Ken "tagged" me...and since nearly everyone else
has played this game, i guess i will, too.
so, if you are bored and have nothing better to
do:
4 jobs I've had:
1.car hop at a drive In
2. teacher (kindergarten then adjunct college professor of photography)
3. Garden Designer-Gardener: Never, i mean NEVER agree to create a garden for a wedding...i've done it 3 times: The first turned out okay, but i was a nervous wreck for most of a year. The second was magical: discovered that i kinda know what i'm talking about--sometimes--the foxgloves i grew from seed for the ocassion flowered right on cue and the mother of the bride has become one of my best friends. But it was another very long year of little sleep and i delcared: "that's it!" But, of course, the sister of the first bride prevaled upon me and i caved, but then she and her mother turned right around and ignored me when i warned them that "August is the worst month for a garden wedding because the weather is so upredictable here" and i could not perusade them to move it to June or September--sure enough, a "micro-burst" wind/rain storm hit the garden the night before the nuptials. No amount of money can get me to be the gardener again...but for a large stack of cash, i'll give a person a lovely wedding-garden plan and a carefully composed disclaimer!
4. freelance writer/photographer
4 movies I like:
1. Andy Goldsworthy's Rivers and Tides
2. Nobody's Fool
3. The Enchanted April
4. The Black Stallion
4 places I've lived:
Nevada
Utah
Pennsylvania
New Jersey
4 tv shows I like:
1. Gilmore Girls--particularly the first season
2. The Courtship of Eddie's Father reruns
3. Masterpiece Theatre
4. Charlie Rose
4 places I've vacationed:
1. Pacific Northwest
2. Maine
3. England
4. Islands off the Eastern US coastline
4 dishes I like eating:
1. fresh, in-season tomatoes (my favorite of all time--to date--is the heirloom 'Persimmon') from my garden with a smear of mayo on great bread, with sea-salt (yes, it makes a difference)
2. What my sister and i call "Boiled Supper" which is a silly name for fabulous, spring-fresh steamed asparagus, artichokes, and new potatoes served with aioli and sometimes chunks of tuna (fresh if we are both by the seashore, canned when not)
3. one of the best things from my childhood (decades ago)--but almost everyone here in the East looks at me askance when i tell them about this (people who have never lived where it can be 110+ degrees day after day for months on end with perpetual dust in one's throat and air conditioning unaffordable to anyone but supermarkets and doctor's offices) ...One person actually said once, “That sounds like prison food!” They just do not have any concept of how hot, how dry one's throat can get...nor, i suppose, do they understand truly simple food is often manna from heaven...anyway, here's the recipe:
Serve this late in the day, as the sun is about to disappear behind the mesa:
1. Half an hour before serving, place a jug of milk (purchased from the local dairy farmer) in the freezer until it turns slushy
2. arrange a few slices of your favorite cold cuts on a salad plate along with a couple of slender scallions just pulled from the garden, trimmed and washed and a small bunch of Thompson seedless grapes given to you from your neighbor's vines.
3. Tear a large, thick slice of day-old (but very good) bread into bite-size chunks and put into a cereal bowl.
4. pour the icy milk over the bread and then alternate spoonfuls of the bread and milk with bites of the scallion, cold cuts and grapes (i always plucked the grapes off their stem and put them into the bowl of bread and milk)
believe it or not, i am salivating as i type...but then, i think i only just cleared the last of the dust from my throat in 2003!!
4. a really, really good burger and fries and perfectly cooked fish and chips (the best i've had to date were purchased from the fish and chips wagon in a little village in East Sussex in 1989) are duking it out for 4th position....oh gosh! and then there are the fabulous empanadas & tamales and salsa verde from the local hole in the wall owned/operated by a Coast Rican grandmother-daughter-granddaughter-aunts-nieces team who serve up their homecooking.
4 sites I like visiting:
1. all of my blogger friend's sites (which numbers more than 4)
2. http://www.emilypatrick.com/
3. http://www.greatdixter.co.uk/gardens/g_meadows.htm--the best web site i have visited to date for communicating how it feels to visit the garden and talk with the gardener in question--though navigating the garden pages isn't as intuitive as it could be...never mind...it's so fabulous you won't mind going back and forth as often as required
4. my local library's web site so i can get my next read in the queue
4 places I would rather be right now:
1. walking, for miles, down the road outside my door like i used to be able to do, every morning
2. in the garden fantasizing that it is May which has magically become 8 weeks long
3. swimming at the Y, fantasizing that i am body surfing in the aqua-tourqouise waves of the September temperatures of the Atlantic Ocean surrounding the island i consider my second home
4. walking where violets are in flower in Southern England or France
4 bloggers I'm tagging...i think everyone i visit has already participated
