Looking toward Lower Manhattan,  Wall Street and the Statue of Liberty on a hazy day.

I know, I know. I apologize right up front. I’ve been lagging far behind in my ABC-Alongs. It’s a lot harder than I thought to come up with something. Plus, I like to do entries that coincide with what is actually happening in my life now, and what’s blooming in my yard now, and well, like my life now. My good friend Carolyn wrote to tell me that although she enjoyed the Queen Anne’s Lace entry, she felt that I had royally screwed up my ABC-Along because now what was I going to come up with for Q? I guess I’ll just tackle Q when I come to it.

So, with what’s happening now in my life as a guideline, what could be more timely than our trip into New York City last week?  We went in for the Walking with the Dinosaurs event at Madison Square Garden. We took the train in early to do something we have meant to do since moving here two years ago: visit the Empire State Building.

As you can imagine in high tourist season, lots of other people had the same idea. We stood in line; we went through security, we stood in line again—all before even getting to the ticket office. Here is a shot out the window while waiting in line.

All in all, it wasn’t that bad. We made it from the beginning of the line to the elevator in about 30 minutes. Our elevator made it from the bottom to the 80th floor in less than a minute. The floors didn’t register as 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. Oh no. More like 10, 20, 30, etc. As I watched we scaled ten floors at a time in about 5 or 7 seconds. Straight up. No stopping. whizzzz! When we stopped I felt dizzy and off-kilter. Very strange indeed.

We thought we were there, but alas, no. Another line awaited us and at the end of that we had a choice to climb the six flights of stairs to the Observatory on the 86th floor or wait in yet another line for the elevator. We opted to do stairs. The numbers on the landings told us where we were. I swear the 85th floor went on for two floors instead of one. Finally we were at the top with a crush of people vying for spots at the rail.

Here are views from a short person’s perspective. ( I was also trying to be artsy at the same time. ) I could have shot through the barrier but chose not to. Each shot is looking out from a different direction.

We didn’t tarry long gawking at the view. We figured we could come back in the low tourist season and not have to deal with the crush of people. We made our way back down, but this time took the elevator between the 86th and 80th floor instead of the stairs. The ride down was just as disorienting in equilibrium as the ride up, and I found myself staggering out of the elevator doors like someone who has had too much to drink. I have to admit that I had visions of “what if” flashing through my brain as we barreled downward at such a dizzying speed. What if the cable broke? What if the elevator suddenly stops and we’re trapped in here with little to no air flow? I do tend to an overactive imagination at times. Thankfully I didn’t have to worry about any of that since before I knew it we were back down to the main floor.

Walking with the Dinosaurs was awesome but I won’t go into that here since this post is not about that. If you have the chance to see it, do so, you won’t regret it.

There you have it: “N” is for New York (City).

Where the day lilies used to bloom, Queen Anne’s Lace now rules the roadsides. The delicate white umbels nod and sway gracefully as if they are waving hello as you pass by. For a lowly member of the carrot family, it has had bestowed upon it a truly royal name.

Just how did it come by its name?  The American legend says that Anne of Denmark (1574-1619), queen consort of King James I, was an expert lace-maker. The central flower of the carrot’s umbel is reddish-purple. This odd flower was placed upon the umbel for the time Anne pricked her finger and a drop of blood stained the lace. According to Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary the name Queen Anne’s lace did not appear in print until 1895, two hundred seventy-six years after Anne’s death.

Another legend says:
Queen Anne’s Lace is said to have been named after Queen Anne of England, an expert lace maker. English legend tells us that Queen Anne challenged the ladies of the court to a contest to see who could produce a pattern of lace as lovely as the flower of this plant. No one could rival the queen’s handiwork. She however, pricked her finger with a needle and a single drop of blood fell into the lace, that is said to be the dark purple floret in the center of the flower.

One anecdote says Queen Anne’s Lace is so called because one tiny purplish floret in the center is the queen. The white florets make up her lace collar.

