What If a Tree Falls and No One Hears It?

I got home at about 6:30 last night. We sat around in the living room for a while listening to my son play all his upcoming band concert songs on his new French horn. We wandered into the kitchen, made a dinner salad, and ate it. Needless to say, like every other household blessed with air conditioning, we were running it with the windows closed during yesterday's sauna-like conditions (low 90s and dew point close to 70, which is more Gulf-state than Minnesota).

Anyway, after dinner we sat in the kitchen for a while, and then I thought I'd go back into the living room where there's an overhead fan. And there, filling the view from our large picture window, was a massive section of our neighbor's honey locust tree, which on this windless day of all days had cracked and fallen right into the circle we live on, without our hearing a thing.

One Year of Penelopedia

Container garden, July 18, 2008

Last year's garden in mid-July

Penelopedia was launched one year ago this week with the words "This is my garden" accompanying the image on the right, above. On the left is this year's container garden, doing quite well but -- thanks to our cold spring, later planting, and pleasantly cool June -- noticeably less advanced than last year's at the same time. I've got a nice thick crop of leaf lettuce, rather crowded in its pot. I've got a container pepper that's appreciated our recent warmer weather, as have the several container-size tomatoes. My neighbors picked up some rather slim, leggy pepper plants at a garage sale and have added them to my cluster of pots; only one looks as if it might become sturdy enough to bear any fruit.

In about a month I'll be leaving this duplex, but I'll carefully transport my pots to the deck of my new residence, which is actually my former residence. It's all rather confusing really, as a character on the Goon Show used to say. My other garden, which I've blogged about recently, is there already, just waiting for me to come home again. I'll be starting a new life with a new spouse in a familiar location. Our families will blend, and my two gardens will become one. I'm looking forward to the adventure.