Last night.
This morning. The David phlox are blooming. They have a pretty heavenly scent.
We’re definitely at peak garden level. After this, everything will start to fade away. Slowly, but it will happen. That makes me feel sad. It goes so quickly, doesn’t it? And once I hit August, I’m less apt to weed or clean out the beds.
I start work on one show in August and another in September, so my gardening time will be limited. The second production is a musical version of A Man of No Importance. It was originally a movie, starring the great Albert Finney and it’s one of my favorites. It’s being done at Classic Stage in NYC and will star Jim Parsons – which is why I’m a part of it. He recommended me and after some negotiations, I think all is set to go. I’ve zoomed with the Director, chatted with the new Artistic Director and done some research. Their budget is limited, so my days of work will also be limited. In the ‘small world’ category, the music and lyrics are by Lynn Ahrens and Steven Flaherty who wrote the glorious music for Anastasia. So, Jane Eyre in August and into the beginning of September, and A Man of No Importance in September and October.
Finished tree puzzle. This one was difficult, but it’s so beautiful that it was worth it.
Stay safe.
Happy Tuesday.
congratulations on the upcoming work! your friendship with and recommendation by jim parsons are sweet, but it’s your skills that get you to those jobs. :)
beautiful sky, trees, flowers and photos! thanks for sharing.
that puzzle does look difficult … and worth it.
we had nice weather yesterday … about 77 degrees, clouds from time to time blocked the sun, hardly any breeze … lovely! now it’s supposed to turn hot again with low (10%) or no chances of rain for the next week. when it gets hot, i don’t feel like doing much (i function much better in cooler temperatures). good thing there’s not a lot that i “have to” do. :)
hope you are all have a good day ahead. stay safe and comfy.
kathy
I cannot deal with the heat/humidity. I feel like my brain is foggy and I have no energy! Today, on the other hand, there is no humidity and we just finished mowing the front yard. Felt good to get out there and DO something!
Stay safe, Kathy.
Congrats on the work! You must be pleased to be working with Jim Parsons again.
The whole year has flown by for me, altho, to be honest, they usually do. I am happy that the weather is cooling off a bit this week. I am not a fan of the heat!
Stay safe!
It’s gone by surprisingly quickly given that we’ve been fairly sedentary.
The heat is back with us next week.
Stay safe, Ellen.
Congratulations on the new work. I hope NYC will be beautiful and comfortable by August and into October. It must be such an ease of worries to know you have work for the next months.
We’re sweltering through another 100+ day today but are looking forward to tomorrow’s prediction of 98 degrees. It’s amazing how much easier 98 is than 107, which we hit about a week ago. Our lawn is brown because I refuse to water it enough to keep it green here in the part of Texas where water resources will one day be scarce. We ask ourselves weekly why we’re still here, but the reasons are multiple: to add our voices and votes to others’ and five people aged 12-21: J, C, E, V, and J, our five grandchildren, four of which are girls or young women living in a state where their rights are abridged.
Well, yes. I work. But it pays very little, so it doesn’t really ease our money worries. But I am grateful for it, nonetheless! Glad that people still want me.
I know it’s hard for you to stay in TX, but bless you for it. Texas needs your votes, Linda.
Stay safe.
What a beautiful puzzle! So glad you will have some time coming with work. I think working in the theater would be wonderful, but then I tell myself work is work. I think speed skating looks like good exercise and would be fun, but I bet it also would just turn into exercise and I would want earbuds to listen to music. Funny how other people’s work looks like fun. I think I am beginning to ramble. Going to be a hot one today and I don’t like the heat, so just trying to stay positive here. Indulge me please.
I don’t like the heat one bit. Especially humidity – my brain feels foggy.
Stay safe, Tana.
Your work sounds so interesting…and unique! And that tree puzzle is incredible, it has a peaceful quality to it, even though it’s busy…by far my favorite!
Isn’t it beautiful? Glad you like it, Barrie.
Stay safe.
That puzzle is stunning! I’m happy you have some work to look forward to. Enjoy the garden while you can. The heat is already hurting the plants here.
I was watering – buckets full – every morning during the heat wave. I’ll be doing it again next week when we hit the 90s every day.
Stay safe, Linda.
