News Trend Growing Things|Actual

I wonder what our farming forebears would have thought, had they seen my second-born and me in action at the plant store today.

Fueled by our usual fever for fanciful indoor plants and fired up over a surprise 30% off sale, between the two of us, we plopped down around $70 for a fistful of quirky, interesting plants.

Succulents.

Air plants

A lone striped aloe.

Beautiful, no doubt

But these plants serve absolutely no practical function in our lives. Unlike the many relatives who came before us, who farmed to put food on the table and shies on the family feet, we simply like to live among cute, green, slightly pricey plants.

And while I have no doubt that this frivolity would at first freak our agriculturally-minded ancestors out, I also like to imagine that once they wrapped their minds around the reality of our post-terbaru suburban lives, the old-timers would smile and find it kind of sweet that we just like to grow things.

* * * * *

In my opinion, you can never have too many succulents, and you can never have too many stories about succulents. Here are a few to choose from:

Court And Kylee's Succulent Party

Succulent Season

Franklin Park Conservatory

Confessions Of A Crazy Plant Lady

Pallet Possibilities

Another Rainy Day

Growing Things

This Is War

All In A Day's Work

Design Dilemmas

Wait For It

Shopping Spree

Saturday Spring Satisfaction

Sprouts

Tiny Tinsel Tree

Biology 101

Little Things

News Trend Road Trip Day 15: West Yellowstone, MT To Seattle, WA|Actual

Off we go on another all-American family road trip.

Two parents

Two daughters

A big red dog

And a car full of suitcases, leashes, a cooler, bags of food, blankets, pillows, maps, books, extra sweatshirts, water bottles, bags, backpacks, and a whole slew of electronic devices and their chargers.

Where are we going and what will we do when we get there?Just wait and see.

* * * * *

Winding across the Palouse of eastern Washington, past golden wheat fields and towering wind turbines.

Crossing the mighty Columbia, her blue waters wide under the brilliant sky.

Climbing up Snoqualmie Pass in the Cascades, where mists and fog drift among the stands of evergreen.

Streaming down the mountain to find my city waiting for me, familiar and exciting and twinkling in the evening light.

These, the last sights of my road trip, cool my wandering heels and set my heart at peace. As much as I love to criss-cross the beautiful American countryside and feast on her endless variety, I am always happy to come back to my little piece of Pacific Northwest heaven.

Distance covered today: 758  miles

Total trip: 5217 miles*

*Total trip according to the odometer, which includes miscellaneous side trips, errands, and rounding: 5781 miles.

News Trend August Miracle|Actual

To anyone who gardens in the Lower 48, prepare to laugh at me. But all you Pacific Northwesterners will surely understand.

This week, when I waltzed back home after a two-week road trip, my elder daughters presented me with the tomato crop - minus the six or eight they ate themselves - that they harvested while I was gone:

This, my friends, is an amazing bounty!

This summer's fiery temperatures (in the 80s) and incessant sunshine (we actually saw the sun in June and July) created perfect conditions for this heat- loving fruit and pushed both the quantity of tomatoes and the timetable for their ripening into the hot zone.

In comparison, I often have to wait till October for the first red tomatoes, and the entire season's output might equal what you see here.

In this magical summer of 2015, not only have we blasted all the normal records for PNW tomato production out of the water, but the vines are still loaded with oncoming fruit. If the weather holds, we could be looking at dozens more!

Okay, you hot-weather tomato champs. Go ahead. Shake your heads at the absurdity that is Seattle vegetable farming.

As for me, I shall turn a few more cartwheels of joy for this unexpected August miracle, and celebrate with my favorite sandwich.

News Trend Talking To Strangers|Actual

I cooked something new for my lunch today - a sauteed spinach sandwich:

In a small cast iron skillet, two cloves of garlic were chopped and browned in olive oil.

To which were added two whopping handfuls of fresh spinach, stirred until wilted.

This mixture was then sprinkled with crushed red pepper and heaped into a chunk of crusty bread.

Delicious.

I reveled in every bite of this surprisingly tasty concoction but I must confess that as I ate, my mind feasted on an entirely different matter.

This sandwich was more than just a random new recipe. It came recommended by a friend of mine named Peter.

Well. I'd say we are friends. But the truth is that I've never met Peter in person nor chatted with him at length, and the little that I do know about him suggests that he and I are two very different people..

