Entertainment

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Summer Update….Warts And All

This is a Summer update to some of the stories we have posted earlier this year on Acorns On Glen.  Can you believe it is the middle of July?  It doesn’t seem possible until you go outside and the hot sun beats down on you while you are gardening or messing around on the patio.  Time goes so fast.  I am remembering a saying that seems to hold some truth for us this year–the older you get, the faster time flies.  That sums up 2011 so far for us even though I am not admitting to getting any older.  On Sunday, we posted a virtual garden tour on what was blooming in our garden.  While we were walking around the garden, there were so many times we stopped and remembered that we had done a post on a certain flower or a certain plant earlier in the year.  So we came up with the idea of doing a post to show what has happened since we first posted the original garden or everyday life story all those months, weeks or days ago.  Some of the stories show progress and some show a different picture.  In the spirit of open and honest communication, we are going to share the good with the bad.  It’s what’s going on at Glen Road….warts and all!

In June, we posted an article entitled “Another Post About Legal Pot“.  We thought the title was funny as the post was about potting plants that we had purchased from White Flower Farm and not about the happy weed that most people would think about when they read the title.  Can you believe that it is one of our most visited posts?  We get it, it’s not the gripping story that unfolded, but the provocative title.  In our story, we show two collections of annuals that we received and planted in pots around our pool.  At the time we wrote the post, the pots looked pretty empty with the little plants placed in them.  Here are the pictures that showed the planting of the ‘Sunny Summer Annual Collection’ and the ‘King Tut Annual Collection’.  Pretty meager to say the least.

Well, we hoped in our post that our two collections would take root and grow and grow they did.  We have been lucky to have some long spells of sun interrupted by a few days of rain and this has been the perfect trick to grow our two collections into some impressive potted displays.  Here are the same two pots still sitting around the pool, but look at how well the plants have filled in.

Sometimes your best intentions in the garden turn out to be disappointments.  Take our story in April on Grace Kelly coming to see us on Glen Road in the post entitled ‘Grace Kelly Moves To Glen Road‘.  If Grace Kelly visited or moved in that would be news to us because we missed it.  Our post was about a tree rose where a Grace Kelly rose bush was fused to a tree trunk and the small tree would bloom with Grace Kelly roses all Summer.  Here are a few shots of the tree rose that we planted and placed on our patio.  So full of potential at the time!

So to be honest, things looked great at the beginning of Grace’s growth.  She pushed out a few leaves on the top branches and hopes were high.  Then she just stopped, dried up and died…or so we thought.  At about the time we were ready to give Grace and her soil a final resting place in our compost pile, we noticed that she decided to change her mind and grow from the bottom of the container and not from the top of the branch like she was supposed to do.  So we have left Grace in her same spot to see what she produces from the rose branch that is growing from the base of the pot.  Do you think we will get a pretty pink rose by the time Fall comes to visit?  Look hard at the base of the pot and you can see the spindly little rose branch growing.

Remember when we were ‘Hot For Horseradish‘ and ‘Raising Rhubarb‘ in April?  We planted some horseradish and rhubarb at about the same time and we were so excited for them to grow and then come back in 2012 for some harvesting.  Well, we will have some rhubarb, but the horseradish had other plans.  Here are our horseradish and rhubarb plants from back in April.

Needless to say our horseradish patch is now a nice little track of dirt and mud.  Did the plants just pack up and leave?  Maybe they didn’t want to live by the sweet and sour goodness of the rhubarb?  Whatever the reason, our horseradish struck out while our rhubarb hit a home run this season.

There are even updates from our post on Sunday ‘What’s Blooming – Another Virtual Garden Tour‘.  In that post, we talked about our best garden buy ever, which were the long-blooming day lilies from QVC.  Well since that post where we showed two blooming varieties, a third one has opened its buds to display a brownish bloom that will last for a couple of months.  Maybe it’s the child of the original yellow variety and the coral variety that we showed you on Sunday.  Remember them?

We are not sure we remember this variety from previous years.  Can that be possible that it just came out of no where?  Doubtful, but stranger things have happened in our garden.  Again, notice the almost brown color of the petals.  As well, the dark purple middle is a killer.  So gorgeous and, best yet, long lasting.

Remember this little stunner from our trip to Christie’s auction house in June in our post ‘Lots Of Bling – Christie’s Important Jewels‘?

