While the eastern states have been getting hit with
incredibly bad weather all this year, Denver
has been breaking or matching high heat records that make trees wilt. Old sol
decided to give us a brief break at the beginning of this month- particularly
around my birthday in the first full week- but it’s been back to 90 + days for
about three weeks and only broke today with primarily 60 degrees. Our high
today was 72. I’m looking forward to winter about now. Phew! I was ready for a
break!
Meanwhile, I’m
dealing with an early grape harvest- the earliest I’ve ever known since
Mom grafted a piece of Grandpa Walters vine from the old country in the yard.
That comprises one large section of prize-winning grapes from Burgundy which stretches across 100 feet of
fence line and I’ve already grabbed a sizeable enough batch of those for myself
to make a gallon of juice! It is great tasting, full-bodied and sweet as can be
without a single granule of added sugar! Concorde grapes like these are loaded
with antioxidants and give you energy along with improving vision! The other 75
feet of vines are newer additions added more than a decade and a half past. If
you happen to be lucky enough to live in the Athmar
Park section of Denver you can mosey on over here and get
some for yourself. Just make sure you call me first to let me know you’re
coming. Bring a raccoon trap with you and I’ll give you a gallon of juice free.
No kidding. Wascally wacoon!
Top agenda for me
this summer was finally getting my hair done and needed it badly when I had it
done on my birthday. I don’t know how anyone else feels about it but getting my
hair overhauled gives me a new lease on life. It’s right up there with teeth
whitening, a new handbag, new car or a whole new wardrobe! For others it may be
getting a full set of nails after having them off for a long period of time but
for me, that’s business as usual, of course. It’s one of the constant perks of
being the best nail tech on the planet, if I have to say so myself. It speaks
volumes that I wouldn’t consider getting my nails done by anyone else unless
I’m out of town or in another country. Pedicures are another matter. When you
have to massage your own feet something gets lost in translation.
At any rate, I’m
up to my elbows in too much to do, once again. Sometimes that’s great but along
with the heat I’ve lost momentum and back in the proverbial molasses trying to
paddle my way out. Before this week’s up I’m going to have all the invasive,
dead or out and out tree stumps removed from my yard to make way for some
changes and brand new additions to the yards. I want to do a small kitchen
garden next year and I need bare and fallow ground for that! I tore out weeds
this year as tall as myself all over my property and I’m still bagging them!
This is no joke. Last May all my free ground was bare except for soil and it is
once again but I’m going to have to figure out a way to protect whatever I
plant. Those flower bed carpets don’t work, by the way. Just a warning!
Survival of this
summer has entailed trying to figure out how to get a bunch of reading done so
that I can get on with my castle writing. I feel stalled when, as a matter of
fact, I’m really just trying to fit too much into a day and that never works,
you know. There are only so many hours in a day and reading
used to be the bulk of it. Now I have to try to read and peruse books like Windsor Castle: A Thousand Years of a Royal
Palace (which is 526 pages of text,
diagrams, photos and paintings the castle contains along with magnificent
trifold page maps of the upper and lower wards) in a matter of days with one
hour left per day to actually sit down with it. All I can say is that hour is
golden and wouldn’t give it up for anything. Finally, a book that does justice
to a Norman castle!
I think
I’ll hire someone to pick those grapes. How does a dollar per pound picked
sound? Like Peter Piper picked a peck of grapes? I thought so.
The Castle Lady
