More Fancy News from Exciting Vermont

What a riot! I thought I left the big city behind when I moved here! The Simpsons Movie opening on the twentyfirst is still having repercussions. Yesterday I was interviewed by telephone by a popular national radio station in Spain, (www.cadenaser.com - find Maria Guerra's Ventana show for the 26th, it will probably be available as a podcast) quite thrilling to prepare for, and when it happened it was flat out fun. I rec'd several telephone calls from friends in Spain letting me know how surprised and amused they were too, LOL/MPEC.

Ayer me entrevistaron en la Cadena Ser (www.cadenaser.com - hay que buscar "la Ventana" de Maria Guerra, del dia 26 del presente, a lo mejor se encuentra como podcast en iTunes). Me conocieron atraves de la reportera Barbara Celis quien tuve placer de conocer esa tarde del estreno. Buscava un lugar central, para observar a ver que puedo hacer o ver, ya que la tarde iva terminandose aunque seguia movimiento. y dentro de poco veo una reportera muy interesante poseando con su fotografo en frente de donde todos los estrellas havian hecho su pasarela en frente del teatro, con camiseta en castellano -
Le pregunto -"Hola, sois de la prensa de alguna parte?"
ella - "Si, de Espanya ... "
yo - "No me digas, de El Pais?"
ella -"Vaya, pues si, espera, eres de aqui? Como es que hablas
espanyol?"
yo - "Si Ms Corresponsal, soy de aqui, y si, hablo espanyoooool"
ella entonces saca su boli y me hace preguntas, hablamos media hora, cambiamos tarjetas y tal, y terminamos invitandole a ella y al fotografo a una paella esa noche (no llegaron, pues se les hizo tarde y estavan de trabajo, pero me escribieron un email gracioso dando las gracias y para darme el pdf del articulo que salio en "El Pais" hoy dia 26 en la seccion de Cultura, lo has visto?)
Ella se llama Barbara Celis, reportera en NYC para El Pais, y me dijo por email esta manyana que le havia dado mi tarjeta a un socio en Cadena Ser/radio Valencia, llamado Javier Del Pino creo.
Entonces llamo ella a Javier en Barcelona, averiguando los detalles, y me explico de que dentro de poco llamarian para poner me en vivo en la radio.
Hace poco rato mas, llamo una assistenta para entrevistarme y sacar algunos mas detalles, y dentro de poco llamo Maria Guerra y me presento a los RADIO AUDIENTES EN ESPANYAAAA!!!! que risa, y sigo riendo!!!
Now back to the garden.

Fancy News - Exciting Times in Vermont, by Edward Huse, 2007

Today was an excellent weather day.
The tomato seedlings are looking mighty beefy, and next week they will start living outdoors, or maybe the week after next, (or wheneverthehell Summer finally starts and the nights don't frost over anymore).
There are also very robust lavender seedlings, and some annuals.
Both the tomato plants and the lavender plants each are grown enough by now to produce fresh floral smells, however neither one as yet smells the way it should (the tomato smells not a whit like a tomato plant on a summer day, etc.) but rather each has some odd smell that our acquaintance Dr. Macrovertigo ascribes to the plants' ancient alien roots, a juvenile characteristic that quickly fades as a given plant matures. All present expressed amazement or amusement, one laughed out loud, and very soon a party was in full swing.
Recently, I took the good old Saab to the new mechanic, for diagnosis and repair of unnerving hard shifting symptoms - I already knew that they are incredible at this shop, so I was glad to have them go over the machine. Even so, I was pleasantly surprised.
Instead of diagnosing the problem as some exotic mechanical crisis and charging us any amount, they charged less than an hour of labor to clean an accumulation of dirt in what is apparently is characteristic for good old Saabs - (a bearing on a shaft that moves to push the plate against flywheel sits in a channel that can collect dirt sometimes). Ray even showed me how to access and clean out the channel myself whenever it happens again!
And wait, there's more - suddenly like magic, the key no longer gets stuck in Lock position - huh!?
Unbeleivable! All of this instead of a 6 or 7 Hundred Dollar Repair!
(I express glee because I have gone through the experience of hunting for a mechanic in a new town. For example, I once had a car with that developed a rattle that I took around to different mechanics - each of 7 mechanics told me some variation of impending transmission and/or engine failure, one cautioned me to stop driving it for my own safety and to sell it to him for seventy five dollars! I finally found the right place when they diagnosed a U-joint prob that was fixed in twenty minutes for 60 dollars.)
The Artist is way pleased.
Who says nothing exciting ever happens in Vermont?

Turkeys and ruined bridges in Vermont, by Edward Huse, 2007

[This was written on April thirtieth.]
Today I drove the back roads to Rochester. The weather was beautiful. The rivers are busy this time of year - full but not ferocious. They are still wicked fast though, like thick viscous clear liquid glass running by as fast as possible.
It is a definately scenic route, so that the drive itself was great in the trusty, zippy old Saab. And then to arrive itself is a pleasure, it is so nice there in the little town of Rochester, Vermont. Everyone's gardens are perking up there, things are looking crisp and green already, the chickens were out busy, and the mechanics were taking a break watching traffic while I made a judicious u-turn to visit a bike shop.
The turns can be decieving, and on the way home I almost ran over a couple of turkeys - Who says they can't fly?!
They split in different directions. One played possum at the side of the road, but the other lept instantly into muscular flight and sailed through the woods and over the river with apparently just one initial swift stroke. I was very impressed. It was like watching a C5 cargo plane taking off from a hot zone at dawn or something.
This happened right after I passed a favorite view of a ruined bridge that is only visible during 'stick season' - that, plus the awe-inspiring turkey exhibition of powered flight, made me stop at the next turn-off and make a few drawings, one of them is here.

Edward Huse, Artist, in the garden in Spring, item 1,

Here we see my all-time favorite cat, the accomplished Huntress, Miss Kitty - she was allowed to rest in the seedlings because she was such a good cat.
This image is of my recent hand-pulled drypoint engraving, from a drawing of MK that I made several years ago, it is on display during May of this year, at the Howe Library, in Hanover, New Hampshire.

According to the older neighbors, the folks who lived here for half of the last century brought a cartload of horse manure to spread out every Spring and now the fine rich black topsoil is a foot and a half thick and we can grow anything that has enough time to mature in the short New England growing season.
One neighbor told us that during WWII, everyone in the neighborhood cultivated food crops all over, treating the whole of the lawn as a garden from property line to property line, imagine!