In about three weeks, I’ll see my husband. I have yet to make the plane reservation but I’m planning on traveling sometime during the first few days of July. His show closes July 9th. Then, on the 10th, we’ll start out on our trip home.
And in the ‘we’re never home at the same time’ category, I found out that my next show at Hartford Stage starts rehearsals on August 11th. Sigh. I guess we’ll have about three weeks together here at the cottage. I’m, as always, grateful for the work, but not so entranced by another separation.
Taken about 6:30 this morning, as I was trying to get a good picture of the Catalpa blossoms:
The blossoms are everywhere. Since we’re due for rain on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, I fear they won’t be with us much longer. The scent is wonderful. As I do my work outside, it hovers in the air. Beautiful.
Roses and roses and roses.
Each stage of the unfurling is beautiful. If I had the time, I’d park myself on a bench and take pictures throughout the day, capturing all the changes.
I mowed the front of the property yesterday. It was a beautiful day; low eighties with no humidity and sunny. Today, the corral and the back forty and I’ll be good to go for another week. Life seems to consist of checking the weather forecast and calculating when I will be able to mow.
Next week, I will be in Manhattan on Tuesday and Wednesday to do a little checking in on Anastasia and to work with a couple of the actors. Working with the actors is always a pleasure and seeing the show again will be lovely.
Do you ever find yourself wanting to say “I warned you” or “I told you so” when talking about the current state of things in the Oval Office? I do. (I’m only human.) There were so many warnings from so many people about what would most likely happen if he was elected. And it’s all coming true with an extra dollop of corruption, collusion and greed.
Those of us who live in or near NYC were on to him years ago. His corruption was well known – there’s a reason New Yorkers didn’t vote for him. As you know, I wrote about him over the course of four or five posts and certain readers were angry about that and stopped reading the blog.
He’ll be a less than one-term President. Let’s hope that happens sooner rather than later. There is too much at stake.
The shootings that happened yesterday – in Virginia and San Francisco – were tragic. My thoughts are with everyone involved. Violence and guns are never the answer to any problem.
Peace.
Happy Thursday.
Your roses are so beautiful. My roses are finished :(. Concerning the oval office, been the longest six months and I voted for him. I am tired from all the shenanigans that is going on there. (Hope this doesn’t mean you will block me from your blog knowing how you feel about him.)
Of course I wouldn’t do that! No one has ever been blocked. They’ve left of their own accord, but no one has ever been blocked.
Only hackers get blocked, Trina!
In fact, you get extra points for honesty!
Edited to add: I did block someone who was trolling the blog and only coming here to harass me. But even then, I warned her first. She kept doing it and she was blocked.
Just wanted to say thank you. I got unfriended by someone who I thought was a friend. That still stings a little and it is because I disagreed with her. I really do enjoy your blog. Your world is so different from mine. And it is fascinating.
Thank you, Trina. I’m so glad you’re here.
I forgot: I did block someone who was trolling the blog at one point. Only coming here to harass me. But that is the only time I’ve had to do that and I warned her first.
Well, Claudia, its about time you and Don reunite! It’s his turn to mow! Seriously, I’m glad you’ll have a leisurely drive retuning home together. It certainly won’t be a quiet or dull cross-country trip, as you both have so much to share with each other. I’m tired of what’s going everywhere, period. And there’s no honorable leadership coming from the White House that I can trust.
I know – we’re really looking forward to all that time on the road together. Just what we need.
Your roses are so beautiful.
You echo what I have been saying for forever…when we lived on the East Coast, Trump was really somewhat of a joke, I think; a caricature. The bankruptcies, the unbecoming feud with Rosie O’Donnell (which certainly foreshadowed his other behavior). I have always enjoyed watching the news but every single day, it is something else. Today it is Mueller and his investigation…
I now expect to see at least 2 or 3 new revelations a day!
glad that you can take a little break from mowing – and especially that you and don will get to be together soon (and you can see the shows)!
and the road trip home sounds wonderful; enjoy!!!
if you are anywhere near des moines/iowa, i would be glad to take you and don out to dinner!
and yes, peace …
kathy in iowa
Thank you Kathy. I have no idea what our route will be – I expect we’ll firm that up when I get there. xo
Aren’t roses just beautiful? Good plan to see your husband. :-)
Roses are amazing and these newer bushes seem to be disease-resistant.
Your catalpa tree and roses are beautiful! I used to grow roses…til the deer made them their daily dinner option. So I appreciate your pics ever so much.
As far as #45 goes….gardening is my distraction from all the ‘carrying ons’. Frankly, I hope yesterday’s Virginia shooting will pave the way for some more cordial discussions between the parties….and lead to some positive changes. We had interesting discussions about British politics while we were away….they are dealing with many issues there, too. Politics seems to be the topic of the day, no matter your location.
