February 18, 2014February 23, 2014 by clumpaday

Turning Over A New Leaf

Clump #159: Clear pile number 18, receipts … and shred.

Today’s pile was tedious, but most of it could just be shredded, shredded, shredded. I do have a few good habits, and one is putting all my Christmas receipts into a big envelope. This one was from 2012, so if it ain’t broke, and it’s over a year old, we won’t need the receipt. There were exactly four pieces of paper in this pile worth saving: the type of receipts we would normally tear the house apart to find. Big step forward!

As for the third installment of my week-long pigment therapy for the winter blahs … some of you might remember months ago I posted photos of a floral shop I walked by one night in Chicago. It seemed magical, and I was entranced. Here are two photos from back then:

The store was called New Leaf.

This winter I was back in Chicago visiting our older daughter and, cheapskate that I am, got a great hotel price on Expedia. It was one of those steeply discounted deals where you pick the general area you want to stay, and you don’t find out the hotel name until you pay. I took the gamble, and was very pleased with the resulting hotel and location, especially for the price.

Here’s the amazing part. Below was the view from my hotel window. The lit up store is none other than New Leaf. Chills!

Since I was right next door, I was actually able to stop by and go inside!

It was just as magical in daylight.

Oh, rich and gorgeous color!

Blossoms from a warmer land.

Wickedly frigid Chicago became tolerable in this plant paradise.

I realized that I have included a song every day with the color infusion posting. In yesterday’s pile I uncovered many notes to myself, and I’d undoubtably jotted this one down upon hearing the song It Goes As It Goes, from the movie Norma Rae, on the radio.

I looked it up today, and what a beautiful song it is. From 1979, written by David Shire and Norman Gimble, and sung by Jennifer Warnes (not Warrens, as I had scribbled). The song won the Oscar that year.

I was moved to think of this Clump A Day project like the flow described in the lyrics, below. What we keep and appreciate gets better, while what holds us back gets gone.

So it goes like it goes
and the river flows
and time it rolls right on
and maybe whats good
gets a little bit better
and maybe what’s bad gets gone.

February 17, 2014February 23, 2014 by clumpaday

Orange You Glad You Let It Go?

Clump #158: Clear pile of sentimental mementos.

Whoa! This was a tough one. Trying to thin down today’s pile of papers was heart-wrenching. Photos, programs from important events, special cards:

Of course, there were also little slips of inspiration and life advice I had cut out. This one, from a long-forgotten magazine, seemed especially appropriate for the task at hand:

In ten years, will I still want this photo of myself at a taping of Let’s Make A Deal? Will my children’s children be interested in seeing how goofy I looked in a referee’s uniform, blowing a whistle? Possibly.

(Like much of the show, which is controlled by the producers, looks are deceiving. The photo was taken in front of a green screen. It was a blast, even still!)

Below are the keepables. One pile of photos and one of other special papers. On top, a photo of our daughter and son when they went out for Halloween as Brother and Sister Bear from the Berenstain Bears book series. There are no words for how much I love this picture. Our son might be an illustration for “The Berenstain Bears and Too Much Halloween.” I also couldn’t part with our younger daughter’s old YMCA ID card on which she looks like a porcelain doll.

And now for the daily dose of color … orange. From Longwood Gardens this fall:

And from the conservatory this winter, inside:

As much as I love the exotic flowers at Longwood, any grocery store contains an infusion of radiant flowers:

And other gorgeous plants, like these leeks dripping over carrots:

And beautiful peppers:

Great song heard today on the radio (WXPN, 88.5): Valentine’s Day Is Over by Billy Bragg. Couldn’t get enough of the Cockney (?) accent, the raw emotion, the horn section, and these lyrics:

Thank you for the things you bought me thank you for the card
Thank you for the things you taught me when you hit me hard
That love between two people must be based on understanding
Until that’s true you’ll find your things
All stacked out on the landing, surprise, surprise

Love is really the thing to cherish, not the things.

