Off the Map, on the trail, missed the mouth, monorail

This oddly rejuvenating weekend began while I stood spoon-feeding Dad his blueberry pie Friday.  The local news was on tv, but the sound was muted.  My eyes had an end-of-the-school-week glaze on a segment about Zumba Gold dance exercise, but suddenly I recognized one of my favorite library patrons being interviewed.  I smeared blueberry mess across Dad's chin as I grabbed the remote to turn on the sound.  Dad grabbed the remote away, smearing the blueberries even more.  Zumba is probably a cult, but my eighty-something patron has a zest for life that is contagious.  

Friday evening I made a nice sauce for pork chops and pasta with roma tomatoes from the school garden, basil and sage from my patio pots.  Saturday I received a wonderful brown bagful of homegrown tomatoes from a library coworker.  Today I bought bacon to make BLTs...ummmm-good.

Grasshopper monorail above the roma tomato plants.




Bag of tomatoes resting & ripening on my counter.

Reading while Dad dozed, I loved the "Tomatoes" chapter in Joe Henry's Lime Creek.  This section is beautifully created in a crystalline collision of Emily Dickinson and Larry McMurtry with  the Berenstain Bears.  Other chapters vary in power and clarity, but the short novel is worthy of a read.  

If Emily and Larry were to collborate on a fence it might look like my favorite home on Euclid in Highland Park, TX.  I walked over on my lunch break just to see the clear blue glass.  Then I went down to Lakeside to look at the blue dragonflies above the lilypads.

Watched "Off the Map" on DVD last night to get a New Mexico fix.  Although I wanted to go live off the grid and the map, I managed to spend forty dollars at the new Market Street grocery store at Park and Preston.  I'd been for a long walk at Arbor Hills Nature Preserve in west Plano, taking a map with me this time so I could find the hidden Pond Trail.  

© 2011 Nancy L. Ruder