I'm happy to report that the appliance repair guy actually showed up yesterday, and we now once again have a functioning washing machine and dishwasher. He brought a plumbing snake and some kind of vacuum that cleaned out the pipe, and those seem to have made the difference. Thank God that's over, at least for the time being.
I spent the morning in the garden, where the lilies I rescued from the garden center a few weeks ago are beginning to bloom. They look particularly good surrounded by the purple wallflower and the blue forget-me-nots.
I prepared the flower bed near our back steps, where I planted some zinnia and sunflower seeds. Oh! And the weirdest thing happened. Several weeks ago we got a flier through our letterbox from a landscaping company, with a little envelope attached. The envelope rattled, and the flier said something poetic about how nice it is to have a packet of wildflower seeds. So I saved the packet -- but when I opened it yesterday I found only tiny pellets of dirt. They weren't seeds at all. What a scam!
I guess it's a good way to make people hire a gardener. Give them fake seeds that don't sprout, and then they'll think, "Wow, I can't even grow wildflowers! I need professional help!"
In the afternoon I took my big green bean bag chair to school, for the kids to sit on in the library. I didn't use it here at home as much as I thought I might, and it's just too big for our house. I hired my very first Uber (using the app, which I only recently installed on my phone) to transport me and the bean bag. Welcome to 2012!
In the afternoon Olga and I went to the cemetery. I found a headstone buried in brambles for a woman named Marjorie Helen Hill who was born in Irwin, Pa., in 1874 and died in London in 1917. Moving from Pittsburgh to London back in those days couldn't have been a small thing. Wonder what her story was?
I also heard a blackbird singing enthusiastically. They remind me of mockingbirds with all the various sounds they can string together. I got to wondering about the nursery rhyme that mentions baking 24 of them in a pie. Who would come up with such a thing? Nursery rhymes are insane.
Congratulations on functioning machines!
ReplyDeleteWas that really just earth in the packet? A shameful scam, not real gardeners atall.
It really was just earth. I even crumbled up the pellets and there was nothing in them.
DeleteI remember reading that Sing a Song of Sixpence originated in the 1700s with the line “Four and twenty naughty boys baked in a pie.” Yes, who would come up with such a thing?!?
ReplyDeleteSo glad your pipes have been engineered.
The colors in both photos are brilliant.
That's an awfully big pie!
DeleteI trust that the bean bag chair has no historical stains on its fabric surface. Perhaps Marjorie Hill fell in love with an Englishman. After all, Englishmen are much better lovers than uncouth American chaps.
ReplyDeleteThe bean bag is unsullied, as I only sat in it maybe twice!
DeleteI would have planted the dirt seeds regardless, just in case.
ReplyDeleteOne and only Uber experience in Australia was a disaster and I refuse to Uber here again. The trip to the airport cost $100 instead of $65 we pay for a cab. Mind, Uber was really good in South Africa.
It must be a relief to have your drains working properly again.
I did plant them -- just scattered them over the flower bed -- so we'll see if anything arises.
DeleteI wonder if you got seed bombs -- pellets with wildflower seeds embedded in them. They're microscopic seeds. I'd still plant them, just to see.
ReplyDeleteI was wondering the same thing - my dad gave me what looked like dirt balls & I planted them. There are some green things sprouting - we'll see what actually comes up!
DeleteIf the seeds are indeed microscopic I guess that's possible. I ground one or two pellets between my fingers and didn't see anything in side them.
DeleteIn my world, Marjorie Helen Hill was a Pittsburgh spinster at age 30, and was swept off her feet by an Englishman and moved to London to marry him.
ReplyDeleteI have never Uber'd. I must still be in 2011?
I have Uber'd but (until this incident) only when others made the call! Surely Camden must have Uber?
DeleteWe bought two bean bags for the kids years ago. They used them a lot for the first few months and now they gather dust under our stairway.
ReplyDeleteMy 3rd great grandmother was born in America from English immigrant grandparents. Her father though evidently perished in the California Gold Rush of 49 and she was brought back to England. A few years later she traveled back to America to marry her former sweetheart fresh out of the Civil War and spent her life here. I've found records for her younger brother who stayed in England and where his birth is noted as California, not America as his other siblings were labeled. Different times back then. He died young before he had a family so somewhere over there I expect a gravestone that says he was born in California and died in England.
Interesting ancestral story! Some people were quite adventurous in those days, when traveling to California from Europe would have meant weeks and weeks.
