Late Winter Visitation
Apr. 6th, 2008 04:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pameladeanI've been wanting to post more, both to entertain you loyal people who haven't given up on me and to jog my memory a year or more from now, but haven't been doing very well at it. I thought I'd at least do some brief notes on Eric (aka ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
arkuat)'s visit, since it was a remarkably fine one.
Easter Sunday -- Went to Minicon's Closing Ceremonies and watched Fiona and Delia elegantly assassinate Lydy (akalydy, after which their father revived her with a legal technicality to be President of Minn-Stf for another year. Then was kindly driven home by minnehaha B, who was going home anyway to feed cats. Spent evening turning the media room into a bedroom, doing laundry, and hanging out with Raphael. Went to bed at 2:30, being still on Minicon time.
Monday, 6:30 a.m. or so, got text message from Eric; took last few things (desk lamp, laptop) downstairs for the week, hung out in front hall watching for E and listening to a cardinal sing. E arrived, very pleased about the cardinal, whose tree he had walked directly under while it was singing. Reunion, nap. Got up blearily around 11:30, got ride with David (akadd_b and Lydy, freshly arrived from Minicon, to eat sushi at Sakura with hardy Minicon people who wouldn't quite miss their planes if they had fish first, plus locals. Sat at opposite end of table from the early arrivals, so that E could have his good ear towards the conversation, however distant. Were rewarded by being surrounded by later arrivals like Marissa (aka mrissa and Timprov (aka timprov and carbonel. Was sorry not to have been able to talk more with Josh, Ctein, Cally, and Joel, but had seen pleasantly a lot of Cally during Minicon and ended up having dim sum with Joel and Felicia later in the week; and Josh is coming to Applecon.
Went home, had more reunion and second nap. Got up even more blearily and went to Dessicated Dodo Party at home ofcowfan and fmsv. minnehaha K and B showed up; K had seven or eight rolls for the player piano, obtained on eBay; later claimed partial credit for huge numbers of rolls lining several walls, which, if such eBay excursions are a regular event, I can well believe. Player piano was employed several times in the course of the evening. Other activities included several card games and the sorting of the Minicon surveys.
Went home, fell over with cats.
Tuesday -- David needed the car for a job interview, so E and I took the bus to 38th and Bryant and then walked through that little park and up Dupont to the gardens around Lake Harriet. It was overcast, chilly, and slushy, but a constant stream of water ran from every snowbank. We reminisced about the horde of green darners we had seen in September, and the nighthawks swooping over the same spot in late summer.
We walked through the bird refuge until the water seeped through our boots, admiring the almost-monochrome winter landscape, gray, silver, white, black, with the rich brown of oak leaves and the startling red of dogwood standing out like lightning. We saw a few chickadees in the undergrowth. Came out near the Lake Harriet bandshell, and walked back along the lake, remembering summer walks and one swimming expedition. On our way out of the park, saw two robins sitting in a little ornamental fruit tree, which was still hung with what looked like bunches of cherries. A block from home, saw several woodpeckers and goldfinches and chickadees at a feeder, which amused us after the emptiness of the bird refuge. At some point Eric started pointing out old birds' nests in the bare trees. I'd certainly noticed a lot of large squirrel and perhaps crows' nests, but not the tiny ones he found. Made fish paella for dinner, and served it with asparagus and some of French Meadow Bakery's take-and-bake rolls. David and Lydy seemed to like it.
Wednesday we could have the car. Drove to Crosby Farm Park and walked through the slush and the watery snow again. Went around the marsh, seeing one pale raptor soaring in the sunlight, and then Eric saw that the sandier soil near the river was quite dry, so we went and walked along the river on the firm sand for a while. A fellow ahead of us was kneeling at the water's edge at intervals, peering intently down, but we never found what he was doing. We gazed longingly at Pike Island, as we had done every time we'd come to Crosby Farm Park for several years. Overall, we didn't much like the slush, but it was fascinating to be able to see the lay of the land with all the wood nettle and underbrush laid down flat by frost. We saw trees we had never noticed, all gray and silver and brown and black, their branch-tips sometimes furred with buds. Some silver maples leaning over the beach were getting read to bloom. One of them had clear liquid hanging from its new growth. I wondered if it was sap and was just saying that I wasn't suggesting tasting it when Eric did just that. He said that it was incredibly sweet, and I do know a silver maple when I see one, so I tasted it. It was very sweet and vaguely dusty. Far out on another branch of the same tree was a very small, tightly woven, cup-like nest.
