Meg'sfoodandwinepage

You (and all your ideas) are totally unmarketable

I'm so lucky to live in a big city with (O god I hope) deep resources of like-minded individuals.  This idea, in fact, is Main Reason Number One I keep living here despite the strong hankerings of one side of my soul for a garden, for the land, for space and views.  I hold onto that ideal on days like today.

Today Manhattan was drenched with a technically 'light' rain that had amazing powers of full soaking. (I ran 7 miles this morning in "mist" which never coallesced into raindrops and yet was so uniformly soaking that I dripped puddles all the way up the stairs home.)

These coastal-soaking rain days are days on which it is a major pain in the ass to do my job, since for me to carry a good number of wine samples to my customers requires a backpack (which the umbrella drips on such that in a soaking rain the backpack then gets soaked and starts draining onto my lower back &etc= wet ass).  Also a side wine bag which I have to put down if I need to answer the phone or hail a cab, which = wet thigh when I pick it up again to  carry.  Of course in addition to that there is the fact that there is no way around  wet feet and ankles from walking around.  So one gets pretty wet in general.  Not to mention the annoyance of the total physical inconvenience of wielding all these bags plus an umbrella and a cell phone (esp a Treo which refuses to get your email and/or work as a phone if the wind is blowing in the wrong direction, not to mention a coastal soaking rainstorm). . .

On these days it smarts all the more to be confronted with what we shall delicately call an unreceptive public. In short, today I got soaked to have some customers (well one, but it's his store so no one, especially me, could disagree) totally dismiss a  wine for the "sin" of having acidity (and we all know how I feel about acidity as a trait in wine).  What could I do but bite tongue,  as in this case it is impossible for me to empathetically second the customer's opinion and hell, at least at this very moment I'm not getting rained on so it could be worse.  Only thing to do is to continue sales call.  Get order in the end, although it's clear that despite my best efforts at diplomacy a chill has fallen.  Schedule tasting for later to express my good will (however fake!).  Linger a few minutes longer in an attempt to show that I'm really happy to be here!  Feel clearly unwelcome!  Leave awkwardly!  It's pouring!!  by the time I reach the corner I'm soaked!!

Know I have way too much wine to carry to my next appointment (where I'll drop off 4 bottles, but now I have 10!! I weigh 123.5 pounds!!  My bags weigh almost half that!  it's pouring!!) so plan to take a cab.  No cabs coming!  I get further soaked! An off-duty cab driver finally takes pity on me and takes me to my next appointment.  My second wine bag drips onto my feet as I call orders into the office and (for once) feel grateful for the traffic that makes it take ages to get where I'm going.

The rest of the day progressed in better form, thankfully.  I decided NOT to drive to Columbia County in the dark tonight on flooded roads and instead came home and made a lovely dinner.  Had a glass of the wine that my customers rejected as too "tart" (and enjoyed it totally) with my dinner.

But of course that was not the only lesson of my day.  I also read about this book on Dooce's post from today and so was reminded, for the second time today, that my tastes are totally unmarketable (also that I should never be trusted to date anyone ever again because the red flag dates?  I marry them). It is true that I actually do care about what certain people (Clotilde, Pim, Joe Dressner, just to name a few) might have had for lunch.  I hope that some people might care about what I have had for lunch if I find it interesting enough to post about.  But the fact remains that I was reminded by this post that 99.9% of the world does not care about lunch (or what anyone including themselves have eaten lately) in general. They are followed by a more giant subset that never really think about wine.  Some of them are my customers.  Such is life.

But I am off to watch one of my all time favorite movies.  Might need to watch it twice, but that should do!

We're cooking in New York! But not in our Kitchens!

Since this is going to be a post partly about the weather, I feel as if I should start out with some funny comment about how boring it is to talk about the weather.  Except the topic of weather is never boring, if you live in the North-Eastern half of this country.  This is why we live here.  If we didn't enjoy the occasional bout of extreme weather we'd all move to Santa Barbara (where I'll be for all of next week, and where I'm expecting Perfecly Boring Weather.  Which quite frankly will be a welcome change.)

