The New American Digest

originally posted by Jean June 21, 2009

meditate.
pontificate.
graduate.

oh my, don’t cry,
it isn’t over yet.
there’re more to come
so don’t you fret.
he wasn’t the first
won’t be the last
one of those
dime-a-dozen-boys just
passin’ through.
don’t cry for him
he won’t remember you.
there are plenty more
where he came from
so stay away from there
or you will find
more dime-a-dozen-boys
to wear you down.
you’re not much
of a prize, yourself,
you know
when you’re howlin’
about what shoulda been.
the dime-a-dozen-boys
are fine for playin’.
not worth a damn
if you want ’em
to stay(in).

Mrs DT got back home last night. First a long bus ride to Istanbul, then the airport hassles, off to Amsterdam and layover, then a long direct flight to Seattle, customs, etc, then a flight to Boise, then the long drive home.
With a 9-hour time shift. Midnight here is 9AM there.

Her garden is her baby – she had to check.
Just light enough out for her to begin pointing out the differences between plants and weeds in the garden.

“Yes dear, but I kept everything alive.“
That pretty much pushes the limits of my gardening ability.

She tells me she’s exhausted – who wouldn’t be after a bit over 24 hours of travel?
An hour or so just kicking back, shaking travel jitters off.
Then to bed.

About 2AM (remember when that used to be almost bedtime?). I forget she’s home – lights are on.
I can’t believe I was so tired myself I went to bed with the lights on.
“Oh yeah …“

Time passes. Someplace in there I closed the bedroom door and went back to sleep.

It’s getting light out – it’s past get-up time. Sun will poke up pretty soon.

Lights are on, coffee’s hot but almost gone …

It’s late Sat morning as I write this. (and it’s late evening where she just was.)

Other than a 2-hour nap, she’s not slept properly for two days but since she got home last night – just over 12 hours ago, she’s cleaned the kitchen to her standards, including re-washing the clean dishes that were out.

She’s harvested much of her garden. Tomatoes galore!

And cleared out a few hundred square feet of goatshead weeds. Pretty yellow flowers, nice-looking ground cover … I didn’t know.

She’s taken a shower, washed her clothes, put stuff away, said Hi to her cat, fixed breakfast, took care of a credit card problem, washed her car (huh?), and as I write this, she’s off to a full-scale Costco/Winco shopping trip.

When the crash comes, it’s going to come hard. Hope it doesn’t come while she’s out and about.
Probably won’t see her tomorrow.

Out on the edges of an unnamed playa somewhere off the beaten path in the Great Basin lie remnants of what once passed for civilization.

It doesn’t matter which playa – there are many; there are many ruins.

Sometimes … if the scavengers hadn’t cleaned up … there are enough remnants to help identify the ruins; these appear to be on silver smelter grounds near the California border.

Something substantial once stood here – the pile of bricks suggests a desire of the builders for something longer lasting than a wood frame building. I believe I noted square nails in a higher resolution shot. This would suggest pre-1890s

The track appears to be 18″ between rails – a common size for ore carts and underground transport.

The ruins could date to the 1870s – it’s a very dry climate – but I would guess constructed 1880s and active until maybe the 1920s.


… though given the history and climate of the region, 1860s is possible …

Mrs DT disappears every so often for a few months at a time. On one of those occasions, she tasked me with keeping the weeds under control.

We have a crushed rock front ground covering so figuring anything green in there was by definition, a “weed”, I “kept it under control”.

Poor ignorant me. It was green, I pulled it, … and wiped out all her snapdragons.

“Except those!” didn’t work well, especially after the fact. It was green stuff, it got picked.

I can appreciate gardens and the work that goes in to them but I don’t have any desire to participate in the activities that surround such interests.

This year I didn’t pick the green stuff and the snapdragons appear to have thrived quite well on my lack of interest.