Vast drifts of oak and cottonwood leaves and a number of unidentified green rosettes, just getting started, lay all around the woods. We had not done much before at identifying trees only by their bark, and found it hard in many cases. The weary gold of the cattails in the marsh was pleasant in the sunshine, but we saw much less life than we'd expected. We thought, consulting Sibley, that the raptor might be a juvenile red-tailed hawk, or a juvenile rough-legged hawk. Drove to Namaste for dinner and were very happy with it -- ginger cardamom chai with soy milk, mustard fish, brown rice, a quite spicy mixed vegetable curry, and, wonder of wonders, dessert for both of us -- they have a vegan carrot and coconut cream concoction that was splendid. I almost never get dessert at restaurants.
Thursday we began to clean the house for a small gathering we had planned. In the evening went with David and Lydy to hear Bruce Schneier speak at the Weisman Art Museum. We had a lovely dinner first at the Village Wok withminnehaha, who were leaving town for the weekend and hence could not come to the gathering, discussing food, teaching, travel, and gardening. K wanted to order the whole walleye with ginger and scallions, but was told that it was "huge, and takes a long time," so we had to give it up. Perhaps there should be a whole-fish expedition there some time when nobody is trying to go hear a speech afterwards.
Eric and I inherited the leftovers and stopped at the car to deposit them, losing the rest of our party in the process. But we had time to slip into part of this exhibit, and were particularly interested in the portraits of the town and village councils of various small towns across the U.S. I especially liked the one from North Carolina, which had four extremely formidable black women seated two on either side of a vacant seat with the mayor's name on it. One of them had a name sign proclaiming her the Mayor Pro Tem. You had to wonder what had happened. We also looked at photos of various missile installations, which I didn't much care for, except for a set of nine photographs of nine different locations, some with mountains in the background and some on the flat, flat prairie. These were American landscapes, all with missiles. I remembered that the most terrifying moment of The Day After, for me, is the one where a couple of young children, in the fenced yard of their little tract house, stare open-mouthed as the earth opens up and the missile they live next door to starts to fire itself up. Their mother grabs them and hustles them into the house. Not that that helps.
I was impressed by Bruce's speech. It provided a framework for thinking about things that are hard to think about, at least for me. I was amused that during the speech he slowed his usual rapid-fire delivery down a lot, but when the questions came, he answered in his usual manner. The questions were good ones, and so were the answers. Afterwards there was a rather munificent spread, but since I couldn't eat most of it, I was glad all over again of the Village Wok dinner. We saw various acquaintances, includingbarondave, davidschroth, lsanderson, and tesla_aldrich and were most kindly invited out for socializing afterwards, but were too tired to accept.
Friday we cleaned the house some more, made a list, and shopped for goodies. We had decided that rather than doing an endless round of lunches and dinners and still missing people, we'd have a small gathering of people whom Eric wanted to see. It was hard to keep things small; there were at least eight others we'd have invited if we could. I think it went pretty well, although the primary purpose went awry, because my mother andelisem couldn't come at the last minute, and we had to make appointments with them during the last few days of the visit. It was very good to see everyone who showed up, and I didn't have the usual harried feeling that I was flipping past people as if they were postcards in a book.
David was out all day Saturday, and I had formed the impression that he would have the car, but when Eric and I went out with our lunch neatly packed up in our knapsacks, meaning to walk along Minnehaha Creek, we saw the car there, and promptly absconded with it and went to Wirth Park. Eloise Butler is not open yet, but we parked by Wirth Lake and took the trail through the marsh. We heard one lone red-winged blackbird croaking from a tree top. The pond was iced over. No kinglets, no Eastern kingbirds, no wood ducks, no green herons, only the single blackbird. The red-stemmed dogwood glowed. We walked along the trail south of the garden and took a shortcut just south of Birch Pond, through woods ordinarily thick with brambles and underbrush, getting a much better look at Birch Pond than one usually does, and noting thistle rosettes in the grass. When we got to the trailhead for the Quaking Bog, we had to scramble around a fair amount to get up the hill -- the way they wanted you to go was a huge pool of water -- but we made it to the ridge trail and managed to walk through the entire bog. There was a birch tree leaning over the little railed section of bridge that takes you over the water to the bog proper, and its near branch was popping with little fur flowers like pussywillows. We'd seen pussywillows themselves back by the Wirth Lake marsh, and I had made the obligatory quotation: "Have you seen any gray fur flowers that look just like me?" There were sticky red buds on the birch tree as well.
