TGIF

I met my goal this week of getting to the gym three times! Yay for me!  (I'm focusing on the positive, here, folks.)  Today I really worked hard and pushed beyond what I thought I could do.  Such a great feeling of accomplishment.  It doesn't always happen that way, so when it does, it makes me super happy.

My friend Kathy sent me this great photo today, which was taken on our trip to Cuba.  Fran is photo bombing me.  I haven't seen Fran since the trip, but I'd sure like to.  She is an extremely kind and generous woman, with great photo talent.

Perhaps we'll meet again someday in a workshop with Peter Turnley.  Love to go to his Paris workshop.  He knows the joint inside and out, having lived there for the last 40 or so years.

Steve and I are working on a book of our Cuba photos.  All black and white.  I've made one book, but this one will be more comprehensive and adding his work to mine will make it a more substantial piece.  It will be available on Blurb.com for all those who are interested.  Stay tuned.

Our trip to North Africa is something to look forward to.  We think that maybe in 5 years it may not be safe for Westerners to travel there, so we've got to do it now.  The whole idea of Morocco was a fluke, but once the notion took hold, whoa.  We've got our books to read in preparation, and a friend stopped by yesterday to drop off another photo book of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia hilltop towns.

As photographers, and lovers of the countryside, we are truly excited!

As Texas is bracing for the hurricane, we are bracing for record high temps over the weekend.  103 and 106 degrees.  Jeez, I thought we were past this.  Tomorrow early there will be full scale military style watering in our yard.  We lost plants earlier in the summer due to high temperatures, and I do not want a repeat of that.

We harvested the entire crop of figs yesterday.  Grand total of TWO.  WTF?  Second year of fruit.  Maybe next year will be our jackpot.  That's the way it is with fruiting plants and trees.  Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.  We've got quite a number of olives on our trees this year.  I'm going to let them stay on the trees a bit longer so the majority of them turn a very pretty shade of purple.  They are labor intensive to brine (each olive must be scored across the top) and while the green ones were okay, I'm looking for a deeper flavor.

Growing edibles is hard work.  I'm amazed at friends who harvest all kinds of fruits and veggies in their own gardens.  Some friends enter their bounty into county fairs.  And win!  They have more energy than I do.  It can be extremely satisfying, which makes the work a pleasure instead of a drudge.  But these days, meh, I'm not so enthusiastic.

Hope you have a good weekend, and for my friends in Texas I hope you are safe!