Happy mid-July to all:
“With your chrome heart shinin’ in the sun…..long may you run”…………………………..Neil Young
“ Sorry I’m not home
to take your call. At the tone
please state your bad news”……………………………………………………….Haikus for Jews
It’s been a quiet week in the mountains. The grass has been growin’, the flowers have been bloomin’, the frogs have been froggin’, the birds have been chirpin’…and not a lot much else has gone on.
The week started with our annual Mt. Holly Daze cookout at milfoil- filled Star Lake (the town spent several billion last year to reclaim it, but have been foiled by the milfoil- whatever that is). Potluck, grilled dead meat, lounging in the grass in the midday sun with our neighbors and sort -of friends. Lots of spilled food- so a real bonanza for little Lucy.
THE POND has reached a next level of clarity…..seeking it’s spot in Better Homes and Gardens…..after a mere: 2000 packets of bacteria dumped in, an entire colony of crayfish nibbling the undergrowth, 650 barrels of algae removed via kitchen strainer and the various floatation devices spouting water at all hours of the day and night. And….I came home from town on Wednesday afternoon, to the startling site of Jenn floating around in the pond in one of our gifted deluxe floating rafts….her first time entering the sludge in five years, which so startled Lucy, that she was running around the entire pond in non-stop circles to try and figure out what had befallen poor Jenn….
And…have I mentioned our home improvement projects lately?……well we now have new countertops sprawled through the house and painted walls going up the stairs and into the upper hallway, AND, significant progress on her 3 month long journey to replace the stairway carpet with some kind of tread system……and soon the new upstairs carpet is coming , to be scheduled in with the sixteen remaining summer projects on the forewoman’s list….. you’ll be glad to know I have found a Marriott up at White River Junction that apparently needs my attention this week……..
So, I made my yearly trek this week to see the medicine woman who provides “integrated positional therapy” (this is for real and you can only imagine) in the little schoolhouse in the woods that takes nine dirt roads to get to…and now am semi-healed until I get back to Ohio to visit with the beloved Shaman – whence we make our mid-summer visit…only in Vermont…..
Midweek found us at the first show of the season at the Weston Playhouse…a stunning reproduction of the play/film “Once”…fourteen very talented musicians on the tiny stage replicating a pub in Olde Dublin (Ireland, not Ohio)…..we are constantly amazed at the quality of these productions and that it takes us 17 minutes of driving down through the mountains with nary another car in site…we have now seen “Once” twice…..and this all for the “Vermonter” price of 25 bucks a ticket for center floor seats…..so, what’s not to like?
The rest of the week was consumed with dinner preparations. On Friday, we had our friend, Linda, over for supper. She is a delightfully funny little woman who is some kind of consultant, working for a company out of Boston, that is spreading some kind of scheme to cure cancer via the use of various non-toxic poultices (or something like that, I think). She and her husband, Phillippe, have finally semi- relocated from Arkansas (really) and looking to become full time mountaineers. In the interim, she is living here, while Phillippe, who is a Parisian born chef, has found a head chef seasonal job at some fancy yacht club up in the Bermuda triangle hinterlands, south of Burlington (which, you may remember is almost like being in Vermont). Phillipe is a very desirable catch in the Vermont foodie obsessed culture as he sounds distinctly like Maurice Chevalier, which in and of itself, raises a four star establishment to an automatic five star….
And then last night we had our fist overnight personal guests; a friend of Jenn’s from her wok in Marysville and his girlfriend, a music director for Delaware city schools (who very closely sounded like and resembled Georgeanne from the Mary Tyler Moore show). Jenn outdid herself with a locally-grown, organic, grass-fed, non-toxic, anti-bulimic, free-range, did I say organic?….and tasty meal…followed up with key lime pie made with a base of avocado and crust of figs and nuts……I later snuck to the fridge for ice cream..…nice folks, nice visit, short and gone, the way we like it (not of course, if you are the ones coming)
So- that’s it for the quiet week…..much, much more action due this week…..in the meantime- a short test, if you will. If you have made it this far in reading this weeks’ musings, then maybe you would let me know. I get very little response for the weekly nuances, so once in a while get to wondering if anybody besides Jenn, Max and the Nave are reading this..…this is your chance to be counted amongst the loyal reader base and be entered into a contest to have a free subscription for life……..…But Wait………………………
Insha allah……Stubert