In the bog, the tamaracks had small buds, and their last year's needles, gone from gold to rust, lay everywhere amongst the snow and the oak leaves and under shallow pools of water. The sphagnum moss was pushing up green bits everywhere that it could. We saw more chickadees.
We went home and made Hoisin Explosion Seitan (seitan with cashews and bell peppers). We were making this especially for David, but he preferred to be taken out for dinner at Red Lobster by Joel. This was just as well, on the whole, because we were out of hoisin sauce and had to make our own using peanut butter, since we had no black bean paste. It was quite good, but not much like hoisin sauce. Eric and Lydy and I had a nice dinner, and then Eric and I retired with books. We were exhausted after the busy week. David came home in time to have dessert with us.
Sunday was crowded. We got up and went with David and Lydy to meetcarbonel and Greg and Cat WINOLJ and pgdudda for dim sum, a scheme hatched at the last minute during the dregs of the party. I'd been reluctant to go on the grounds that dim sum tends to have egg and chicken broth in everything, but carbonel called the restaurant for me and ascertained that I could order off the menu. It turned out to be the same restaurant where Cally and Marilee had been heading on Thursday night of Minicon. Once we got there, though, I couldn't resist the shrimp dumplings. They also brought around plates of bright green Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, and it turned out that Greg and Cat were quite as interested in them as Eric and I were. There was one lonely tofu item later that I ate in addition to the shrimp, and a sesame golf ball, as David has called those things for years. We were joined a little later by joelrosenberg and fgh, which was very pleasant. Joel told a few stories of our early acquaintance.
We went home, and while Lydy napped and David packed his suitcase, Eric and I watched a DVD of the Thames Television version of Twelfth Night, directed by Kenneth Branagh, with Frances Barbour as Viola and Christopher Ravenscroft as Orsino, a present to me fromcarbonel. Twelfth Night has rather been "our play" since Eric and I saw the BFA Actors do it back in 2003. Raphael and I are particularly fond of the movie with Ben Kingsley as Feste, and I'd watched it with Eric, so that he was fond of it too. I didn't necessarily expect to like this production as much, and I still retain a preference for the movie's Antonio in particular (Nicholas Farrell, wow).
But this was a really fine production, in Victorian dress. Eric was very pleased with the way that they brought Fabian onstage in a non-speaking part, dressed I think as a kind of footman, so that he didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere; and, especially, so that he could sing in the drunken scene that first Maria and then Malvolio interrupt with such disastrous consequences, because four-part harmony works better there than three. Feste was a young, haunted, skinny type, but still sardonic; his distaste for the jape with Malvolio was very evident. Sir Andrew was really very pathetic; one laughed at him only gently, and felt very keenly Sir Toby's rejection of him at the end. As in the movie with Nicholas Farrell, they changed the order of the opening scenes and had Viola and the Captain's scene before Orsino's mopery.
Just after the recognition scene, David indicated that he was ready to leave for the airport, a little early so that we would have more light for hiking after we dropped him off. We paused the DVD, drove to the airport, sent David off to California for the last time, at least on Sun's dollar, and went back to Crosby Farm Park.
There was much less snow this time. We headed straight for the river and took the now-dry asphalt path for a while, and happened upon a woodpecker-fest of amazing proportions. We ventured over the leaf-strewn, sandy ground much further than we would have in summer, and saw a lot of nuthatches, as well as downy and hairy woodpeckers on the same tree, for better comparison. Perhaps best of all, we first heard and then saw two pairs of red-bellied woodpeckers, again kindly demonstrating how the male had an entire red head and the female a red patch on the back of her neck. We went close enough to the marsh to hear the electronic trilling of red-winged blackbirds in quantity, but decided that the path was too slushy to go further. After that we tried the sandy path right at the top of the cliffs above the river, and went along it quite dry and happy.
