It’s been on the cool side and gloomy, which suits some of us just fine, especially since June – hotter than blazes for the last two years – is looming.
Busy day yesterday now that I think about it:
Found and planted some old nasturtium seeds.
CM deep-pruned one of the bushes in the front, and it looks 1000% better already. She offered to help with more pruning this weekend.
Locked myself out and Peter came over with the keys I’d given him only two weeks ago. While waiting, I did some long (years) overdue weeding in the back and afterwards, mowed. The back really looks like a wasteland now, but at least it’s no longer a potential haven for mice.
Davey Tree came back to CM’s for winter moth treatment, and they had time to do the yard here as well. They’ll give us an estimate for 11 Edgewater. We’re a little late this time, but they’ve got us on the schedule for next year.

It’s Memorial Day. Last night, I tried to watch the National Memorial Day Concert in Washington, DC, but it was unendurable, becoming more maudlin and histrionic every year, making a day that should be dedicated to inspiration, respect and remembrance an occasion to feed on other people’s grief and suffering.
This time I got smart and recorded the concert, then skipped ahead to the part that has the most meaning for me at least, the splendid “Salute to Services”, in which each branch of the Armed Services is distinctly honored.

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Inspired by the magnificent stands of daisies and lupine at the new Sagamore flyover, I’m finally getting seeds in.
I used up a packet from last year of Botanical Interests Terrific Trailers.

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Others have completed the lion’s share of the work – in fair exchange for a lion’s share of the profits – on cleaning out the Milton house, but my truck and I were recruited for a couple of transfer station runs, the last of which was yesterday.
Fortunately, a clever gentleman managed to load everything on to the truck, and they took pity on me at the transfer station, allowing everything to either be dumped or recycled.
I’m just glad it’s done.

Is Memorial Day really only a week away?
Oh, Lordy.

Mr. Fluffles was born in early May 1994, which makes him 15 years old this month and the equivalent of age 76 in human years.
He’s in pretty good shape: uses his litter box faithfully, can run up the stairs, and can jump reasonable heights. Except for morning stiffness, he’s a lot more agile than I am, even though in human years, I’m considerably younger than he is.

A good set this week, from Live Journal:
1. If you could live in any period in history other than now, when would it be?
I would have enjoyed being a landed, well-educated gentleman in the Age of Enlightenment. What a thrilling time for science and politics.
2. What knowledge or skills do you think you’d have to learn to be able to fit in your chosen period of history?
Agriculture and at least one skilled trade.
3. If you could take just one thing from the modern world back with you, what would it be?
Antibiotics
4. What period in history would you hate to have lived in?
The Middle Ages. I’m sure I would have been burned as a witch.
5. What thing from the past would you like to see make a comeback?
The practical attitude about marriage that produced the pioneer woman rather than a batch of look-alike painted dolls.

It’s been a long while: my right knee kicked up again last month, but two evenings ago I dragged out the old push mower and did the lawn, and yesterday felt well enough to do some real gardening and to visit a local plant sale.

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In 1963-64, I spent one unhappy year at “Pembroke in Brown” as it was known then.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but the antidiluvian administration was fighting – a fight they eventually lost – to preserve a way of life and a way of thinking about women in academia that had long gone by the board.
This morning, I found a good description and example in of all places, the Brown Alumni Magazine, which describes the “antiquated rules” that the late Dean Rosemary Pierrel Sorrentino and her Assistant Dean, the detestable Gretchen Tonks, insisted upon enforcing.
Interestingly enough, Dean Pierrel demanded the same freedom for herself that she wanted to deny to her students. She never understood that freedom of thought is the same creature, whether academic or social.
Evidently Pierrel married well: upon her death in 2004, her husband left a bequest to the University in her honor. Some thirty years earlier, in 1971, the College she headed dissolved, marking the end of “Penny Pembroker” and the beginning of the “Brown woman”. If I had an unforgiving spirit, I’d be tempted to write “good riddance” as a coda to both of those events.

No wild parties, no barking dogs, no kids to get into fights with other kids, no husband to get into someone else’s pants or to forget to return borrowed tools.
An old lady with a cat, a green thumb and an independent streak could be the perfect neighbor.