Oscar Wilde, raking leaves and cooking

That's pretty much the summary of my weekend, or Saturday and Sunday, anyhow - on Friday night, we saw the Madison Symphony Orchestra with Denyce Graves - she wore two different dresses, the first of which made me wonder where they found such an African looking print on satin, and the dress had a bustle. It was sort of like this dress, that she wore for a Washington DC Christmas paegeant. She sang some of her signature piece, from Richard Danielpour's opera "Margaret Garner", that is based on true history, the story of an escaped African-American slave, who killed two of her children rather than letting them be returned to slavery, also the basis for Toni Morrison's Beloved - Morrison collaborated with Danielpour on the opera version.

On Saturday, we went to the last outdoor farmers' market, and bought just as much as we could carry - it's the heavy stuff, apples, butternut squash, and cranberries. I started raking leaves while everyone was at the football game; Bucky beat Penn State, I cleared out the driveway. Mark came home and we raked all the backyard into a pile, and I dragged it to the curb Sunday morning. The thing that really struck me is that the whole pile is basically the leaves of one tree, the big oak in the backyard, that if it falls, is going to take out the garage if we're lucky, and the back of the house, the addition with my bedroom and the extra bathroom, if we're not.


I had an Oscar Wilde bio pic from Netflix, and I watched it on saturday night - the main things I knew about Widle were that a fellow textile artist that I did a show with in 1980, Chad Hagen used this Wilde quote - A really well-made buttonhole is the only link between Art and Nature, which seemed perfect for a show of textile art, and I've seen his play, "The Importance of being Earnest" a number of times. I guess I mainly thought Wilde was a clever and much-quoted flaming queer, so it was nice to learn more about him.

Also on Saturday, I made a good spicey-Thai style curry with rice, and macaroni and cheese, so I could take pictures of the process - I am trying to make my recipe in to a comic book, using ComicLife - of course I will post the results here.

On Sunday we had another iteration of chicken cooked on a bed of vegetables, with the the veggies pureed for gravy, along with mashed potatoes & celeriac, and broccoli and cauliflower with mustard butter from a Deborah Madison recipe.