Anyhow, this has been an extraordinary, record-breaking heat wave here in New York.  Actually on the entire East Coast and beyond.  So extremely hot that instead of the usual bitching and suffering and saying "hot enough for ya?" and randomly shooting each other, there's been a sort of feeling of community, that we're all going through this Historic Event together and coping as best we can.  Um, let's just hope the power stays on, though.  There's only so much Historic Event I can take.

Personally, since Al Gore is/has always been one of my great heroes, I decided only to install one small air conditioner this year and use fans to do the rest.  So this week I've been having to camp out in the living room.  On Tuesday I caught the cat lying miserably in a limp pool back in the un-airconditioned, south-facing bedroom (this animal is completely nuts, what's wrong with her?). From that point on the bedroom was officially cut off, door shut!  It's been like living in a studio apartment for the last two days -- sort of fun for a while but I'm looking forward to reclaiming the square footage (not to mention that the novelty of the sofa bed wears off quickly). 

Fortunately, in anticipation of a few hot days (not that I imagined THIS hot, never actually having experienced this hot before, because it has never BEEN this hot before, can you say GLOBAL WARMING AL GORE DOES NOT LIE) I spent a good deal of Sunday up at my house cooking.  I haven't had to turn on the stove and have been dining very well on the bounty while hiding out from the heat.  The haul consisted of:  some leftover farro salad, a whole grilled chicken,  a piece of grilled skirt steak, a huge pile of blanched string beans for salad, and a batch of ratatouille (which I froze half of for later in the year when fresh produce will be but a memory).  Supplemented by some produce (cucumber, carrots, a few tomatoes) and the giant bag of basil which became pesto, I've been eating quite well despite the total infeasibility of cooking.  In case you were worried.

I read last night with amusement that Marsha had adopted much the same technique (creating uncooled no-go areas) for her house.  Except?  She took advantage of the cool zone by canning some cherries.  The woman never ceases to amaze! I love it.  Also, I'm never inviting her over in a heat wave, unless she promises to bring cherries that are ALREADY CANNED to have on ice cream.

Now that I've nattered on and on about the weather. . . here's what I really wanted to say today. One of the things that finally prodded me back to writing this blog again was a post that Joe Dressner wrote on his last month that resonated with me profoundly.  Specifically, this: 

"I want to apologize to the readership for the personal character of this blog entry. I often hear the criticism that for a wine blog my blog has very little about wine. I suppose I should be tasting wine daily and writing fabulous notes here about how they smell like tobacoo and are smoky in the mouth.  . . .
. . . I never quite manage to write those sort of wine notes. To me, being a wine importer is almost like being on a mission and its a mission that is filled with circuitous routes, missed flights, turbulence and discomfort. Simultaneously, I have the privilege of being associated with an enormously gifted group of vignerons who bring the earth to life and into the bottle. Even a night in South Jamaica's Hampton's Inn can't ruin that. "

and also this:

"I fell in love with wine in the Maconnais and fell in love with my wife there and had two children there. All done in an ancient farmhouse facing vineyards which have been there for time immemorial, even if they have now been mechanized, pulverized, chemicalized and denaturified to produce something unattractive to drink. It will be wonderful to go home again, a home I never would have guessed existed some 23 years ago when I started this adventure."

Thank you, Joe, for continuing to speak of wine as a process, not a product.  For speaking about our business not as an "industry" but as an adventure.  For reminding me that it is about the people and the land and also the crazy trips we go through to see those people and places.  All of which can make a bottle of wine resonate profoundly with experience.  Those are the only bottles really worth drinking.

6 days, 400 wines. . .

. . . many long meals, and lots and lots of cheese later, I return.  But only a few pounds fatter through some miracle of metabolism (plus lots and lots of training in advance ;->).   I'm back at the computer just waiting for the jet-lag to catch up and flatten me out.  The jet-lag is of course combined with a general lack of sleep accumulated over the course of an entire week. . . I'll be flat indeed!

