curiosities

Whew.  I’m finally catching up after our glorious week away!  Today I’ve noticed some funny little things that I thought I would share…walking to work this morning, I saw a pen on the sidewalk that had been stepped on–behind the pen was a large rorshak puddle of dried ink.  In writing it sounds fairly normal, but the serene image of a pen with its inky guts beside it was comically morbid and for better or worse made me smile…I thought that it could only be improved upon by making a chalk outline of the pen and removing it altogether, but alas I was without chalk, so it stayed in its original pose.  Driving home for lunch I was behind a 1980 something old Buick that had seen many better days–it was dingy and brown and the interior lining was dangling into the anonymous head of the driver.  It was without hub cabs, with a back fire, and generally on what appeared to be a last mile.  Plastered neatly on the back bumper was a new shiny bumper sticker that read, “don’t let my car fool you, my real treasure is in Heaven”.  Perfect.  And just as I had finished smiling about that, a bright yellow convertible Smart Car drove by.  Haven’t seen a Smart Car before?  They’re about the size of your average lunch box…Charlottesville is on the Smart Car bandwagon, but I had yet to see someone’s hair trying to take flight with the top down.  Here’s a stock picture to give you an idea:

And finally, my two favorite oddities of all, from our garden–

take a look at the marigolds and this collard:

and our cool heirloom tomatoes eeking their way into the world:

And while the following pictures aren’t particularly unusual unless the wiles of nature strike you as being curious, I thought they deserved a spot on the web…

And, joy of joys!  What some might consider to be an invasive painful mess, I consider to be a treasure…our little urban yard has blackberries!  I think that we’re just a few days away from a cobbler…

 Our little tiny garden is recovering from our week away and little to no rain, but we made a nose clearing broth to kick a summer cold the other night with jalapenos, basil, onion, green onion and parsley all from the garden (with a healthy dose of sriacha to really amp up the nose clearing power) and I couldn’t have been happier.  I love the Summer…or in the case of this head cold…I lub da sumber!