Tales from the Microbial Laboratory

ha!

Normal is nothing more than a cycle on a washing machine.

~Whoopi Goldberg~

~sweet Airstream-dwelling pointer girls~

Patient wild dogs, waiting for the rain to end - surprisingly prissy for such crazy things - waiting for blue sky and sunshine to resume their usual tomfoolery.

Me?  I have a list of things to write here, updates about what is blooming that is new and fun, what looks happy and what doesn't - but here it is, again, almost midnight and I have no update prepared.  But I did manage to weed some of the vegetable garden... that's worth quite a bit, don't you think?

~views of a camellia~

 

:)

 
~fast asleep Annabelle Lee (aka Bella, aka Bella Banana, aka Banana)~

~~~~~

The sound of much needed rain on the Airstream roof and a sleeping Pointer Sister...perfect on a Sunday morning.

Update, 45 minutes later:  The rain stopped almost as soon as it started, but Bella Banana is still asleep.

~wisteria, flattened on asphalt outside of the McClellanville Museum~

 
~~~~~

 

"...the magic washing machine..." that gives you books!

"Happy Camper"

 
A friend couldn't resist getting this fun cotton kitchen towel for me as a gift... and I must say, it's perfect for the place, don't you think?  And probably quite true - I had a friend from my graduate school days in East Lansing, Michigan visit last week, and I had her and her husband out to dinner at my place (I know, I know - here they were, in Charleston, with a gazillion wonderful restaurants, and I had them over to the Airstream - that's almost cruel) - and having them visit reminded me that I I've always been a happy camper.  Even in a tent.  Thank goodness for that. 

The towel was handmade by Pam Spivey, right here in Charleston.  You can find her (and other examples of her work) on Facebook.  They're alot of fun!

"Does someone want to know the way to spring?"

Black Petal
by Li-Young Lee
I never claimed night fathered me. that was my dead brother talking in his sleep. I keep him under my pillow, a dear wish that colors my laughing and crying. I never said the wind, remembering nothing, leaves so many rooms unaccounted for, continual farewell must ransom the unmistakable fragrance our human days afford. It was my brother, little candle in the pulpit, reading out loud to all of earth from the book of night. He died too young to learn his name. Now he answers to Vacant Boat, Burning Wing, My Black Petal. Ask him who his mother is. He'll declare the birds have eaten the path home, but each of us joins night's ongoing story wherever night overtakes him, the heart astonished to find belonging and thanks answering thanks. Ask if he's hungry or thirsty, he'll say he's the bread come to pass and draw you a map to the twelve secret hips of honey. Does someone want to know the way to spring? He'll remind you the flower was never meant to survive the fruit's triumph. He says an apple's most secret cargo is the enduring odor of a human childhood, our mother's linen pressed and stored, our father's voice walking through the rooms. He says he's forgiven our sister for playing dead and making him cry those afternoons we were left alone in the house. And when clocks frighten me with their long hair, and when I spy the wind's numerous hands in the orchard unfastening first the petals from the buds, then the perfume from the flesh, my dead brother ministers to me. His voice weighs nothing but the far years between stars in their massive dying, and I grow quiet hearing how many of both of our tomorrows lie waiting inside it to be born.

Tonight's Supermoon (over the Airstream)

Let there be laundry in the Woman Cave!

 
Success!  The plumber and his brother showed up this morning and plumbed the shed for the washer, moved the washer and dryer down from the falling down house to the shed - and even stood around with me while the washer went through a cycle, to be sure everything was okay.  It's a good thing he did, because we quickly got an 'F-H' error message, which meant that the inlet filter was clogged.  The filter got cleaned out...and, miracle of all miracles, washing commenced!  I'm already on load three, and I must say that this is heavenly.

When the shed was being electrified last week, the electrician said that he'd wired alot of sheds like this for Man Caves, but that this might just be the first Woman Cave that he'd wired for electricity.  So today, just before the plumber left, he sent me a pic from his phone of a friend's Man Cave door (my plumber had found the sign for him and gave it to him as a Man Cave-warming present).  Me?  My friend Cindi last weekend brought over a blue basket filled with mango-scented laundry detergent and dryer sheets.  Perfect!

 

Now, I don't think I'll decorate the door to my Woman Cave with deer antlers or a football, but I am thinking that it might need a little 'Woman Cave' sign.  And I might need to drink a cold beer while I watch the clothes spin in the washer.  And I've suddenly got this bizarre urge to watch basketball...

(Don't you think the way the light is coming in from the skylight, shining brightly on the dryer... doesn't it look divine...literally?)