was Hercules and Love Affair blasting from open windows.  In the literature passed out, the couple admits they “like to imagine gardens as [they] listen to independent pop music.”  Haha.  Their front yard was a “modern prairie” of tall ornamental grasses and a large potted Japanese maple enclosed by a picket fence.  The side yard was sculpted with moss mounds, Japanese painted ferns, hostas, and two blue lawn chairs.  In the back, we found espaliered apple trees, white astilbe, a very cool tree house, a whimsical fountain, a red barn, a bosquet of four variegated willow standards, and a perennial bed backed by four bright blue panels (for year-round color).  God, I wish the inside of the house had been open to visitors.  They had that je ne sais quoi I have been trying to incorporate into my dowdy, country style.

Another favorite garden was full of fragrant plants!  It’s inspired me to try growing more fragrant plants of my own: roses, mock orange, honeysuckle, Viburnum.

So I’ve started thinking…maybe I don’t want to be a clinical psychologist.  Maybe I want to follow in my mom’s footsteps and go to landscape design school.  Maybe I want to be a sustainable food activist and teach people how to implement it in unlikely communities.  Maybe I want to work in health care policy.  I guess I’m starting to accept that I am good listener, but I am not necessarily a passionate listener.  If I’ve learned anything from my year away from academics, it’s that I have an insatiable creative appetite.

This year is my hometown’s 350th anniversary, and today is the HUGE celebratory parade. It promises to be the hugest parade Hadley has ever had with 18 bands, 26 floats, and an $80,000 budget. I’m stuck at work, and feeling kind of grateful for an excuse to opt out. I kind of loathe militaristic parades from my days in the high school marching band. I satisfied my curiosity by altering my commute this morning. At T-minus 1.5 hrs, Route 9 was lined with lawn chairs, balloon and snack vendors, signs for residential parking fees (two bros were charging $10/car!), and stray band kids, presumably walking to Burger King for breakfast. I wish Hadley would have used $80,000 for something a little less lame…

Hey, I’m trying to stay positive, this community raised me. So here are some of my favorite things about Hadley:

- Hadley “Grass” (asparagus) and sweet corn – abundant in the summer
- The Montgomery Rose Greenhouses – lit to an orange-y glow at night, spectacular in the wintertime
- The Porter-Phelps-Huntington House Museum – supposedly haunted; The sunken garden is where I want to get married if I decide to get married
- The Norwottuck Rail Trail – especially the lattice truss bridge over the Connecticut River where “EB U R THE 1 4 ME” is tagged
- The Hadley Salvation Army store – impressive size, selection, and organization
- Frequent hot air balloon sightings – once one landed in our backyard! I was at soccer practice
- Mt. Warner pond – I fell asleep to the sound of crickets and bullfrogs
- The Food Bank Farm – amazing cutting flower garden, great cause
- Flayvors of Cook Farm and The North Hadley Sugar Shack – local maple syrup (get Grade B! I learned my lesson) and maple syrup ice cream
- Moody Bridge Road – protected as conservation area under the leadership of Keith’s boss
- Hadley Garden Center – Indeed, “Everything You Need To Make Your Garden Grow”
- Lakeside PYO Strawberries – one of the fields borders on our property, and my sister still sneaks out for berries after dark

FBI agents, probing Connecticut bank robbery, raid Northampton home

Keith came home from a smoke/walk the other night and announced, “I think there’s a drug bust!” There was police tape blocking off the sidewalk, and an officer asked him to cross the street. But we picked the perp wrong: my neighbor’s a suspected bank robber and kidnapper!

I’m not proud of my poor sun protection regimen. Currently, my idiotic judgement has left me with this ridiculous “farmer” tan:

Oh, and I permanently have a sports bra scarred into my back from last summer.

Ugh, I’m convinced I’m going to have skin cancer.