This little diamond ring set with an oval-cut diamond, weighing approximately 46.51 carats, flanked on either side by a pear-shaped diamond, weighing approximately 1.01 carats, mounted in platinum was estimated to go for anywhere from $2,500,000 to $3,500,000 in auction.  Guess what the final bid price was when the dust settled at the auction?  $4,226,500!!  A steal (or to steal it is the only way we would ever be able to own such a gorgeous diamond!).

Lastly, we had made a smart little comment about our Asiatic lilliums being some of the first flowers we planted at Glen Road and, while we were excited that they came back year after year, they were not the most vivid colors we had ever seen.  We tried to get out of putting them down by saying we weren’t the most vivid color either after six years on Glen Road, but it didn’t work.  Here is what we snapped on Sunday in ‘What’s Blooming – Another Virtual Garden Tour‘.

Well this morning on a little garden stroll, another Asiatic lillium had shown its face.  Guess what?  The blooms match our embarrassed faces.  How dare we make fun of our lillium tribe.  Our new bloomer is a dark red.  We may be less than vivid in our six years here on Glen Road, but don’t bring the lilliums down.  They are a diverse nation if we have ever seen one.

So we hope you enjoyed our little update of what’s been going on here at Glen Road.  The garden and everyday life are amazing and fun things.  With every great story, there is another one where things just didn’t go exactly as planned.  That’s life!  Well, for all our less than stellar performances, we guess there is always next year…or the year after….or the year after.  You get our drift.  What good or crazy things have been going on for you this Summer?

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What’s Blooming – Another Virtual Garden Tour

This is a little added bonus that we found as we were walking around looking at what was blooming in the garden.  Don’t be fooled.  This little toad was no more than a half an inch long….a baby.  When I was a little boy, my Grandma would always pull me aside when I yelled at the sight of a toad and give me the benefits of seeing them in your vicinity.  They eat bugs that devour your garden.  They save our garden.  Be happy when you see one near your garden.  So I will take her long ago given advice and be happy that our little friend is out protecting our garden.  Lot of plants are peaking in our garden right now.  Let’s enjoy a little virtual garden tour of what’s blooming.  Come with us….and Mr. Baby Toad.

We hope that you enjoyed our little virtual tour.  After a heavy rain this Friday night, things are looking pretty good and there is no need for us to haul the sprinklers out.  Let’s hope that we can continue to alternate between full sun and then some rain.  It sure makes things stay in bloom a lot longer.  What is blooming in your garden right now?

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – Don’t Bark Up The Wrong Tree

This is JoJo at our July 4th party.  She didn’t take a nap all day.  She just ran from guest to guest to guest.  When she went to bed at 11:30 at night, she fell to her side and didn’t wake up until 10:00 the next morning.  Partying is really hard work.  What have your pets been up to lately?

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Friday Dance Party – All Time Low But Dancin’

This is another edition of Friday Dance Party on Acorns On Glen.  It’s the time where we give thanks for another week of living.  We give thanks for making it through and for being able to celebrate this fact.  How do we celebrate another week of living?  We dance.  So take a moment and be proud of the fact that you’re here and you’ve made it to another Friday.  Not only you, but your family and friends as well.  So, to that end, are you alive this Friday?  Have you given thanks for this?

Good, now let’s dance.

At our July 4th party, I used an application on my iPad for the first time called Pandora.  Basically, Pandora is a music application where you key in the name of a favorite song or artist.  The application will then play the song you requested or a song by the artist you selected and then continue to play songs that are similar to your initial request.  So if you choose Beyoncé, she starts singing and other songs that follow are similar but by artists like Jennifer Lopez, Mariah Carey and Brittany Spears.  We changed the theme up a few times going from pop to R&B to standards from the likes of Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett.  All we needed to do to keep the great music playing was hook the iPad into a speaker and an electric source and we were set for the day.  Pandora did the rest.  We highly recommend Pandora for your iPad or iPhone.  Even better is that the application itself is FREE.  The one thing we did notice is that one song kept playing for several of the songs/artists we selected and people were actually commenting about how much they liked it.  The song was from a band called ‘All Time Low’ and is called ‘I Feel Like Dancin’.  Since that is what we like to do on the Friday Dance Party, we thought it would be perfect for today’s song.  So crank those speakers up and get to groovin’.  You’ve made it through another week and you deserve to celebrate.  Don’t sprain anything!  What cool music applications can you recommend for our iPads and iPhones?

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A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words – Critters I Like

This is the kind of critters I like to see on Glen Road.  The stone kind.  The kind that doesn’t jump, hiss, run, slither or scurry.  They just sit there and do absolutely nothing.  Sort of what we did this weekend after our July 4th party.  What critter horror stories do you have to share here at Acorns On Glen?

