Weekend Thread for May 2024

I'm starting this on Wednesday because my husband and I are leaving tomorrow on a mission vacation to the West Coast. Two days driving through the mountains, amuse ourselves in Vancouver on Saturday, race on Sunday, then head to Salt Spring Island to visit family. There will be books, cheese, cider, scenery, and other good stuff.

>1 tardis:
Safe trip. I love your cover story.

>1 tardis: What Peter said. Weekend in Vancouver in May — bliss!

>1 tardis: That sounds lovely!

We have a 3-day weekend in the UK. On Saturday I'm going to the Craft Museum in Ditchling (on the South Downs) where there is an exhibition about the illustrator and author Raymond Briggs. Not sure about Sunday yet, other than singing in the morning, but on Monday I'm meeting a friend for a walk by the Thames at Richmond.

>1 tardis: & >4 Sakerfalcon: Sounds wonderful. Enjoy, and share photos!

I've got only gardening planned. So much work to do.

>4 Sakerfalcon: Oh, I love Raymond Briggs! The Snowman is my favourite, especially the animated version, but my kids and I enjoyed all the others we read, too.

Nephew and niece and their two small boys (5 and 3 years old) are stopping for a visit on Sunday. Other than that it will be the normal routine of baking, cooking, reading and gardening.

Since my husband is traveling for most of every week this month, weekends will be hanging together and maybe doing some chores. Hope to get into the woods tomorrow for some small bird photography, but that won't take all day.

Tomorrow I have the great privilege to see one of the great ballerinas of our age. Natalia Osipova is guest artist at San Francisco Ballet in Swan Lake. I am over the moon!!
Saturday is our local pagan group's Beltane ritual. It's supposed to rain, but hopefully it will clear up in time.

oh god, i hate it when the pagans go door knocking on the weekends and ask if you've heard the word of nature :(

>10 littlegeek:
I hope the rain stays of for you.

>10 littlegeek: Oh, enjoy!
>11 MrAndrew: 😆

>10 littlegeek: Osipova is wonderful! I'm so glad you get to see her dance. And fingers crossed that the rain holds off.

>10 littlegeek: I'm very jealous :) and wish you a wonderful ballet evening!

Today involved a visit to the groomer for our dog and a visit to the château at Chaumont for us. Photos, when ready, will be posted in my thread.

A very mild weekend here. The weather is supposed to be icky. I have a bit of a cold and cough so I’m staying in and not running. My friend is getting a tattoo on Sunday so I’ll go and keep her company for some of it. If she does the whole thing, it’ll take about 8 hours.

finally accepted by the Yakuza, hey?

There's a plant sale put on by the local Friends of the Library today. I'm hoping to snag some herbs and maybe a hanging flowering plant or two. Tomorrow is supposed to be rainy, so I will be doing some paperwork, and, hopefully, reading.

The Husband took me to a local bookstore. While in there, he asks me how long I’ll be, he needed to go back to our truck for something. My response was “how long do you want me to be?” :P Then he left me, in a bookstore, unsupervised! I bought four books and almost bought a cookbook. I think I’ll go back for that one. And now I’m crocheting while watching some Bob’s Burgers episodes. Such a weird show.

Welp, Osipova was injured and it's still raining so no ritual. Disappointing, but hubby and I are home, warm, and dry and are enjoying some cocoon time together. The ballet was still very lovely, SF Ballet has a killer corps de ballet!

>11 MrAndrew: Aren't we obnoxious?

Eagerly awaiting the Bruins game tonight! This is their chance to redeem themselves and wrap up round 1 of the finals. Fingers crossed!

>21 littlegeek: I am sorry for the disappointment, but glad you are making the best of it all.

>21 littlegeek: I am sorry to hear that! But it's nice that you are still having a great time.

