Of Slow Cooker Wisdom And Simple Garden Plans

May 5, 2015May 5, 2015 / Ally Bean / 44 Comments

“Knowledge is the process of piling up facts; wisdom lies in their simplification.”

~ Martin H. Fischer, Physician and Author

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WE SPENT MOST of this past warm and beautiful spring weekend working in the garden.

My goal, influenced by the Fix-It and Forget-It Cookbook , is to have what I’ve come to call a slow cooker garden.

A space filled with variety, but put together in a way that is simple to understand. Pleasant to look at, but requiring less and less effort each year to maintain.

That is, we’re going to fix it now with perennials, paths and stones; then forget about changing anything out there for the next decade.

• • •

SO WHAT HAVE we got going on? Well, we’ve got:

a plethora of roses + daisies + hostas in planting beds beside stone and/or concrete steps that circle the house;
a landscape island in the front yard near the street filled with grasses and mostly purple flowers;
a newly installed dry faux creek bed under the deck; AND
a lower terrace in the back yard down by the woods that features stone steps, grasses, roses plus the recent addition of difficult-to-find milkweed. *yeah*

• • •

I’M NOT SURE how our garden ended up being so multi-faceted and unique, but over the years, little by little, it did.

My hope is that when it comes time to sell this property, like the HGTV show CURBAPPEAL suggests, the awe-inspiring exterior of the property will be so amazing that this house’s relatively small square footage won’t hinder a sale.

However, be that as it may, in the mean time, I’m not worrying about real estate business-y things like ROI. Instead, I’m going to groove on all that we have going on in our pretty, pretty garden.

• • •

So tell me, gentle readers: how does your garden grow?

We Went To Washington, D.C.

April 24, 2015July 1, 2025 / Ally Bean / 28 Comments

ZEN-DEN NEEDED TO be in D.C. for his work, so we wrapped a couple of days around his business travel– and went to Washington, D.C. for a fast little vacay.

We figure that it must have been 15+ years since we’d been there together, which surprised us. At one point, Z-D’s job in the midwest took him to D.C. about half of the year, so I’d meet him there on the weekends.

D.C. was our favorite vacation playground.

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Cherry blossoms were past their prime, but tulips were everywhere. I snapped these photos at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel.

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FROM A TOURIST’S point of view much has changed for the better in D.C.

What amazed us was how much cleaner, easier, prettier, friendlier the city has become. No snarly people [I’m looking at you, Boston] or people with superior attitudes [I’m looking at you, NYC].

Instead, hotel employees, nice. Cabbies, pleasant. Museum employees, helpful. Restaurant wait staff, attentive. TSA, patient.

Who would have thought that while the jackweasels in the U.S. Congress can’t agree on which way is up, the rest of Washington is buzzing along like cooperative little bees making honey while the flowers grow?

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I took all of these tulip photos with Zen-Den’s iPhone, which is something that I’ve never done before.

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WHILE MOST OF our time in D.C. was taken up with business events, we did manage to do a few things.

We had a delicious lunch at the Omni Shoreham Hotel, which is a gorgeous old-fashioned hotel in Adams Morgan that you may remember from scenes in The Pelican Brief.
We rode the metro which made me feel like a young twenty-something fresh out of college, assuming I’d end up in a big east coast city. [That didn’t happen, now did it?]
We went to the National Gallery of Art, toured it, then ate lunch in the cafeteria in the basement by the waterfall because… well, that’s what we do when we’re in D.C. together.
We wandered around the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden which was pretty even if we were a week late for the cherry blossoms.
We saw the Navy Yard, the Watergate Complex and Rock Creek Park from a taxi.
And while waiting at Reagan National Airport for our flight home, we saw an Honor Flight of WWII & Korea veterans arriving in D.C. At their gate a live jazz quartet playing pop standards from the 1940s & 1950s met the group, while a crowd gathered round and applauded.

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While the flowers were glorious, these iPhone photos don’t do them justice. Next time I’ll bring my real camera with me. 🙂

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IT’S BEEN A long time since I’ve been anywhere that I felt as comfortable as I did on this Washington D.C. trip. We’re both ready to return soon.

Next time I’d like to focus on seeing more of the presidential and war monuments; take in a few more museums; perhaps go to a concert; and breakfast each morning on fresh east coast bagels with a schmear & a coffee regular.

How have I lived without them?

A Conversation In Which I Learn Something About E-book Readers, I Guess

April 10, 2015January 9, 2017 / Ally Bean / 37 Comments

Make no assumptions…

IT’S BEEN STORMY here this week. Some days the sky has been as dark at 11:00 a.m. as it is at 11:00 p.m. This weather phenomenon has been the talk wherever I go.

As you would imagine.

ONE THING THAT I’ve learned during these exceptionally dark mid-days is that my Kindle Paperwhite does what it claims that it’ll do. That is, it automatically adjusts to the changing light conditions, making reading an easy pleasant experience.

I’m rather impressed by this.

SO I’M CHIT-CHATTING with two acquaintances, a man and a woman both in their early 50s. And I mention, in passing, as a way of having something topical to say, that I’ve enjoyed my Kindle during these dark days. And both of my acquaintances said: “what’s a Kindle?”

They did not know about e-book readers. Any of them.

I WAS STUNNED, and started trying to explain what a Kindle is– what e-book readers are– how you use them– the different brands of them. Et cetera, et cetera. But while I talked, hoping to inform, these two seemingly normal people just stared at me like I was talking Martian gibberish. Which to them, I was.

Can you even imagine?

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[Hello FTC! Please note: I’m opining here about an object that I bought with my own monies and just happen to like. I received no compensation of any sort for this review, such as it is. I mean really, who would pay me to say this?]

The Fine Art Of Indecision: A Gallery Wall, Maybe

February 10, 2015June 22, 2015 / Ally Bean / 25 Comments

THE PROBLEM [as a reformed perfectionist sees it]:

I’ve been thinking that I might want to put a collection of frames, with yet-to-be-named images, on the big blank wall in the TV room. This wall, painted SW6142 Macadamia, is across from a run of five divided-light windows that allow us to look out into the woods behind the house.

I want something going on across from the windows but am uncertain about how much pattern I want to see over there when I look into the TV room from the kitchen. I tend to be a bit pattern-phobic, but can stand pattern, which to me often looks cluttered, IF the pattern/shapes/colors makes sense to me.

Therein is the problem.

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AN ASIDE [for those interested in fine art]:

While I wasn’t blogging in December one of things that we did was visit NYC for a short getaway. I’ve not spoken of it before because overall it was a lousy experience that left me wondering about humanity and my ability to deal with said humanity.

However, there were a couple of wonderful adventures during our few days in NYC. One of which was going to MOMA to see Henri Matisse: The Cut-Out Exhibit [also here via NYT: A Walk Through The Gallery].

To see his work up close was amazing. First, I’d never realized how intensely colorful it is, and that before he cut out his shapes, his students painted white paper these bold colors for him. And second, the thing that struck me about the exhibit was that the cut-outs, which are easily recognizable as a whole, were not perfect in the small details.

At all.

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MY CONCLUSION [albeit a wishy-washy one]:

Looking through all the gallery wall images that one can find online, I realize that anything goes. And I’m cool with that, in theory. But when it comes to actually putting a framed “art” collection on my TV room wall, I hesitate.

I look at what other people have done and see that the gallery walls that appeal to me are balanced, yet stunning in their uniqueness. There’s a flow and cohesiveness to the frames and images that I adore, but so far I haven’t been able to translate this feeling onto our TV room wall, which remains blank until I decide what to do about it.

Soon, I hope.