The Queen of the Night

On the other end of my balcony the queen of the night is about to bloom. It will bloom at night and I will not bother to get up and look at it. Whatever insect, bird or bat that pollenates it doesn't exist here and so this dramatic event will go unnoticed. It is the first time it's bloomed since I moved it here. And just the one bloom isn't enough to motivate me. I've had as many as 7 on it before. The first picture is 2 days ago, the other is this morning.

Morning glorious.

Finally a morning glory.

Pickled green tomato

I had these little jars I'd saved from some fig jam my sister and brother-in-law had given me. I save jars I like. They fit one green tomato exactly. I spent like 20 minutes getting the damn things inside and straight and looking essentially whole. Put in the dill, garlic, pepper corns and red pepper (not hot unfortunately) and when I poured in the brine the whole thing got discombobulated. After I processed them and they cooled down, I spent another 20 minutes or so turning them every which-a-ways to get them back into some semblance of the position they were formerly in. The jar in the middle is from Harrod's by the way. I have no idea what used to be in it.

Labor Day labor

More concerned with how they look than how they taste.

Pickles

Bread and butter pickles. The next picture is dill. I spent Saturday making pickles. I also made tomato sauce and jarred it. Though I realized when I tasted what remained in the pot, that I forgot to salt it. This is probably not such a huge problem since I can salt it when I make whatever it is I will make with it but one of the jars didn't seal so I reopened them, salted it and reprocessed the jars. A nice way to kill a lovely sunny day.

After spending the day in the hot sweaty kitchen of my condo I then went to the 40th high school class reunion of the seminary from which I did not graduate but only attended for a year and a half. I am not connected to these men and they seem very connected, even after all these years. Only one priest showed up, though I somehow have remained friendly with him, the rest are just shadows of people I used to know.

Four Collages

Something I have always wanted to make. Collages. I can't think what possessed me to sit down and start except that I had a lot of junk I'd saved, like the little paper tags they put on your laundered shirts and pieces of tickets and other ephemera that interests me. I have a lot of prayer books I plan to cannibalize.

Morning not glorious

This is my morning glory. It has twined nicely up around my light but there is little hope it will bloom anytime soon. Like my tomatoes which will most likely not turn red, the morning glories have pin-head sized blooms which are not getting bigger and will disappoint me. At least I can turn the green tomatoes into pickles.