A bit of a mish-mash this week and I'm sorry Blimpy, I can't seem to find a picture of one anywhere, but I'll add something in a minute. Some weeks ago someone started a thread, "Where I listen to Music", I didn't respond then nor did many others, so lets give it a second go. I have two favorite spots, this is one,
my hot tub in the conservatory. A taste of heaven is to choose a CD, put it on in the living room with the hot tub speakers on and then get a large glass of brandy and you're all set for the next hour. The hot tub is at 104°F and all the plants love the moist steamy environment about as much as I do, most hot tub use is in the winter. The second spot is exclusively for spring and summer, it's my hammock which is slung between two large trees in the shade. Ecstacy is to lay in the hammock late in the afternoon with the iPod on shuffle and again with the requisite glass of brandy, sorry, don't have a picture of that, I'll have to speak to the staff.
On the gardening front 'Spring is Here' as Ella reminds me. We had a nasty winter, an unheard of 10 weeks of frosty overnights but hopefully that's now passed. Days are now warm and sunny and all the soft fruit trees are in full blossom. We have a variety of fruit that's probably not made it to the UK, it's the pluot, about 20 odd years ago a Californian horticulturalist started crossing plums and apricots, he succeeded hence the name plu-ot. All my life my idea of god's gift to 'personkind' was the Mango, I got to a point of only buying specific varieties, if you ever have a chance to eat a Bombay mango, go for it, it's sublime, it's the ultimate fruit; but then came
the pluot! The first one I tasted did it, I was hooked, I promptly went out and bought a tree, then I tasted a different variety so I bought another tree, now I have six and feel that I must stop, there's only so much fruit that two people can eat after all and we also have about 20 odd varieties of apples, 6-8 of pears, two apricots, six citrus, two persimmons, six plums and grapes and figs and berries etc, etc, it just goes on and on. That's what happens when you grow up to be an obsessive, but I do make lots of jam and chutney.
OK, in the past several of you have been very generous with your comments re. some of my stories, I enjoy writing them and have just finished another but this one's different. It again deals with an incident from my travels but I have both pictures and audio of the event so I've tried to do it differently but unfortunately so far I haven't been able to get the audio to play at the site, I'll keep trying, suggestions are welcome. The story is at
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgq4z9v6_7cvr8dssr
In addition I've been scanning a lot of my music oriented slides, specifically jazz and blues and I've posted them at my Picasa site which is at
http://picasaweb.google.com/goneforeign
some of you might enjoy those, there's a couple of new postings, color and B/W jazz, for some reason the B/W is at a different site and is still a work in progress, at the top left of the Picasa site there's 'Documents' link, click that and it will open and then insert a check into the Jazz artists item and click and it will open. While you're up there open the 'Garden' photos and you'll see what I have to deal with.
And finally if you haven't yet seen "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly' you should make the effort before it disappears, an amazing and inspiring film. 'Nuff for now, more later....T.
