Birthday Extravaganza

 Sunny Peppers!

Yes, the peppers continue to ripen and survive despite cold nights.  It's amazing what a sheet of remay row cover can do to preserve and protect.  I'm not sure about this week with lows forecast in the mid 20's it could be the end, but it's been a great run.  We have loads of peppers now that I need to cut up for the freezer because I don't think we will be able to eat them all up.

I've had a wonderful birthday week with multiple celebrations in honor of turning, as someone said "double nickles".  There have been cards and calls, gifts and dinners and a general festive air all around.

I baked this gorgeous snapper from the local fishmonger on my birthday eve. Along side crispy roasted potatoes, the last of the garden beans and a salad of just picked red bibb lettuce, a nice french white Bordeaux, that was some living brother.  And we polished the night off with a flour-less chocolate torte that I baked for myself as I'd been having a hankering.

On my actual birthday Nov 8th, David went out to Prairie Ridge with me to help band birds. It was another cool sunny day and we had a big time capturing kinglets and many sparrows in the nets and putting the bands on their tiny legs before measuring, weighing and releasing them to fly on about their day.

That night we enjoyed a super dinner at Mateo Tapas Bar in Durham where we sampled 9 different plates and a fair amount of wine.

Yesterday I spent the day at the NC Community Garden Partners Annual meeting.  I am on the education committee and so was on the planning committee for this event.  I think it was a big success, we had over 100 people from across the state taking part in workshops and presentations.  People seemed to be learning lots and networking too, always good.  Our theme this year was sustainability of gardens, not on the ecological level but on the management, business, funding, longevity level. It is great to see the community garden movement growing in North Carolina and so many people interested in getting gardens started and in keeping them going strong.

Best of all- I won the raffle of this gorgeous community garden quilt!  It represents raised beds, pathways and veggies growing, and has a few chickens clucking through it as well.  Colorful and fun.  I couldn't believe it.

And so, I enter my 55th year feeling very celebrated, loved and lucky indeed.

A Banner Birthday Celebration

It's been a good week on Trout Lily Lane.  The weather has been glorious; warm, sunny and the leaves are hitting peak.  I've been working outside, cleaning up the front garden, weeding and cutting things back. 

Yesterday was my birthday and it was an excellent day from start to finish.  I met my friend Alison for what has become our regular morning swim on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Such a great way to start the day.  We went out for a swell breakfast, I went to vote and then came home to spend the afternoon puttering outside.  Dinner with our buddies John and Michele; homemade pizza, fresh salad and champagne.  Then off to Playmakers theater to see The Parchman Hour.  An excellent play about a group of Freedom Riders in the 60's who were arrested and incarcerated in the notorious Parchman penitentiary in Mississippi.  To maintain their sanity, they organized nightly variety shows from their cells, singing and telling stories and jokes to get through the long nights.  Good music, singing, choreography and historical references.  Enjoyed by all. We topped off the night with dessert at the Lantern where I had a warm chocolate cake with roasted peanut ice cream, very tasty, but the star dessert was a coffee creme caramel.

If the quality of yesterday was any indication, I think its going to be a banner year.

In the yard the little Japanese maples have really come into their prime this week.  We have several that David dug from my fathers yard, seedlings of uncertain parentage, they have all developed quite well, some turning red others coppery at this time of year.  I look forward to seeing them mature over time.

Happy Birthday to me!

Birthday breakfast: cappucino and pear tart!

Yesterday was my birthday so I've been in celebration mode for the past few days, I believe you have to give yourself some extra good times around the birthdate.  Sunday David and I spent the day just playing together, something we rarely do.  We started with a stretch and restore yoga class, 45 minutes of gentle stretching followed by 45 minutes of very long, supported poses, something you could do at home but never give yourself time and space for, now why is that?  We can easily lay on the couch for 2 hours watching a movie, only to arise with a sore back, but won't consciously do resting yoga poses for even 15 minutes!  Go figure.

We then went to brunch at Crooks Corner- I hadn't been there in ages, the food was great but the atmosphere hectic and very loud.  From there it was off to the North Carolina Botanical Garden to tour the grounds and view the outdoor sculpture show they put on every fall. The theme was Elements; earth, fire, water, air and spirit.  Some of them I liked, some I thought a bit too cutesy.  We then took a walk on the trails through the woods there.  NCBG is a wonderful resource in the middle of town, before we lived in the country with trails outside our door we often frequented the NCBG trails.  I always feel akin to the place as our same Morgan Creek flows through the gardens, albeit wider, deeper and more free flowing coming out from below the lake.

