Praise then darkness, and creation unfinished

On Thursday, cattitude, adrian_turtle and I had our now-traditional Thanksgiving dinner. This year we had the turkey with an interesting gravy instead of stuffing; lots of roasted root vegetables; cranberry-orange relish; some last-minute green beans with sesame seeds; and apple-cranberry crisp for dessert. The gravy was good but not worth the amount of work, and I missed the stuffing. We treat the holiday as cozy time for the three of us to just be together, and it was good that this year nobody had to travel a long distance for the occasion.

Yesterday Cattitude and I met some of his relatives for lunch: his sister, brother-in-law, their kids, and another niece who is at grad school in the area. (The brother-in-law has family in the area.) That was a pleasant hour or so of conversation over Vietnamese food: they asked us to suggest a place in Harvard Square, and we knew Pho Le is both good and convenient to where we were meeting. He then went to a museum with them, and I came home and spent some time making annoying but necessary phone calls.

In the evening Adrian and I went to a party at the home of some fannish friends of hers (who I know casually), featuring more turkey, good conversation, and a hot tub. Soaking for a while seems to have done me good. (The tub is outside on the deck, a short walk from the back door; the air temperature was 40F/4 C outside, which was warmer than I was expecting when Adrian first mentioned the possibility to me.)

This afternoon I have pulled out the tomato plants and a bunch of weeds from the front yard and the planting strip, and brought in the last few halfway-plausible green fruits to ripen. I also collected a few more quinces, which I had overlooked last week. browngirl, the quinces have your name on them.

Tomato season really is over, despite a few hopeful flowers left on the plants, and the last yard waste pickup of this year will be Monday. That leaves us with lettuce, 42itous's peppers, rosemary, some chives that were lurking in the bed next to the house. Also a miscellany of flowers: radish, wood sorrel, and the lavender gives every sign of planning to flower again. Why not? There's a fine rhododendron in bloom a couple of blocks away on Mass Ave, and Cattitude showed me a periwinkle flower around the corner yesterday.

For my reference: the cherry tomato that produced a small number of really good purplish fruits is called "Black Cherry." (I think I lost the label for the burgeoning yellow-orange one.) We got almost nothing from our yellow Brandywine plant, alas. That's a really tasty heirloom variety.