Zooming Spring and Visits to the Farmers Market

Spring is zooming by so quickly.  It seems that just yesterday (but it was the end of April) we had a snowstorm, but today, it's 90F (32.2C) as I blog, and is still going up.

Spring is going by so quickly that I had photos from April of our local farmer's market, and hadn't even used them on my blog yet.  These first three photos are from April 22 (first photo) and April 30 (next two).

Parsley root (yes, there's such a thing and it's delicious)
 

Mushrooms.

Ramps.  (I never did try to plant these in my yard).

By May 7, some of the vendors (this is a year round market) had moved outdoors.  We call these plants on the right "scallions" in our part of New York State. Other parts of the country call them spring onions, green onions, or even salad onions.  On the left is spring garlic, which is quite edible before it starts forming bulbs.

Asparagus and rhubarb.  This asparagus is so much better than what is in the stores - so fresh and, sadly, not cheap, either  We splurge on this.

Leaf lettuce (this is so fresh, too.)  We have lettuce planted but it is nowhere near ready.

Most of the May 7 produce is still available, but it won't be long until strawberries are ready.  My hanging basket everbearers (overwintered in the garage) are flowering.

I have so much to show you but it would be overwhelming.  But, as I leaf through photos taken in May, it brings back so many memories of how quickly spring is moving this year.

Is this season (be it spring or fall) moving too quickly for you?

All In A Day's Sky Work #SkywatchFriday

Last Sunday gave us some amazing sky contrasts with stormy weather where I live in the Southern Tier of New York.

Rain was threatening, so we went to a local park for some walking in the afternoon.

This doesn't look too good, does it, although you can see a patch of sunshine on the hill in the extreme right.

You can see rain in the distance right above the indentation in the hill in the bottom center.

Yet, in another direction, the clouds are so puffy.

But back to the ongoing storm.  Maybe we'd better call it quits and head home.

Around sunset, I decided to see what the sky looked like.  You can see why it's called the Blue Hour.

The sky still seems a tad grouchy.  No big post sunset show tonight.

It's all in a day's sky work.

Now, to all, a good night.

Joining Yogi and other skywatchers this Friday for #SkywatchFriday.

How Many People Does It Take to Buy a Light Bulb?

It started with a burnt out little lightbulb.

We bought our chest freezer back in 2012. It has a light in the inside of the lid which turns on when you lift the lid.

Recently, the light started to flicker.  My spouse, who knows a little bit about electronics thanks to military training from years ago, tried various things but nothing seemed to eliminate the flicker.  On Saturday, the light stopped working.

Spouse took the lightbulb out of the lighting compartment.  It was a small thing, an LED bulb that said only "12V E14".  

Now, keep in mind that spouse and I are senior citizens, meaning that most of our lives were spent with the old incandescent light bulbs that have since been replaced by newer, more energy efficient technologies (such as LED bulbs).

My education on LED bulbs, just coincidentally, had begun a couple of days before, when we had to buy light bulbs for my home office fixture.  We hadn't bought light bulbs in a while, and the choices for modern LEDs absolutely overwhelmed me. Warm bulbs. Cool bulbs. Color changing bulbs. Dimmable bulbs.  Non dimmable bulbs.

Now, another project.

So E14, I found,  means a small screw socket. The "E" means an Edison socket, in other words, the socket looking like an old incandescent light bulb, and, indeed, that is what our small freezer bulb looked like.

But this is where the fun (and I use that term loosely) began.  The owners manual for the freezer said that if the bulb burnt out, we were to contact a service technician to replace.

Umm, no.

But, an hour or so later,  I was exhausted from fruitless Internet research. We used to have a couple of appliance parts places in this area, but we knew they were no more.  The manufacturer of the freezer had nothing at all about freezers on their website. They had a customer service number that actually had Saturday hours, but spouse didn't want to try it.  Amazon didn't seem to have anything that looked anything like this little light bulb.  Finally, we gave up for the day.

Sunday, our son came over for lunch and he tried to help us. He discovered our particular bulb had been discontinued, after visiting several more websites.   Finally, he came up with a possibility, on Amazon (a site I try not to order from, but it was looking like we had no choice).  The bulbs (we had to buy two) came Tuesday.  They didn't fit.