Our paths crossed years ago, when we blindly added one another on Facebook as part of a gaming strategy and we have lived on in each other's feeds ever since. I'm sure many right-minded people would call that out as reckless and inappropriate social networking behavior, but as with many other of my old Mob Wars comrades, I've grown quite fond of the guy and enjoy keeping up with his interesting antics and colorful commentary,

Which, last night, included his vivid and mouth-watering description of the spinach sandwich he whipped up for his dinner. And that is exactly how my inspiration for today's lunch was born.

So as I devoured my delectable sandwich, enjoying each warm and savory bite, I couldn't help but think how glad I am that I talk to strangers online. Thanks, Peter!

News Trend The Bridges Of Madison County|Actual

During our summer road trip, we saw more interesting sights that I could squeeze into my real-time posts. Now that I'm back home and have fished all 548 photos off my devices, I have a few more road trip stories to share.

To catch up on the rest of the trip, start here.

* * * * *

It wasn't the first time I woke up from my car nap that I realized something was amiss. Sure, I sensed that we had veered off our proper route on the interstate and were now prowling the back roads of Iowa. But I just assumed my husband was performing his usual mid-morning Starbucks hunt and fell right back to sleep.

But it was ten minutes later, when my body woke me up a second time, that I realized this unexpected detour was more than just a coffee break. Rubbing my eyes and tilting my seat back to its upright position, I took in the winding hills of the two-lane highway, lined with well-kept homesteads and lush cornfields as far as the eye could see. Before I could gather my thoughts to pose a reasonable question, my typically predictable and totally by-the-book husband could contain himself no further.

"We're going on a side trip!" he exalted, giddy with his own cleverness and derring do.

Turns out that when the sign announcing our entry into Madison Country, Iowa, popped up along our route, he decided that a tour of the local covered bridges was in order.

Thus began an interesting morning adventure around this famous patch of green, and a series of new discoveries for me.

^ The bridges of Madison County, popularized in story and a 1995 film starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep, really do exist. What's more, they are big, barny, brawny affairs, much larger and sturdier than their New England compatriots (or at least they seemed that way to me) and totally in keeping with their midwestern surroundings.

^ My two younger daughters were entirely smitten with not so much the bridges themselves, but the countless and infinitely varying messages penned on the interior walls. Notes, love letters, and autographs from local old-timers, love-struck teens, and a surprising range of international visitors offered my girls entertainment aplenty and I swear they read every one.

^ For his part, Ranger would have NOTHING to do with the bridges. Time and time again, I tried to casually lead him into the big red mouth but as soon as my boy approached the shadow of the structure, he hit the brakes, dug all four feet into the wooden planks, and resisted further forward movement with every ounce of his being.

So he went swimming instead.

^ As we wandered from one bridge to the next - there are six still standing and we visited four - our senses were dazzled by the Iowan countryside and small town scenery. I for one could not get enough of the hay rolls dotting the landscape, and was perfectly willing to wade through foot-high grasses lousy with grasshoppers to get a good shot.

^ Winterset, Iowa, is the county seat and gem in the crown of Madison County and also the birthplace of famed cowboy actor, John Wayne. A surprisingly affluent and hipster-licious city, I hung out the car window snapping shots as we rolled through town.

^ At our second bridge, Ranger displayed a further development in his frantic covered-bridge phobia. Not only did he refuse to set paw anywhere near the big red beast, but he cautioned me - with the full range of his vocal chords - to stay away too. I brashly ignored his yelping and walked through this one, but when I came out the other side and looked back at my noisy dog, I saw that he had stepped around the bulwark to keep an eye on me.

Look carefully at this photo and you will see his red head at the opposite end of the bridge. Squint your eyes and you may be able to make out his offended facial expression and open mouth. Yes. He was barking at full volume.

^ More bridges, more bridge graffiti. The interior of this bridge was filled with light from the cut-out windows which, despite the monstrous oaken timbers, created an atmosphere that felt strangely light and ethereal.

^ Two other unexpected discoveries from my day in Madison County:

First, there were a surprising number of other sightseers visiting the bridges on this ordinary August day, including apparently international tourists. The foreign tongues and European soccer jerseys pretty much gave them away.

