Cloud art

I wrote a scintillating entry yesterday about daily life, inspirations, revelations -- then my laptop froze (I've been telling myself to get it fixed for eight months now) and I lost it. The upshot (with updates, because you want the very latest):

Knitting: We had our first knitting group session of the season last night, and it was a great three or so hours of knitting, self-revelation, and ranting about, what else, the Madness of King George. I'm working on a luscious cabled pullover for Maggie from local wool/alpaca soy silk, and an "all weather" pullover for Lazarus from old Irish homespun yarn that I'm trying to soften and strengthen with Lansinoh left over from Maggie's first weeks (applying the beeswax principle from sewing -- it's a stretch, I know). So here's what's on the needles now:


Quilting: I'm finally making good progress on Maggie's quilt, and just have the color blocks and borders left to quilt. Thanks to this book, I finally "get" how to do mitred corners on bindings, so that should go easily. I'd love to finish this by early next week because two jobs are coming in and I won't be able to "play" for the next two weeks or so.

Gardening: My little helpers have at least much fun as I do:


My autumn flurry of housework-avoidance-inspired gardening is on hold at the moment while a cold front descends and brings soaking rains and fog (but not frost, thankfully) to our fair village. I still have bundles of bulbs to plant, along with some new perennials (I'm making a fiery orange garden out front), and now the soil will be moist and diggable rather than dry and concrete-like. Note to self: pick up another big bucket of horse manure from Omar. I'm not so bullish (heh) on the chicken poop now that I've done some reading about that avian flu stuff. At first I thought, we're so isolated, it'll never come here. Then, as I watched the sparrows flit in and out of the chicken coop grabbing for food, I realized it would take just one infected bird migrating here to get it all started. Nice thought. But waterfowl are the primary carriers, not sparrows (as far as I can tell), so we might be okay here, and I guess we won't be tripping down to the Bosque del Apache this winter to see the visiting cranes, geese, ducks and other waterfowl. Anyhoo, I'm switching from chicken poop to horse poop, just to be safe. (See what I meant about scintillating?)

And what would a good blog entry be without a political rant? So I want to know, who the f%#& is Harriet Miers? There are so many judges, DAs, AGs, etc. out there who have spent decades working their butts off to build respectable careers and qualifications, and none of them seem to fit W's criteria? About all I've heard from this person so far is that she thinks Dubya is one of the most brilliant men she's ever known. But there's info out there -- many thanks to Catherine (via the divine Cecily), for compiling the following:

She was Bush's personal lawyer in Texas. She worked as counsel for his 1994 gubernatorial campaign. When he won, he appointed her to head the Lottery Commission.

She also proved indispensable in a carrying out a delicate assignment in 1998, according to the Philadelphia Daily News. During Bush's re-election campaign for governor, she was put in charge of squelching rumors about Bush's dubious National Guard service. His campaign "actually paid Miers $19,000 to run an internal preemptive probe of the potential scandal."

When Bush became President, he made her staff secretary in the White House, then deputy chief of staff, then White House counsel.

Even the National Review online acknowledged her lack of qualifications for the job. "Being a Bush loyalist and friend is not a qualification for the Supreme Court," its editorial states. "She may have been the best pick from within Bush's inner circle. It seems impossible to maintain that she was the best pick from any larger field."

...you can bet that she'll be a down-the-line conservative on social issues. One clue dates back to 1993 when Miers, as president of the Texas Bar Association, tried to get the American Bar Association "to reconsider its pro-abortion rights stance," as Anne Gearan of AP reports.

Another clue: She served on the board of directors of Prison Exodus Ministries in Dallas, which describes itself as a place "where ex-offenders learn how faith in Christ is the first step from captivity to freedom."

And you can bet that she'll toe the corporate line. She has represented Microsoft, Walt Disney, and SunGuard. She has spoken at conferences of the American Tort Reform Association, the business group that has been one of the prime movers against anti-corporate lawsuits. And she was a trustee of the Southwestern Legal Foundation, which is now the Center for American and International Law. The center appears to be in the pocket of Big Oil. Advisory board members on its Institute for Energy Law include several ExxonMobil executives, as well as representatives of Amerada Hess, BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Hunt, Marathon, Occidental, Shell, and Texaco. According to the group exxonsecrets.org, the "Center for American and International Law has received $177,450 from ExxonMobil since 1998."

So that's who Harriet Miers is.

Just another mountain of proof that the man is an insane zealot living in a bubble of privilege and ignorance. This cronyism crap is why the Katrina aftermath was so atrocious, and it scares me to think of the consequences on such a keystone institution as the Supreme Court. I keep waiting for Sandra Day O'Connor to step up and say, "Wait just a damn a minute -- this is NOT what I intended, so I'm going to stick around for a few more years until someone can come up with a qualified candidate." Come on, Sandy, step up to the plate. Please? Retirement can wait, can't it?

My beauties

Autumn comes upon us in the lengthening, cooling shadows and a twilight that descends sooner than we've become accustomed to. A few days ago, I noticed a distinct reddish-orange tinge near the top of the mountains, as the Gambel's Oaks yield to the first high frosts. Two heavy showers last week spurred another wave of wildflower blooms, and the hills all around us are outright green now, giving us a splendid last show before the chill descends for good.

In my gardens, I've started letting things run amuck -- the basil bed now reaches halfway up my thighs, and in addition to a sudden burst of enthusiasm from a late-blooming zucchini plant, I have another life form -- a gourd plant, perhaps? -- twining rapaciously around the tomato plants, laden with their ever-green fruits, and even straining towards the lowest elm branches. Were the first frost to hold off till November, this strange plant would surely bear a bounty of something, but I don't think I'll have the good fortune to see this mystery through to fruition. The bed of rainbow chard, beets, and kale that I planted last month is growing wonderfully and just needs some thinning and then a thick blanket of straw and manure to weather the onset of winter.

To prepare them for winter, I am amending and also slowly expanding my narrow garden beds (really more like borders) to build outward on the improving soil quality. Digging in one bed, I found lots of worms -- a gardener's delight! -- and am encouraged that this dry, rocky, alkaline, clay-and-sand stuff is finally coming to life. It motivates me to clean out the chicken house again soon; it's a nasty job (which reminds me, I need more dust masks) but the "gardener's gold" seems to be working as my Jupiter's Beard, Blanket Flower, and other perennials root deeply and this year's annuals put on big blooms and, now, big fat seedheads. I'll be collecting seeds soon from some interesting cosmos "sports" and a few other flowers that did especially well this year. Since I used organic heirloom seeds, I expect fertile seed and beautiful flowers next year, too.

I'm planting bulbs now, too: I put in somegiant allium and crocus today, and will plant scilla, daffodils and tulips later in the week. I'd love to plant the whole back yard in wildflower tulips, which are not only lovely but also xeric (drought-tolerant), but the digging and soil amendment would break my back. Maybe next year. Oh, and I have some iris to plant, thanks to the Socorro garden society. I'd like to plant those along the side of the store once the stucco is finished (next week? the stucco guy keeps getting sick) because the purples and yellows would look beautiful against the pale yellow stucco.

Only one big question remaining: what to do with my perennials in pots? I suppose I should plant them... but I'll probably leave them for now because they make the front yard so pretty. Winter will seem so bleak once they're gone... maybe I'll fill the pots with small evergreens and fake flowers or something....

Tomorrow I'll report on my knitting -- just two projects ongoing -- and give a quilting progress report. To have progress to report on, I will turn to my sewing corner now. Adios.