January 31, In Retrospect

January 31, 2008, we’d been in Scotland for about 5 months. We were getting a veggie box, which routinely came with odd things in it, such as watercress. We’d never really had any prior to this experience – maybe it was in a sandwich or a salad or something, but we’d never just had it. Cress is dead easy to grow, but you’ve got to be careful to keep the stuff it grows in just wet enough, but not oversaturated… it can smell, oddly, a great deal like wet dog if done wrong. (Bet you wonder how we know that, huh? Hydroponic gardening is kind of an exact science sometimes…)

We were still trying to keep our sourdough bread going, in 2008, with a crock of starter, so our baking was frequent and we’d end up with some interesting creations in an attempt to make use of the sourdough. Onion Caper bread: quite tasty!

A year later, January 31 2009, was a day for T. to paint some glass. These are still with us, somewhere. Many of the painted glass jars ended up being given away in the form of gifts, as we tended to recycle jam jars for bath salts, cookie dough (layered attractively, just add eggs, oil and milk), cocoa mix, and the odd (sometimes VERY odd) experiments in jam making. (Rhubarb does not lend itself easily to much that isn’t strawberry. Unfortunately.) Sometimes we miss doing as many “home living” experiments. One of the nice thing about Scotland was uninterrupted stretches of time when no one wanted us or cared what we were doing (an entire city, largely, happily indifferent to us) and so we could get up to some interesting exploits, like…

Fast forward to 2012 and we’re making aprons for our friend Laura. Somehow or other, a group of us in Chorus bonded over being vegetarians, and got aprons or pins or shirts out of our mutual (to many of our Scottish friends) goofiness. This butternut squash is performing – a lovely alto like our friend Laura – and Veggie Girl is her name in lights on the stage. Don’t even know how we got to discussing, “What vegetable describes your personality?” but T is still bewildered that Margaret believes herself to be Bok Choy… Meanwhile, that same day we took this picture, we went out to Chorus rehearsal – but popped out for a cuppa tea in Merchant City and took what’s turned out to be one of our favorite pictures of a cold night in the Shopping District – the movement and busyness and vitality of Merchant City, captured for all time.

This January 31, we’re spending the day recovering from D’s nose surgery. You don’t want photographs…

-D & T