Plum Sick of Plums

This is the seventh plum torte I've made in ten days.  They are stacked like planes over Laguardia in the basement freezer.  We ate the first one.  It didn't taste like deer repellant.  So, if I give you a 9" tin-foiled gift at Christmas, fear not.  Vanilla ice cream helps.

Ungainly Gardening

     Some people should avoid plant life.
     Last year we battled the chipmunks for  our tomato garden.  Our defeat was ignominious .  Before that it was the mutant, manifest-destiny squash (I bought a large, odd-shaped gourd for Halloween porch decoration.  Christmas came and went and it was still on the porch.  By mid-winter, the gourd was in mid-collapse.  I kicked it off the porch.  My husband sighed and took the chunks to the garbage.)  Months later, vines with with heavy gourds spread from where I had kicked the decayed beast, across the azaleas and up the twelve foot holly tree.  Truly.  The vines went up to the roof.  The gourds boasted 14-inch diameters and loomed in the holly branches.  People came to view the spectacle.
     My son bought a house in DC.  I bought him a wild plum tree.  As it happened, his back yard was bricked, so we stuck it in our yard.  For years it did nothing but lean down the hill.  We staked it with string, but still it bent.  It bore a few plums one year but the deer ate them.  The brutal winter seems to have goosed its reproductive imperative.  Dozens and dozens of plums appeared.  The staking ruptured under their weight.  My husband rushed to prop the tree upright with iron braces.  Then he sprayed the plums with a foul odored deer repellent. Yum.  The problem is that he wants me to do something productive with this dubious bounty of very small plums.
            "Make jam!" he says.  (I don't even buy jam) He advises that I wash them well, better yet, peel them!  (Why risk deer-repellant jam?)  I parboiled the plums.
    Peeling them felt as if I was skinning them alive.  Red, viscous, staining fluid spread across my skin. Removing the pit from the flesh left me with a swamp-like slurry.  I threw it in the freezer so that months from now I can throw it out with good conscience.  Today I made a plum torte.  With the skins on.  No one wants to eat it.  And there's another bushel ripening on the kitchen table.

Dilemma of the Two Hatted Artist

                      "New Kiss in Town"  © 2007

I work in a non-profit art store one day a week.  I also work in my Torpedo Factory studio three days a week.  The pay isn't great in either place.

 In my studio, I hope to encourage random people to become patrons of the arts.  Wearing my other hat in the Art League store, I serve students and artists .  "Miracle on 42nd street" left a deep impression.  If we don't carry an item, or I think another store has a better selection, I tell the buyer.  For fourteen years, I have supplied the customers with dark Hershey kisses.  My co-worker Diane once opined, "I know why you give out chocolate.  It's so they won't think you're mean."  I was stunned.  "Why would they think I'm mean?"

Apparently, though I have a generous heart, it is hidden within the body of a curmudgeon.   So be it. I think I'm nice to most everyone.  It isn't always easy.  Working in retail has certainly made me a much nicer customer elsewhere.

This week's two-hatter dilemma was a phone call in the store.  A man said he and his wife had been looking for a big piece of art (Yes! I thought as an  artist).  But now they decided that they would just paint it themselves.  (Boo, hiss.)  And, he wanted advice on how to do it.  He already had the supplies, there was no money to be made for the store.
But I helped him anyway.  No chocolate was involved

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To Sleep, Perchance to Shop Online

           "Maley's Martha and Whale Bones" © 2013

  I cannot remember when I last had a good night's sleep.  Really, it's been decades. 
  Like my mother before me, I have "crazy legs".  She diagnosed them long before 'restless leg syndrome' became a cause celebre.  That's not my only hurdle, but the only one I care to mention.
   I do what the tv show doctors recommend.  I exercise, limit my caffeine,  go to bed at the same time (10pm) and get up at 7 every morning.  (Sounds good unless you count my wandering the house between 11pm and 2am.)  I take sleeping pills, melatonin and half a benadryl to little effect.
   During those benighted hours, I have three choices.  I can watch bad tv and eat even worse food-- things I would never eat during daylight hours.  Or, I could browse the internet and shop.  (My husband used to refer to weekly packages from online art stores as my "midnight oils.")
  Or I could thrash in bed and fret.  Oddly, this is probably the healthiest of the three.  My kids are grown and healthy.  When I brood, it generally ends with thoughts about the family house on the Vineyard.  Why it isn't rented, why the bats abound, why the contractor wants 17k to paint the windows, on and on it goes.
I love this house.  It's been in the family for 61years.  The way costs are escalating, it probably won't be in the family for our children's children.
So I worry.  During the day I paint pictures of different rooms in the house.  So our kids' kids will know once there was a house on the hill, filled with bats and very well-painted windows.

