Fun Monday - Give Me Five

I was reading this blog, and saw the Fun Monday meme, so here goes:

1. "People come and go so QUICKLY here..." - Dorothy (Judy Garland) in Wizard of Oz. She has just had a visit from the Good Witch Glinda who leaves in a bubble. I often say this - and have said it for many years - at places I have worked, where the turnover was high.

2. "Frankly, Scarlet, I don't give a damn." - Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) in Gone With the Wind. Last scene in movie, where he's had enough of Scarlet's crush on Ashley Wilkes, and leaves her for good. Or not. I have used this when in an argument with my daughter - and said it word for word. Of course, she looked at me like I was nuts until she got older and understood the reference, at which point she only would roll her eyes.

3. "Are you entertained?" - General Maximus Decimus Meridius (Russell Crowe) in "Gladiator". This is screamed a few times in succession at the audience from the floor of a huge arena after Maximus has defeated all that they have thrown at him.
I use this when I've done something stupid and everyone laughs - I say it to be funny, but I'm not sure most people get the reference on this one.

4. "I'll be back" - the Terminator (Arnold Schwarzenegger). Everyone knows this one - and it is so usable. I say it to my cockatoo before I leave the room where his cage is - and he repeats it back to me all the time. I say it at work, when I leave the room, to let my coworkers know I'll be returning shortly. Of course, I use the accent, too.

5. "Do I feel lucky?" - Dirty Harry - Clint Eastwood. This is only part of the whole quote, but it's the part I use - when I'm doing anything that might have an "iffy" outcome.

The Battle of the Morning Glory

Today was going to be a restful Sunday until I started reading some gardening blogs. These are blogs of people who live and garden in Florida, some even as far south as myself, or farther. People like Danielle's Garden Blog, Hoe and Shovel, Wicked Gardener, Dragonfly Gardener, Gardening in Central Florida, and last but not least, Florida Ecomania. A couple of the above blogs are Central Florida or farther north, but one is south of me in Miami. I got as far as Dragonfly Garden this morning in my reading, before I could resist my conscience no longer.

The Saga Begins
I have a Morning Glory vine from a Stephen King horror story. Years ago, when I first moved into this house, there was one corner of the yard that had a pretty deep green leaved and purple flowered vine. Since purple and green are my favorite colors together, it was serendipity. I thought. I thought wrong. That vine would not die. The neighbors who shared the other side of the vine knew better than I did and killed the stuff on their side with Round Up. I was upset at the time, but now I understand. What astounds me is that people who live north of Florida actually plant Morning Glory ON PURPOSE from seeds every year. They get a season called winter, which effectively kills off the vine every year so it has to be replanted. We don't get freezes down here, so Morning Glory becomes riotous, insanely voracious in it's ability to cover everything and smother it - it's the Kudzu of my backyard. Oh - by the way - my husband read the other day that Kudzu is growing in the Everglades - now THAT is a serious, villainous vine - I hope they can eradicate it - but, I digress.

The years passed and we thought the Morning Glory was dead, since the neighbors had killed the root system, which happened to be on their side. I planted Bougainvilleas, Clerodendrum (which get carried away themselves, but that's another story), Cape Honeysuckle (someone told me I'd get hummingbirds if I planted this - but I've not seen one yet...but that, too, is another story), Confederate Jasmine, Mexican Heather, Beautyberry and wild Lantana transplanted from the Everglades. I also planted native bushes like Firebush and somthing else whose name I can't recall.

Then, one day I noticed a few purple flowers and deep green leaves along the left back yard fence. Just a few. They looked pretty, so I left them. I'm a softy about anything living - usually. I can't stand to hurt living things, including bushes and trees - it's dumb and ignorant, since pruning helps trees and bushes. Anyway - I left the Morning Glory alone. Then, last spring we had cat birds in our yard. Cat birds are notorious for loving heavy brush cover. Since the Morning Glory had formed a nice covering over some bushless areas in the back yard and provided cover for the cat birds, we left it alone. Big mistake.

Now it's a year later, and the Morning Glory has taken over the back yard. Runners could be seen through the grass, it covered the Clerodendrum way too high up to pull down. It covered our fence in the back yard and was beginning to smother the Bougainvillea.

