Tuesday

Ran over to Quest at Von's for my blood test at 7:10 and was home before 8:00. Had breakfast, then met Suzanne outside and off we went to WinCo. I got a bunch of heavy stuff I would have had a hard time transporting otherwise, including onions, tomatoes, oatmeal, acorn squash, and so on, all in large sizes.*

Home after 11:00 and putzed around until lunch. After, I tackled the four pounds of onions I had bought and using my trusty Chop Wizard and julienne device, chopped some and julienned the rest. I then cored, seasoned, and roasted four big apples,  and separated them for the freezer. 

Jim picked me up at 6:00 and off we went to the Dudley House potluck. As ever, it was enjoyable, although ever since COVID, it wasn't as heavily attended as it had been in earlier years. The speaker was Stacy H., who addressed us from the year 1915. She was impersonating the daughter of Theodosia Shephard, a well-known Ventura gardener of the late 1800s:

On the way home, I invited Jim for lunch on Saturday. I've been feeling a little guilty (guilt's my middle name), as I haven't had him over lately. I'll just have something simple, and maybe serve the roasted apples for dessert. Didn't get home until after 8:00.

*Literary Note: Suzanne and I often share what we're reading--she likes "historical fiction," which I intensely dislike and I noted I'm reading what I think of as Ira Gershwin's literary bio. I'm a musical illiterate, but love the lyric  part of songs and this is fascinating, as it goes deeply into the structure of some of his lyrics. We then talked about other writers and I was surprised to learn she had never heard of Vladimir Nabokov--good grief, he was a literary giant, also one of my favorite authors of all time. His autobiography, Speak, Memory (isn't that the best title ever for the genre?) is a marvel and endlessly fascinating. He fiction is superb, too, of course; he wrote in both Russian, translated later, and in English. I wrote to him via his publisher, but didn't hear back. I actually remember when he died and I felt a real sense of loss. Nabokov taught at Cornell and if I visit in Jersey this summer, I hope to see my granddaughter, who will be interning there. If so, I'll ask to see his papers and artifacts, which he left to the university. Interestingly, when I mentioned Nabokov to Jim he was very familiar with him; that was good to hear.