This is Rosie, maker of mincemeat

 

 

This is Rosie.  Isn't she adorable?  This is the dog that turned Christmas 2013 into a Quentin Tarrantino film, leveling 4 larger dogs, enriching local vets.  Rosie is my daughter's pit bull rescue.  We have her for 9 days.  My husband has declared Rosie the weirdest dog he's ever known.  I would agree.  She is remarkably good about somethings, she doesn't chew shoes or furniture.  She sings and talks more than any child I have known.  Most dogs will 'mouth' you while playing.  Rosie's teeth are curved needles.  She will release politely if you say 'no.'  Speed is of the essence.  She is skittish about going outside.  But then again, she doesn't go inside.  She loves tug of war.  My daughter left a remarkable tug toy for her.  It is a tee shirt that has been strategically ripped.  It is long enough, and has the tensile strength, to be used to evacuate the second floor of a burning building.  I'm not sure how it remains of a piece.  I have attempted to introduce the concept of heeling, using the techniques that brought my son's rescue dogs to heel.  Rosie veers between being dragged and  dragging the human.  When she finds a spot of mud she explodes in puppy fits of circling and rolling.  Lucky us, three days of rain....

Policy Change

                        The Bend, Again copyright 2013

I know everyone likes a bargain.  And how is a buyer to know whether you are flexible in your prices?  I try not to be insulted.  (A friend of mine had a piece listed for $1600.  A surgeon asked if she would take $800.  Imagine if the tables were turned, would he operate at half price? ) I tend not discount unless two or more pieces are involved.  Last week, a woman from mainland China came in to my studio.  I was at  home.  My studio partner called to say that the woman was very interested.  She wanted a discount and would be back in a half hour.  Times are lean in my studio.  I agreed to a 15% discount.  Two hours later the woman returned and insisted on talking to me.  She wanted a 25% discount and the piece removed from the stretchers.  I said no thank you and left it at that.  She did buy the piece.  My partner had to remove it from the stretchers, no easy task.
It put me in mind of my children.  When they were young and had to go to bed in 30 minutes, they would whine.  I responded, okay, you have to go to bed in fifteen minutes.  They caught on quickly.  From now on, if I offer a discount and the client asks for more, I am returning to the full asking price.

Bike Nazis

   I found this once-white bicycle in the shed at the Vineyard.  I have no idea who put it there.  The shed holds a wealth of discarded boogie boards, broken chairs, an old dishwasher and possibly Tularemia  (which is why no one wants to organize it).  The bike's lines and rich rust tempt me to do a painting.
   I once biked everywhere on Chappaquiddick.  It was such a simple pleasure.  This was a time before Kennedy drove off Dyke bridge and turned our rural island into a must-see bike destination.  The roads are narrow on the island. My father didn't drive his oversized station wagon as much as wield it, hovering over the center line (his driving was legendary).   I used to be embarrassed when he leaned out the window and yelled at the clots of bikers, "Single File!"   In retrospect,  I find it admirable.
  I work in Alexandria, Virginia which is a bike friendly city.  I am not bike friendly.  I long to veer into these arrogant cyclists as they blow through every stop sign.
   Yesterday as I drove down Union Street, navigating past the parked beer trucks, parked cars and traffic from the opposite direction, a biker decided that she needn't stay in the designated bike lane.  She pulled to my left, to middle of the road.  I had bikers to the right me, bikers to the left and oncoming traffic before me.  I leaned out the window and said, "get out of middle of the road."  Poppa would have been proud.