Monday is laundry day

Monday is traditionally the day Midwesterners (and lots of others?) do laundry and I have recently installed good old fashioned outdoor clotheslines as a gesture toward energy savings (by not running that electricity hog, the clothes dryer).   And yesterday was a perfect day, sunny and windy, for drying clothes outdoors.  So why was I able to take this photo today early this Tuesday morning?!    Basically, the answer is trying to do too much in one day: to Three Rivers, then home to wash and hang out the clothes, prepare for dinner guests by cooking and cleaning (just a little of the latter), take down the dry sheets and make the bed..... and by the time the guests left, the laundry remaining on the lines was wet once more, this time from the heavy dew.  It was worth it, however, to see the colorful clothes in the early morning sun.  Life's small pleasures that brighten a day, if we only can notice them.

Back to the evening festivities for just a moment.  Gene did a Gazpacho from our plethora of tomatoes -- I am not complaining -- using our friend Claudia's "absolutely authentic" recipe from Barcelona.  And I fixed a Watermelon, Feta and Black Olive Salad from Nigella Lawson that I had heard on NPR last week.  Lots of time spent taking the seeds out of the watermelon, but it was well worth the effort.  Add whole flat parsley leaves, chopped mint leaves, red onion soaked in lime juice and olive oil to the ingredients of the title and you have an incredibly tasty and unusual salad that will cool you off on a hot summer day.  Here is the watermelon recipe and several other "stay cool dishes" for you: Nigella Lawson on NPR.

Since you have come this far, let me recommend another pleasure for you: a film about Piotr Anderszewski, called Unquiet Traveler.  It was the reason why we his fans gathered last night. He is a Gilmore Artist, whom we have heard play several times at the biennial Gilmore Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo.   So you too can see and hear a part of this beautiful film about Anderszewski and the music he loves and plays, here is an excerpt from an Unquiet Traveler You Tube.  I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

My world this Tuesday

"A hard rain's a gonna fall" is the reality of this Tuesday in Fabius Township.  All is green and growing so fast that even our "wild look" landscaping that features very little mowing is getting beyond us.  But today the rain gives a respite from the work outside.

We are emerging from two weeks of daily concerts at the Gilmore Keyboard Festival in Kalamazoo 25 miles north of us.  Finally I wore out and good only keep up with the concerts and not the blog.  The Festival is a marvelous orgy of music all day, every day, every two years.  We heard old favorites and experienced music we did not know from composers of the 19th and 21st century.  If you love the piano, think about visiting Kalamazoo in two years for the next festival.  It is a beautiful time to be in Michigan!

Visit many more spots around the world at My World.