May 27, 2005

• No muppets were harmed in the production of this prayer shawl. Of course, you are right. Muppet pelts do automatically imply dead Muppets. This had not occurred to me, and I am terribly sorry for spoiling anyone’s breakfast.

  
  

  #2 daughter agreed to model the prayer shawl for me, in this Zorro-like pose, to save it from another terminally boring photo. It still looks like a blue rectangle of muppet wool (wool, not pelts), but at least it is being swirled about in an exciting fashion. I have gone against my normal policy of not putting any faces in my posts, at least so far as to show a quarter of her face, but if she is being paid to stand around being looked at (which she is, at the mall), then she might as well model a shawl here.

  
  

  In other animal-welfare news, here is Nadia, the cat. She is sitting in the sink, for reasons best known to herself. She has settled in, to the extent of roaming all around the house whenever Toby is in his crate, and hanging out with the people. She still hides whenever Toby come near her, spits at him, and otherwise shows that she has not forgiven him. As for Toby, he tries to be good, he really tries, but if at any time he is actually face to face with her, he breaks into a fusillade of barking. He cannot control himself. Sigh.

  
  

  The back garden, in the rain.Well, a very small part of the back garden, obviously. Most of it is stuff like tomatoes, green beans, strawberries, peppers, and cilantro, none of which looks picturesque so early in the season. Or at least not when I am taking the pictures.

  
  

  And here are some bits of the front garden in the rain, too. The flowers in these pictures are lavender, dianthus, lamastria, violets, columbine, and some rose petals that got knocked down by the deluge.

  
  

  I love the rain. I love the smell of the garden in the rain. There is nothing about rain that I do not like. Having said this, I will now join the rest of the town in hoping that the rain will end in time for a lovely Memorial Day weekend. We will not be able to play croquet and boules in the rain.

  
  

  Dr. Drew is coming to visit us. I have a sneaky plan to get the kids to play boules and croquet rather than basketball, because Dr. D is way taller than the rest of us and thus has an advantage in basketball. Well, yes, I believe he also played the game at school, giving him a further advantage. But will he have played croquet? Will he be accustomed to boules? Does he have badminton skills? Perhaps not. Plotting against guests in this way, with croquet, inevitably puts me in mind of Patrick Campbell’s hilarious essays on this subject. If you have not read them, then you should. Check your library, as he is out of print. Is this because fewer people nowadays are plotting against their houseguests, or because fewer people play croquet? Frankly, Dr. D and Pokey entirely skunked me and #1 son at Catchphrase too, so it may be a vain hope that we will be able to uphold the honor of the household with mere croquet. We may have to descend to Scrabble.

  • 3:37 pm
  • 3 Comments