bashasgarden

I am so missing writing on this blog. But my job is very busy again, and it will probably be so for the near future. I am also trying to post my garden list (which is over to the right in the links section) so that my customers will be able to see what I am going to be growing this spring. Since I have tomorrow and new year's day off, I will see if I can get to it at home.

I did get out to jog this noontime, and it was a tonic that I sorely needed, having been lazy over Christmas week, my sole exercise taking the dog out for walks, nothing aerobic. Although we did go for a hike up at the nature preserve with my stepdaughter and her husband, and the dog. That was a bit of a workout.

Joined the gym, can't seem to get there. I am staying late at work tonight, trying to finish an important task--important only that someone here is depending on the results to write his stuff. So I will forego the gym again.

Excuses, excuses.

Went to an Al-anon meeting yesterday at lunch. It takes me twenty minutes to drive there, and twenty minutes back to work, so I only get twenty minutes of the meeting. But it is a splendid aid for my psych problems. And now the bridge is closing for six months, and I won't be going there for the time being, unless my job gets really slow, and I feel I can go without being missed. But it will add another fifteen minutes to each way in order to get there, as I have to travel up-river a few miles to find a crossing.

But a woman who goes there, and seems to have a lot of time in the program, told me she lived in this town, and wouldn't be goiing as much to the meeting, because of the bridge closing. And she offered to meet me at times, and we can have some fellowship and perhaps construct a small meeting of our own. I was heartily moved at her offer, and hope to call her soon and thank her.

Happy new year to all. Don't drink and drive.
Love,
Basha

Christmas Day. We are staying very low key, with daughter and her husband off in Illinois until Saturday, we are having a movie festival of our own. We will be going to the neighbor's house shortly for a Christmas dinner, and then we will be going out to see another movie. Gift-giving to each other and daughter and her husband will wait until Saturday. So we haven't even done our shopping yet, but plan to go tomorrow. We generally try to avoid all the hullaballoo anyway.

I did get one of my seed orders written out, and will mail it in tomorrow. I am planning to try to germinate some older seeds this weekend, to get a head start on parsley, lettuce, and celery root. I will post my whole order on this weblog this weekend, so that I can have a decent record stored somewhere where I won't lose it.

Hope everyone has a wonderful holiday, and a happy new year's eve and day. Don't drink and drive.
Love,
Basha

Again, so very very busy at work. But I decided to take a few minutes of my lunch hour to post.

I have a gripe to explore. Alright--it was fascinating to see the videos of Saddam Hussein after he was captured. And to learn the new term, "spider-hole." But what makes me mad, is not the contempt with which he is spoken of by the powers that be, but that they compare him to a homeless man, or a homeless man-on-a-grate.

Now, to me, seeing a mass murderer in custody doesn't actually bring joy to my heart, but it sure is where he belongs, and not out there still killing. But the phrase that strikes me as apt, in describing him is: "absolute power corrupts absolutely!"

So it would behoove the leaders, politicians, whoever who has the media ear for the moment, to take the lesson at heart. His crime is not that he looks like a homeless man. The homeless men that I have seen in my life are to be pitied, for their alcoholism, drug addiction, mental illness, and their poverty.

But there are those in power, who are puffed up with their own arrogance, who can't see the lesson in Saddam Hussein. That lesson is absolute power corrupts absolutely. And for our own powerful people, the corollary is true, power corrupts. So that they all don't end up in their own version of a spidy-hole, let's hope that we can keep them from holding absolute power.

Today is shaping up better than yesterday. I wrote an article for the company newsletter, based on an interview with someone in the company. Writing is new to me--and I accept and welcome the challenges given to me for improving it.

But I have a long way to go. Reading some of the weblogs that I have found since I have been doing my own has inspired me. One of the beautiful posts I came across today is from butuki at Laughing Knees, writing about an article written about the environment by Michael Chrichton. Each writing, I have to admit, pulls me in opposite directions.