It was a cloudy day, and so getting dark earlier than we'd expected. We looked longingly at Pike Island again, and as we did so, we heard a barred owl call repeatedly, who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all. We took it as a sign, and consulted the map in the car, and went. Eric said that, since it was getting late and I was tired, we would just explore the trailhead. This involved getting into Fort Snelling State Park at the northern end and driving back south until cars are no longer permitted, and then going over a footbridge. Pike Island was not deserted, but there were far fewer people and far less trash than at Crosby Farm Park, possibly because the city park is free, whereas state parks now charge five dollars as a day fee. I don't mind paying it, but the park office was closed and we couldn't find any way of doing so.
In any case, we ended up reading a batch of very sobering informational signs about the Dakota presence in the Minnesota River Valley, and then trudging through mud and slush until we finally slid down a slope to the dry beach. The beach on that side of the river is much stonier than on the Hidden Falls and Crosby Farm Park side. As we were coming back again, Eric noticed that the whole beach was strewn with tiny spiral shells. I'd seen shells just like them along the St. Croix River when Raphael and I had gone to the parks scattered along the Minnesota side. We picked up a handful and noticed that they were exactly the color of the beach as a whole, which is to say, the color of the yellow and pinkish and brown and white rocks that made up the beach.
We trudged back through the slush, talking happily of how we would come back in the spring. We drove to Evergreen for a quick dinner (three-cup tofu, Buddha's Delight, seaweed with garlic and ginger, and pickled lotus root), and then went over to have tea withelisem. She was in the middle of an online sale, and heaped us with shiny things, sold and soon to be sold. We went upstairs and paid our respects to the cats, and then went home and fell over again. However, we had to rouse ourselves enough to watch the rest of our DVD. There was more left than we'd remembered. We agreed that this Malvolio was the best we'd seen, and that this production intended you to see three leftover characters at the end: Sir Andrew, Antonio, and Feste. Feste ends the play, walking through a garden gate and shutting it behind him, after which he looks back at the audience through the bars of the gate, as Malvolio had looked out of his prison.
On Monday it snowed, and the forecast was fairly dire. But the ground was so warm that the first few hours of snow just melted off, so we had lunch with my mother at Pizza Luce. Eric and my mother often enjoy comparing her Unitarian Church's doings with his Friends Meeting's doings, and we also talked about cats, teaching, and food. After she dropped us off and went home before the snow should become serious, we walked over to the Salvation Army for some clothes shopping; came home and got a pizza, again from Pizza Luce; and decided to watch Twelfth Night again, this time with the text, which was a thoroughly delightful proceeding. At various times, Eric shovelled snow twice and I did it once. The snowfall was particularly beautiful in the twilight and after dark.
On Tuesday there were packing and farewells and a trip to the airport through the melting snow, and suddenly after having all three of my sweeties under one roof, I was down to one. I went home in the dazzling day, got reacquainted with the home sweetie, and got back to my revisions.
P.
arkuat)'s visit, since it was a remarkably fine one.Easter Sunday -- Went to Minicon's Closing Ceremonies and watched Fiona and Delia elegantly assassinate Lydy (aka
lydy, after which their father revived her with a legal technicality to be President of Minn-Stf for another year. Then was kindly driven home by minnehaha B, who was going home anyway to feed cats. Spent evening turning the media room into a bedroom, doing laundry, and hanging out with Raphael. Went to bed at 2:30, being still on Minicon time.Monday, 6:30 a.m. or so, got text message from Eric; took last few things (desk lamp, laptop) downstairs for the week, hung out in front hall watching for E and listening to a cardinal sing. E arrived, very pleased about the cardinal, whose tree he had walked directly under while it was singing. Reunion, nap. Got up blearily around 11:30, got ride with David (aka
dd_b and Lydy, freshly arrived from Minicon, to eat sushi at Sakura with hardy Minicon people who wouldn't quite miss their planes if they had fish first, plus locals. Sat at opposite end of table from the early arrivals, so that E could have his good ear towards the conversation, however distant. Were rewarded by being surrounded by later arrivals like Marissa (aka mrissa and Timprov (aka timprov and carbonel. Was sorry not to have been able to talk more with Josh, Ctein, Cally, and Joel, but had seen pleasantly a lot of Cally during Minicon and ended up having dim sum with Joel and Felicia later in the week; and Josh is coming to Applecon.Went home, had more reunion and second nap. Got up even more blearily and went to Dessicated Dodo Party at home of
cowfan and fmsv. minnehaha K and B showed up; K had seven or eight rolls for the player piano, obtained on eBay; later claimed partial credit for huge numbers of rolls lining several walls, which, if such eBay excursions are a regular event, I can well believe. Player piano was employed several times in the course of the evening. Other activities included several card games and the sorting of the Minicon surveys.Went home, fell over with cats.
