Distractions

I've been absent for the past few weeks because I've been distracted by things big and small. A few examples:

Why a picture of half of my garage, you might ask. Well, this is a photo of absence rather than of presence. What is not in this picture--and what used to be in my garage--is my very large, very heavy, very expensive snow blower, which I bought out of necessity the year after I moved here, living as I do on the side of a mountain. I can't say I particularly liked the snow blower, but it did its job admirably, and we'd made some kind of peace with each other. And we would have had a long and happy life together if some person (or more likely, people) hadn't decided to help himself to the snow blower one day when I wasn't home. It was a particularly audacious theft, given that it had to have happened in the afternoon, and it would have required a truck and other paraphernalia to get the snow blower into the truck. The cop told me it was the third snow blower reported missing in the past couple of weeks, and since then, I've heard of two more. It seems unlikely that my little Western Massachusetts town is harboring a roving gang of snow blower thieves, but that appears to be the case. My insurance will cover a chunk of the replacement, which I'm not going to buy until the fall--hopefully, that will give me enough time to figure out a way to lock it up, given that my garage has no doors.

Thankfully, there are happier things to think about:

The garlic is up! I planted more than usual so I could use some as green garlic, but now, looking at it, it doesn't seem like as much as I remembered. Still, a healthy bed of garlic is always a nice thing in the spring, and I have some miscellaneous garlic coming up--from heads I didn't pull up last year--that I can also use as green garlic. I'm already thinking about that delicious green garlic soup I made last year.


The rhubarb is up too! I have it planted at the edge of my garden, and now it's still at the edge, but in a few weeks, it will become its dominating self. It's nice to have something grow so vigorously in the spring--it's very heartening when so many other plants are rather poky about coming out of the ground and presenting themselves.

That's my false indigo, take three, the one I planted last year in the spot I hope will become its permanent home. I'm not expecting a lot of flowers this year, but if the false indigo settles into its spot and is happy (and will give me flowers eventually), that's fine by me.


This last photo seems unrelated, I know. But it needed to be documented, and this was a good a place as any. I saw Andy the other day, and he told me he had a present for me from India. I really had no idea of what it was, and then he presented me with this fabulous bag. He's been doing a project on bags in India for several years now, first on jute bags, and now that jute bags are a dying industry, on the bags that have replaced them, most of which have images on them. (At some point, I may be able to link photos of some of the other cool bags he's found, but I can't at the moment.) He found this bag in Benares, and knowing my love for the Delhi Metro, he bought it for me (and then saved it to give to me now, which I appreciate).

We went on the Delhi Metro together--his first time--on New Year's Day this year, the day we were in Delhi before the endless fogbound trip to Benares. And I have no doubt that I went on and on about how much I love the Delhi Metro. I should probably write a separate post about how great the Delhi Metro is, but suffice it to say that it's Delhi's first real functional transportation system, and it's a joy. At the moment, the routes are fairly limited, but by sometime in 2010, it will be finished, and I will be able to hop on the Metro in Green Park or Hauz Khas and get to Connaught Place without having to argue with a single rickshaw-wallah. I eagerly await that day. In the meantime, I will be able to carry my bag advertising "Delhi's Pride" in anticipation. Thanks, Andy!