And despite the many jokes and references made among us visitors, at least on this day spent among the bridges of Madison Country, Clint Eastwood was nowhere to be found.

News Trend Cloud Gate|Actual

During our summer road trip, we saw more interesting sights that I could squeeze into my real-time posts. Now that I'm back home and have fished all 548 photos off my devices, I have a few more road trip stories to share.

To catch up on the rest of the trip, starthere.

* * * * *

Its proper name isCloud Gate.

But almost immediately upon its construction after the turn of the millennium, Chicago's new stainless steel sculpture was affectionately nicknamed The Bean, in gaji of its undulating kidney bean curves.

I think both names are worthy and accurate descriptors of this amazing sculpture. Not only does the piece reflect the sky in infinite variety, but it also seems oddly familiar and comfortingly organic. Which is no small feat for a gigantic hunk of steel.

I fell in love with it long before I ever saw it in person.

Still, when we stopped by Millennium Park for a quick visit on the eastbound leg of our family road trip, my devotion was doubled. I love everything about this art work - the massive scale, the surprising delicacy of the shape, its contradictory curves in delighted defiance to the square-shouldered skyscrapers that stand at attention in the periphery.

But even more, I marveled at the way my fellow visitors responded to the piece. Like any good outdoor sculpture should, this shiny spectacle drew people in and invited them to explore and experience the artwork up close.

Mostly, everyone stood around and took photos of themselves and their loved ones, reflected and distorted in the mercury-like surface.

And while the outside surfaces provided endless entertainment, the inner archway with its dimpled contours took the photo opportunities up by several notches.

Literally everyone was running around, brandishing cameras and snapping endless shots of this amazing interaction of humans and art.

I was no exception to this phenomenon.

And while I can totally get behind both Cloud Gate and The Bean as sweetly suitable titles for this gem of a sculpture, I would like to propose a new name that most accurately captures its effect on human beings.

The Smile Maker.

News Trend My New Record Player|Actual

It was another of my late-night come-to-Jesus moments.

Suddenly, clear as a bell, an idea burst into my mind not in stages or increments but in a single flash of inspired brilliance.

I needed a record player in my living room.

Not wanted. NEEDED.

I have digital music coming out of my ears, but suddenly I craved records.

The epiphany hit me just before Friday midnight, and all the pieces immediately fell into place.

My first-born owns a turntable - a Christmas gift from several years back - but has never been able to find the right place to set it up in her bedroom. She often loans it to me and I knew if I asked real nice, she would let me take that little gem downstairs and give it a permanent home.

Next, I would need some records.

As a child of the 70s, I collected a goodly number of albums during my formative years. That's what we called them back in the day - albums. Never "vinyl." Despite the successive waves of advancing technologies - cassette tapes, compact discs and digital music - I held on to those old crumbling cardboard covers and scratched black discs.

Believe it or not, the better part of my childhood musical archive has been living in my attic, just where we stashed it when we moved into this house almost three decades ago. At least a hundred albums were up there, still stored in the original moving boxes - oh yes, they were - and all I needed to do was haul those boxes back downstairs for a long-awaited reunion.

Only one important matter remained. This dream required a small piece of furniture to a) support the turntable out of harm's way and b) hold my album inventory. I considered and reconsidered every piece of furniture we own, and concluded that nothing would work.

Oh darn. I would have to buy something new.

Twelve hours and one trip to IKEA later, I was the proud owner of a bitty KALLAX unit and now all that stood between me and my dream was a set of assembly instructions and an alphabetizing project.

Eight p.M. On Saturday evening found me lying alone on the living room floor, listening to one album after the next, as sweet memories flooded my mind and filled my soul.

Music from a turntable is different. Rather than jumping around all ADHD-like between albums and artists, as I often do with digital music, albums coax me to listen through a full side, five songs flowing seamlessly into a single unit. Once I drop that needle, I'm transported and rarely lift the arm until it's bouncing against the inner rings.

I love the creativity of the cardboard covers and paper liners. Double albums, single albums with double covers, notes from the band, lyrics on the inner sleeves. This lovely inconsistency make opening up each album an individual and highly serendipitous experience.

Though I've listened many times to this same music on other formats, nothing compares to what I feel when I listen to my albums. This, for me, is how music is meant to be heard and, thanks to my new record player, my heart - and ears - are completely content.

^ Ranger is a big fan of my new record player too.