Home again after that for a quiet evening, where David, in the true spirit of birthday celebration baked for me a pear and almond tart so I would have something delish to sink my teeth into into on the morning of my actual, factual birthday (see above).  We wound up the day with a lovely supper of crab raviolis we had made and frozen a while back, part of the bounty of our Community Supported Fishery-Core Sound Seafood. 

Yesterday I did some work, took a long walk in the woods and went to town for a wonderful massage from my longtime masseuse and friend Pat Kosdan.  Knowing it was my B'Day she spoiled me with a hot stone massage and gifts of bath salts and an exfoliating brush- can't wait to put those into action.

Tonight, in the final tryptic of my celebration, we have tickets to see Fences at the Playmakers/Paul Green Theater.  So I guess one could say that I'm a very lucky lady who knows how to spoil myself on and around my special day.  I can't close without a shout to all those who sent cards, e-mails, packages and made calls to also wish me a happy 52nd year on the planet.  Love to you all.

Birthday Flowers

I spent the weekend celebrating my birthday.  That included spending Saturday night around a fire with a few friends, drinking much good wine and eating amazing food including homegrown and wild picked mushrooms, chicken wings and pork tenderloin cooked over the coals, baby sweet potatoes roasted with peanut oil and maple syrup, they melted in our mouths, home grown salad too.  I just polished off the last scrumptious piece of chocolate cherry torte that my honey pie baked in honor of my special day. 

We laughed, sang and danced and the resulting hangover didn't keep us from spending yesterday out in the garden.  The day was way too beautiful to stay inside and as its autumn, well, you gardeners know there are things to plant, move, rearrange, dead stuff to cut back, WEEDS.  I planted two new camelias including this one called Sarrel.  It has a mounding habit and I put it in a spot where I hope it will trail down the hill.

I had to share this lovely with you as well- planted last spring, October Affair, it's decadent in its perfection, this photo really doesn't do it justice.

On Turning Fifty

It was my fiftieth birthday on Saturday. I believe I won't live to 100 so I'm shooting for 75 as a ripe old age to wind up at. That means I've only got 25 years left to finish what I've started and everything I try to do seems to take longer than it once did. Oh well, we can only accomplish as much as we possibly can.

In honor of the day I took a long walk around the land, visiting all my favorite power spots and thinking about what I wanted from this year and the next third of my life. It was a phenomenal day which I took as a good sign, sunny and clear, blue blue skies, the trees still turning. Dogwoods flame with the lower leaves yellow and upper leaves red.

The Ginko Biloba on its' way from deep green to lime green to yellow to gold. We are placing bets on which day this week all the leaves will drop off, they tend to fall almost simultaneously.

On my walk down to the creek I drank in the gorgeous day. Dry leaves were swirling around and down, making a crinkling sound as they fluttered out of the trees, through the air and landed crisply on the ground. A giant oak fell across the creek in the hurricane Hannah flood making a perfect bridge, so I scaled it and crossed to walk with a new perspective from the other side. Over there the bottom land is broad and flat with tall trees, on our side are steep mossy bluffs, rocky and veined with ropey beech roots.

I wandered on down to the big rock bluff, getting there is treacherous, the path now so narrow that you can only put one foot in front of the other, 6 feet above the water on one side, a steep bluff on the other offering no reprieve, nothing to hold on to. But I precariously made my way along the ledge and then scrabbled up the steep slope to sit on top of the big rocks and study the way the big beech branches wrap around them at the top and the roots of the sycamores across the creek grow around the rocks below.

The water was flowing beneath the rocks at the bend at a level that created an echo and reverberation amplifying the burbling, gurgling creek, sending that music up to me as I sat on top, watching the leaves fall, feeling the air on my face, the sun on me and feeling pretty damn good about the place I am in my life right now. A pileated woodpecker called and flew across the sky, a portent of good things I'm sure.

The day progressed into a clear and starry night filled with friends and laughter, champagne and good food, fire and fireworks to send me into a festive new year and new beginnings. The 40's were my best decade of life so far and I think the 50's are going to be even more miraculous.

Celebrations continued into the week, between the fabulous election results- Go Obama!- and my B'day, I've drunk more bubbly in the past week than in the past two or three years, I'm drying out now and moving forward to bright days ahead.