Can You See the Difference?

Why in the world am I posting a picture of the glass in my living room window, you ask? In my ongoing quest to limit the amount of junk that I buy that isn't at all helpful to anyone really, I'm experimenting with cleaning using low tech and old fashioned cleaning methods. One of the most common and approved of is the use of vinegar and water instead of glass cleaner. And my, oh my, it works!

Left is vinegar and water; Right is Windex

If you click the photo it should open up huge for you. Please, please ignore the rampant meadow that is my lawn, it is now cut. I promise! At any rate, like many people with dogs, I have a constant streak of nose marks across my window at Beagle nose level. It is gross and cloudy and snotty and even has little run marks when they are particularly excited and fling snot. In other words, I have window challenges.

While there is some reflective cloudiness on the windows, it isn't them but my camera work and you can take it from me, there was not one jot of difference between the two windows. And while I did notice an immediate vinegar smell when I sprayed the windows, it was gone by the time I was done. I think it must evaporate quite quickly.

The recipe is simple: 1 Part White Vinegar to 3 Parts Water. That's it.

Colonial Williamsburg with Mom

Mom in Governor's Palace

My mother, J, came down for a lovely visit a few weeks ago. She stayed with my sister but we got to do plenty together. A super fun day for Mom and me, but perhaps less so for my sister J the Younger, who wasn't feeling great, was our trip to Colonial Williamsburg. My sister was a trooper though and seemed to have a good time anyway and it was nice to spend time with her.

I've been there before, but never in the first flush of spring and it was wonderful! I think the highlight for my Mom was the tour of the Governor's Palace. For me, the kitchens and kitchen garden were by far the focus.

Kitchen Gardens at the Governor's Palace

The food made daily in the kitchen outbuilding is taken from foods grown there in the gardens and heritage breeds of stock, some now quite rare, raised and slaughtered there. Some of their animals are simply amazing and wonderful. Luckily, they have a book of their breeds for sale in their book shop. :) Next time I'll get it. This time I focused on garden books outlining the evolution of the garden design in America, Pleasure gardens and other wonderful garden-y things.

But back to the food for a second; the cooks in that outdoor kitchen use authentic implements and everything just as it was and cook real food, all day long, which they lay out on a table in between their cooking area and the visitors. Not to eat, of course, but anything you might want to ask or have explained, they do. It really is amazing.

The Hedge Maze at the Palace

The hedge maze was looking a bit worse for wear with so many people pushing through rather than find their way out. Since it is still early, they will thicken up, but it is a shame to see people destroying something so old and beautiful. This photo was taken from atop the ice house which is about 16 feet tall and still perfectly operable. The Palace runs along the canal, with truly spectacular terraced lawn and gardens, and the ice used to be cut right from that canal. It hasn't actually frozen in years, but the stone and earthen ice house provided cold storage and ice throughout our sweltering Virginia summer and fall for all the people that lived there.

We ended our evening there by enjoying a wonderful dinner at Shield's Tavern, where we were very lucky to get an early reservation. It is superb food and very stout fortified beverages are served :: grin::. I knew enough to get a Pimm's Cup, which is just fine to have early in the dinner and be able to drive a few hours later. My Mom, on the other hand, got a Rummer. Those are basically a glass full of delcious, but rather potent, alcohol. She was a trooper though. The portions were huge and we took home doggie bags. I highly recommend it.

Mumsy is coming back this month and we plan on going again to see the growth. We're going for King's Tavern reservations and carriage rides. I'm focused on trying that Colonial Game Pye, which I've heard a great deal of good about, before I try the recipe (which I have) with my limited supply of venison.

Blogalyser

I recently saw this analysis on another blog, (sorry that I can't remember who, it isn't one I follow but one I linked to somehow), and favorited the base site for later. I've now run the analysis on my blog. The link for the site is at the bottom so you can do it to your blog too. I'd be interested to see how all my blog friends out there roll out doing this.

My feeling is that a lot of us garden bloggers and sustainable living bloggers might wind up similarly. My purposeful and, at times, difficult avoidance of talking politics and sullying gardening with that tends to skew these stats some, I think.

I also ran the Gender Genie linked at that site to see the results for individual posts. Every single post I tried, and I tried a lot, came up more male than female (how depressing is that!) but there was a definite difference depending on topic. When rambling on about Sustainability or reviewing a book, I came up less overwhelmingly male in my writing. When giving facts and status on gardening then I come up with a much higher percentage, up to 80%. Argh...is that just my alpha personality and 23 years in the military?

Enjoy! What would you suggest I do to improve my communications with all of you?

The Blogalyser reveals...

Your blog/web page text has an overall readability index of 11.

This suggests that your writing style is conventional
(to communicate well you should aim for a figure between 10 and 20).Your blog has 34 sentences per entry, which suggests your general message is distinguished by verbosity
(writing for the web should be concise).

CHARACTER MATRIX

male		female
self		world
past		future

Your text shows characteristics which are 56% male and 44% female
(for more information see the Gender Genie).
Looking at pronoun indicators, you write mainly about yourself, then the world in general and finally your social circle. Also, your writing focuses primarily on the present, next the past and lastly the future.

Find out what your blogging style is like!