Tuesday -- David needed the car for a job interview, so E and I took the bus to 38th and Bryant and then walked through that little park and up Dupont to the gardens around Lake Harriet. It was overcast, chilly, and slushy, but a constant stream of water ran from every snowbank. We reminisced about the horde of green darners we had seen in September, and the nighthawks swooping over the same spot in late summer.
We walked through the bird refuge until the water seeped through our boots, admiring the almost-monochrome winter landscape, gray, silver, white, black, with the rich brown of oak leaves and the startling red of dogwood standing out like lightning. We saw a few chickadees in the undergrowth. Came out near the Lake Harriet bandshell, and walked back along the lake, remembering summer walks and one swimming expedition. On our way out of the park, saw two robins sitting in a little ornamental fruit tree, which was still hung with what looked like bunches of cherries. A block from home, saw several woodpeckers and goldfinches and chickadees at a feeder, which amused us after the emptiness of the bird refuge. At some point Eric started pointing out old birds' nests in the bare trees. I'd certainly noticed a lot of large squirrel and perhaps crows' nests, but not the tiny ones he found. Made fish paella for dinner, and served it with asparagus and some of French Meadow Bakery's take-and-bake rolls. David and Lydy seemed to like it.
Wednesday we could have the car. Drove to Crosby Farm Park and walked through the slush and the watery snow again. Went around the marsh, seeing one pale raptor soaring in the sunlight, and then Eric saw that the sandier soil near the river was quite dry, so we went and walked along the river on the firm sand for a while. A fellow ahead of us was kneeling at the water's edge at intervals, peering intently down, but we never found what he was doing. We gazed longingly at Pike Island, as we had done every time we'd come to Crosby Farm Park for several years. Overall, we didn't much like the slush, but it was fascinating to be able to see the lay of the land with all the wood nettle and underbrush laid down flat by frost. We saw trees we had never noticed, all gray and silver and brown and black, their branch-tips sometimes furred with buds. Some silver maples leaning over the beach were getting read to bloom. One of them had clear liquid hanging from its new growth. I wondered if it was sap and was just saying that I wasn't suggesting tasting it when Eric did just that. He said that it was incredibly sweet, and I do know a silver maple when I see one, so I tasted it. It was very sweet and vaguely dusty. Far out on another branch of the same tree was a very small, tightly woven, cup-like nest.
Vast drifts of oak and cottonwood leaves and a number of unidentified green rosettes, just getting started, lay all around the woods. We had not done much before at identifying trees only by their bark, and found it hard in many cases. The weary gold of the cattails in the marsh was pleasant in the sunshine, but we saw much less life than we'd expected. We thought, consulting Sibley, that the raptor might be a juvenile red-tailed hawk, or a juvenile rough-legged hawk. Drove to Namaste for dinner and were very happy with it -- ginger cardamom chai with soy milk, mustard fish, brown rice, a quite spicy mixed vegetable curry, and, wonder of wonders, dessert for both of us -- they have a vegan carrot and coconut cream concoction that was splendid. I almost never get dessert at restaurants.
