Love Notes: 21st Century Style

I came home to this very modern love note from The Squeeze waiting for me on the tv screen. So sweet.

Photo Friday: started with a bang! (bang!bang!)

2:15 am
Would have been a great time to rob a bank in Long Beach.

From the Garden Today

It wasn't much today, but I'm happy for it anyway. Two strawberries, one zucchini, and a jalapeño pepper that was stunted and red. Who am I to question?! Oh, and Jaco looking too cute not to share.

Today's Harvest

One gorgeous, almost perfect japanese eggplant, a not so perfect radish, two jalepenos, five apples from the community basket, and herbs, herbs, herbs: italian parsely, oregano, basil, rosemary, and a bounty of beautiful looking sage so I can make my Squeeze some sage bread. He was bummed the last one got gifted.

The garden looks very green and wild. Not a lot of bright colors other than the golden squash flowers peaking out under enormous leaves. But, tomatoes are forming and the hot pepper that was a surprise to me (mismarked) has long green fruit that are just about to start ripening. The corn looks healthy and the tops certainly remind me of my childhood driving past the fields on end; so, I'm hopeful. I forgot to get the two strawberries that were ready today, so I suppose if you look closely there is a beautiful red amongst all the lush green. I'm grateful for this garden.

Photo Friday: the morning after

This morning, by Fed Ex, I got some scans and prints back from Paris Labs. The package contained: The exciting 11 x 14 Somerset Rag print which marks the end to a portrait session which hopefully will be on a family wall within days (and beautiful if I do say so myself) and some Holga film/scans which I had been holding since New Years. There were lovely desert shots of The Squeeze's favorite place on Earth... the Kimber's Ranch in Arizona. This shot was from a walk at sunset with Lisa K. The light was dramatic.

Photo Friday

To apply for a Model Mayhem account....

Photo Friday

Scanning old shots...

Thought this one (without the label, of course), might make a great candidate for metallic paper. It's my current passion for printing....

The plan for it is:

- Sage Bread
- Quinoa with rosemary roasted Japanese eggplant and carrots (with basil)
- Organic Free Range Roasted Chicken with fresh oregano, parsley, and chives.
- Apples slices for dessert

Which still leaves the green onion and bulb onion for another day!

This is my Poppop, my father's father, and me in 1965. I adored my grandfather. Truly adored him. His name was Guiseppe. But, everyone called him Joe.

Last year I wrote a piece on my other blog about picking hyacinths and lilac with him behind my grandparent's house. I planted hyacinths in my garden this year in his honor. The smell of the two flowers always brings me back to his twinkling blue eyes and gentle voice. I wrote also about our ritual when he would get home from work, him leaning on the enormous ping-pong table and me sitting cross-legged on it. He would read the paper and tell me the news or read me the funnies. I will say it again, I adored him. The white shirt he's wearing in this long lost slide my father scanned and sent to me today reminds me, though, of his barbershop.

Family lore has it that he came to America to be ordained, but while chaperoning a CYO dance he fell for my grandmother. The Church's lost, our gain. But, it wasn't until I was in jr.highschool doing a report on our family tree and he wrote me a letter with family history that I suddenly realized English wasn't his first language. He wrote in broken English. But, he spoke it perfectly. I couldn't reconcile that.... Which brings me to his barbershop. Tailor's ran in his family, but once he tossed the frock away, he apparently apprenticed at a barbershop near the courthouse. He knew lawyers would get their hair cut there and he wanted to learn how to speak proper English. Who better to learn from than the highly educated? And so he did.

Eventually he owned his own barbershop on a busy street with cracked sidewalks. I don't recall what it was called. Certainly not Joe's Barbershop, although I wish it had been. My brother has one of the wonderful old, antique chairs and my father still has the really old school barber sign. You know the ones: red and white that actually spiraled up and down. (Boy that would look good in a loft, maybe, *wink, wink*).

But, I have his small secretaries desk. It sat in the back, in a strangely dark corner given the entire front of the shop was glass. He paid his bills from it, had his phone on it, but above all had pictures of his family on it. When my apartment roof caught on fire once, I carried that desk outside with the family photos... that was all I cared to save. (Luckily the firemen came and I carried it right back up!)

He was a proud and hard worker. He told me that I carried his name and so I must always do things that honored it. I see how he is looking at me in that photo and the feeling has been mutual. I have photos of my father looking at his grandchildren with the same adoration. How lucky they are to have another Poppop of equal stature standing with them. I am so heartily sad that he won't look at a child of mine like that. But, my siblings and I were so blessed to have Poppop C. for ourselves. He was with us just long enough to see me off on my first weekend of college. My other grandfather told me he knew he was hanging on through his illness that long to see his oldest grandchild make it there. And I did. And we spoke that weekend. And I know he was proud of me.

My only bad memory? I cried when he gave me boy haircuts, but I miss him so much still, that maybe I would let him give me one more.

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