When I had a garden that I could call a garden, I used to put green tomatoes on the kitchen windowsill. Now that we are living in a deed-restricted area, I have no garden where I can raise whatever I wish. We do have something that has some resemblance to a garden, but the names of plants we can put in it come in a handbook.

Thus my gardening has dwindled down to a few small pots of herbs on the kitchen windowsill over the sink.

Not only the lack of a garden but the lack of autumn colors are among the things I miss of my earlier decades, Anyhow, to add a dash of color, I bought a small pumpkin today.

The pumpkin alone, however, was not enough. I needed to add something I truly loved among the herbs on the windowsill. What else but WdC of course, on my mug.

Thus my cup runneth over with love.
 

Today I received a newsletter from a journal writer. She starts as: "Autumn truly is an amazing time of year. The changing leaves, the shorter days, and the chilly weather are all felt keenly." That made me chuckle. I bet she doesn't live in South Florida. We're hot here again 89 degrees, which feels like 96 if you're under the sun. I miss the lingering autumn drizzles of Northeast, the changing of the colors, putting away the summer wear from the closets to make place for the winter things. One thing I don't miss is the allergies, the ones that come from weeds, and specifically ragweed. Because ragweed allergy, combined with other allergies, gave me such terrible attacks of asthma, we moved to Florida, since mainland USA has it all over each state to some degree, but not California and Florida.

People are afraid of sharks, alligators, snakes, and hurricanes of Florida, but I am afraid of ragweed, even if some of its pollen is a component of honey. Go figure!

Because ragweed scares me so much, I might put it in a horror story. Ragweed or ambrosia --as the ancient Greeks called it-- has the most widespread and dangerous weed pollen to those who are allergic to it, even if this weed only grows one to four feet tall. Ambrosia, what a name! It means divine dish. Some dish!

Come to think of it, it would be like those gods to enjoy such a dish. Just look at what we humans have to put up with here on earth. Our pains and sorrows must be their feast, too. Crazy gods!


 

There is no place on this earth where clouds won't visit. Even on some very clear days, I expect them to show up, pause straight on top of the sky, hide among the treetops or congregate together, white lost on white, as if expecting me to look up and imagine extraordinary things from their lighthearted shapes. Hurrying forward, they parade, sometimes letting a tiny patch of sky play peek-a-boo.

Sometimes, for not having escaped from the grips of day-to-day life, I airily dismiss them. This evening though, I caught the colors of sunset reflecting through them at the back of my house.

 

I came across this site of bad predictions. Anyone receiving a rude rejection, low grade, or low rating should take heart.
http://www.coolquiz.com/trivia/predictions/

Here are a few bad predictions from that site.


"Brain work will cause [the 'new woman'] to become bald, while increasing masculinity and contempt for beauty will induce the growth of hair on the face. In the future, therefore, woman will be bald and will wear long mustaches and patriarchal beards."
- Berlin University professor Hans Friedenthal, 1914.

"Mendel lacks the requisite clarity of thought to be a scientist."
- professor at the University of Vienna on Gregor Mendel (1822 - 1884), the founder of genetics

"All marriages will be happy [in the 1990s], for the law will put to death any man or woman who assumes conjugal position without the proper physical, mental and financial qualifications.'
- author John Haberton, 1893.

"Drinking in excess is plainly on the decrease. And with every step in this direction the self-respect of the people must grow, pauperism decrease, and an enlightened conception of public duty develop. Whatever else the twentieth century brings about, we may reasonably look for a great revolution in the political status of the world."
- Charles Morris, The Marvelous Record of the Closing Century, 1899.
(Holocaust, two world wars, cold war, several other wars and things...and "let me count the ways"...)

"We hope that Professor [Samuel] Langley will not put his substantial greatness as a scientist in further peril by continuing to waste his time, and the money involved, in further airship experiments. Life is short and he is capable of services to humanity incomparably greater than can be expected to result from trying to fly...For students and investigators of the Langley type there are more useful employments."
- The New York Times, December 10, 1903, exactly one week before the first successful flight at Kitty Hawk.