Thursday we began to clean the house for a small gathering we had planned. In the evening went with David and Lydy to hear Bruce Schneier speak at the Weisman Art Museum. We had a lovely dinner first at the Village Wok with
minnehaha, who were leaving town for the weekend and hence could not come to the gathering, discussing food, teaching, travel, and gardening. K wanted to order the whole walleye with ginger and scallions, but was told that it was "huge, and takes a long time," so we had to give it up. Perhaps there should be a whole-fish expedition there some time when nobody is trying to go hear a speech afterwards.Eric and I inherited the leftovers and stopped at the car to deposit them, losing the rest of our party in the process. But we had time to slip into part of this exhibit, and were particularly interested in the portraits of the town and village councils of various small towns across the U.S. I especially liked the one from North Carolina, which had four extremely formidable black women seated two on either side of a vacant seat with the mayor's name on it. One of them had a name sign proclaiming her the Mayor Pro Tem. You had to wonder what had happened. We also looked at photos of various missile installations, which I didn't much care for, except for a set of nine photographs of nine different locations, some with mountains in the background and some on the flat, flat prairie. These were American landscapes, all with missiles. I remembered that the most terrifying moment of The Day After, for me, is the one where a couple of young children, in the fenced yard of their little tract house, stare open-mouthed as the earth opens up and the missile they live next door to starts to fire itself up. Their mother grabs them and hustles them into the house. Not that that helps.
I was impressed by Bruce's speech. It provided a framework for thinking about things that are hard to think about, at least for me. I was amused that during the speech he slowed his usual rapid-fire delivery down a lot, but when the questions came, he answered in his usual manner. The questions were good ones, and so were the answers. Afterwards there was a rather munificent spread, but since I couldn't eat most of it, I was glad all over again of the Village Wok dinner. We saw various acquaintances, including
barondave, davidschroth, lsanderson, and tesla_aldrich and were most kindly invited out for socializing afterwards, but were too tired to accept.Friday we cleaned the house some more, made a list, and shopped for goodies. We had decided that rather than doing an endless round of lunches and dinners and still missing people, we'd have a small gathering of people whom Eric wanted to see. It was hard to keep things small; there were at least eight others we'd have invited if we could. I think it went pretty well, although the primary purpose went awry, because my mother and
elisem couldn't come at the last minute, and we had to make appointments with them during the last few days of the visit. It was very good to see everyone who showed up, and I didn't have the usual harried feeling that I was flipping past people as if they were postcards in a book.David was out all day Saturday, and I had formed the impression that he would have the car, but when Eric and I went out with our lunch neatly packed up in our knapsacks, meaning to walk along Minnehaha Creek, we saw the car there, and promptly absconded with it and went to Wirth Park. Eloise Butler is not open yet, but we parked by Wirth Lake and took the trail through the marsh. We heard one lone red-winged blackbird croaking from a tree top. The pond was iced over. No kinglets, no Eastern kingbirds, no wood ducks, no green herons, only the single blackbird. The red-stemmed dogwood glowed. We walked along the trail south of the garden and took a shortcut just south of Birch Pond, through woods ordinarily thick with brambles and underbrush, getting a much better look at Birch Pond than one usually does, and noting thistle rosettes in the grass. When we got to the trailhead for the Quaking Bog, we had to scramble around a fair amount to get up the hill -- the way they wanted you to go was a huge pool of water -- but we made it to the ridge trail and managed to walk through the entire bog. There was a birch tree leaning over the little railed section of bridge that takes you over the water to the bog proper, and its near branch was popping with little fur flowers like pussywillows. We'd seen pussywillows themselves back by the Wirth Lake marsh, and I had made the obligatory quotation: "Have you seen any gray fur flowers that look just like me?" There were sticky red buds on the birch tree as well.
In the bog, the tamaracks had small buds, and their last year's needles, gone from gold to rust, lay everywhere amongst the snow and the oak leaves and under shallow pools of water. The sphagnum moss was pushing up green bits everywhere that it could. We saw more chickadees.
We went home and made Hoisin Explosion Seitan (seitan with cashews and bell peppers). We were making this especially for David, but he preferred to be taken out for dinner at Red Lobster by Joel. This was just as well, on the whole, because we were out of hoisin sauce and had to make our own using peanut butter, since we had no black bean paste. It was quite good, but not much like hoisin sauce. Eric and Lydy and I had a nice dinner, and then Eric and I retired with books. We were exhausted after the busy week. David came home in time to have dessert with us.