I looked at it in extreme dismay. My husband joked about setting fire to the back yard and then paving it. We're both in our 50's, out of shape, overweight, and bookworm-internet nuts. I'm more of an outdoor nut than he is, and I enjoy working in the yard, but we were facing a monumental task this time.

I girded my loins, figuratively speaking, gave myself a pep talk, determined to wipe out the Morning Glory one step at a time. I started on the left side fence in the back yard where it was the thickest and where it was smothering my Bougainvilleas. I ripped and pulled, I trimmed the Bougainvillea. I literally, step by step, obliterated all signs of the vine and it's roots.

Of course, my back was killing me for days - and each time I've gone out there for another round of Morning Glory War, I think calling 911 might be a good idea.

Well, now I've got documentary evidence of my battle. I decided today to conquer the left side of the house where the fence passes between my neighbor's house and my house. The houses are about 8-12 feet apart, with the fence passing in the approximate middle of this. Weeds had sprung up on the side of the house, since it is such a narrow space and brutally hot in the summer, I rarely try to plant anything there. My husband, ever security conscious, thought it might be a good idea to leave the area overgrown to discourage would-be burglars from trying to climb into our windows from that side. Well, I decided it had to be cleaned up. I could see the Morning Glory juggernaut had reached the back of one of my favorite bushes that line the front of the house. The Morning Glory was moving up - and I had to stop it. Below is a before picture of the side of the house at about 11:00AM this afternoon.

As usual, click on the picture for a bigger, more detailed view.





Now for the after picture - taken about 3:00PM. My husband joked that we should have taken a before and after picture of me, too - but I'll save that for another time.



Pretty good, huh? Does anyone out there have any suggestions for something to plant on that side? It gets brutal sun in summer for a number of hours.

Now that the left side of the backyard fence is completely done and also the left half of the fence along the back of the yard, I'm ready to start on the right side, which isn't as bad. I also need to weed along the back of the house itself, and along the edge of the outside of the back porch.

Every week, I inspect the areas I've already de-Morning Glory'd to make sure no little shoots are coming up - I've caught two tiny ones and promptly ripped those suckers right up.

That's the saga so far - now for some Biofreeze and a heating pad.

New Dentist

I went to a new dentist today. I had gone in the past to a couple of young guys who were priced very high. I had to use "Care Credit" to pay my bill with them and I hated going.

What prompted me to change, other than my dislike of the present dentists, was a flyer I received in the mail advertising "free whitening for life". My teeth are slightly discolored due to medicine I took when I was a child. They're not bad - they're light beige as opposed to stark white - and they don't look any different than they did from my sixth grade pictures - and I am now 52. I just am tired of beige teeth - and if it is free, as they say, then what the heck.

I had this flyer for a while, and last night I chipped a filling on one of my back top right molars, so I made an appointment and got right in today. I was nervous since this was a whole new office, but it seemed quite nice, modern and very clean.

The Dr. is a graduate of the University of Louisiana, and probably in his 60's. At first, his age made me nervous. I didn't like the know-it-all cockiness of the young guys I went to before, but I also didn't want someone who was past his prime either. However, he was personable and discussed what he wanted to do about the chip. He said it was a small chip and didn't take much drilling to fill. He said that filling was the best option, since I didn't need a crown - the tooth could be fixed, in other words. I'm afraid the young guys would have told me I needed a crown and before I could get the crown, I'd need surgery to lower my gums, etc. etc. etc.

So, the dentist drilled a bit and refilled the chipped area - so far no problem. He numbed me right away. In the past, I've had dentists have problems numbing me - not this one. I also have had weird feelings like my heart racing once the shot of novacaine is given, but that didn't happen this time either.

It all went so smoothly. I also asked about a small chip off the bottom of one of my two center front teeth. He said he though he could actually fill that also - he didn't think filing or a fake tooth was necessary since it's such a small chip. He did say that the filling might not last as long as other fillings - but we'll see. I'm also scheduled for a cleaning next time and for molds to be made of my teeth in preparation for the whitening stuff I'll get to take home and use.

Oh - and I got X-Rays first, of course - I forgot to mention that. So, all in all, it seemed like a good office and he seemed like a good dentist.

The bill? $58.50, of which $25.00 was my deductible for the year, now met. Can't beat that.

Green Cay in Palm Beach

We visited Green Cay Nature Center in Palm Beach on Sunday. It was magnificent. There were so many birds I used up a 2 MG photo card, which means at least 500 photos. Of course, when I got home I had to go through all those photos and pick out the 20 or 30 that I wanted to keep. That took a loooonnnnngg time, but it was worth it.

