The Bourgeois Life

It's been two years since I had this blog. Never told friends or family about it. It's just there. But what really is it about? It's hard writing about things when you exclude work, neighbors, family and friends. After all, these are the daily material of our lives. But early on, I decided to write about my life outside of work. So, although I find my part time job very stimulating - it's useful, not just a part-time vanity job - and although I like most of my neighbors and family and all of my friends, they are off-limits to this blog too, except in a very general way.
Of the things that remain, I find myself reflecting mainly on my lifestyle. And living here in Southwestern Connecticut, it's all about real estate, the price of gas, and the activities at school. Once in a while I go into the city and look wistfully at the could-have-been me me as she joins her friends for an evening of fun. The alternative me wears snazzy clothes, preposterous high heels and looks, I have to admit it, very fetching. Then, after a dizzy evening of socializing, my substitute self deflates her spirits, puts herself onto a late evening Metro North train and returns to her bourgeois life in the suburbs.

Edible Forest Gardens

The magnolias are done swooning on my lawn, their fat pink opulence already becoming this year's spring memory. There are the usual forsythias, the dogwoods are still a tender, tiny white and pink glow. It's springtime, folks, and summer is just around the corner. K. is outside planting his "edible forest garden." He hated gardening (or so he claims) until this past year when he read a book called Edible Forest Gardens by Dave Jacke (with Eric Toensmeier) and now he has gone absolutely crazy, planting pear trees and plum trees, blueberry bushes and hazelnut trees (bushes?). I, who never could tell a zinnia from a dahlia, have also been infected but my enthusiasm is more muted. My energy is directed at keeping something pretty and flowery around the yard. I chose a ground cover of strawberries and goldenstar and hopefully that will be attractive to look at. To this K. added wintergreen which, so I am told, has edible berries.

In the backyard, I have become an expert chipper. While K. digs up the pesky bushes that we can't eat (and the deer won't eat either), I use our new machine to grind all of them into chips to be composted into topsoil. Farmer K. contemplates his soon-to-be edible yard with a beatific smile. I am less entranced, thinking of all the deer that will now show up. In any case, I'm more of an indoors-type. Prefer polishing the newly-installed shelves in my office so that I can finally start work. Or maybe I'll just surf the internet a little while longer...