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3318. Ronski - 10/25/2005 2:42:12 AM

That was taken by the driveway, yesterday, in late afternoon light, with the compulsory flash on the SONY digital.

It's witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana) and red maple (Acer rubrum).

3319. Ronski - 10/25/2005 2:43:50 AM

Pelle,

Btw, Colchicum appears not to need particularly good soil. I wouldn't make a special trip for it of course, but if you're going up to the lake, I'd take the bulb and plant it somewhere there.

Then, if you ever get gout...

3320. judithathome - 10/29/2005 8:55:06 PM

Keoni is making his work-of-art pumpkin pie with pecan pie in the center. He has banned me from the kitchen for the duration.

This pie is pumpkin at the edges and pecan in the middle...so you get to experience two pie flavors in one slice. He spent $8 on a tin that he cut the bottom off of to make the form for the pecan mix that fits into the middle. He puts the form in and pours the pumpkin mix along the sides of the pie and then, fills the form with the pecan mix and lifts it out very slowly.

Then, he cuts out leaf shapes of dough and applies them to the edge of the pie crust.

We're taking this to our monthly gourmet dinner this evening. And I'm making my faboo salad with greens, dried cranberries, walnuts, and sliced strawberries with crunchy chow mein noodles tossed in. And Ken's raspberry-walnut dressing.

3321. arkymalarky - 10/29/2005 9:36:55 PM

That pie sounds wonderful. He ought to enter a contest with his pies.

3322. judithathome - 10/29/2005 10:15:58 PM

Next time we come to see you, he'll make a pie! He makes a fabulous apple cranberry and a fabulous cherry blueberry pie. But I'm rather biased in his favor.

3323. arkymalarky - 10/29/2005 10:36:38 PM

Oh, I'm sure we'll agree with you. He's lived up to everything else (especially biscuits!). With the nip in the air it's a good time to think about pies--pie and coffee. Mmm.

3324. PelleNilsson - 10/31/2005 8:37:29 PM

The Rise and Fall of a Colchicum
I have suffered in order to be able to bring you this unique and gripping documentation. My wife was vivid about having a decrepit plant on the windowsill for what seemed like ages.

3325. arkymalarky - 11/1/2005 12:50:50 AM

livid?

3326. Ronski - 11/1/2005 1:07:28 AM



Happy Halloween!

3327. PelleNilsson - 11/1/2005 9:41:15 AM

Yes, livid of course.

3328. thoughtful - 11/1/2005 3:24:21 PM

The thoughtful's don't do halloween and instead treat ourselves to a nice dinner. Went to an Indian restaurant...I printed out the menu ahead of time and went over it with an indian fellow I know to order the best dishes. We had a wonderful meal.

Hubby was especially delighted as he hadn't had indian food since he was in india which must be almost 20 years ago.

We ordered Murg Masti (fennel induced minced chicken, spiced cashews on crisp lettuce)
Masala Dosa...enormous crepe stuffed with spiced potatoes and peas
Chicken Tikka...grilled chicken
Chicken Malai Kabob...tandoor fired chicken tenders with saffron
spiced garlic nan
zafrani pulao...basmati rice cumin seeds and green peas
finished with spiced tea ....cardamom and cinnamon
Everything was wonderfully delish.

3329. thoughtful - 11/1/2005 5:53:46 PM

I meant to post this here, not there.
Sorry for spamming.
via delong's site:

Do you always get the wobbly table at restaurants and cafes? Don't despair. A physicist has proved that, within reasonable limits, it is always possible to rotate the table to a position where all four legs stand solidly on the ground. Andre Martin was moved to study the problem because he was fed up with the wobbly tables at CERN ... in Geneva ... where he works on abstruse problems in high-energy physics. Anyone who drinks a cup of coffee on the terrace of the CERN cafeteria ... discovers that the tables usually have only three feet resting on the ground, so that the slightest touch spills your drink. Time after time, Martin would find himself rotating the table to look for a stable position. "I've always been able to find one," he says. "People are sometimes amazed that it works." More than ten years ago, Martin decided to see if he could find some proof that a stable state always exists. He believed that he'd found one ... in 1998, but ... discovered that ... it wasn't completely correct. Now Martin believes he has a more watertight case, and this time he has gone public. "I had the feeling that mathematicians were interested," he explains.

3330. Ms. No - 11/1/2005 6:08:28 PM

Okay, so I'm a day late, but I didn't manage to get myself together with pictures 'til today. Saturday I went to a pumpkin carving party.



Pumpkin Artistes among the offerings of lesser mortals. (Mine is the one barely begun in the foreground.)

3331. Ms. No - 11/1/2005 6:11:09 PM

Finished and Lit....very, very lit as a matter of fact.

3332. Ms. No - 11/1/2005 6:13:04 PM

Yeah, we had a pumkin carving ringer among us. Later we bound him to a stick and roasted him over the fire, but it's worth a close-up anyway. (The blond guy in the first pic is the carver)

3333. PelleNilsson - 11/1/2005 7:24:31 PM

I rather like the soft autumn light we are having these days. This picture was taken at 2 pm.

3334. Macnas - 11/3/2005 12:41:22 PM

Would you like to hear the story of Jack O'lantern??