Yet another says that the white clusters apparently reminded the British of Queen Anne’s lace headdress.

English botanist Geoffrey Grigson suggests that the name of the plant comes not from a Queen of England but from Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary and the patron saint of lacemakers.

Whatever the true origin of its name, this lacey lovely graces the ground wherever it grows.

The rain washed everything clean and brought with it much cooler temperatures yesterday. That’s a good thing and a bad thing. Good because a lovely cool breeze wafted through the house making the curtains billow out, breathing fresh air in; bad because the combination of new rain water and the cooler temps made the pool temperature drop by three or four degrees. boo hoo. It was pretty cloudy for the better part of the day and not very conducive to splashing around the pool. Still, we hung out in the cabana. We feel we have to take every advantage of the pool that we can since all too soon it will be closed for the season. At least that’s the best rationale that we can come up with for spending another Sunday doing not much of anything.

We kicked off our shoes

and proceeded to kick back ourselves and just relax and read while the cool breeze blew through our little poolside oasis.

Of course, with us there is always food involved and this was no exception. I tried out a new recipe Grape-Mint Salsa. It’s made with both green and red grapes, chopped mint, chopped chives, a jalapeno pepper and some lime juice. (Follow the link if you’re interested in the recipe.) Sugared pita chips are served alongside for dipping.

And, if you’re following along with the Robinson’s you should also know that there is always some kind of drink to go along with the food. Another new recipe, this one taken from Rachel Ray’s website: Beer Margaritas. Oh my. I am not a beer drinker at all, but this is enough to change my mind. delicious. refreshing. addictive. Take 4 12-ounce bottles of ice-cold Corona, 1 cup of tequila, one 12-ounce container of limeade concentrate and mix together. Salt glass rims with kosher salt and serve with wedges of lime.

The only downside to these that I can think of is that they go down a lot easier than a normal margarita. Maybe too easily ...

The day got sunnier as it went on and we did take a quick dip, then just floated around for a while.

Our little garden frog was happy too.

For dinner we grilled pizza. The crust comes out cracker thin and crispy. yum. One with tomato sauce, fresh mozzarella, portobella mushrooms and roasted red peppers,

and one with caramelized onions, gorgonzola cheese and black olives (my particular favorite.

A walk after dinner down the road with the dogs topped off another great (if not very productive) Sunday.

Last night we had a power failure. Since moving here we’ve only had one other significant power outage and that was during the daylight hours. Our neighbors have always told us that it’s very common to lose power here so I always have candles on hand, and we bought a lantern the year before last when tropical depression Ernesto paid us a visit but we’ve never used it.
Sidebar: Most of our power lines are above ground; not buried. Add to that all the trees that fall down on a fairly regular basis and you can understand why we have power outages.

We had a thunderstorm roll through around 7:00 p.m. last night just as we were eating dinner. We had three very close hits (if not our house than something in our yard), and on one of the lightning hits the power went out. It poured; more lightning and more thunder. We sat there watching the rain come down and about 20 minutes later the power came back on. The little thunderstorm moved off to rain on someone else and we cleaned up the dinner dishes.

An hour later found us settling down in front of the television to watch Flashdance and give Rick a much needed back rub. All of a sudden we were sitting in total darkness. Hey, who turned out the lights? Somehow, this seemed more final than the previous one. We scrambled around in the dark grabbing candles and remembering where we’d put the lantern. It was so dark! Soon we were sitting in the comforting glow of candlelight. Kind of nice. Peaceful. We carried lanterns down into the yard to put the solar cover back on the pool. So very dark.

We didn’t get to watch Flashdance, but Rick did get his back rub—by candlelight. Two hours later as we got in bed to read, the power came back on. It went off again in the middle of the night too. We only know because we were rudely awakened by the beep of the smoke alarm as the power came back on. This morning everything had to be reset, from the coffee pot to the pool timer. Oh how we depend on our electrical gadgetry!