My only complaint was some of the people that were at the Nature Center. Yes, it was a weekend day, so there were many more people. So many of them were just there to get exercise, so they walked fast and conversed loudly about anything and everything except where they were. This one pair of women literally walked the entire place twice and never shut up for even 2 seconds. Each time they speeded past me, they were blabbing and gossiping about someone or something, talking about recipes, illness - you name it - and loud? You could hear them coming for a while. I had to stifle the urge to tell them to shut up, trip them - or ask them to walk in their own neighborhoods from now on. After all it didn't matter a hoot where they were, they were totally wrapped up in their silly conversations - so why not walk around their blocks instead of spoil the time for everyone else at the Nature Center who were there for - guess - NATURE!! There was even a sign as we came into the Nature Center that prohibited speed walking, but, unfortunately, not speed talking - what difference anyway, since those women obviously didn't pay any attention to the rule about speed walking, they wouldn't have heeded the non-speed-talking rule if there was one either. Those kind of people should stay home.

Below are some of the highlights in pictures:

Weeds in My Back Yard

All the following pictures were taken in my back yard. We don't have much grass in the back yard, but we do have a lot of ground cover weeds that don't look bad at all - and have some beautiful flowers:

This is the uninspiring macro view of the bit of ground where most of those weeds are flowering - they are so tiny you can't enjoy them much with the naked eye.

Next - I played with some lenses a little bit and took some "effects" photos of my clerodendrums and blue lantana in bloom.

Lastly, some blue glass we have hanging on a bird feeder branch, a clear picture of the clerodendrums and a little bee I saw while lying in the grass.


































































Oops - I almost forgot - an aloe-like, cactusey kind of plant that is flowering right now.

Hiring Women - 1943

My husband sent me this article with humorous intent, but I find it very interesting. It's an Adobe Acrobat file that I saved as a JPG, so I'm not sure it'll copy here - and the copy I have is pretty messy looking. It's an excerpt from Savvy and Sage Maagazine, but I don't know which issue.



Hopefully, you can read this. It contains tips for men having to hire women during WWII. As I read through the tips, I realized that women in general were not used to working outside the home. Hence the need to give them solid instructions because they don't tend to find work for themselves to do - what we call today a "self starter". Evidently, in 1943, women in general weren't the best employees and their shortcoming had to be recognized in order to get a good days work out of them.

The sensitivity issue has never gone away. Women are more sensitive, and it becomes a pain in the neck at times. Instead of just walking up to a female employee and giving her instructions, you have to stop, say hello, ask how she is doing, how is her family, etc. I usually don't do that - I just cut to the chase, which is why I'll never be "employee of the year".

In any case, this article is a glimpse into a world where women didn't HAVE to work outside the home, and, as such, didn't HAVE to be tough.

More Portuguese Music Info

I looked up Amalia Rodriguez on Google and found out she was a famous Portuguese singer (not Brazilian). She specialized in Portugal's famous "fado" music. Here is a Wikipedia article about Fado:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fado

There are musicians today who still specialize in singing Fado style music - I'll have to investigate them too.

Amalia Rodrigues was one year younger than my father. She was born in 1920 and died in 1999. Her music was popular in the 1940's. She was known as the "Queen of Fado" and evidently pushed that style of music into the mainstream and eventually, to the attention of the world.

Oh My Gosh - This is Beautiful!!

Listen to this woman's singing!! Her name is Amalia Rodrigues and she was popular in the 1940's, in case you can't tell by her clothes and hair.



I went immediately to Itunes and downloaded what I could find of hers. She is singing in Portuguese, which sounds like Russian a bit to me - weird. I have heard lots of Spanish and even Italian, but Portuguese is especially soft. French is more nasal and it is soft also, but Portuguese sounds like an Eastern European language a bit because of all the "zh" sounds in their speech. I wonder why, out of all the Romance languages Portuguese sounds so unique.

Oh how beautiful are these songs!! The singing starts at about 1:01 if you don't want to wade through the Portuguese and don't understand what they are saying. I sure don't - but I don't care - the singing is absolutely beautiful!

I found her because I had also previously found Sylvana Mangano, a singer and actress popular in Italy in the late 1940's - here is HER video - I love this song, also, but there is little singing, just "bailar"ing - or dancing....

