Not a food-related post today, but just a nice reminder from our trip that sometimes you get to see the fruits of your labors in a surprising and gratifying way. These two trees are in the front of our old house in Northern Virginia where we lived from 1994-2009. We planted them when Gideon was a baby/toddler–I think he may have been a year and a half old. I remember that we did some gardening in the front yard with him sitting out there in his playpen with us. Jim and I pondered and pondered about what trees to choose and decided on the contrast of the Japanese red maple with the Kousa dogwood. The photograph doesn’t do the dogwood justice; it was covered with blooms. Kousas are so much nicer than the regular dogwoods as they bloom quite a bit later and their blossoms are longer-lasting than the regular ones. I keep saying that I want to plant one here, as they are hardy to zone 4. Since they bloom later in the season they are less likely than the earlier-flowering ones to have their buds killed by a freeze. Seeing the spectacular results of our efforts over two decades ago is a nice spur for me to get going on planting one now. They take awhile to get going, and we aren’t necessarily going to be at this house for 20 more years! Maybe I’d better go over to the garden center today and see if they have any in stock.
Is there a project you need to start so that you can see the results down the road?
As I often say, this isn’t a political blog. If you want to see my opinions in that arena you can visit 
Two ways my procrastination is costing me right now:
. . . is one less day you have left.
Sunday evening, May 21: Here I sit on the stairs of our soon-not-to-be-ours house, and I’m so tired that this is the only thing I can do. It’s too early to go to bed, I don’t have any books I want to read, and there’s no TV. And pretty much no internet, although once in awhile I can get a faint waft of Xfinity wifi. So I’m writing a post! Aren’t you flattered!
Before I get to the subject of today’s post, I have to ask: Did you notice that the website looks different? New lettering and new features on the sidebar and at the bottom. I’m pretty sure I’ve posted about this upcoming change in a previous post, but it has taken a very long time. Jim has labored to get all of my sites onto the WordPress platform, which has its own challenges, but which gives me much more in the way of flexibility and features.
This post is going to be in the “I should have known better” category. As I wrote last week, we have put our house on the market, and we started showing it this past weekend. The realtor had scheduled the first appointment for noon on Saturday. Oh man! As I said to Gideon, “You wouldn’t think that getting a house ready to show would be so much work when I really try to keep it in good shape all of the time.” Jim was still finishing up the basement ceiling which had had to be repaired because of this mysterious leak that turned out to be caused by water overflowing from a plant pot in our entryway.
Although I’ve temporarily discontinued my posting on the “Intentional Hospitality” blog I’m still cooking away. Last night I provided the desserts and punches for my church’s Christmas banquet. This turned out to be yet another one of those “I-thought-I-was-going-to-have-an-easy-time-of-it-but-I-was-wrong” episodes in my life. I had made my famous orange-almond biscotti before the Cherry Creek Chorale’s concert over a week ago with the intention of putting them together into tree shapes held together by frosting, but I just ran out of steam and time, so I ended up putting the baked biscotti into the freezer with the intention of building the trees for this party.
A terrible, terrible habit of mine. I’ll be all ready to get started on an actual task, something that needs to be done, and then I’ll say to myself, “But first let me check my e-mail. But first let me see what so-and-so is saying on that website I like. But first let me have a snack.” Whatever. Half an hour, forty-five minutes, an hour can go by. 