So son did a lot more research (after asking us for certain measurements) and he thinks he found a replacement bulb locally. Several hours of research and hair pulling have already been invested in this quest.

So something 11 years old is obsolete.  That's nice to know.

Later today, we will go to that store.

Finally, to answer my blog post title's question:  How many people does it take to buy a light bulb?  

Answer:  at least three.  Maybe more.

Made With Sun Wind and Time #WordlessWednesday

We recently had a water softener installed in our house.  It needs bimontly or so infusions of salt crystals, but that beats living with the hard water (10 on a scale of 1-10) that has rotted out pipes and water heaters in our house over the years.

This is from the bag of salt crystals we buy for the softener.  There's just something about this that makes me feel connected to the Earth.  Sun, wind, and time.  Aaahhhh....doesn't that feel good?

Joining Sandee at Comedy Plus for her #WordlessWednesday.

Tragedy in the City

What a sad weekend.  Words stick in my hands, unable to be written.  I wish this was more elegant.

If you want elegance, please enjoy some flowers from my garden in 2019.  Happier times!

The rest of this post is a bit grim, so please feel free to admire the flowers on your way out.  But I hope you'll stay.

As my United States readers know, there was a mass shooting in Buffalo, New York, at a supermarket.  13 people shot, 10 dead, the alleged shooter (whose name I will not use) in police custody.  Buffalo is the second largest city in New York State after New York City.  It is also the home town of our current Governor.

The alleged shooter is an 18 year old man from Conklin, New York, which is about 15 miles from where I live near Binghamton, New York. Conklin is a small community of about 5,000 people.

Our community here in the Binghamton area knows about mass shootings.  We have felt the pain that so many communities have felt. 

On April 3, 2009 (as my regular readers know) a mass shooting several blocks from where I used to work in Binghamton took the lives of 13 innocents and the man who killed them.  That shooting convinced me to start this blog.  That shooter lived locally and bought the gun locally (at a sporting goods store now closed).

The school psychologist at Sandy Hook grew up in Vestal, another town in our area.

But these shootings were not like our shooting. Buffalo's pain is not our pain.  Our shooting didn't involve a young man who drove some 200 miles to target members of a Black community.  He picked the only supermarket in the area.  He must have known that, sooner or later, everyone in that community shopped there.

What else are we learning?  This man graduated from high school and was apparently attending our local community college. He also live streamed the shooting (which was taken down  but other sites keep posting it) and published a long manifesto with his beliefs.  He drank from the poison waters of extremist sites.  He came with weapons inscribed with symbols and words of hate.  This was, pure and simple, a crime of hate.

He purchased his Bushmaster semi-automatic weapon locally in the Binghamton area (although it was modified after sale in a way that would not be legal in New York.) The gun shop that sold the gun is now being targeted on social media, and has closed for this week, and I will not name it.

These are some of those he killed.  Reports state he had planned to visit other sites to continue his spree but the Buffalo police came too quickly. It's also reported that he may have also scouted out Rochester another major New York city, for a shooting.

By all accounts, this Buffalo neighborhood is a close knit community, and the residents are coming together in their grief as they now have nowhere to buy food.

Worse yet, this wasn't the only active shooter event in our country this weekend.  It was just the most deadly. There was a church shooting in Laguna Hills, California, also described as a hate crime. That shooting was stopped by a heroic doctor who died. There was a shooting in a flea market in Houston.  There were shootings in several locations in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.  There were other shootings that didn't even make the news.

No community is immune from the poison of hatred or the easy availability of weapons, and we ask ourselves again, "why?" If we aren't minorities who are targets of hate crimes (people of color, Americans of Asian-Pacific origin, various religions) we may live in fear, a fear we don't dare show as we go about our everyday lives. (I say "we" because I am a member of one of those groups).  But make no mistake, everyone in this country is at risk.   Hatred is out of control.  It has become mainstream.

Americans have asked that question of "why" too many times now, in this nation.

How many times is too many?