Sunday was crowded. We got up and went with David and Lydy to meet
carbonel and Greg and Cat WINOLJ and pgdudda for dim sum, a scheme hatched at the last minute during the dregs of the party. I'd been reluctant to go on the grounds that dim sum tends to have egg and chicken broth in everything, but carbonel called the restaurant for me and ascertained that I could order off the menu. It turned out to be the same restaurant where Cally and Marilee had been heading on Thursday night of Minicon. Once we got there, though, I couldn't resist the shrimp dumplings. They also brought around plates of bright green Chinese broccoli with oyster sauce, and it turned out that Greg and Cat were quite as interested in them as Eric and I were. There was one lonely tofu item later that I ate in addition to the shrimp, and a sesame golf ball, as David has called those things for years. We were joined a little later by joelrosenberg and fgh, which was very pleasant. Joel told a few stories of our early acquaintance.We went home, and while Lydy napped and David packed his suitcase, Eric and I watched a DVD of the Thames Television version of Twelfth Night, directed by Kenneth Branagh, with Frances Barbour as Viola and Christopher Ravenscroft as Orsino, a present to me from
carbonel. Twelfth Night has rather been "our play" since Eric and I saw the BFA Actors do it back in 2003. Raphael and I are particularly fond of the movie with Ben Kingsley as Feste, and I'd watched it with Eric, so that he was fond of it too. I didn't necessarily expect to like this production as much, and I still retain a preference for the movie's Antonio in particular (Nicholas Farrell, wow).But this was a really fine production, in Victorian dress. Eric was very pleased with the way that they brought Fabian onstage in a non-speaking part, dressed I think as a kind of footman, so that he didn't suddenly appear out of nowhere; and, especially, so that he could sing in the drunken scene that first Maria and then Malvolio interrupt with such disastrous consequences, because four-part harmony works better there than three. Feste was a young, haunted, skinny type, but still sardonic; his distaste for the jape with Malvolio was very evident. Sir Andrew was really very pathetic; one laughed at him only gently, and felt very keenly Sir Toby's rejection of him at the end. As in the movie with Nicholas Farrell, they changed the order of the opening scenes and had Viola and the Captain's scene before Orsino's mopery.
Just after the recognition scene, David indicated that he was ready to leave for the airport, a little early so that we would have more light for hiking after we dropped him off. We paused the DVD, drove to the airport, sent David off to California for the last time, at least on Sun's dollar, and went back to Crosby Farm Park.
There was much less snow this time. We headed straight for the river and took the now-dry asphalt path for a while, and happened upon a woodpecker-fest of amazing proportions. We ventured over the leaf-strewn, sandy ground much further than we would have in summer, and saw a lot of nuthatches, as well as downy and hairy woodpeckers on the same tree, for better comparison. Perhaps best of all, we first heard and then saw two pairs of red-bellied woodpeckers, again kindly demonstrating how the male had an entire red head and the female a red patch on the back of her neck. We went close enough to the marsh to hear the electronic trilling of red-winged blackbirds in quantity, but decided that the path was too slushy to go further. After that we tried the sandy path right at the top of the cliffs above the river, and went along it quite dry and happy.
It was a cloudy day, and so getting dark earlier than we'd expected. We looked longingly at Pike Island again, and as we did so, we heard a barred owl call repeatedly, who-cooks-for-you, who-cooks-for-you-all. We took it as a sign, and consulted the map in the car, and went. Eric said that, since it was getting late and I was tired, we would just explore the trailhead. This involved getting into Fort Snelling State Park at the northern end and driving back south until cars are no longer permitted, and then going over a footbridge. Pike Island was not deserted, but there were far fewer people and far less trash than at Crosby Farm Park, possibly because the city park is free, whereas state parks now charge five dollars as a day fee. I don't mind paying it, but the park office was closed and we couldn't find any way of doing so.
In any case, we ended up reading a batch of very sobering informational signs about the Dakota presence in the Minnesota River Valley, and then trudging through mud and slush until we finally slid down a slope to the dry beach. The beach on that side of the river is much stonier than on the Hidden Falls and Crosby Farm Park side. As we were coming back again, Eric noticed that the whole beach was strewn with tiny spiral shells. I'd seen shells just like them along the St. Croix River when Raphael and I had gone to the parks scattered along the Minnesota side. We picked up a handful and noticed that they were exactly the color of the beach as a whole, which is to say, the color of the yellow and pinkish and brown and white rocks that made up the beach.