This was easily the most inspiring wine trip I've been able to take -- spending time with a group of winemakers who are as crazily dedicated to working their little plot of soil as this bunch is nothing short of a revelation!  I'd hire myself out to any number of them for food (and wine!) and board in a flash.

Photos to post later -- lots of weather-beaten faces and "vigneron tans," lots of vistas, vines, and great meals -- some of them laid out on boards over sawhorses amidst vats and presses and such.  The real thing.

But now back to the business of making a living out of selling the wines <sigh> aka "real life".  Or just another aspect of it, I suppose.

Coming home to Manhattan after a last day in Paris always brings home to me that Manhattan's charms are certainly more visceral than visual. 

But I am yet of good cheer because P returned with bags and bags of salad, zucchini, beets, and carrots from Columbia County just before I crashed last night.  And I have a new cookbook that I grabbed at Athenaeum bookstore in Beaune that will give us new ways to prepare many of the above, just in time for the garden's upcoming EXPLOSION (despite the early-season bounty, it's becoming clear as usual that we ain't seen nuthin' yet! Time to break out the canning jars. . . ).

Big News in the Wine Biz

The ban on "direct shipping" of wine from wineries in one state to consumers in another has been overturned in court.  Read here to get the full story. Before you get excited and start ordering wine like mad on the internet, bear in mind that the ruling only specifies that in-state and out-of-state wineries must be treated equally.  So theoretically, for example, New York State could now rule that instate wineries may not ship their wine directly to NY residents, either.  And we'd still be beholden to the 3-tier system.

Also, the ruling says nothing about the ability of liquor license holders (ie retail stores) to ship wine from their state into another.  This is still technically illegal (I think) but widely practiced.  Everyone is selling wine all over the country on the internet.

Personally, as a wine lover/drinker/cellarer myself, I would not feel terribly comfortable trusting my cases of wine to the UPS or Fedex system for safe (and temperature-controlled) shipping.  But then again, I guess many distributors don't use refrigerated trucks/containers/warehouses, either. And many retail shops leave something to be desired in the termperature control department.  <sigh>  Unless you know you're buying from someone who insists on those things, who knows what condition your wine will arrive in? 

I guess as long as you are buying Fruit-Bomb California cabernets with 15+ degrees of alcohol, it doesn't really matter anyhow.  I think I need to move to France before I'll have a cellar that I'm totally happy with, or just get over the fact that I know that shipping, even WITH the best-case scenario, isn't the best thing you can to a bottle of wine.

Worst Wine Marketing Awards!

In case you need a giggle for a dark and rainy March day, I announce two winners in the dubious category of Really Bad Wine Marketing Ideas:

The ENTIRE "Little Penguin" concept (go on, you know you want to take the "little Penguin Personality test.  You know you want to!)

The attempt to market wines to women by giving them names like "Mad Housewife."  (hey, at least they come right out and admit they're marketing the wine to people who don't want to think very much.)

I mean, blech!

Break on Through!

Some weeks, the craziness kills you.  Other weeks, you realize that the craziness that exhausts you and makes you (well, duh) crazy is Just Worth It Even Though It Costs.  This week I think I have mangaged to break on through the exhaustion into a feeling that what I do is worth it.

Thanks for all the supportive comments on my last post.  Leah  especially hit it on the head with the question she asked herself: "Well, who wants to spend their whole life sitting around on their ass anyway? Time to do that once you're dead, so to speak."   This is a precise echo of my college advisor (whose death, almost exactly a year ago, I mourn all the more for not having kept closer to him in the last several years).  He said to me (a wild-eyed crazy 17-year-old with high expectations of myself and no sense of the world. . . gee, not much has changed in 15 years!) "But are you HAPPY in what you are doing?  Because if you are not happy in the moment, what else is there?"  This from Clark Rodewald, the most intellectually vigorous and physically present man you can imagine, who was confined to a wheelchair.  The hardest, best professor a selfdemanding, smart, but intellectually sloppy 17-yr-old could ever wish for.  The professor who changed my life, but with whom I never kept in proper touch with, because as much as he gave, he was a little scary (you felt you were interrupting a life that was more vigorous, more connected, and deeper than your own could ever be).  The professor who convinced me not to go to graduate school and got me to read what is still my FAVORITE NOVEL EVER. (Howard's End by EM Forster).