Lovely puzzle and great work plans. I amworking on syllabus for Senior English for last granddaughter who is home schooled…my daughter does the most detailed lesson plans…third grand girl…one working Nyc graduated Purdue…one graduates college in May and this one…also working on lessons for two little boys for when they get back from three weeks camping and staying lodges in mountains…we work in the summer and after school…they also have two Spanish tutors…they are going to be in second and fifth grades…finished tutoring the little boy on West Coast…they want me to tutor a cousin, but I am taking a couple weeks break…will see if I decide…love.y family…if I were in my home state…if Covid was over…I would sub in classroom…Covid hit my family……
It mine, too. Little Z has it.
Stay safe, Brenda.
Congratulations on exciting work news. Both productions sound good and it will help having the income this fall as who knows what winter will bring. After the past two years, I count nothing out! And you’ll get to work with Jim again, which I know will be a joy for you. (And a musical!)
Love that puzzle but it looks like a bear to do! Well worth it.
A very, very modest amount of income. These theaters barely have a budget for a vocal coach. Let me put it this way, The two jobs combined are not even close to the amount I earned per day for the movie.
I love Jim (frankly, I didn’t know he could sing!) and Mary Beth Peil is also in it and I worked with her on Anastasia. I love her.
Stay safe, Jeanie.
Sometimes, something is better than nothing — especially when you can work with people you love.
Oh, yes. Otherwise I wouldn’t be coaching! It truly doesn’t pay much, but the experience and people make it all worthwhile.
Oh my goodness, I love that puzzle!! Can you share the details on it, I have to do that one!! Your yard looks beautiful!
It’s called: Around the World in 50 Trees, published by Laurence King. You can get in on Amazon.
It’s truly beautiful, Jen!
Stay safe.
Greetings from Sarajevo, Bosnia&Herzegovina. I am regular reader but this could be my first comment, I think… Thank you for leting us be part of your life via this blog, it is so nice see your beautiful garden, your amazing doll houses, your great puzzles. And to envy you for your gorgeous husband :-D
I didn’t catch up…what do you do with puzzles, once you finish it?
Have a great summer, and congratulation for your jobs in next period.
Sabina
Thank you, Sabina! It’s great to hear from you. I’m so glad you commented.
I take the puzzles apart and donate them to a local charity. They resell them at a deep discount to senior citizens on a fixed income.
Please comment again (when you feel like it!)
Stay safe.
That puzzle is amazing! I would have to frame that one. We did not get the rain like we expected, so, yes, I am outside watering again. I look forward to October which is our peak gardening month and I am not watering every day.
Sounds like you will have interesting work again. Happy for you. Take care!
I’ll be watering again next week when we’re back in the 90s. Sigh.
We finally got rain the other day, but before that, every time we were supposed to have a storm, it would somehow miss us.
Stay safe, Deb. How is your mother-in-law doing?
Believe it or not she is still hanging in there. We don’t know how because she has stopped eating, is just skin and bones and I don’t think she recognizes anybody. We are praying she does not have to suffer anymore. Thank you so much for asking. It means a lot to me.
I’m thinking of you and your family, Deb. xo
Wow, that looks like a difficult puzzle; it’s so intricate.
Congrats to you for having some employment lined up in the coming 90-day period! I’ve heard that spring and fall in New York City is just the best; scenic; so much color in the many municipal parks, especially Central Park; the reds and golds of the turning leaves; gosh would I love to see that! I hope you can travel from home in good weather; no snow yet in October. And it’s good that the work away from home starts just when you wouldn’t be doing so much intense gardening at the cottage anyway. You’ve probably seen the best of it at this point, although I know you love your yard/property in all seasons.
From where I sit out West, I do feel that your East Coast/NY spring-summers are all too short although glorious; it seems winter likes to set in and grab on for you and Don; but, oh, delish autumn, and I hope you’ll be home enough to enjoy it.
Really happy that you got these jobs! An infusion of money/income is always welcome in these ‘senior’ years. It’s gotta be gratifying, too, to know that your skills and long-time experience are needed and valued. I was reading again (we all know this!), about how to have a balanced life, that it’s so important and healthy to do work you enjoy, sometimes even more so if it’s a part of something bigger (the ensemble idea, everybody working toward a goal and each contributing; very satisfying).