We trudged back through the slush, talking happily of how we would come back in the spring. We drove to Evergreen for a quick dinner (three-cup tofu, Buddha's Delight, seaweed with garlic and ginger, and pickled lotus root), and then went over to have tea with
elisem. She was in the middle of an online sale, and heaped us with shiny things, sold and soon to be sold. We went upstairs and paid our respects to the cats, and then went home and fell over again. However, we had to rouse ourselves enough to watch the rest of our DVD. There was more left than we'd remembered. We agreed that this Malvolio was the best we'd seen, and that this production intended you to see three leftover characters at the end: Sir Andrew, Antonio, and Feste. Feste ends the play, walking through a garden gate and shutting it behind him, after which he looks back at the audience through the bars of the gate, as Malvolio had looked out of his prison.On Monday it snowed, and the forecast was fairly dire. But the ground was so warm that the first few hours of snow just melted off, so we had lunch with my mother at Pizza Luce. Eric and my mother often enjoy comparing her Unitarian Church's doings with his Friends Meeting's doings, and we also talked about cats, teaching, and food. After she dropped us off and went home before the snow should become serious, we walked over to the Salvation Army for some clothes shopping; came home and got a pizza, again from Pizza Luce; and decided to watch Twelfth Night again, this time with the text, which was a thoroughly delightful proceeding. At various times, Eric shovelled snow twice and I did it once. The snowfall was particularly beautiful in the twilight and after dark.
On Tuesday there were packing and farewells and a trip to the airport through the melting snow, and suddenly after having all three of my sweeties under one roof, I was down to one. I went home in the dazzling day, got reacquainted with the home sweetie, and got back to my revisions.
P.
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Date: 2008-04-06 10:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 04:36 am (UTC)It's all feast or famine around here, I guess. 8-)
P.
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Date: 2008-04-06 10:46 pm (UTC)I need to get out walking in the woods before everything gets overgrown...
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Date: 2008-04-07 04:37 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2008-04-07 12:14 am (UTC)//grins I really liked that. (And the icon!)
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Date: 2008-04-07 04:38 am (UTC)Peg Kerr made me the icon, but I hadn't really twigged to how pretty it was until I used it. I expect it'll be the default until I need the Porlock one again. As you probably know, it's a detail from the cover of Juniper, Gentian, and Rosemary.
P.
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Date: 2008-04-07 04:51 am (UTC)I sort of went "SQUEE!" in an embarrassingly loud manner when I figured that out. Fortunately I was alone in my living room....
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Date: 2008-04-08 03:59 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2008-04-07 01:35 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 04:38 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2008-04-07 01:39 am (UTC)Oh, and have a few of these -- I think you need them: ))))
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Date: 2008-04-07 04:39 am (UTC)You can borrow them back if you like.
P.
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Date: 2008-04-07 01:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 04:41 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2008-04-08 01:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 03:56 pm (UTC)P.
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Date: 2008-04-08 06:38 pm (UTC)They didn't have the cart going around when we were there, the waitress brought us plates of dim sum that we'd ordered from the menu.
Well worth the wait!
Date: 2008-04-07 01:54 am (UTC)Were the tiny spiral shells turretella fossils that came out of nearby rock? http://www.curiogrove.com/shells/shl001.htm (they come in all sizes)
Or were they some freshwater gastropod do you think?
like? http://naturalresources.nsw.gov.au/water/wetlands_facts_molluscs.shtml
Re: Well worth the wait!
Date: 2008-04-07 04:59 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2008-04-07 03:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-07 04:59 am (UTC)P.
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Date: 2008-04-07 10:55 pm (UTC)thank you for the write-up! and good luck with your revisions (since i also read your other post).
*hugs for encouragement*
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Date: 2008-04-08 03:58 pm (UTC)Thanks for the good wishes!
P.
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Date: 2008-04-08 01:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-04-08 03:13 pm (UTC)Which was quite fun, actually.
B
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Date: 2008-04-08 03:57 pm (UTC)Seriously, we were just wiped out. We'd probably have just nodded off at the table.
P.
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Date: 2008-04-08 04:39 pm (UTC)The ridge trail that takes you to the bog is man-made and covers the water main that brings all the water from the purification plant into South Minneapolis. In the bog, you see what looks like half-submerged electrical boxes and those are there to discharge the current caused by the current. (I don't know exactly how come the water generates electricity, but a senior staff person from the Parks department [the person in charge of buckthorn removal in the bog] told me this, so I believe it is true.)
There's peepers in the pond on the east side of the trail. Lots of them, in the right weeks of spring.
K.