I still disregard his advice.  But from time to time it rings true, and I grasp what he was saying.  This week has been C-R-A-Z-Y.  Being an ambassador for true wines in a world populated with aggressive salespeople, mega-mergers among liquor companies (the Titan Southern just moved in, and they have muscle.  Money, and muscle.  They are very, very ugly.) is not easy. 

But, you know what?  I finally think I have learned to embrace that and say "EFF-IT".  They are they.  I am I.  Give me the wine that is hard to sell because people don't know that they should want it.  I will make them want to want it (and then it will be sold out and they'll have to wait for the next vintage -- HA!)>

12-hour days.  Lots of driving.  Never being caught up.  Haven't cooked dinner all week.  Well, it's a good cause.  I hope I can keep saying BRING IT ON.

My current awards for keeping the spirit up:  retail website of the year (until Hudson Wine Merchants gets online) vote goes to Laurent at the Princeton Corkscrew Wineshop.  They are uncompromising.  Would that we all could be so. Restaurant I Most Want to Sell Wine To goes to Chiboust  in Tarrytown for just Getting It in a county that for the most part is perfectly content Not To Get It.  They made my day today for being open, and cool.  (THANK YOU.)

And, thanks to my husband:  For liking the wines I have a hard time selling and reminding me that they are often the best.  Folks, "light" is not a bad word.  Wines should be a pleasure to drink.  Being drunk is not (always) a pleaure. (And the aftermath is never pleasant, be the drunk ever so necessary).  But drinking a wine that tastes good without hitting you over the head?  Always a pleasure.  It's like the difference between junk food and wholesome food.  Wines I had this experience with, just this week?  Here and Here. (besides my favorite, LaPierre Morgon, which shouldn't even count anymore).

So, I'll try to keep learning all these thing, try to forget them less, and keep on plugging.  All this work will pay off, someday.  Right? 

And I get to don safety glasses and chip pepto-bismol pink tiling off my bathroom walls this weekend.  I'll pretend each one is a bottle of yellow-tail shiraz or something and sing a little song as I go.  My husband has promised to take me to dinner at Swoon in Hudson tomorrow, too. (Number 2 on the list of Restaurants I Wish Would Buy Wine From Me.)  How bad could life be? 

Tra-la, I'm off for a few hours of sleep now.  Bets are that I won't make it to the gym tomorrow.  Can I promise to go for a long walk outdoors on the weekend to make up for that?  Please?  Can I?

Back to Work, Again, and Food for Thought from 'the Art of Eating'

Instead of blogging, last night I read a wonderful article about Beaujolais in Edward Behr's quarterly The Art of Eating.  Which, in turn, gave me things I wish I had more time to blog about.

But in the meantime, it's back to the driving (on slushy roads, too often) working grind for me.  And in cooking, back to the tried-and-true favorites.  Tonight, a winter classic that never fails to please -- what my mother always called Chicken Cacciatore, also known as chicken legs stewed with carrot and mushroom and canned tomatoes.  It's always delicious.  I hope my children will learn the same dish from me and make it when they're old enough to appreciate its joys, too (one of which being the joy of making a delicious dish out of the cheapest possible ingredients).