I know you are happy for the work…but your schedules this year seem to be unusually spaced. Your trip across country will be fantastic I predict! Happy mowing! ;)
I hope so, too. And I think it will for some but will make not one whit of difference for others.
I remember one year – maybe 5 or 6 years ago – where Don and I were apart for a total of 7 out of 12 months. Yikes.
So glad you are going to get to see Don. Will you get to see the show? And then have each other home if only for a few weeks. Great news.
Photos are gorgeous!
Judy
Yes, I’ll get to see the show. I’m really looking forward to it! Much love, my friend.
I am glad to see that things are finally being seriously investigated. It is overwhelming to think of how broad this corruption may be! How has all of this happened? It causes me to lie awake at night. I am heartened by the many many younger people getting involved in community service and politics. The younger generations make me hopeful for a better day and a more just country for all.
Yes, I am, too. So many young people – the millennials I guess – are becoming very active. They won’t stand for this and they just might save us.
Your roses are beautiful!!
I had to stop watching all of it because my health went south and I strongly believe it was due to the stress of election and resulting happenings.
Take care of yourself. It’s best to balance what you hear and read and your health is the more important. Things will move along whether you watch it or not.
Thanks Claudia.
I’ve been enjoying the nice weather, gardening, decorating my balcony, spending time on my balcony, and trying to avoid it all. I still keep informed but on a limited basis.
Enjoy, Chris.
Hi Claudia, thank you for sharing the photos of the catalpa trees. I grew up with two of them and find them so beautiful! I understand fully your appreciation of the fragrance, there is nothing like it. I know my Mum would get frustrated because we kids would track in the flowers on our bare feet into the house. They seem to stick everywhere.
Your roses are stunning, just beautiful.
I am Canadian so really have no right to comment about Trump but what the heck were people thinking??? It has gotten to the point I just don’t listen to the news expect first thing in the morning. I quickly find out what the “Orange Horror” has done in the last 24 hours and move on. Sorry, blathering on but it boggles my mind how intelligent people even voted for him.
Have a good day!
You have every right to comment as we are your neighbors and what we do also has impact on your country. I have no idea what people were thinking. My country seems like a foreign land to me right now. There is a lot of willful ignorance and people like Trump know how to exploit the fears of a segment of the population.
That circus in DC just makes me so mad! (So sorry for demeaning the real Circus.) I have to try to put it out of my mind or I would explode.
It will be a great cross-country trip, for sure…something positive to look forward to.
I have to go out and mow the lawn or weed or something to get my mind off it!
Oh, and that rosebud that is spiralling open like a nautilus shell…
Beautiful, right?
Our neighbor’s catalpa tree is in full bloom right now, too. We had a pretty hardy rain storm yesterday afternoon and our yard and the street were pretty much covered in the white flowers. So pretty!! AND, since it rained, I didn’t have to water!! Also, my moon flower opened yesterday. Just beautiful!!!!
I was heartened by the attempts made by Congress yesterday to try and explain that they have friendships across the aisles, but they also disagree on things they work on ~ but they don’t hate them. Then the idiot in chief starts tweeting about stupid and bad people and it falls in around their ankles. They should take that d@#^ phone away from him to stop the stupid tweeting and stick him in a cage like a bird. A Do-Do bird.
Our humidity hasn’t broken yet. Looks like Sunday will be the day!! Can’t wait. Hope you have a grand Thursday, and happy happy trip planning!
Gosh how is your moonflower open already? My vines just broke through the ground about a week ago.
I will admit….. I “cheated”. I bought 2 starter plants at the Amish farm. They were tiny, but have flourished. They are just gorgeous.
Ah, I planted mine from seed.
That catalpa tree is gorgeous…and so big..I wish I could smell it!…your roses remind me of the dozens and dozens and dozens of rose bushes my son’s Grandma had in her backyard when he was a kid…all different colors and sizes…She had a climbing rose that was so amazing..it climbed up the side of the house and across the balcony…so beautiful!…After she died the house was sold and all of the roses were taken out….heartbreaking….As far as DT I don’t mind saying it at all after the rudeness and ignorance shown by so many of his followers….I told you so!
Oh, I would have cried seeing those roses being taken out – what were they thinking?
I agree. I’m happy to say “I told you so!”
Same thing with my parents. Their long-time neighbor moved; beautiful roses, pride of the homeowner, all across the front of the house; gorgeous flowers and many unique varieties. New person moved in and immediately massacred every rosebush; took it down to the bare dirt. The new homeowner said, “Oh, I hate roses.” How can anybody hate roses? And then they didn’t replant with anything else.
