Tableau with Sweet Potato

 
I find these little scenarios all over the house, because I have been really bad at training R to pick up her toys and put them away. This one is a fairy sitting at a table eating a roast chicken, and one of the dehydrated sweet potatoes I make for treats for Charlie.

Gingerbread Bento

Catching Up With Birthday Pictures

R turned 6 at the end of August. She had a Secret Garden party at the neighborhood pool that's two doors down from our house.


Heading out for her party.



We had spinach & cilantro hummus with vegetables (lemon cucumbers, zucchini & summer squash, radishes and lemon cucumbers are from our garden); turkey spinach rollups with roasted red peppers and grated carrots on whole grain flatbread; cornmeal, cheddar & scallion muffins;

PB&J on whole wheat flax bread;

Watermelon; grapes and cheese & crackers (I didn't get a picture); Honest Kids juices, iced tea and wine; and

Robin's nest cupcakes, in honor of the robin's nest in The Secret Garden. Full-sugar, white-flour, since the birthday girl told me "the cupcakes MUST be junky."

They swam for two hours and then got in their pj's to watch "The Secret Garden" outside in the dark. These are her cousins, my beautiful little goddaughter Z, who turned 6 the very next day! And Z's little sister C.

We sang Happy Birthday just as it was getting dark.




Getting cozy for the movie.

Cupcakes!

Then on Monday we had her family party at home. Leftover cupcakes, her favorite English Muffin pizzas (like my mom used to make for my parties when I was little!) and sparkling apple juice in champagne flutes with an edible flower.

I think everyone had a lot of fun. But it almost kills me every year, all the birthday hoopla on top of the first week of school.

Carnival Bento

School started weeks ago, but I am just starting to get back in the swing of R's bento lunches. Adding Charlie into the morning schedule has thrown me off.

Too much food in this one, but she said she shared, and she ate some in the car on the way home. PB&J's on whole wheat with edible nasturtiums; cantaloupe and plums, and . . .

Multi-colored Carnival carrots, lemon cucumbers, yellow pear and cherry tomatoes, nasturtium and radish flowers, all from the garden. Spinach, ranch dressing and a cheddar giraffe.

For now, here's Charlie

Life has been piling up too fast to blog, which is embarrassing, because we do not have a very eventful life. R turned 6, lost her first tooth, and started first grade all in the last week of August. Lots of pictures to come about all that. The garden is finally coming into its own after this unusually cool summer. Just in time for the first frost that will take all the green tomatoes.

For now, here is Quiet Charlie. He's growing. He is three months old, and as of his second vet trip last week, 13 pounds. More than doubled from his first vet trip at eight weeks. His legs are growing the fastest. He has that classic slightly cantilevered, gangly-puppy posture.

Oh those ears! He concentrates so hard with them that they come together in a precise little "V." His nose is elongating. D used to call my border collie Gracie "pointy-nosed and beady-eyed," and I love to see Charlie growing into that.

His pink puppy nose is slowly turning black. He has a love-hate relationship with the hose. We water the gardens twice a day in late summer, so he usually has a wet head like this.

Some dogs have faces that are so almost-human that we respond to that, which is probably not fair to the dog. Charlie has that--I think a lot of border collies do. It's why we got a border collie puppy, even though we know how much extra work they are. My border collie Gracie died when she was almost 15, and R was two. The expression in Gracie's dark brown eyes was so complicated and fiercely intelligent that it never stopped startling me.

But a dog's intelligence is so different from ours, and now with Charlie, I'm trying harder to understand it. He needs focused and consistent and energetic training, and we're doing great in some areas and not as well in others. He is a barker and a biter and a digger. But he is doing great walking on the leash, which is the product of many, many frustrating training sessions with a pocket full of treats and a no-tolerance policy for pulling.

Once in awhile you can convince him to sit like this , and just relax for some petting. And how thoughtful -- look at the modest paw. The second day we had him, R said "Why does Charlie have a little radish hanging from his tummy?"

The tomatoes that are in are spectacular. I can't describe how they taste. It's an event when you find a ripe one on the vine and bring it inside and slice into it, still warm from the sun. This is the summer that I learned to taste a peach and a tomato.

Rest in Peace, Uncle Lu

My mom's older brother, my Uncle Lu (Lucius), passed away last week in New Orleans. His funeral is Monday. I won't be there. We tried every which way, and failed, to find a way that we, or at least I, could get there in time. Tomorrow we will remember him at Mass, and celebrate him and his remarkable life.

If you are reading this, say a prayer for Lu. He is the man for whom Larger Than Life was coined. He was one of a kind, he was loved and admired by more people than most of us come across in a lifetime. He deserves his own post without cliches, and he will get one. I hope I can find my favorite black and white photo of him from the early 60's in New York, showing off his guns above a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and wisecracking out of the corner of his mouth, around a cigarette. The last time I saw him this spring, he was singing grand old songs with his brother Jim, and when they got to "I'll take you home again, Kathleen," he teared up. "It's such a beautiful song." I can still hear his voice as he said that.

He was a joyful musician who loved Dixieland jazz the most, and he loved life like a true artist. I can't do justice to a description of his professional life, and I won't try. But he was a brilliant and utterly original mind in the world of finance. He was utterly original in everything that he did.

A rare August post

Too much life, too little computer. Tuesday is back to school, and yet there are almost no posts for August. Maybe in September I will catch up on the photos and post some. The tomatoes are ripening, the sunflowers have finally burst open. Charlie is getting more long-legged and sweet and charming every day.

My high school friend Robert came from Minneapolis to stay with us, and we had a great visit with our other high school friends Margaret and Jennifer and their families. We all grew up in Albuquerque, how lucky are we to live close enough to Denver now to meet for a party? The kids ate at a kids table on the grass in the backyard. Apparently it involved a lot of tinfoil. I only remember making the kids food the lowest priority and most last minute, we put turkey hot dogs on the grill and piled them on a plate when they were done. And then Jennifer saved the day with her beautiful terracotta platter of quesadillas.

Maybe in September there will be time to take a breath and go through the photos and remember this glorious August.