Musings

I love black beans cooked like this, with epazote, onion, garlic, and cilantro added to the stew. I really only use epazote in two dishes, the black beans and in quesadillas, so I usually can’t use the whole bunch before it goes bad. Sadly.

Epazote doesn’t sound very tasty in the WikiPee description, but I love what it does to the beans and cheese….

There’s a story here, but I’m not sure what it is. Spotted this in the parking lot of a busy oversized grocery store just north of the perimeter.

Two coats (suit jackets?) and another garment hanging in a tree. There was a fellow in the middle vehicle. No vehicles around the trio/tree/garments.

So, was he hoping they’d dry?

Was he advertising tailoring services?

Were they for sale?

Or…?

TJs offers assorted products that I’d call almost veggies and almost fruit. We opted for the mini-zucchinis (skillet roasted in a bit of olive oil, salted) and a tossed salad. Real veggies, no grinding, reconstituting, or bathing in sugar.

Note that someone I was around recently loved to reheat a can of peas and eat them as a snack, spoonful after spoonful.

Improved version of Fig. 1 from Baggaley et al by Boy and Baggaley elsewhere on the interwebs.

Sooo cool. I’ve been thinking about making a version of this figure myself, just to see the pattern. Quite excited to find that someone else has already done so.

Shows a persistent impetus to move along. Note that as time goes along there are more dots for each color…which I interpret as more people, so more cultural deposits left to be dated….

I stayed with the catch-up/indoorsy theme today, so I’m grabbing this from yesterday. So mellow I felt looking at this fern glade.

Sigh.

A different falls on a different mountain river.

The lovely D suggested a lady-expedition today, and a cozy foursome set out for a mountain winery luncheon and a walk in the woods to a lovely waterfall.

We found the winery dining room quiet and stately until a large party emerged from the tasting room to be seated around the corner from us. Think: boisterous. Still, we had a grand time. Tried the dry rosé; nice. Also enjoyed a quick visit to the barrel room; great visuals.

Later, humid walking made us appreciate the cool mountain streamwater. N and I waded; D swam; P said laughing, “looks cold!” Found a few wildflowers and iridescent blue damselflies. No ticks. No snakes. The best!

Unfortunately, this was in the Chattahoochee National Forest, and we discovered loggers taking out the larger trees (selective cutting) on the ridges above our river to make better habitat for Peruvian…um…finches(?), a migratory species. Not the ambiance D was expecting.

Thanks, D, for the invite.

I especially like the crane just to the right of the sun-ball.

Enough of that bucolic life, we are in the CITY.

This was actually last evening’s (ever-so-slightly double) rainbow, but still a fitting visual for my last day here in Virginia.

Sometimes, this is what happens on a rainday—the sun comes out and mocks you as you do indoor work. Still, in this case, the indoor work was backlogged and now it isn’t.

To be fair, the rain didn’t totally stop until shortly after lunch.

Bucrania—a new word for me I came across the other week…used in the context of the Neolithic Turkish settlement we call Çatalhöyük. The archaeologist I was reading defined it as cattle horns and skulls in a display context, interpreted as intended to impress, intimidate, and remind visitors how important their hosts were.

So, I drove up on this semi-load, and all these projecting arms were aligned and appeared as one, and thought: modern mechanical bucrania.