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Our Happy 4th of July Picnic Celebration

This is our second day of recovery from our July 4th celebration held on Saturday.  Our party started five or six years ago and was really a small affair.  We would invite our immediate family and close friends over for a barbecue.  The kids would swim most of the day and the adults would gossip about what was going on over the beverage of their choice.  Oh yes, we also ate…and ate…and ate.  Each year after that first party, the July 4th celebration just kept getting bigger.  We weren’t really increasing our immediate family so that wasn’t the reason for the growth.  I guess we were just meeting more friends that we felt we wanted to come over.  So this year, it was our biggest party to date.  125 people big.  So big that we thought we needed a tent for people to sit under to ward off the sun.  That was a good idea as temperatures hit 85 degrees with full sun.  The tent that we got was like a circus tent.  We were joking that later that night, one of us would be performing a Cirque du Soleil performance at the top of it.  Festivities went from 1 in the afternoon until about midnight.

Believe us when we tell you that 125 people can eat.  We had food on the barbecue grill outside and lots of good old Italian food on the inside.

We will try now to the best of our ability to document all the food that we enjoyed.  I am sure we forgot a lot, but here’s a good try:

  • 20 pounds of hot dogs
  • 30 pounds of hamburgers
  • 20 pounds of skirt steaks
  • 30 pounds of baby lamb chops
  • 20 pounds of boneless chicken thighs
  • Large tray of chicken marsala
  • Large tray of eggplant parmesan
  • Large tray of sausage and peppers
  • Large tray of penne marinara
  • Large tray of rigatoni with sausage and broccoli rabe
  • Tomato brushetta with ricotta salata
  • Filet mignon on toast points with carmelized onions and balsamic reduction
  • Shrimp cocktail
  • Potato croquettes
  • Antipasto (cheese and sliced meats)
  • Pigs in the blanket (because it is not a party without pigs in the blanket)
  • Italian sausage wrapped in phylo dough
  • Salad
  • Bread, buns, rolls (you can’t imagine how much starch there was)

Now the dessert.  Our Brooklyn Italian Grandmother put out the call for all Brooklyn and Staten Island bound guests to hit their best Italian pastry shops.  You can imagine the results.  We had so many pastries, cookies and cakes that we actually took many of the leftovers to the homeless shelter the next day.  There was no way we could eat all of the desserts that entered our house on Glen Road.  Here are some cupcakes (which are always a favorite):

Each year, I also ask one of my best friends to make her famous flag cake which is from Ina Garten.  She always obliges.  The flag cake sort of ties it all up here…you know, a symbol of why we are celebrating.

So Happy 4th of July to all of you from all of us here on Glen Road.  We also want to take this opportunity to thank all of our women and men in the armed services who risk their lives to protect all of us.  We appreciate your dedication.  By the way, if you are looking for us, we are still recovering from the big party.  Our beverage of choice was not lemonade, so that fact, coupled with the number of hours that we partied have made all of us Glen Road old people tired.  Thank God we have to go back to work tomorrow.  At our age, work is much easier than partying.  What are you doing today to celebrate the 4th of July?

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Friday Dance Party – Mumford & Sons ‘The Cave’

This is another edition of Friday Dance Party on Acorns On Glen.  It’s the time where we give thanks for making it through another week and for being alive and present here on Earth.  How do we celebrate another week of living?  We dance.  So, are you alive this Friday?  Are you and your family safe and sound?  Take a few seconds now to be in the moment and realize what a great life you truly have.  Did you give thanks for that?

Good, now let’s dance.

We’re getting ready here on Glen Road for a big 4th of July party.  125 people are coming and we just keep inviting more people.  It’s crazy.  Everything is set for a good time.  Plenty of food-the BBQ kind outside on the grill and the Italian kind inside the house.  The pool is heated to a warm temperature.  Since it is forecasted to be 90 degrees outside, it is important that the pool be kept at a constant 80 degrees, right?  Speaking of the temperature, we have had a large tent put up in our back yard so anyone not wanting the sun beating down on them can sit under it.  The tent itself could host a circus.  At night, it has lights in it so the party can go on late into the night.  Oh, and did I mention the booze?  Needless to say, there are bottles everywhere.  All the makings of a great 4th of July!  Now all we need is the music.  Music is always a tough one because at a party like we are having, you need to please people from 5 to 90 years old.  However, this song will absolutely be played because it is one of our favorites this month.  It’s Mumford & Sons ‘The Cave’.  It’s one of those songs that is a cross between several genres of music.  Great strings.  The best part of it, we have absolutely no idea what the lyrics mean.  Internet surfing says everything from a song about recovering from addiction, getting over depression to getting over a failed relationship.  Sounds great for a party, right?  Whatever it means, its our dance number for this week.  So turn the speakers up and celebrate another week of living.  Happy 4th of July and enjoy your dance.  You deserve it.  What are your plans for the 4th of July?

