Mimi left me a note for my stuffed nose (I haven’t tried this yet, but I’ve got sage growing outside my kitchen):
For your stuffed nose, try making a steam tent out of a towel and a bowl of steaming sage tea. About 1 Tblsp. of sage to 2 cups of boiling water. Simmer the sage for 10 minutes and bring it to a table. Lean over the pot or bowl with the hot sage tea in it. Drape a towel over your head and the bowl. Try to stay in for 5 minutes. Your stuffed nose will start clearing up right away.
Ilana-Davita has started a new blog, Pierre Ramus in South River’s Weblog, together with a South River, New Jersey high school French teacher. The students in the two countries have written blog posts introducing themselves. If you can write well in French, please comment on the students’ posts that are in French (the American students who are studying French). If not, I assume you can read English because you are reading this post, so please comment on the posts that are in English (the French students who are studying English).
Apples Growing Up in the Sky at Lee Turkey Farm in New Jersey
We visited Lee Turkey Farm in East Windsor, New Jersey last Sunday. I took a mere 150 pictures that day. I’ve already posted apples, pumpkins, and a girl pulling a cart.
1802 Home at Lee Turkey Farm, East Windsor, New Jersey
I love old nineteenth century homes. This one at the Lee Turkey Farm entrance, built in 1802, has such pretty details on the top cornice.
The fields of Lee Turkey Farm in East Windsor, New Jersey
In the distance in the above photo, where there are itty bitty signs of scarecrows, is the corn maze. My son, his friend and my husband did the corn maze while my daughter and I hung around the playground. They only got six out of eight clues. It wasn’t easy, but they enjoyed it.
Above are the “scarecrow” signs at the entrance to the corn maze.
I ruminated over whether I should post about September 11. Do I really have anything new to add? Some bloggers have chosen to commemorate this day; others have not.
The easiest part was to decide on an image. Black. It is a day of mourning, is it not? There is a Jewish tradition to leave one part of one’s home unbuilt, to commemorate past tragedies, especially the destruction of the Temple and the scattering of the Jewish people. In that vein I leave you a big square where I might normally place a joyful image.
9/11. I was at the dentist that day, in East Brunswick. Some 9/11 widows live there and became famous a while back. I’m not going to link to that story. Back to the dentist…my dentist plays the radio in his office. When I heard the first plane crash, I thought, a fluke. When I heard the second one, I got scared. Deliberate? Could it possibly be terrorism had struck New York? This was only a month after the Sbarro pizza bombing in Jerusalem, where 15 people where killed, including young children. Anyway…fast forward a few hours, I’m back in Highland Park and hanging out with a friend. She nicely offers to turn off the tv. That was the last time I watched tv news. The previous time was in the first Gulf War, when Sadaam Hussein was pointing his nasty scuds at Israel, including my little cousins (who are now grown up with kids of their own) huddled in a sealed room with gas masks. Aside: do you understand why I didn’t want to write this post? All these yucky memories.
OK, so my friend and I wander the day together, listening to U.S. fighter jets flying above our heads in the direction of New York City. My friend in Ma’alot, Israel emails me to make sure we are OK. We leave our kids at school; it turns out, the kids are comforting the teachers, who are the scared ones. We later hear stories about the lucky in our area who did not go to work because of taking care of a child’s cast or some other reason. We also learn of the many who did go to work and did not come home.
Enough of the bad news. I can’t concentrate anymore on this. I have a great Sky Watch post coming soon… enjoy it!
I put four art cards for sale here: http://www.cafepress.com/leoraw/
This is rather experimental; if I make some sales, maybe I will think about how to develop this further. If you want to offer any marketing advice, I’ll be happy to read. Can’t say I’ll take it, but I’ll read.
Thanks for reading my blog; that’s really what I enjoy most, sharing with the public and exchanging ideas. I don’t expect this to take over my web work as a means of income, but rather a fun, experimental supplement.
Update: Thanks to triLcat, I added two shirts, one 3/4 sleeve, one long-sleeved. With garlic. Broccoli Update: I added a broccoli t-shirt, especially for nutrition nerds.
These photos were taken in Ocean, New Jersey, Teaneck, New Jersey and Highland Park, New Jersey over the past two weeks. Click on any thumbnail to enlarge.
I hate shopping for school supplies. I hate picking out all the notebooks. I hate it, I do, I do.
For the past few years, I’ve taken my sons. They hate it, too. This year, I left my eldest home, and my middle son was traveling on a bus home from camp (he’s now back), so I took my daughter. She didn’t seem to mind it that much, though when I asked if she wanted to look at skirts, she clearly just wanted to get out of the store.
Since we were close to my favorite plant nursery, Livingston Park Nursery on How Lane near Livingston Avenue in North Brunswick, we rewarded ourselves by going plant shopping. And taking photographs.
One of the reasons my daughter is happy is I bought her that purple costume she is wearing, a belated birthday present. Among my plant purchases were two of those little evergreen bushes behind her. Hopefully, we’ll have something green in our backyard in the dead of winter.
This is how the nursery looks:
I could have held unto this one until next Tuesday, so I could post it for Ruby Tuesday, a fun photography meme in which you post a photo that has red, but I like it too much to wait:
Finally, one good purpose for going to nurseries is that you find out the names of the plants that you already own. I don’t think I will forget Andromeda now:
On the other hand, I’ve already forgotten the name of the tall purple perennial I planted in my backyard. Is it loosestrife? lobelia? salvia? penstemmon? If it lives through September, I’ll take a photo of it and post it with a “please identify”.
Oh, peach, how I love thy juiciness.
I will miss thee come fall.
You provide nourishment for my eldest son
And decorate my window sills with your yellows and reds.
As the peaches in New Jersey are luscious and seem to be almost red in late August, I present this peach as my Ruby Tuesday post.
Spencer Rockman, a friend and a wonderful local soccer coach who also runs clinics in Israel, was recently on PBS (public television). He starts:
I am a soccer coach. I am also an observant Jew. It was God’s plan for me to be a soccer coach.
In the video, he shows how he leads diverse groups of children here in New Jersey, teaching them not just soccer but values. Two of my friend’s sons are shown (quickly, the scenes change often in the video). He makes us proud!
I don’t really mean to freak my readers out with the first two photos, but the New Jersey turnpike around Elizabeth, Newark and Linden is really what gives New Jersey a bad name. These don’t even show the worst of it, which we passed when I was driving my son to the bus stop for sleepaway camp last week. He took the photos.
Just to prove that our state is actually mostly much prettier than this, I took these in Hope, New Jersey in a wonderful little amusement park, water park and outdoor theatre in which the audience can participate:
My daughter, husband and I participated in a play in the front of this castle. She was a princess, he was the dragon (a major role!), and I played the skunk:
After I took the above photo, it did rain on us. But not too much.
Since the sky was glorious blue this morning, I’ll finish up with these two photos taken in front of my home:
I ruminated over whether I should post about September 11. Do I really have anything new to add? Some bloggers have chosen to commemorate this day; others have not.