We have new neighbors on the one side of us and not much vegetation/landscaping was left because the previous homeowner was elderly and her relatives didn’t lift a finger to do anything. One plant remained, on a trellis; pretty purple thing against a fence. These new people have only mowed their lawn ONCE since moving in over two months ago…they semi-stripped the hillside weeks ago and left all the brush rotting and drying up in piles on the slope, the job half-finished; they seem to have no interest in going any further with it…but what was one of the first things they did? They ripped out that purple plant on the trellis. It’s just another dirt hole now.
Other people moved in down the street where a home was beautifully landscaped by a flipper; the prettiest red and white flowers all up against the house, new plantings. They, too, never mow, and all those beautiful flowering red & white plants are dead. It’s younger people in all these cases and I can never figure it out. They pay big prices for these homes (California real estate ain’t cheap, even for dumpy houses) but don’t seem to have any pride of ownership.
We’ve noticed that these young families don’t spend any time outdoors (which is why I guess they don’t do yard work); the kids don’t play outside in the front yards or the backyards. (It makes you wonder what the kids do for physical activity.) They all seem to only live life inside their homes so that’s where the emphasis is for them. They drive in, go inside, shut the door and you never see them again unless they’re getting in and out of cars in the driveway. But this is California, the weather is considered enviable for outdoor living most of the year…so, it’s kind of a mystery. We’ve reverted to a family neighborhood (cycling from elderly people to young families again) and there are a ton of kids but, most of the time, you see few of them. They don’t seem to ride bikes, nobody skates or plays ball, never see them jump rope or build forts or anything. No interaction with other kids on the block either. Don’t kids play anymore, or do they just spend all their time in front of a computer screen? How do they burn off all that energy? Maybe they do stuff away from home; maybe their parents take them to a soccer field and they do team sports.
Maybe I’m just out of the loop but it seems like such a different day from when a lot of us baby boomers were growing up and some people didn’t even have a television yet, so kids had to find ways to entertain themselves, like playing in the sprinklers on a hot summer day, card games and board games, hopscotch on the sidewalk, hide ‘n seek, tricycles and wagons, musical chairs, kick the can, statue maker, badminton, croquet, ping pong, kites, paper airplanes…kids just running around, being loud, in the air and the sun and the wind in their ears…
growing up as a military brat and then wife, I have done several cross country trips and they can be quite relaxing. Hope the weather is good and you see all the beauties of our country. And hopefully, it will be minus DT in the news.
I’ve done it once, when we moved out east, but we had a truck, a car and two dogs, so it wasn’t all that relaxing. Looking forward to this one!
That’s the only way I’ve driven cross-country (somewhat cross-country, Gulf Coast to West Coast, going and coming [relocating/moving]). It’s a zoo, totally, with animals and vehicles stuffed to the gills. Not a vacation!
I’m selfishly hoping so much that you can share a little of the trip with us, Claudia (if it doesn’t invade your personal time with Don too much). I always love to see other parts of the country I’ve never visited, and you have a good eye for things! Do you have any one place in particular that you’re really not wanting to miss, on the way back East?
The Grand Canyon. I’ve never seen it. Hopefully, we can do that. I think we’ll sit down and put together a wish list and see what we come up with.
I will share. I might not post every day (like when we went to Florida) but I’m taking my laptop and I’ll be posting on the blog and IG.
Goody! Love that you’ll share. You two are going to have such fun.
Those roses are beautiful. I love tea roses especially.
Marilyn
Thank you, Marilyn!
Your roses are lovely. We have red roses and white ones.
Marilyn
I wish I had some white roses – they’re so pretty.
Pondering everything you’ve said. So glad you’ll see Don soon. I guess it’ll be his time to hang out and recharge at the cottage for awhile but I-so-know what it is, about not turning your back on the work.
I’ve had a harrowing few days myself although I’ve tried to catch up with world news along the way. I woke up Monday to a symptom which was my greatest fear, which could indicate a return of my cancer. Not to mention, nearly-unbearable ab pain. Thus began hours on end (via phone), trying to get priority referrals/stat to my oncologist; slow wheels of HMO although, I must say, everybody came through for me this week. While waiting, I kept another long-standing medical appointment (located at a big hospital/clinic complex) on Tues., the next day (I’ll synopsize), that doctor took one look at me and said, ‘We’re wheeling you to the ER.” So, this, in another city and another hospital, different from when I was just in one about two weeks ago for the car accident; and so, here we go again, in the ER from 9am to 5pm while they ruled out this, ruled out that, and was I going to be admitted into the hospital or not, and so on and so on. I can’t believe it, but I had to have ANOTHER ct/cat scan. So, I’ve now had 6 in the past 9 months which is ‘way too much radiation but there was simply nothing I could do about it. They’re not entirely sure yet, but it’s looking like I suffered an internal injury that took some days to reveal itself; possibly the lap portion of the seat belt/harness in the car when I pitched forward (and the seat belt did its job) from the massive hit from the rear (the hit&run driver).