Lovely sunshine during the day, followed by nightly rain/storms most of this last week. In between showers, I've planted a bunch of stuff in a new flower bed. My first hummingbird arrived, which always makes me happy; many bees have been helping themselves to the flowers, and there's a family of robins who have taken up residence in my new gutters. If the weather clears up, I will be making a trip to the nursery. And we cut down our Bradford Pear tree (they are terribly invasive here), and received a free new non-invasive oak from the state conservation department. Again, we need to wait for the weather to dry before planting it.

One night this week, the security cameras caught someone stealing flowers from my front flower bed--this is the second time this has happened. Grr.

Yesterday, I got notification from the public library that I had been appointed President of the Library Board. Which is hilarious, as I have never even been to a Board meeting; I just told the librarian a couple of weeks ago that I would be happy to serve on the Board. I'm guessing this is one of those cases where if you don't show up to the meeting, you get elected, lol. Forty years in the business, I've never been to a Board meeting, so I hope they're aren't expecting much. :)

>26 theretiredlibrarian: Possible solution/revenge for the flower thieves (it might be too evil, but maybe not). Pick up some of the spray "ick" used on dogs and cats (bitter apple, bitter cherry, there are several). It's safe for plants and people, as it is used to discourage pets from licking wounds or chewing the wrong things. It is also spreads like craft glitter in a kindergarten class. Spray those flowers. Anyone who picks them will get the "ick" on their hands, and from there it will spread onto face, hair, etc, where it won't be harmful but will be REALLY UNPLEASANT -- it will inevitably get into their mouths and they will not enjoy it. None of the ones I've used have much of a smell, at least for people.

I know this because, being owned by a number of cats and dogs, I have inadvertently "icked" myself more than once. If I am not especially careful, I will be tasting the stuff, even just from being downwind of the spray. Perhaps the thieves will think the plant itself is the problem and will no longer raid your flowers! :)

Just remember to wash yourself well after spraying, and stay upwind. That stuff sticks!

FYI, this also works for those underworld creatures who steal lunches from the workplace refrigerator. Just spray the container, and remember to use disposable gloves or paper towels to open the container yourself. The culprit will very likely be revealed, but even if not, there will be revenge :)

>26 theretiredlibrarian: Maybe install motion sensitive sprinklers? Although the solution >27 Murphy-Jacobs: suggests sounds very satisfying! :D

>26 theretiredlibrarian: I would print a photo of the flower thief, and stick it on a pole on your front yard with a message. If it happens again then I would add a motion sensor spotlight and the stinky spray.

The first time this happened (we call this "The Great Rose Robbery of 2022"), it was in broad daylight. My husband uploaded it to local FB pages, and we immediately get dozens of identifications, all pointing to one of two women. The next day, a cop shows up...a friend showed her the video, and she immediately knew who the culprit was AND also knew what house it was (gotta love small towns!). This time it was in the middle of the night, and all we can identify is that it was possibly a couple in a Cadillac. Cop was cruising the street Saturday, and he spoke with her (different cop, she didn't know about the first incident) and she's looking into it. We have now placed No Trespassing/Under Surveillance signs in the flower bed. I know it's not really high crimes, but it's pretty annoying. Also, the first woman was a known criminal, known for drugs, trespassing, and breaking & entering.

We finished our races on Sunday (my time was 1:11:59 for 8 K, which is adequate but not impressive even for me), packed up and checked out of the hotel. Then we found a dimsum house and had a nice lunch before heading to the ferry. Now we're on Salt Spring Island to visit my mother and stepfather. It's very beautiful here. We're staying with my stepsister and her husband, and feeling very pleased to be here.

So the youngest offspring was successfully married off this past weekend (further details on my reading thread) and it was an entirely successful family THING. Got to see all of my siblings at the same time. (The youngest niece is apparently just turning 16 which threw me for a loop.) That said, it's always interesting to see how wedding protocols shift from family to family and culturally over time. Why do we let these things get to be so big and so expensive? Keep it small, keep it informal, and let everyone enjoy the situation. (My only grumbles had to do with a too-loud DJ which is about par for the course and a less than stellar wedding cake.)

>32 jillmwo: As a person who has baked and decorated many wedding cakes, I need to hear the whole story.