Or will we offer thoughts and prayers yet again, and then move on, leaving the families and friends of Buffalo, of Laguna Hills, of Winston-Salem, of Houston, of previous sites like El Paso, Pittsburgh, Orlando, and Sacramento...so many other towns and places where hate has surfaced, to pick their lives back up?

This time, what will we choose to do?

Driving and Racing #MusicMovesMe

It's Monday, and the month of May is zooming by!  It's time once again for Music Moves Me!

Who are the Music Moves Me bloggers? We are bloggers who blog about music each Monday and if you have music to share with us, you are most welcome to join! (Music Posts Only-meaning at least one music video, please!)   Our head hostess is Cathy from Curious as a Cathy,  and she is joined by the knowledgeable Stacy of Stacy Uncorked and the world famous (not) me.  Our founder, Xmas Dolly, has stepped back from blogging for now, and would appreciate your good thoughts as she works through some health issues.

We'd love more music lovers to join our fun group.  All you have to do is join the linky above with a music post that contains at least one music video (there must be a music video or your post will be subject to removal or labeling "No Music").  Easy peasy!

Each month, except December, we have a guest host. For the month of May, our guest host is John Holton of "The Sound of One Hand Typing" and he's got a good month of themes picked out for us.

For today, John is choosing the theme "Songs about Cars and Racing, because of the Indy 500, etc."

I've never attended a major car race, although I have been to (as a tourist) the Daytona Speedway in Daytona, Florida.  Taking the tour of Daytona in 2006 (the track and the museum after) was pretty awesome, I have to admit.

So anyway, about cars and racing.

This song immediately comes to mind: Hot Rod Lincoln.  The original, from 1955, is by Charlie Ryan.  I discovered it in 1972 when it was covered by Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen.  I chose a cover by Asleep at the Wheel, because he gave it a little different twist.

From 1972, Highway Star, by Deep Purple. 

Also from 1972, Rockin' Down the Highway, from The Doobie Brothers.

 

I'm going to start drifting a bit from the theme, but these are songs I really enjoy. First, Radar Love, 1973, from Golden Earring

Maybe not totally in line with the theme, but it's a favorite of mine:  1991's Life is a Highway. I chose the original from Tom Cochrane.

And finally, I have to include this because I love the Cars, and I love this song:  Drive.

And it's a driven/racing wrap!

Join me again next week, same time, same place, for another episode of Music Moves Me!

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day May 2022

It's May, it's the 15th of the month, and it is spring/summer in my zone 5b garden in the Southern Tier of New York State.

Friday we reached 86F (30C) and yesterday we got up to 83F (28.3C) before things clouded over.  It's been warm and very dry, and a lot of my spring bulbs gave up blooming for the year, along with my cherry tree.  Today it is near 80 and we may get strong storms later today.  The rain is welcome.  The "strong storms" part (chance of tornadoes) isn't.

It was a bit disappointed because I had a number of spring flowers to show you, and they are gone.  But, nevertheless, there are a lot of blooms at my house - finally!  Winter is truly over.  As usual, the variety names are lost to me because I don't keep good records.

I only have a couple of these late pink and white tulips.

Ditto for these white tulips. 

 

Only a few late daffodils left.  These grow several flowers on a stem and have a scent.

 

Last of my late yellow - this may not last the day and is so faded you can barely see the yellow.

These are what the blooms on my wild cherry tree looked like on the 11th, alas.

The lilacs have come out.

 

Light purple. (We had another lilac, but it was destroyed in our late April snowstorm).  We planted this one several years ago.

White (we share this with our next door neighbor; part of it is on their side and part on ours).

Darker purple.  This came with the house, so it is over 30 years old.

In our shady back yard, a wood poppy purchased several years ago from Monticello (President Thomas Jefferson's home).

White bleeding heart.

Pink bleeding heart.  I don't think it's happy where it is and we may have to fix that.
 

Barrenwort.

Lungwort.

Variegated Solomon's Seal.

And that's it for today, although I have lots more, because I have to go now.  If this wasn't enough, why not go to the site of the woman who lovingly provides this monthly 15th of the month meme, Carol at May Dreams Gardens, and check out her blog and other blogs linking to GBBD today?

See you next time!