We’re talking about internal bleeding here and I’ve heard of such things but never thought it would happen to me; I always think I’m the exception, not the rule. Saw yet another specialist this morning and he gave me the all-clear on a few things, but I see another doctor and yet another over the next two weeks to make sure I’m ‘repaired’ 100%. I’ve spent the past four days with a lot of inner terror so I’m exhausted, but I had wonderful people caring for me and my husband has been stalwart; I’ve never loved him more. The irony is that I was supposed to start my physical therapy this week for my neck injury from the accident but that certainly all fell to the wayside with this bigger threat. I sure hope I can get my life back on track soon.
I kept thinking about Rep. Steve Scalise and how I guess the doctor on-scene knew things were really bad when they couldn’t find an exit for the bullet. Not comparing what happened to me to this at all—he’s critical—but it made me think about what damage that bullet did as it ripped through him, with these sensitive internal organs we all have; bones, muscles, nerves, too. I don’t know anything about Steve Scalise but it just makes you weep inside to think how badly he must be suffering and, of course, how injuries like this will probably/likely bother him for the rest of his life, even with all the expertise of the physicians/surgeons. So sad that the lobbyist Matt Mika is also so severely wounded. The whole thing is just so tragic and sobering.
I was very caught up in the news events of Rep. Gabby Giffords when she was shot; I had extended family living in Tucson at the time and followed her journey back from that devastating injury. My mom had a stroke around the same time and I could see parallels in her rehab to what Gabby Giffords was going through, in terms of loss of speech, etc., and the tremendous climb back up, to even be able to form words and sentences again; Gabby was our heroine, and I’d say to Mom, “If Gabby can do this, you can, too, Mom!” and, yes, rehab for my mother was remarkable; she made a lot of good strides (she was twice Gabby’s age).
Anyway, this incident at the baseball diamond has just left me feeling so somber inside and, of course, we’re all feeling such a mix of emotions about it, because this is our country and most of us are good people who feel so bad for those brave souls stricken…them, their families; the stress must be unimaginable and I’d imagine a lot of those Democratic/Republican baseball players are going to need more than that charity game to get them through the next weeks and months; post-traumatic stress would be completely understandable in them.
Oh Vicki! It’s one scary thing after another! It sounds, from what you’ve said, that it isn’t what you feared but something from the accident. Take care of yourself. Rest. I’m glad you have those around you who are watching out for you.
That we’ve come to this – a country where the rhetoric is so inflamed, where people who were running from office have withdrawn because of death threats, where someone can turn up at a baseball practice and shoot public servants…it’s very frightening.
Thanks. Yeah, I was just trying not to deliver ‘too much information’ or be too graphic so I know I sound a little vague. My tests and scans are still being evaluated but it’s indeed looking like internal trauma from the auto accident. Who knew? Never entered my mind. The air bag didn’t deploy; I never thought the seat belt dug into me that hard at the abdomen although it sure hurt me across the chest. I was so sore across the chest in the days following the wreck. At first I couldn’t figure out why I was hurting there and my doctor just looked at me and said, “Vicki, it was the seat belt; it goes rigid and you slammed against it.” I’m better today than I was the past three days; I’ll just be staying off my feet for the next few; need to mend. I’ve long since learned that doctors sometimes have to make a best-guess. They don’t always know why things happen to a patient. They use all the tests and knowledge they can but sometimes they don’t know. It’s a lot of process of elimination. The body is complex and everybody’s different. But the body and brain have amazing resilience, which is why those injured lawmakers will be in my prayers tonight. If they were healthy enough to be practicing their game every weekday morning, getting physical, getting exercise, then perhaps their bodies are fairly strong for the fight to get well.
xoxo
Dear Claudia, I would Love to Have you as my guests! Dinner, and I have a guest room.
If you have a couple of hours I could show you So many cool things.Like where we still have big bunches of Wild Horses, Or(The Utah State EOC) Maybe a wide open Opal mine, just walk out,pick up a chunk of Granite studed with Opals. Trilabites fossilised right into shell remnanets of the Ancient Sea, a bed of several square miles of Geodes just thrown around , like someone throwing corn to chickens. I could go on and on!
oh wait I already did. I do hope you will consider making Salt Lake City a stop on your way home. XOXO-Judy A
Oh, you are so sweet! If we decide to head that way, I’ll let you know, my friend.
(I love geodes!)