I'm all about the simple family wedding. They are beautiful moments in our lives and sharing vows as witnessed by the family is what it's all about to me. I suppose it works best if you actually have a family you like. ;)

Starting tomorrow, many people (myself included) will have a four-day weekend. Nice :) We have no plans just yet, we'll see what happens.

Past weekend was a lot of fun, though. On Saturday, we (me, my husband, our son, and my mom) went to see the cherry blossom miracle. We spent two hours at the park and it was glorious. The little one was so happy, it was such a pleasure to watch him. Well, we were happy too :) Also, it was around 22C (71.6F)







After that, we had lunch at my mom's, and then mom and I went to an afternoon concert - a wonderful performance of Mozart's piano concert no 22 and Rimsky-Korsakov's Sheherezade. And after that, my husband and I went to a birthday party while the little one slept over at grandma's. I can't quite remember when we last had such a Saturday :)))

>34 Alexandra_book_life: Lovely flowers, happy little one and beautiful music. What a wonderful weekend. Thank you for posting the pictures, especially the close-up.

This is a long post, so if you want to skip the detail you can jump to the summary at the end.

Some of you may recall that last Wednesday we had a great plan to attend the largest flea-market in France which was being held in the grounds of the magnificent Château de Chambord. You might also remember that our plans were abandoned as we experienced nineteen hours of continuous heavy rain.

To compensate for our not getting to Chambord, a place we love to visit, we decided to visit the grounds of the château today as it promised to be a lovely day weatherwise.

It turned out the weather lived up to the forecast and we had a beautiful sunny day.

We set off to Chambord using the route we prefer. It was about a 45 minute drive. When we got to our regular entry point to the grounds there was a sign stating the road was blocked at this point and that we had to take a detour to the left. This detour took us on a long route around the immense estate until we came to another entry point that was letting people in.

Being a beautiful day there were plenty of cars on the road into and through the estate. We followed the kilometres long route towards the car parks only to join a long, slow-moving queue of vehicles. When we got to the point causing the queue we found another route blocked sign just 300m short of the car parks. We were directed to turn right. As we drove several hundreds of metre to where we were going to be able to park, we watched hundreds of people walking towards us and back where we had come from, i.e. towards the château. We realised we were going to have to walk a great distance in the heat to get anywhere near the château. Eventually we came to the point where stewards were directing drivers to park on either side of the road.

A quick meeting of the governing committee, i.e. my wife and me*, was held and an executive decision was made to not stay but to go somewhere else, somewhere to be determined later. As a steward was frantically trying to get us to park at the side of the road I used my best French to ask him where the exit was. He eventually realised we did not want to stay and directed us to continue right up the road through the throng of people heading back to the château from their parked cars.

A short distance further on we came to the exit point. It was the original gate we had tried to enter by earlier before being sent on the detour, or, as is stated on the French sign, the "DÉVIATION", around most of the Chambord estate grounds. The positives associated with this driving in circles included:
- At least we knew where we were.
- We got to see a few places we had not seen since 2010, which was nice.
- We remained stoic and focused on not being in a rush or having to anything by a certain time.

Having left the Chambord estate we put our minds to what to do next. We were on a road that would take us towards the River Loire passing through two very small and picturesque villages. The second one we were to pass through is called Montlivault and it has an interesting looking twelfth century church called Saint Pierre Église. When we have passed through this village in the past I had always thought, “I would like to stop there and take some pictures of the church and the village”. As it happens, my wife, on our previous passings through the village had thought, “Oh! I would love to stop here and have lunch at those tables sitting in the village square just beside the church.”

It will not surprise you to hear that in our efforts to turn a negative into a positive we stopped in Montlivault and had lunch at the tables in the town square beside the church, and then wandered around the village and took pictures of the church, the restaurant, the village wash-house where the whole village used to wash their clothes, the old Court of Justice on Rue de la Justice, the entrance to the village château (yes, the village has a château which is still owned by the original family that built it, and is private so we could not photograph the building itself), the old post office, the old school house, etc…

Bottom line, we had a fabulous day. Plenty of photographs will appear on my Facebook page. A select few will be in my reading thread in the GD.