February 17, 2014February 23, 2014 by clumpaday

Unworthy Worries

Clump #157: Clear pile of medical expense paperwork; cook rice for 35.

Okay, another victory against the white blight in our house today. Clearly, it’s been a long time since I’ve felt up to tackling a stack of health expense statements:

I shredded anything from before 2012, then filed, in chronological order, anything after. I don’t think a single 2013 statement had reached the folder until today:

I was in the midst of this boring, but strangely satisfying job, when I heard Unworthy, by Cheryl Wheeler. The comic song consists of a litany of guilty “shoulds,” and the conclusion that “I’m unworthy.” Priceless.

The song certainly captured my mental state for much of the day. I had signed on to provide rice for 30-35 people as a part of a Salvation Army dinner coordinated by a member of our Quaker Meeting. And then the reality hit me. You can easily ruin rice … so often either too crunchy or a gluey mess. And that’s in normal quantities. I spent way too much time Googling “rice for a crowd” and other similar prompts.

I ended up with this recipe for fool-proof oven-baked brown rice from a blog called One Good Thing by Jillee. I made myself crazy worrying about whether it would work as well with aluminum foil pans. And would cooking three pans at one time throw it off? I had neither the time nor the nine cups of rice to start over again. In short, I was feeling unworthy to the task. But it turned out perfectly! I would highly recommend the method. One good thing, indeed!

I promised yesterday to post color-infused pictures to combat winter and paper white-fatigue.

At another three hour watercolor class at Longwood Gardens today, I was immersed in the mixing of colors … and felt like a blooming idiot (unworthiness strikes again). I will not post photos of those colors, but of flowers from a recent visit to Longwood’s conservatory:

A selection of purpley-pink and green. How’s this for color?

Hibiscus, the ultimate “come-hither” siren of the plant world:

Less crass, the lovely lily:

I couldn’t get over the leaves on/near this anthurium, looking like shadows, or imitations, of other leaves:

Longwood Gardens holds an “Orchid Extravaganza” every year at this time, but we were a little early for the extravaganza. These were from their every day collection:

Ordinary orchids? I think not.

Extravagantly worthy.

October 25, 2013October 25, 2013 by clumpaday

Blossoms and Bantams

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Bantam Chickens, Decluttering, Flowers, Life, Photos
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Clump #71: Bring left-behind belongings to younger daughter and clear out shoebox.

I had the delightful job of bringing a clump of things to my college student daughter and taking her out to lunch today. The restaurant was decorated with beautiful, energizing paintings of flowers. I loved this fall display with the pumpkin-like urn on the floor.

Even more lovely was a short reprieve from the recent sensation of chicks leaving the nest. Heaven.

But then it was back home to make another little dent in the shoe-pile remains: a shoebox that somehow became the repository of a strange assortment of objects. More flowers: these were from a past theater experience involving our older daughter. They will adorn the next Goodwill donation pile.

This chicken was hand-knit by the dear second wife of my husband’s father. It sits on a green plastic egg. Must keep. I put it away with other Easter stuff, to be enjoyed for years to come.

I can recycle the box and my identification number from when I was on the show Let’s Make A Deal (a blast, even though I didn’t get picked to play). We’ll hang my husband’s academic cords on his side of the closet, where he had thought they still resided. He worked very hard for them.

Just yesterday I had stopped to take a picture of a sign I enjoy seeing on my way to and from visiting my mom in Lancaster County, PA. I know I’m in farm country when the roadside advertisement is for Bantams.

I wanted to make sure I knew exactly what Bantams are, so I googled a definition: “Called the flower garden of the poultry world, Bantams are miniature chickens, usually one-fourth to one-fifth the size of standard varieties.” Once again, flowers and chickens.

October 7, 2013 by clumpaday

To Do and Don’t List

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Flowers, Life, Opt Out List, Photos, SteinMart, To, To-Do List
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Clump #65: Take back shirt and call OPT OUT.

