Good morning! It’s very nice to see you. I hope you had a nice week.
We’ve reached that magical time of year when the task of mowing the grass never fully leaves my to-do list. Even if I mowed it yesterday, the lawn and weeds are already creeping back, and a tiny nugget portion of my brain is calculating how long it’ll be before I need to find an hour or two to cut it.
This morning, that task takes up just a tiny fraction of my brainpower, so I can redirect a good chunk to catching up with you. Go grab a couple of clean mugs in the kitchen. I’ve got a pot of tea.
Let’s dish.
Last minute flossing
I had my annual visit to the dentist this week. On the ground of the parking lot, I found no fewer than three discarded disposable floss picks from fellow patients who no doubt thought they could make up for a year without flossing with one good last-minute sesh.
I know I’ve talked about this in the past, but the dentist is a bit of a point of contention between Erin and me. Because of good genetics, I won the teeth lottery. I have good, solid teeth that don’t ask a lot of me to stay in good shape. Every year, my trip to the dentist is a pleasant experience, where I sit in the chair of Vicki (who has been cleaning my teeth for nigh on 17 years—nearly my longest relationship on this Island), who does minimal picking and scraping before telling me everything looks great. Some years, she even tells me what a relief it is to work on someone’s mouth who clearly takes his oral hygiene seriously.
I smile and say thank you, never wanting to confess how very seldom I actually floss.
Erin, on the other hand, flosses every day. She takes great care of her teeth. Truly, she really works hard every day to take care of her teeth, and she has a lovely smile to prove it.
However.
Her trips to the dentist are less pleasant. Despite all her work, the picking and scraping is pretty awful. There were a few years where our former dentist, a lovely and gentle man, had a delicate talk with her in which he inquired whether there was some sort of “hidden sugar source” in her diet that would contribute to some of the issue he was seeing.
Reader, there has never been a hidden sugar source.
This year at my appointment, Vicki had to pick and scrape a tiny bit more than usual. Not a lot, but more than I’m used to.
I came home excited to tell Erin my experience was less than wonderful. I found her sitting at her desk.
“Yeah, wow,” I said. “She really had to get in there to scrape. That was no fun.”
Erin turned to face me with the calmest expression. She narrowed her eyes ever so slightly.
“Shut up.”
Living under a horse chestnut tree
When one lives under the shade of a giant horse chestnut tree, one gets used to the annual cycle of things that fall from it.
In the spring, an unknown sticky substance falls. I have no idea what it is, but it’s brown and it’s gross. If you walk across our driveway in May, you will emerge on the other side with your soles plastered in sticky goo.
We have reached the more pleasant season, as the tree showers us with flower petals. This photo was taken about a week and a half ago on the first morning of petal season.
The tree will give us a wee lull over the next few months as it prepares to throw thousands of conkers at us.
Slug Bread
I made a loaf of caraway rye sourdough bread last week that, while delicious, turned out looking kind of slug-like. I hadn’t made this particular recipe in quite a long while and forgotten how much bigger it is than my usual loaf. I shaped it batard-style (long and oval, rather than a circular boule), which meant it didn’t quite fit into my cast iron dutch oven. The result is the creature you see above.
Again, delicious as heck. Just… looked a bit like a slug.
Late
The few, the proud, regular readers of my serial fiction Substack Dunnock Bay will have already noted it didn’t arrive in their inboxes at its usual 6 a.m. time this morning. Rest assured, it is on its way. It just won’t be arriving today. Expect it in a day or two. It’s been a busy week, and I was under the weather for part of it.
For those who aren’t reading regularly, last week was a bit of a weaving together of threads. I thought it was high time there was an event that brought together several of my favourite characters into the same room. You can read last week’s chapter here.
Picking up spikes
The job of picking up spikes never ends. The bottom left spike was a particularly interesting find, as it appears to be a hand-made nail from ye olden days.
My brother-in-law and his lovey wife are visiting this week. While we were chatting, he proudly hauled out his phone and showed me images of a few spikes he’s picked up along the way. He suggested we should maybe make T-shirts to unite us all, but we finally decided my oft-repeated slogan “This is a movement” might make people think more about bowels than of this little karma project.
OK, that’s all she wrote. Or he, rather. Or, I guess, me. That’s all me wrote.
Have a great week.