SUMMARY:
For the second Wednesday in a row our plans to visit one of our favourite châteaux, Château de Chambord, were scuppered.

Striving to make a positive out of a negative we visited a beautiful old village that managed to meet two of our long-held objectives, the sort you say you must do and never do.

We had a fantastic time.

*In the interests of full disclosure, my presence as a member of the governing committee is window-dressing so that I might feel some buy-in to the decisions made by my wife. The dog, who was with us, is definitely not part of the governing committee.

>34 Alexandra_book_life:
Wow! Those pictures are amazing. You had a beautiful day for your visit. Thank you for sharing those images.

>34 Alexandra_book_life: That looks and sounds like a perfect day.

>36 pgmcc: Your day was a day of serendipitous goodness as well. I suspect that your efforts at flexibility and not allowing yourselves to be rushed had a lot to do with that.

>35 Taphophile13: >37 pgmcc: >38 MrsLee:

Thank you, everyone :))) It was such a happy day!

>36 pgmcc: It's so nice when you can be flexible and enjoy stuff you *can* do. I loved the description of your day, what a great time you had!

>34 Alexandra_book_life: purty.

>36 pgmcc: i am appalled by the blatant canine discrimination.

>34 Alexandra_book_life: I have often read of the magic of Washington's cherry blossoms, but never seen them. Your pictures surpass the descriptions.

>36 pgmcc: Clearly Dog needs to consult with "HaydninVienna's friend Jess", who simply takes her way when not given it freely.

>34 Alexandra_book_life: Wow! What fantastic blossom! Sounds like a perfect day!

>36 pgmcc: Well done for turning disappointment into delight!

My weekend went mostly as planned. We made it to the Raymond Briggs exhibition which was wonderful, although no photography was allowed due to copyright reasons. It was wonderful to see sketches and proofs for some of Briggs' work, as well as letters and other ephemera. Alas, I did not get to walk by the river in Richmond on Monday as it was pouring with rain. Instead, my friend and I met in Kingston, mooched around the shops (including the excellent Oxfam used bookshop) then walked back to Surbiton, arriving at her flat completely soaked. We then enjoyed lunch and a long chat, spending 7 hours together in total.

>43 Sakerfalcon:
That sounds like a great time. Do not think, however that you can get away without reporting the acquisitions from the Oxfam used bookshop.

>44 pgmcc: I wouldn't dream of it!
The doll by Boheslaw Prus
Beth and Amy by Virginia Kantra
Sculptor's daughter by Tove Jansson
We of the never-never by Mrs Aeneas Gunn

Something for almost every mood I might be in!

>45 Sakerfalcon:
Thank you. You have given me names and books to research.

Having four days off was very nice! We entertained the little one, I planted some more stuff and read books (I finished Paladin's Strength and started Silent Parade).

I more or less didn't watch Eurovision, that is, I quickly went through all the performances on Youtube, giving each about 20 seconds, and then watched the voting part (which was excruciatingly boring this year). I still don't know why I bothered, since I wasn't in the mood. Tradition?

We also had cheese: tallegio, chèvre, and really nice buffalo mozzarella. Yummy!

Getting ready for my trip, but I spent most of today going through family letters and papers looking for pertinent materials for the book of my grandmother's travels.

We got home from our trip tonight. It was a nice trip, if strenuous. We did a lot of hiking. I have a lot of laundry to do tomorrow, and I want to inspect the garden properly. It was dark by the time we had the car unloaded and everything (including the all-important CHEESE) put away. I don't think the cats noticed we were gone.

>49 tardis: I don't think the cats noticed we were gone.

Oh, they noticed. They just didn't care.

>50 Taphophile13: LOL - very likely true!

The garden is looking good - lots of things blooming or at least showing signs of life. Still no joy from the asparagus, though. I hope it didn't get winter killed. All the plants I started indoors have to harden off, but I've started planting seeds.