DeleteI find myself wondering if Marjorie Helen Hill was hired help to a wealthy Pittsburgh family. Pittsburgh was home to the Carnegies and the Rockefellers etc, being a lumber, oil, and steel town. These families went abroad frequently. She was only 43 years old.
ReplyDeleteThat's an interesting possibility.
DeleteI always liked that nursery rhyme. There was a lot going on there. And now I've just done a little googling and of course there is so much more to the simple rhyme than we ever imagine as we sing it to our children. https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4933345#:~:text=ROBERTS%3A%20%60Sing%20a%20song%20of,parlor%20eating%20bread%20and%20honey.
ReplyDeleteI never thought of the bit about birds singing as a reference to steam! How depressing.
DeleteNursery rhymes possible begot us Shel Silverstein, whose rhymes are just as nonsensical, yet wonderful somehow.
ReplyDeleteThat's true -- Silverstein was a modern nursery rhymer!
DeleteYour lily is early, and so pretty!
ReplyDeleteI'm sure it was started in a greenhouse for the garden center trade, so it's ahead of the others.
DeleteThat first photo is gorgeous. What a great combination of colors and pretty blooms.
ReplyDeleteGood to hear you finally got the washing machine/dishwasher back to normal.
It's so nice to be able to clean things again!
DeleteI remember bean bag chairs. Kids loved them.
ReplyDeleteThey are great for kids -- another reason to use it in the school rather than here at home.
Deletehttps://interestingliterature.com/2018/10/a-short-analysis-of-the-sing-a-song-of-sixpence-nursery-rhyme-origins-history/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20leading%20theories,bread%20and%20honey%20remains%20unexplained.)
ReplyDeleteI found this about the nursery rhyme which was interesting.
Glad your washer and dishwasher are fixed and working again. We can't really grow lilies here anymore, we have a scarlet lily beetle which decimates the plants. I don't like using pesticides so I just pulled my lilies up.
We have scarlet lily beetles too, although we just pick them off the plants and kill them if they turn up. We never see so many that they decimate the plants. Interesting article -- it seems the consensus that this nursery rhyme is from the period of Henry VIII.
DeleteLove the photo of the lily! Such bright colors that look great together.
ReplyDeleteGlad the plumber sorted out your problem.
The students will love the beanbag chair - it will be a popular reading spot in your library!
Purple and yellow always look so good together, don't they?
DeleteI think that in the elizabethan era they ate any meat they could find and this included
ReplyDeleteblackbirds. Good job we do not eat them now as there is a lack of them in my area.
I would plant those seeds just in case.
Briony
x
In many countries there's a tradition of eating songbirds, which is just appalling to me! But you're right -- back then, people looked for any meat they could find.
DeleteWhat A Photo - The Flowers Were Pretty But That Face - She Is Such A Good Girl - I Thank You For Walking Her - Be Well Brother
ReplyDeleteCheers
She loves the cemetery, and running free along those woodsy paths!
DeleteI always wondered about those blackbirds in a pie. It never helped when, as a child, you looked at the illustrations and the birds looked like -- well, birds. What were they doing in a pie? So glad your repairs were done. (I should have read this first!)
ReplyDeleteI always found it a disturbing nursery rhyme! (Yes, probably because of the illustrations!)
DeleteMy 2 year old grandson has always loved nursery rhymes due (probably) to their sing songy nature. They are indeed creepy! There were a couple I refused to read. Glad that your laundry facilities are back to normal!
ReplyDeleteOn Broadway years ago there was a brilliant show called "Shock-Headed Peter" that was based on old nursery rhymes and their inherently dark nature.
DeleteSomewhere in February, during the 'national invasive-species-week' , they served (European) Starling breasts wrapped in bacon at some gathering here in Oregon to show that they're very edible .. I personally like the feisty little guys, they're masterful imitators as well!
ReplyDeleteYikes! We've actually seen articles here about how even starling numbers are declining. Of course, they're not invasive here either, unlike in North America.
DeleteAh, the colours in that first photo! Lovely.
ReplyDeleteAnd Olga, you're lovely too; good girl :D
Glad your plumbing issue is fixed!
Olga says thank you! :)
DeleteHope 'your' kids love the beanbag chair. You certainly must have made a sight wrestling the thing into an Uber!
ReplyDeleteAmazingly, it fit in the trunk!
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