Bow Tie Friday, Eggs, and Baby Hyde

No fooling: Paul wore a bow tie to work!  It's great, and annoying.

He won't do it for fashion reasons or from any of my prodding, but as a joke and "Peer pressure" at work...  Argh!  But my "Whatever, at least he's doing it" starts kicking me to let it go, and he looks so cute...

He tells me it's going to become a weekly tradition Bow Tie Fridays (the brand of his bow tie just happens to be Bow Tie Tuesday).

Mom and I don't have such a fashionable day with James.  We do some chores (she's cleaning the house, I'm cleaning out what is to become the nursery), I manage a short nap, and we make another batch of red eggs* -- for people will be coming to visit James this weekend!

* The food colouring turned out to be a bluer hue of fuchsia instead of a bright orange red.

I'm excited for the visits, but also worried I won't be able to keep James happy during them.

It's awful when he cries.  It cuts through me.  His face turns purple. I panic about toxic stress and prolonged crying and scramble to make it stop.

Grandma (Jackie) has suggested it might be colic (since the bulk of crying is around the same time at night).  But, thankfully, the amount doesn't total over 3 hours a day.  I feed him, change him, and spend a lot of time rocking and burping him... hoping something works.  And then, just like how starts, it suddenly stops.

I guess the fact that the crying is a lot stronger and louder than a month ago is a good sign.

The Good Life

The weather was beautiful this weekend.  Perfect for being outside... and maybe getting some yard work done.  OK, I was kind of dreading it, but Paul was determined this year to do something about all the leaves.  All those lovely trees we have (the blessing/curse of a corner lot), shed every autumn.  Oh, and everyone else around us has already cleaned up their yards...

Anyway, it was beautiful, and colourful.  And even even though it as work, it was nice*.  And, Paul looked like he belonged in a magazine. 

This was his response:

* I got to listen to Wiretap :) 


 

There were so many lady bugs in the leaves!  Why won't they stay out of the bags?  (I fished them out, and they actually flew back in!)

Paul: I named that one.
Lana: Really, that one. 
Paul: Yep, Ladybird.

The job was mostly done when we called it a day.  And then I was free to do some gardening :) 

See!  My fava (broad) beans are still growing.  Oh, and there's Pinky the cat. 

Greisbach Colours

The strip of golden yellow trees caught my eye before, but I didn't know this was a pretty well-known/recommended location for fall photos.

With a beautiful (Thanksgiving) day off, Paul directed me to this part of Greisbach for a photo shoot.

What I learn / confirm:
- Developers might call Village at Greisbach "Edmonton's most beautiful community", but at the moment, it's mostly cracked clay dirt 
- Paul's the better model - he can make the model mouth-half-open face
- Paul's the better photographer - he doesn't get distracted by pretty colours

Here are my photos for the day:  

Soup with a Faint Beet

Oh, lovely beets.  A gift you were.  You moved with us.  Finally, it's time to eat!  

Jitterbug Perfume made me have some pretty big expectations of beets.  From the smell to the colour to the taste... the senses evoked in the novel had been summed up into one word in my head: "intense". Especially the smell.  But maybe because they were so old (and stored in the refrigerator for so long), the smell wasn't that noticeable.

It was the colour that captured me.  They bled red and purple and stained my hands when I peeled and chopped them into wedges of ruby.

And then I followed the rest of the recipe. I'm still not convinced it's borscht, but at least I made it. It tasted pretty good; Paul ate it not suspecting beets at all.

The beets (removed as instructed, after their "bath" in the soup), however, had tasted great.

Oranges

Amazing Rare Things

Start out with the colour's basic name and then make it into a pun, or call it the thing that is uniquely that colour.  And that's the usual formula to get a fun and marginally clever colour name. 

Usually. 

So, you could probably understand why this year's Pantone's Color of the Year had my head itching. 

Honeysuckle?  Isn't that an off-white flower?  How does this relate to pink? 

Then I saw it in a copy of Amazing Rare Things: The Art of Natural History in the Age of Discovery, a variety of honeysuckle that was pink.

I hadn't been convinced by the Pantone's press release image of a pink flower (there are, after all, designer flowers), but this lovely, watercolour by Alexander Marshal from the 1600s seemed good proof to me.  Um... despite scale issues...

The rest of the book was also illuminating, surprising, and inspiring in different ways. 

One was the life story of artist Maria Sibylla Merian, the only female artist in the collection, who went on a wildlife viewing expedition to South America in 1699 when she was fifty-two!  That totally sounds like the crazy type of thing that young-uns get into.  To have that energy and spirit of adventure...

Her pieces are colourful and interesting, but had way too many creepy crawlies for me really enjoy.  I especially cringed and had to flip the page when I got to the one with a hummingbird being eaten by a large spider. 

Turns out this book is based on selections from the Royal Collection that were exhibited under the same name.  The online exhibit includes thumbnails of the pieces and commentary by Sir David Attenborough.