But I digress.  Behr's article (published in number 67 of his quarterly) is subtitled "the Goal of a Gulpable Wine."  It deals with what we call over here the "drainability factor;" ie the goal of making a wine that invites you to drink more of it because you like its taste, not necessarily just because you want it to make you drunk.  A quote from the article came from Claude Geoffray, the maker of those magnums of 2000 Cote de Brouilly we so enjoyed with our Chestnut ravioli on Christmas, and the Rabbit terrine and Chestnut soup on New Year's Eve (and, yes, I promise notes on cooking Rabbit in various forms, I really do, and really will do it, soon).  But here's Behr filtering Geoffray, commenting on the fact that he prefers wines that are "refreshing."  "That's not necessarily what consumers prefer now. (Behr) 'when they open wines on the weekend, they want a special wine -- we {French} don't drink wine any more -- but for people like me who drinke wine every day. . . .'(Geoffray)".  The trailing-off thought suggesting that there IS a place for lighter, more quaffable wines.

I guess this is a point I've been realising, in my little household where we (lucky us) do get to drink wine every day, and do.  For a long timenow I've shied away from big, heavy wines (the bigger Rhones, Bordeaux in general, New World wines almost entirely). More and more, though, I don't even like to drink socalled "lighter" wines  (like Burgundy or Loire reds) that I find too young, even great ones.  Not that I don't like to drink young wine, because I find many young wines delightful.  In fact, I adore drinking Beaujolais BECAUSE it is so good and delightful when young.  But I have raised a protest lately against opening bottles of young Burgundy.  (I know, we all should be so lucky as to drink any Burgundy at all!).  And still, why open one, even a good one, when it is too young to be truly pleasurable?  Because young (good) Burgundy is still a little angular, a little too high on the acid, a little tannic.  It doesn't invite you back to drink more, unless it is to analyse what the wine could become, given time.

But, you know, there's tasting time, and then there's dinner time.  Who wants to analyse their wine at dinner time?  Not (even) me.  At dinner time, I want to drink my wine. 

And enjoy it.  I love well-made, natural Beaujolais made by people who care about their wine and care about having light, refreshing, gulpable wines.  More power to these people, mentioned by Behr:  first of all, the "Gang of Four" (so nicknamed by their importer, Kermit Lynch, who is an Important Person around here as well as supplying much of my husband's livelihood) in Morgon -- Guy Breton, Jean Foilard, Marcel Lapierre, and Jean-Paul Thevenet.  Personally, I confess to preferring Foilard, but my friend and neighbor Phil is crazy about LaPierre almost to a fault, and Behr mentions an '02 Breton wine as soaring in "sweet deliciousness."  Other producers he interviews include Chateau Thivin (Claude Geoffray's property), as well as Paul Janin et Fils, Jean-Paul Brun of Dom Terres Dorees (which I sell), and the Desvignes in Morgon (whose wines I should sell more of).  I drink all of these wines as regularly as I can.

At any rate, if you are interested in the subject, or even just in reading some sometimes-very-fine writing about food, travel, and wine, you should seek out this issue (no 67 of The Art of Eating).  I don't know if it's available on newstands or not.  Here it its website.  It also has an article written by Derrick Schneider, who writes a notable blog called An Obsession With Food.

In parting, I have to say that I truly wish I had more time for consumption of these well-thought-out obsessions of others, instead of becoming consumed with the dailyness of working, driving around, exercising, eating, drinking good wines, reading daily blogs and trying to absorb bits of the newspaper/New Yorker (what WAS that odd Lorrie Moore story about this week??? anyone who got it and/or didn't find it HORRIBLY MORBID please let me know).  I find myself thinking lately that if only I were sharper, or perhaps more organized, or willing to sleep less. . .  .

But there it is.  In the meantime, I was glad to read Behr yesterday and stay up past my bedtime because his article was fascinating enough to keep me reading.  And I was glad to keep thinking about what he said, today.  And I may give him another read tonight (because I finally have admitted to myself that I am NOT sharp enough to get a firm hold on anything the first time through.  I probably would have done better papers in college if I'd known that, then.  But THEN?  I thought I was smart.  I have since learned that in fact I'm a little slower on the uptake than even I like to admit.)

The sky is falling. . .?