This box is a physical to-do list filled with action-needy things I came across in clearing out the den (formerly the den of doom and gloom). It would have stopped my momentum to address each of them at the time, so … into the box they went with an “I’ll clump you later.”

I groaned as I pulled out a bag containing a white golf shirt I’d bought for my husband and needed to return. I did have the receipt, but here’s what I found when I looked at it:

Even through the fog of the picture, you can see that if I had found this on the day I started my September challenge, I would have been able to return it in time. D’oh! But return it, I did. To my surprise and delight, the woman at the exchange counter fiddled around for a minute with her register and said, “I can still give you the refund.” I have nothing to do with SteinMart, but I’ll plug them here for that favor. Wow, indeed.

I ended up buying my husband another shirt, so it worked out well for all parties involved. The clerk, another female customer and I had a discussion about whether our respective husbands would wear the color I picked out. The older woman said hers would never wear it, but she wished he would ; the clerk said she forced hers to wear it (along with lavender); I said I’d see what my husband thought and that I might be back to the exchange counter again.

For the record, my husband wore it and looks mahvelous in it. It’s actually a bit brighter than the picture shows. Let it be known that my husband is not afraid of wearing edgy golf shirts!

In the midst of all the paper purging, I, fortuitously, came across a little article in The Philadelphia Inquirer entitled Protect yourself from identity theft. One of the tips offered to fight this scourge is to call 1-888-5-OPTOUT (1-888-57-8688) to opt out of pre-approved credit cards, “The easiest way for a fraudster to commit identity theft is to fill out pre-approved credit applications we receive in the mail.” Boy, did I shred a load of those.

I called the number to opt myself out. The irony is, you have to give your social security number to them in order to do it. One of the other rules listed in the article: “Shield your Social Security card and numbers.” I googled around for other people’s experiences, and apparently the number is legit.

Feeling the need to close with a little beauty of the season I recently captured: flowers dying and valiantly still blooming …

In colors both reserved and flamboyant.

September 14, 2013September 18, 2013 by clumpaday

Back to the Garden

Clump #45: Take Shakespeare books to used book store.

I had been really looking forward to today. Perhaps my expectations were too high. I’d signed up for a class in iPhone photography at Longwood Gardens, in Kennet Square, PA, a sublimely beautiful place. Afterward I would bring my parents’ old, complete set of the works of William Shakespeare to a rare/used book dealer in the same area.

I was afraid the class would be too technical for me, but I was fine … until the end, when I felt very, very stupid. And it was not that everyone else was younger — just more tech-savvy. This was a picture I took with back-lighting:

And this is the same photo with an Instagram feature enhancing the colors. Pretty cool, almost psychedelic.

These are a few simple things I learned before I crashed into dumbland: first, the volume up button on an iPhone can be used as a camera shutter. Wow! When you tap the camera icon on the screen to take a photo, you often jiggle the phone a little. The volume up button tends to be more stable.

Maybe everyone knows this? I didn’t. When your phone is trying to focus on a couple of areas on the screen (green squares appear), tap the part of the picture you would like it to focus on.

I knew I could get a very subtle grid on my photo screen by tapping Options, then turning Grid on. Our teacher recommended placing subjects on the four intersecting points where the lines meet, in order to add interest in composition.

I spent my time in Longwood Garden’s Idea Garden, meant for home gardeners. Longwood is known for more elegant areas, with fountains, formal plantings, and an indoor conservatory — all spectacular…

But vegetables are beautiful, too.

After class I went to see the very nice and knowledgeable book dealer. In essence, he said the books were not in very good condition; that he wouldn’t be interested in buying them. So, though I got a step closer, the clump wasn’t released. I felt a little personally rejected along with my books.

I think I need to sit at the children’s table, where life is simpler and hopes are renewed.

Clump A Day

postcards from the clogosphere

Tag / Flowers