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Fruit Juicy

This is a very good sign.  Earlier in the Spring, we planted two miniature citrus trees with plans to put them on the patio during the Summer and hopefully harvest some fruit.  I think we might get our wish!  After planting the shipped trees, there was about a month where it appeared there was little, if any, growth.  Then all of a sudden and at about the same time, both trees erupted in a mass of blooms.  There was a little bit of fragrance from the blooms, but not too much.  Towards the end of June, the trees were placed outside where they receive several hours of direct sun.  The blooms stayed intact for about a solid month and now many of the blooms have turned into baby fruit.  Above is a picture of the Meyer Lemon tree and below is a picture of the Calamondin Orange tree.  Both are packing some serious baby fruit!

So we’ve already talked about marmalade making with any oranges the Calamondin tree produces (with the help of regular oranges to make up any shortfall), but this is my vote for the Meyer lemons.  It is one of my new favorite Summer drink recipes.  Don’t worry if you don’t have Meyer lemons because regular lemons work just as well.

Meyer Lemon Drop

Ingredients:

  • Sugar, for rim of glass
  • Powdered yellow food coloring (optional)
  • Lemon slice, for garnish
  • 1/4 cup vodka
  • 1 teaspoon Cointreau
  • 2 tablespoons freshly squeezed Meyer lemon juice
  • 2 tablespoons superfine sugar

Directions:

Tint sugar with powdered yellow food color, if desired.  Place sugar in a saucer.  Moisten the rim of a martini glass with a lemon slice.  Dip rim in sugar.  In a cocktail shaker, combine vodka, Cointreau, lemon juice, and superfine sugar with ice; shake well.  Strain into prepared glass.  Make another, and another and then fall over.

So here’s hoping we get to harvest our lemons and oranges by the end of the Summer.  We don’t want our marmalade jars and vodka to be lonely if the fruit doesn’t make it, do we?  That’s the one thing with gardening…fruit today doesn’t always mean fruit tomorrow.  A bad storm or a big bug can ruin your plans (and crop) in an instant.  However, if they do make it and you see us walking slightly unsteady with lemon-scented breath, you know why.  Do you have any lemon or orange recipes that you can share with us here at Acorns On Glen?

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Critter Alert – What Is It?

This is what I found on the granite posts that support our espalier apple trees.  What the hell is it?  A larvae of some sort with some fur or hair sticking out on the bottom.  When I saw this on the post, I almost threw up.  Again, what don’t I like?  What’s my least favorite part of living in the woods of Connecticut?  Yes, the critters.  It can be as big as a beaver or as small as a hairy larvae, but the site of something like this from nature sets me free.  I don’t really know when my critter fears began.  As a kid I was always one with nature.  I caught frogs and toads, tried to catch fish with my hands, used to watch the pheasant and quail fly around in the fields behind my house.  Something changed and all I know now is that there is no joy…there is just a rush of heat through my body as my natural instincts instruct me to run for safety.  It’s the weirdest thing.

The larvae has to be related to the caterpillar I found on the other side of the post.  As a young kid, I would have grabbed the caterpillar, rubbed its furry little body and maybe put it into a jar with air holes poked into the top to watch it turn into a moth or a butterfly.  Now, I attach the telescopic lens to my camera and zoom in from across the yard to get the picture.

Here’s what I’m hoping.  Maybe the larvae and caterpillar have something to do with the luna moth that was stuck to the side of the house for so many days last month.  Maybe the luna gracefully flew to the granite post to leave one more generation of its beautiful family and this is what I found.  With my critter luck, I know that this caterpillar probably produced the larvae and out will come some hideous moth with fangs, a large wasp with a six-inch stinger or some strain of garden eating worm.  Let’s pray for the luna moth!

So rest assured that I will be hitting the internet this afternoon trying to figure out what is stuck to the espalier posts.  I may even go to the book store and buy a moth/butterfly book to see if I can figure out what is growing in the back.  I pray it is not something hideous so I won’t have to go out there and knock it off the post.  That would mean the neighbors would get to see another round of me screaming and running around like a crazy person.  If you know what this is, please leave me a comment.  In other words…..What is it?