Grapevines, a Friday Fictioneers reprise

Originally published on July 12, 2012, this story is based on a man we often see on our walks around the small lake only a few blocks from our house, fact presented as fiction in 100 words.

Lakeside for our evening walk, we see him in the garden, engendering life, whatever the weather.  His garden is verdant: deep green leaves, fruits and vegetables of varying hues, brilliant flowers.  A radio sometimes  shatters the silence (whether he’s nearby or not—perhaps to keep away birds.)  We attempt a  compliment, but he speaks no English.  “Beautiful garden”, accompanied by an expressive gesture including the whole.  He smiles; we smile.  He sounds eastern European, lives with his daughter and her husband, wrapped in his lack of English, speaking through his garden and the trellised grapevines that shelter and surround it.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Yellow…squashed

‘Twas the week before Christmas
and all ‘round the world,
photographers waited,
their heads in a whirl.
Their photos were filed,
their fingers prepared,
Awaiting the theme
That soon would be there.

And this week’s theme is…..Yellow!  This yellow is from one of the beautiful blossoms I got when trying to grow, as I recall, squash.  Alas, the beauty was all I got, as eventually everything withered and died.  It was, however, glorious while it lasted!

Lunch in Little Italy, something deer, and a pumpkin update

Friend time for a couple hours, so we rendezvoused in Cleveland’s Little Italy for an inexpensive but always tasty lunch at Presti’s, http://www.prestisbakery.com/.   We’d been blessed with rain, more threatening, so when I arrived first, I grabbed a table outside but under the overhang, protecting us from both too much sun and any possible showers.  What to have wasn’t a problem even for me, the one who usually lingers over a menu for ages, torn by all the choices.  We had our usual entree…

Destruction, reclaimation, and growth

With all the traveling I’ve been doing, my garden has consisted mostly of flowers with some herbs and peppers interspersed.  It’s too difficult to get someone reliable to keep a real garden watered while I’m back and forth and seeing a potentially abundant garden wither and the ground crack is heart-breaking, to say nothing of a waste of time and money. 

Friday Fictioneers–grapevines

Lakeside for our evening walk, we see him in the garden, engendering life, whatever the weather. 

Green roof wanna-be

Green roof at Paris airport

Lately I’ve become interested in green roofs. Maybe it’s some quirk that runs in my family. My brother’s interested in straw bale houses and re-doing a barn to live in. I think, though, my interest stems from having a flat roof over our garage, something not an unalloyed blessing. For where there is a flat roof, there you will also find the distinct possibility that water will at some time and in its own inimitable fashion make (or at the very least, seek to make) its way into whatever lie below it.