HAPPY NEW WEEK and HAPPY SEPTEMBER EQUINOX
The equinox is Tuesday in the UK, US, and Australia!
Everyone have a safe, healthy, joyful week!!!
AQ: Oh that's terrible about the whales. I just checked the BBC Australia website (a quite substantial story about that and other strandings) and the count is up to more than 300!! Apparently the tip of NZ is a stranding hot spot. :-( How nice that you had lunch with friend; hope the border openings don't result in any new cases. I've seen that Meltzer quote on bumper stickers and I'm sure it's true for most of us. I second Lindybird's comment about your not feeling obligated to do it every day. :-)
Heather: I'm not sure if you're okay or not with the new family routine.... From here it sounds like you didn't have a say, Nicola and Boris's pronouncements aside. My parents never showed up at sports days or anything else. My Mom worked every hour that God created for British Railways (ah, the good old days when fares were predictable and the trains ran on time) to send us to a good school. Poor woman - and we didn't have a washing machine back then.. My Dad spent most of his evenings sitting by the fire with his back to us reading the paper. It was so nice when she and I came over here: I'd pick her up on a Sunday morning after she'd gone to Mass (daughter was at weekend horse camp) and we'd go to Laguna Beach for breakfast and then sit by the beach for the day with magazines, etc. and people watch. Then we'd pick my daughter and stop for dinner at a restaurant on the way home. She was a saint - my Mom that is! :-)).
Clare: Re the Orange Menace and the virus, that's another question we'd all like answered. :-) I think Melania will jump ship as soon as he's no longer president (oh happy day, but when....)
OG; Well, apparently some packages may have gold or other metals - I'm not sure, but "porch pirates" are being reported on our neighborhood website and have been known to follow FedEx and UPS trucks on their rounds...
Off to Do Stuff
We enjoyed our lunch at the place I photographed the other day- here it is in watery sunshine at midday today.
We’ve had rain, more expected today. OH is out to lunch with Dau#2. School holidays begin this weekend; I’m sure we shall see the Trio here or there sometime over the 2 weeks. I must think of something else besides sausage rolls if they come to lunch!
We have had a TV series “back in Time for Dinner” where a modern family lives & eats as it was on 1900s, 1910s, etc. This week’s episode featured the depression years 1930s. What is annoying me is the mother complaining about too much meat, lack of salads, not to mention lack of labour-saving devices. And being the one who has to stay home while husband & teenage kids go to work. Excuse me, back then, that’s how life was for most. People needed big solid meals. They worked hard, whether harnessing horses to work the fields, or use pick & shovel to build roads, and so on and on. They had big families, Mother was tied to the kitchen without fancy electric gizmos, no vacuum cleaner, and so on and on. People needed a big breakfast, a big dinner in the middle of the day. I’m sure they worked off all those calories. I think the Producers of the series missed an opportunity for a lesson in history.
Cats have 32 muscles in each ear to help them ignore you.
You can teach a cat to do anything that it wants to do.
Cats know how to obtain food without labor, shelter without confinement, and love without penalties. (W L George)
AQ: When I was growing up, farm families would get up just before dawn and have a small breakfast with lots of coffee before they milked the cows and fed the chickens. Then they'd come back about 9:00 a.m. and have a big cooked breakfast before they went out to the fields. They'd return later for a huge dinner in the middle of the day, and back at dark for supper. They ate especially heavily when they were putting up hay or other demanding jobs.
My coal miner great-grandfathers also ate big meals throughout the day, as did my kin who worked on the railroads. Salads were usually potato salad or bean salad drenched in a mayonnaise-based dressing to provide more calories. They ate a lot of very sweet pie made from the cherries, apples, and peaches from the fruit trees or wild strawberries or raspberries for energy. None of my people were overweight. For his entire life, my Dad always ate his meals very fast, because he grew up competing with his brothers for food (he was born during the depression).
During the Great Depression, most rural folks struggled to get enough food. My grandparents, who lived in the house where I reside now, both hunted in order to supplement the produce from their garden. In the summer, the rabbits were skinny and the meat was stringy and tough. Often, when I was growing up, I'd hear my Papaw say, "If people have to eat enough summer rabbit, they learn to vote smarter." He was a Franklin D. Roosevelt Democrat. LOL!
DIANE – Lovely to read of your folks “olden days”. My father had a sheep farm, so we always had mutton (not “lamb” in those days). Hens for eggs and when they were old & stopped laying, into the pot. A veggie patch & fruit trees. We ate whatever was in season or had been preserved. We would not have had to worry about “food miles”! My parents managed, we were frugal. To my shame I remember coming home from boarding school and grizzling “Why can’t we have corned beef?” I know why now, it came from the butcher and cost money.
Diane: Love it! The answer to all our problems: Summer rabbit. Whodathunkit. :-))
AQ: We cooked in - gasp - lard; scarfed up fried bread; had no car so typically walked or rode bikes everywhere. We weren't even farmers but few people were overweight. We needed lots of calories just to survive the winter (our house had only coal fires for heat and mostly just the living room - oh and paraffin lamps). And Wow - I Googled it - cats really do have 32 muscles in each ear. (only 18 for dogs). We have two (and they're inside). Oh well....
Took out three ancient lavenders today. Felt like I was getting a divorce! And then I felt guilty because the bees love it. Will obviously have to replace them with something equally attractive (but less work - they bloom year-round here).
Off to shower, pour a glass of wine and rummage in the fridge for dinner....