Cookbooks From Early 20th Century

I have a number of old cookbooks. My collection started because I was given my paternal grandmother's cookbook, "Larkin Housewives Cook Book". It is circa 1914 and she was married in 1917 or 1918 to my grandfather This cookbook is practically in shreds. I found that my grandmother had scotch taped pages together, thus hiding pages of recipes that I guess she didn't use, to emphasize her favorite recipes on the pages she was strengthening by taping together. I untaped all of these so that the cookbook has it's original number of pages. I also purchased another identical one from abebooks.com online. The one I purchased wasn't much used and is in excellent condition, so I can compare them.

I was glancing through another old cookbook I have called, "The Fashion Book of Recipes" by Jessie Marie DeBoth, director of Homemakers' Schools of Chicago, New York and Canada. This cookbook is 20 years younger than my grandmother's - it was published in 1934.

Aside from the fact that I notice food was much more bland in American cookbooks back then, I also notice that a lot of gelatin and tapioca were used. Gelatin for vegetables, molds with flavored, home-made mayonaisse. There were feeble attemps at Chop Suey, and something that doesn't sound very good called, "Columbian Dinner", which consisted of tomato soup, flaked canned salmon and onions served over noodles and topped with cheese. It just doesn't sound very good - not sure why - probably the tomato soup, rather than sauce - and the salmon.

There is a whole chapter on a "reducing diet" which is excellent. Fast for two days on water, coffee or tea (if necessary) and orange juice. Then eat their 1000 calorie menu for a week. If you lose more than 5 lbs. in that week, then switch over to the 1500 calorie menu since you shouldn't lose weight too fast. The menus aren't too bad, although there are some old fashioned items that aren't popular today, like tapioca. I know there are people who eat tapioca today - but it doesn't seem to me to be as popular a dessert as it once was.

Here is how to choose and cook a chicken from scratch - and I mean scratch.

"Poultry and Game"

The term poultry applies to domestic birds suitable for food, such as chicken, fowl, turkey, geese and ducks.

Game applies to all wild birds and animals used as food, such as quail, partridge, pheasant, wild duck, deer rabbit, etc. The flesh of game has a stronger flavor than barn-yard fowl.

Fresh poultry should be firm and have a fair amount of fat under the skin. Any tame or wild fowl should hang until the animal heat is out, from 8 to 24 hours. One way of detecting the age of chicken is by the pin feathers. They are absent in old fowl; also the breast of young chicken is pliable and the flesh is lean.

Preparing a Chicken

Cut off head of live chicken and allow it to bleed well. Do not have feet tied." (Note - there is no mention of the - to me - horror of the chicken running around headless, or flailing around until the blood is all out....it sounds misleadingly calm here).

"Next, remove feathers. If young bird, pluck by pulling feathers toward tail; if old bird, plunge in scalding water, then wrap in paper few minutes before plucking. Remove all pin feathers and stubs.

Next, singe the bird to remove the hair. Do this by taking chicken by neck and legs and holding over a flame or blazing paper. Do not scorch skin. Remove pin feathers between sharp knife and fingers or with tweezers. Cut out oil sac above tail.

Cut away the legs just below knee joints" (Knee joints? Chickens have knees??) "and draw out the tendons. Make a lengthwise slit along the neck and take out the crop and windpipe. Cut off the neck at the shoulders. Make an opening on the right side near the vent about 2 inches long, or large enough to admit the hand. Work around the organs loosening them from the body. Remove entrails, being careful not to break any of them. Throw away all viscera except heart, liver and gizzard. In cutting away liver, take care not to cut the gall bladder when removing it. Remove bits of lungs and liver that cling between the ribs. Rinse the cavity thoroughly, scrub the outside. It is now ready for stuffing or for cutting. When stuffing, do not pack in dressing - to do so will burst the skin when cooking...."

The cookbook goes on to explain how to cut a checken and/or truss it. Then, how to prepare giblets and broil the chicken. Then there are several recipes.

I must say that after completing the cleaning of the chicken, I would not want to eat anything. THAT would be a great weight loss trick - prepare your own food from hoof to plate......

Funny

Note how the tone of the posts change from 1/14 to 1/16. I was happy as a clam on 1/14 and by 1/16, I was in the pits of despair. I'm sure there is something to learn here....