autumn.

Sad to rport, but not only did my pumpkin vine yield no female flowers (and there for no fruit-- nothing to pollinate), but during the heavy rains of late, it seems to have acquired some sort of leaf-mold. That's what it looks like anyway. It's dying. It put up a good fight, but something like a vine which bears large orange heads for carving simply cannot sustain life in a 15" square container on a balcony five stories up in Brooklyn.

Once they start having them at the delis, I figure I'll get a couple of those small evergreen bushes that are meant to pass as xmas trees for the yard-less and small-of-apartment-- the kind that are still alive, in dirt. I'll put them in a couple of large planters and put string lights. For the winow boxes: plastic flowers, perhaps. Or branches fallen from trees, with little glittering things hanging off.

The basil did well, but as I haven't a food processor, I'll not be making any pesto!
Ha!

"uniter"

In the introduction to his book "How Bush Rules: Chronicles of a Radical Regime", Sidney Blumenthal recalls one of Bush's absurd recurring statements made during election campaigning: "I'm a uniter, not a divider". Sadly, that promise has been kept-- by way of his ability to UNITE the rest of the world in its feelings of ill-will toward the United States.

Ugh.

One Solution...

This article by Garrison Keillor on Salon.com is brilliant. I know he's one of those people you tend to love or hate, but this article is brilliant either way. (Article "America Eats Its Young")

Autumn has been making a seak preview recently in these boroughs of brownstones. Oh, and i may have lied about the calendar. I'm pretty certain there will still be one, but it may instead by a series fo only 4 (but larger and more interesting...?), containing 3 small month-Grids at bottom.

[edit:] Or... Something, at any rate.

We'll see.