This has certainly been a good week for Dinner Table Conversation, at least for people in the wine business.  (AS IF we need more things. . . being a pretty talkative lot, after all!).

First the news that the Supreme Court was debating the matter of interstate commerce.  Here's a concise link that explains the situation, as well as a pro-side editorial from the NYT (yes, you have to register to read).  Many say that this will END BUSINESS AS WE KNOW IT!!!  WITHOUT THE 3-TIER SYSTEM WE WILL ALL LOSE OUR JOBS!  YIKES!  Personally, I am not so alarmist.  I know it will change how the business operates, but let's face it -- there are enough wineries out there who don't have the time and manpower to also manage their own sales, and they need us on the distribution-side.  There are also big wineries who sell too much wine to direct-ship, and who would rather have their distribution managed by people who already own warehouses and trucks and have a trained sales force in place.  But, you know, I could be wrong.  Maybe the sky is falling? 

But, you say, there are always imported wines to keep us in business?  And yet, there is another sign for alarmists: FRENCH VIGNERONS HAVE TAKEN TO THE STREETS!  The French love taking to the streets -- it's not a good edition of the Frenchsnooze if there's not a manifestation or strike going on.  But this time, it's the winemakers, and they're mad.  There's a big government-sponsored anti-drinking ad campaign going on, and this coupled with already declining consumption and a plethora of cheap imports from Argentina and Australia, along with a dollar that is in the toilet following a year when stupid Americans were pouring out good french wine because they're idiots. . . well, sales are not what they used to be.  So the vignerons want the government do do something.  I'm not sure really what the government can do, but I'm not French so I rather lack imagnination in this department.  I just hope that it doesn't mean they relax the AOC laws to allow people to rip out historic vines so they can plant merlot and chardonnay everywhere and water the vines like crazy, trying to beat the Australians at their game.  I have a bit of faith that this will not, actually, happen.  And this is a wine business that survived Phylloxera.  So what's a little ad campaign and some decreased exports, after all?  Is it really a bad thing for the wine business that sales of cheap industrial wines have gone down?  Ah, big questions.

But there remains one final sky-falling fact for those of us who sell wine for a living:  it is that little problem of the dollar being in the toilet against the Euro (and everything else for that matter).  Which means we all have to raise prices a bit on wines that already went up a bit this year.  Which means the retail/restaurant customers will not feel like buying so much imported, especially european, wine next year.  Which means sales will go down at the same time as we lower margins, which means a tough year next year. 

Sounds like the sky is falling!!  Better get under the covers and stay there!  Or, rather than panic, how about reading the wise words of someone who's been there before.  Thanks to Joe Dressner for his "semi-long view on the decline of the dollar." (scroll down to that post).  Right from the mouth of someone who's been there before, a statement that the sky is not, indeed falling.  True, we might have a tough year next year.  Actually, that much at least is certain.  But, you know, things change, the business changes, and the bottom line is that the best man will remain standing.  True, it's "adapt, or die."  But also true is that quality and integrity go a long way.

At any rate, things should stay interesting next year.  I better get out and sell some wine RIGHT NOW just in case the sky does fall. . . . Sancerre, anyone?

So busy

And so very tired. . . turned on the radio to see if the Red Sox could pull it off last night. That was 10:45. Then superstition would not let me turn off that radio until I was sure they had won! (incredible. . . I feel it greatly increases John Kerry's chances, with the natural balance of the Universe set off keel. . . fabulous!) But didn't get to bed until after midnight.

Then we woke up at 4 ish am. The cat is distressed by the suitcase which is out for P's trip that starts tomorrow. I think it was she, and not stress, that woke us up. But the stress kept us half awake until it was time to haul asses out of bed for alternate side parking and work. Now the suitcase is totally packed; she must be even more worried. Which means more bad sleep tonight. Grrr to that little furry beast whose scratching claws can wreak havok in the sleep patterns.

