{"id":170,"date":"2007-04-13T13:18:53","date_gmt":"2007-04-13T18:18:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/2007\/04\/13\/a-lovely-friday\/"},"modified":"2007-04-13T13:18:53","modified_gmt":"2007-04-13T18:18:53","slug":"a-lovely-friday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/2007\/04\/13\/a-lovely-friday\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lovely Friday"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is a lovely day, and I have spent most of it out in the gardens, pruning, moving, and just generally tidying up.  I want to head out to the local nursery for some plants, mostly herbs.  What a pleasure&#8230;I have reached something of a hiatus and am taking advantage of it to do fun things.  And, as always, when I feel happy, I&#8217;m listening to music and podcasts.  I&#8217;ve been grabbing music off some old CDs I made from record albums, and then I started thinking about those reel-to-reel tapes I&#8217;ve got.  I don&#8217;t think we have a working rtr player and I&#8217;m not really interested in buying one.  So, I ended up at iTunes looking for two Sting albums that I loved in the late 80s&#8230;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/musicl?lid=LDLmtSkVG9N&#038;aid=NhKExNc1YoP\">The Dream of Blue Turtles<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/musicl?lid=N3X4PpBx-0&#038;aid=NhKExNc1YoP\">Nothing But The Sun<\/a>.  There they were just waiting to be downloaded&#8230;aah, the dangers of iTunes.  I listened to both of them.  I remembered every song on those albums, just fantastic rhythm, harmony, really tight, music to dance to, to sing along with, and, now, to garden to.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve also subscribed to a bunch of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/rss\/podcast\/podcast_directory.php\">National Public Radio podcasts<\/a>, including Day to Day, Books, and All Songs Considered.   The latter two are dangerous.  I added a couple books to my list of must-reads and the first ASC podcast I listened to included <a href=\"http:\/\/www.npr.org\/programs\/asc\/archives\/20070405\/\">an interview with Joe Boyd<\/a> about his life as a music producer for bands like Pink Floyd, the Incredible String Band and Nick Drake.  In that case, there&#8217;s a book and lots of music.  I was hoping by adding lots of good stuff to listen to, I would be encouraged to walk more.  I&#8217;ve got two audio books, too, that I added because I thought I was going on a road trip.  <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve actually been gardening instead of walking but that works, too.  Good music, beautiful flowers: the lilac is just getting started on blooming and the wysteria is a gorgeous purple-white fringe over the garage.  Mounds of phlox spread across the garden, their lavender flowers blanketing the foliage.  It is always a glorious time of year as the garden begins to burst forth.  Things come and go and overlap.  Right now, the last of the daffodils are blooming, mostly the small, multi-flowered ones.  The azaleas are beginning; I can see a dark pink one from my office window.  It feels good to garden.  With going full time the past two years, I just haven&#8217;t had time.  It is amazing how much time I have when I only have one class.<\/p>\n<p>And, I&#8217;ll end this post with the great news: One of the first things I did this morning was dig out the hummingbird feeders and put out two in the courtyard.  As I wrote the last paragraph, a hummingbird came flying in, checked out the orange oriole feeder than moved on to the old red perky pet.  Very cool!  I think this happened last year; it&#8217;s like they are up in the trees just waiting for them to appear.  How do they know?  We didn&#8217;t get any orioles last year so we shall see.  We have been getting a wide variety of birds including woodpeckers and yellow-rumped warblers that we haven&#8217;t seen before at the feeders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is a lovely day, and I have spent most of it out in the gardens, pruning, moving, and just generally tidying up. I want to head out to the local nursery for some plants, mostly herbs. What a pleasure&#8230;I have reached something of a hiatus and am taking advantage \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/2007\/04\/13\/a-lovely-friday\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31UVs-2K","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/simplykaren.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}