…in with the new! I am not one for making New Year’s resolutions (I know myself too well), but I do feel inspired by the change of the calendar to hit the refresh button, if you will, on my life, or at least the stuff that fills my life. Sometimes it just feels good to use up the last of something. Like the Long Pie pumpkin puree I had in the freezer. The last cup went into these muffins yesterday morning.
The last of the Long Pie muffins
No more delicious pumpkin until we grow some more. I am going to try to grow them from the seed I saved. Wish me luck!
In the meantime, a minor miracle. I have had any number of kalanchoes over the years, often acquired while in bloom, and never has a single one of them bloomed ever again in my possession. Until now.
Bloomin' kalanchoe
This was one of the last plants given to my mother during her final illness; I can’t remember by whom—it might have been me. The peachy color reminds me of her. And now it’s the first kalanchoe ever to bloom for me.
So that’s new. And we have acquired a new member of the family this new year. Well, DH has, anyway. I joked that he has found a replacement for me—a younger, fitter model. Not too far from the truth…
Isn't she lovely?
I have to admit, it is a really beautiful bike. Oh well. Let him see if carbon fiber is any fun to snuggle with! Seriously, though, any possibility I may ever have had of keeping up with him on my flat-pedal hybrid has now evaporated for good. Not that I had any real hope. He has always been, and always will be, faster and stronger than me. I don’t have a problem with that. I’m not a competitive person (except maybe at Scrabble…).
One side effect of this new addition is that we now have what may be accurately called a bike collection. To my mind, the definition of a bike collection assumes more than one bike that goes unridden for most of the time. We already had my dear old 1970′s Columbia 3-speed that DH picked up at a yard sale and refurbished for me before we were married. It’s still one of the nicest things he ever gave me (even if the real motivation was a DIY project for himself). I used to ride it around the Big City when we lived there, and boy was it a bugger on the hills. It’s wickedly heavy, and apparently the frame is bent (DH only just pointed that out to me; I never noticed it). But it has a nice basket on the front and big wide tires and it’s a beautiful shade of green and I can’t bear to part with it, even though it’s been sitting in the basement since we moved into our house, its tires long flat and cobwebs all over it. I have a vague plan to fancy it up and ride it on First Friday with the Slow Riders (see below). That would be cool. Anyway, now we also have DH’s two old road bikes. One of them may have taken up permanent residence on the trainer in the basement. That’s legitimate, I think. The other one, I’m afraid, is part of the collection. We will have to build a two-car garage just for the bikes.