Combined with the stress of a slow month (the economy is so measured by wine purchases, and let me tell you, it was a slow month. How could it not be, when we all have to fill our tanks with much more expensive gas and pay half again as much for our heating oil? Hello, wine sales are DOWN.) all this means I am burnt out. . . looking forward to a weekend upstate with papardalle to make and applesauce to put up for the winter (and my fruitcakes!). Hopefully the cosmos and zinnias are pulling through the chill enough that I can put off pulling them up for a couple more weeks. Because they are really very cheerful. And I need cheer!

Re-Entry

It's another Monday night. I am cranky and cooped up on Mondays, usually.

Mondays are re-entry, always difficult. More so when re-entry means making the transition from a houseful of space to a cluttered apartment. From 3 acres and outdoor time to just the harlem sidewalk. To a fridge full of this week's produce, the weekly glut to deal with. (Tonight's salad of blanched corn -- the last of the local corn we'll buy! -- with our Chioggia beets and some shallots and parseley and a light cider-vinegar dressing -- did some yeoman duty.)

On Mondays, we're always tired from getting up early to prepare the transition and lots of driving with the thought of the week ahead. How hard for the mind to change into work mode, just as it was getting used to freedom, and wind blowing over the clothesline, and many other projects unrelated to the weekly grind.

For me, this Monday also marked the in-between-time when one month of sales has drawn to its hectic, bone-crunching close; the next one has yet to begin its cycle. So, not much to do (don't worry, I did the work of at least two weeks last week alone). I saw a couple of customers on my way back down (the drive was beautiful, with just a hint of fall color coming. How fast the season changes -- wait, wait, I'm not done looking yet!) and then got busy thinking about how I really should clean up my desk, about how much I have going on in October (it's coming, I can wait), taking a few phonecalls and shelving most work under "I'll get it done tomorrow." It was a quiet day after a truly hectic week (no wonder, all my customers are buried under the weight of their end-of-month deliveries -- many of them mine.). Nothing to worry about for me -- I had a perfectly satisfactory month. October will be busiest at the end. I bide my time.

So I am summing up many lessons learned lately. About how marriage is different from even pre-marriage with someone you've lived with for a while. How? There is more time, and space, for everything. Although arguments can take on a greater urgency (since they are for all time) in fact what marriage does is give a relationship greater space to stretch in. Maybe it's just because we have a house, now, where there is more space. But I find we can work separately, on different things, all day long, and still be deeply connected. The rhythm of life just includes each other, without question. We have so much time ahead of us that the daily connection becomes both stronger and less urgent. I like it.

Also there are the lessons learned from our garden. Many, which will take up many blogs. But lesson one: do yourself a favor and plant some zinnias! They will grow anywhere (trust me, my front garden has the world's worst soil, and my flower gardening has been as close to indifferent as I can get away with since it's too hot up there to work after 10 am. . . .) We've had great color from them for weeks, and they love to be cut. They last a long time and even put up with beeing mauled around in a container and carted back in my wine cooler in the trunk. I hauled back a nice bunch deep pink and light pink cosmos and luscious red and magenta zinnias to catch my eye here in the harlem apartment this week. Lesson one of gardening: things want to grow, no matter what you do. This is good. Anyone can grow zinnias with a teeny amount of attention to timing. . . . they are so satisfying. (Thanks to my sister who got me the seeds! I am indebted!)

And today I also busied myself downloading a new mix of music from itunes. Hey, it's legal, it's easy, and I have a great new bunch of songs to listen to. Maybe 99 cents a song is a lot, but, y'know it's cheaper than buying a lot of new CD's and this mix will keep me amused for a while. It all started with Alexi Murdoch, who will someday have a new CD to buy. But now, for those days when I drive out of range of WFUV, I have a great mix. Considering the amount of time I'll spend driving next month (any bets -- do I go over 3,000 milesin October?! easy guess is YES, AND THEN SOME) having a mix of good music on CD won't be a bad thing. (Hence making music downloading a legitimate part of the work-day -- see how easy that was!).

A day well spent. . . . ?