Once apon a time, in the wild bogs of the midlands, there lived a man called Jack. Now, he wasn't a very evil man, but then neither was he good. And his greatest weakness was for drink, as hard as he could get it.

This led him straight and sure down the wrong path, and one evening, fighting drunk, he was thrown out of a shebeen where he had been drinking all the morning before. In a fit of spite he stole a horse that was tethered nearby, and rode off to the west.

Not long after, the horse threw a shoe, and was starting to lame something fierce. Jack was starting to sober up at this stage and realised that he should get the horse to a smith as soon as possible before he got any worse. Just as this thought went through his head, what did he see up ahead but the warm glow of a smith's fire, and what did he hear but the din and peal of a smith's hammer on the forge.

Drawing nearer, he could see the smith at work. A huge man, with massive arms all covered in thick coarse hair, a frightful countenance and a mouth full of bright white teeth that shone in the blaze of the forge. He wore a leather apron that covered him from chest to shins, and a leather cap pulled back from his broad forehead to stop the sparks from singeing his hair. His face was the colour of bog oak, and Jack thought for a minute that his very fingernails were burning black and could see the smoke drifting from them.

The smith looked up at him and smiled. "A fine horse you have there Jack, I know one just like it, not very far from here"
Jack swallowed and space "Indeed smithy, 'tis the same horse you see and no mistake, and I after buying it from the man that owned it!"
The smith smiled wider still, and Jack could see the teeth were sharp as well as white, "Did you know? Well that’s all well and fine, but he needs a shoe, and it's a shoe I'll give him, if you want"
Jack trembled as he replied, "It is a shoe that’s needed smithy, but I have no money in my purse or clout to give you for to do the work"

The smith put down the massive cross pien he had been wielding, and folded his huge arms across his broad chest. "Well now Jack" says he, "I'll make you a wager then, ask me any feat within the bounds of my forge, and if I cannot do it, then I'll shoe that horse for you with a happy heart" Jack was by now shaking as he stood beside the horse, because he knew now for sure that it was nobody but the Devil himself standing at the forge. Under the hem of the long leather apron he could see two cloven hooves.

"And if I fail to find a task to best you, what then smithy, for I'll still have no money for you??"

The smith laughed with the sound of a hundred horseshoes being drenched in cold water "Why then jack, you'll put on these shackles I've been making, and come with me to hell!"
He lifted the heavy shackles in one hand, roughly hammered iron still glowing and crude link between them.

Now Jack, 'though he was a wicked man who had drank and fought and stole and wasted every gift that was given him, could not be said to be a stupid man. He could think fast on his feet when he had the need, and he knew no other time when he had greater need than this. He spied an iron in the fire and made his plan there and then.

"I'd say smithy, that there's not a bar you couldn’t bend, or an anvil you couldn’t toss, but I'm thinking that you couldn’t climb that tree that stands along side your forge there"

The devil frowned, and said "Sure and I could, and if that's the wager, then it's a poor one, and you'll be coming with me sooner than I had thought!" With that, he sprang up the trunk of the tree as nimble as a weasel climbing the ivy on the wall of a hen house.

As quick as he could, Jack took the iron from the forge, and with it burning into his hand, he scorched the sign of the cross on the bark of the tree trunk. Up in the tree, the devil realised he had been bested, for he could not get down again. He roared his displeasure of being cheated of Jacks soul, and then set to laughing his horrible hissing laugh. "You got the better of me Jack, 'tisn't many do, but I'll see you again soon I think!"

Jack left the stolen horse and ran as fast as he could away from the devils forge.

Not long after, Jack died while sleeping out on a cold moor, insensible with poitin spirit. He made his way to the gates of heaven, but found his way barred due to his wicked life before. He was not wicked enough for hell without being tricked into it, as the devil had tried before, so his soul wandered. The devil, recalling Jacks cleverness, took some pity on him, or as much pity as was in him to feel, and to help Jack find his way in the gloom that was his in the world of wandering souls, gave him a glowing ember from the fire of hell, that would never go out.

Jack hollowed out a turnip and put the ember inside, and the devil carved a likeness of his own face in it, to remind Jack of who had helped him and to taunt him for the rest of time.

3335. PelleNilsson - 11/5/2005 7:40:04 PM

What goes on here?



In the meantime, this picture is of two young relatives of ours. They are contemplating a doll which the girl, Victoria, was presented with just a few minutes earlier.



It's a sweet picture, but the doll is also interesting. My wife's maternal grandmother had eleven siblings. All but one of them emigrated to America in the early 20th century. They had to struggle to establish themselves, then to cope with the Depression and then came WWII. But after the war they could and did visit the old country and, of course, they brought presents from their new one. The doll was one of those, given to my wife towards the end of the 40s. And now it has a new keeper. Here is a better picture of it.




3336. Magoseph - 11/5/2005 8:06:23 PM

What goes on here?

I'll be darned if I know--tell us.

Lovely young relatives you have, Pelle.

3337. PelleNilsson - 11/5/2005 9:34:02 PM

I'll be darned if I know--tell us.

Perhaps on Monday if nobody has come up with an answer. Hint: traditional craft.

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