I had lunch with a fellowship friend at a restaurant in the town where I work. Having such a friendship, whereby she is becoming one of the people I feel free enough with to talk about anything, means a lot to me. Especially the day after the company office party. Which was a fine party, but still a bit difficult to stand and sit in a restaurant and bar with coworkers and make small talk, as I was the only one without an alcoholic beverage in my hand. But I survived, and through suffering the meaningless small talk did get to know a tiny bit more about a few people. I noticed, though, that some people had excused themselves from the gathering for various reasons. And I could do that. But even though these situations make me uncomfortabale to a degree, it poses enough of an interesting challenge for this socially-challenged person to go to these events and work my way through them. Even if for the only reason that I want to write.

I wake up each morning with the radio alarm that, at the hour of 5 am, is broadcasting NPR's "The World," which comes from the BBC. This morning, as I listened to the news about children being killed in Afghanistan, the second time in a few days that children have been the primary toll, I thought that I can't wake up like this anymore. But what is the alternative?

There have been times in my life when I stopped listening to the news and stopped reading the paper, when I felt more at peace. I remember going on vacation to places where there were no English newspapers, and I couldn't understand the language of the country where I stayed, and though feeling disconnected from the world as I knew it, also found a different rhythm by which to live for a short time. A different focus, a slowing down. Peace.

But what does one do who feels the need also to join with the witnesses of injustice, fraud, and murder? Can I do my meditation, my workout, my gardening, family stuff, friends, fellowship, live my life and detach from the sadness and still be aware of it all? I am willing to demonstrate, sign petitions, and certainly go to the voting booth each time. Is it enough to simply ask for knowledge of God's will for me and the power to carry it out? And trust that in the asking, and subsequent meditation, I will have the wisdom to know the answer?

Lots of things to report, many of them because of the snow. We got about a foot of snow. Made a few trips to the greenhouse to poke the snow off the plastic covering.

Also got out my cross-country skiis to take a little trip around the property. Sable kept barking and barking, and trying to bite the skiis as I moved along. Later Michel tromped through my tracks, as he found that easier going, but I lamented the loss of the clean tracks in case I decided to go out again. Sob.

The house is colder with the snow. Maybe it is psychological, as looking out on the frigid white landscape causes my blood to run colder. So I made biscotti, two days in a row, and went skiing yesterday. Watched "A Taste of Honey" on video, and read "Fast Food Nation.. The Dark Side of the All-American Meal" by Eric Schlosser, which I received as a gift for my birthday. Makes me glad I am focused on being organic.

I need to do something about the aphids in the greenhouse. I need to find a way to get rid of them before I start putting flats of seedlings out there in the Spring. Any ideas (organic, only, please) would be appreciated.

This was forwarded to me by e-mail today, and apparently it is an excerpt from George H.W. Bush's book that he wrote along with Brent Scowcroft.

[In his memoirs, A World Transformed, written five years ago with his former
national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, George Bush the elder wrote the
following to explain why he didn't go after Saddam Hussein at the end of
the Gulf War in 1991.

"Trying to eliminate Saddam ...could have incurred incalculable human and
political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible ... We would have
been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq ... there was no
viable `exit strategy' we could see, violating another of our principles.
Furthermore, we had been consciously trying to set a pattern for handling
aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus
unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed
the
precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to
establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could
conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."]

We had a terrific Thanksgiving this year, just a nice one filled with good, close people. Lots of good food, too.

One of the vegetables we served was celery root, also known as celeriac. This is the best vegetable, you can prepare it raw, or cooked. My husband grated it and made a mustard sauce, and we all ate it as the first course. I first encountered it in restaurants in France when we went over there in the winter. It is frequently served as a side dish. I grow a bed of it each year, starting the seedlings in January, as it needs a full growing season. I love to have it in the garden. Some of our guests had never had it before, and they liked it, as we did.

After dinner, and before dessert, we took the dogs and went for a long walk in the remaining daylight up to the nature preserve on the hill. There I had a private moment with my close friend, who is grieving.