Overheard
“I saw the dollar store of my dreams today.”
Misheard
Me, trying to get Nick to tell me about his geology class: Why do rocks exist?
Nick: Love
Me: LOVE?! 😍
Nick: No, I said “lava!”
Overheard
Her: I love my cousins.
Him: My cousin is a sex offender.
Her: That’s not something I need to hear about.
Loss
Shanon’s mom, Katy, passed away at the end of June and we went out to Boone, NC for her memorial service last week. Katy had been a member of her church for decades, and it was moving to me how much that was a part of her life, and how the church members had done their best to look after her in recent years when she had some very hard times.
I’m reluctant to write much more about that here—it’s Shanon’s grief and loss more than mine, of course.
Help my friend and hear some great music
I have mentioned Steve Lawson (UK) before, the immensely talented and prolific bass player. The man has cancer (lymphoma), and while his spirits are good and I think the prognosis is not-terrible, if you have an interest you can buy some of his music on Bandcamp, or even buy his whole catalog for a reasonable price. You can also subscribe, which is what I have done for the past several years. He’s got a few “best of” collections near the top of that linked webpage, or I can recommend really anything from the last few years when I have been listening more regularly/carefully. Hard to go wrong with his whole not-jazz-not-ambient-not-electronic “soundtrack to the day you wish you’d had” body of work.
Garden
It’s that time of the summer where the garden is very lush and green but there’s not a whole lot ready to eat yet.
This side of the garden features pumpkins, basil, peppers (sweet and hot), tomatoes, and cucumbers. Plus weeds.
On the right are some sadly neglected potted tomatoes. In the front are carrots, volunteer cilantro from last year, stunted garlic, then lots and lots of green beans. And weeds.
Reading
I believe the last book I finished was Madeline Miller’s Circe, which I think was a bestseller and award-winner so you may not need me to tell you how good it was. It was a good way for me to follow up reading Mists of Avalon since this book does for Circe what Mists did for Morgan le Fay (kinda, sorta). And I have an affinity for The Odyssey since I was in a stage adaptation of the epic when I was in college.
Your garden looks great! My sabbatical is ending, and one thing I'm looking forward to is the return to my own garden. It'll be wild and overgrown and also probably really dry. It'll be cool to discover the life in there again.