I’m writing this after 10am PST and we’re encased in deep marine layer/fog (which won’t last much longer this morning; it burns off, then we steam), and it does make us humid but I’m so grateful to have no sun yet, so that we get a little-bit xtra time without so much heat.
Just so sad that the weather experts are saying California, from here, is likely going to have deadly fires again this year (rest of the year; is really just our consistent norm now); I cry for the area around Yosemite Nat’l Park; it’s so beautiful; so many trees getting torched.
Of course the whole nation is hot right now (the world!) but it’s unsettling to know I’m living in a state where really nobody would want to live, not with our looming/present water crisis, each year of us getting hotter and hotter (I’ve seen the NOAA maps; it’s reality, and frightening of how the increasing temps have been tracked now [ over the decades since I was born]); the devastating fires.
I was talking to a guy last week whose brother had a lovely ‘view’ home just here in our coastal hills in the southern part of the state; lost his home in the 2017-18 fires after owning the house for 35 years. This is just a conventional bunch of neighborhood tracts slightly above the city, and some of the homes have been there a lot longer, like even back to the earliest 1900s. Can’t rebuild because no one will insure him now; I face this each year myself (in the last five years), as to whether or not I can get property insurance renewed on my own little house; my insurance broker has lost hair on his head over it. Many carriers will not even consider my town; and I’m on the valley floor, out of the foothills now, but it makes no diff; we’re all considered a risk.
What will probably happen is that we’ll be able to get insurance, but will have to pay thru the nose for it, and that’s hard for anybody, but especially old(er) people on a fixed income who are trying to have LOWER expenses, not higher. Everything comes at a price, doesn’t it!
Just saw a news story about Lake Mead, which is drying up. It’s truly shocking. It’s a huge source of water.
And we got a notice that our storage facility is raising our monthly payment by $40. It’s truly a crime. So our mission is to get everything out of there by the time the rent goes up. NO MORE.
xo
What IS it with these annual and precisely $40 increases? I am enduring the SAME THING, two years in a row! They’ve got us by the you-know-whats because who can react that quickly to empty the thing?
Whenever I complain, they say “it’s in line with the market value.”
It’s less about the money than the experience. Coaching pays very little. And when the budgets of regional theaters are tight, it’s a real strain for them. I try to be as flexible as possible, but the money? Ridiculously low. However, I like the work, I like the people and I like knowing people still want to work with me. So it all evens out in the end.
Traveling won’t be a problem – this show will be open before there’s a hint of winter. New York will be beautiful, but I’ll just see it in passing as I usually have a bus/train to catch.
Thanks, Vicki.
Stay safe.
Well, let’s just say I’m looking forward to your ‘fall’ posts because of the exciting experiences you’re having in Aug-Sept-Oct!
An aside/unrelated observation: I was so sad to read earlier today that Tony Dow of Leave It To Beaver fame of the late-1950s/early-1960s (Leave It To Beaver being a TV series no baby-boomer kid didn’t watch) had died (cancer). He was Wally, the older Cleaver brother; with the friend Eddie in the show. Tony Dow became a teen heart-throb.
It stayed with me (feeling wistful, too, for what seemed like simpler times) for several hours although I know our ‘icons’ are going to start passing more and more as we’re all at ‘that age’ now. But then, later in the day, I came across an online USA Today article saying that the report of his death was premature, and he was alive but in hospice.
I just feel this was so disrespectful for his family and him, to report on his death before he’s even dead. Made me annoyed and somewhat disturbed. I don’t know how that kind of thing happens, but somebody needs to get their facts straight. Sounds like confusion between Tony Dow’s family and his management team, but somebody jumped the gun.
I had to think of using an old idiom/expression like ‘jump the gun’, like where do I pick up these things, because I don’t want to use the word ‘gun’ in anything. But I looked it up and I guess it’s okay, because it means, in a ‘literal’ sense, ‘to start running a race before the starting signal has sounded’.
xo
xo
xo
Your blog is the only one of my favorites that is still posting, so I say thank you. And congratulations on the work, hope you enjoy it.
Thank you so much, Jan!
Stay safe.
Glad you have work- every little bit of money can help in this economy
Everything is going up, especially difficult for retired people.
Maintaining a home is very expensive
Yes, indeed.
Stay safe, Linda.