Cherry tree picking

A cherry tree will be going into the backyard of the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city neighborhood of Eastwood. My dear wife Karen and I took the trip to Chuck Hafner’s Garden Center in North Syracuse this past weekend, walking the aisles under the sun out back and inside the greenhouses, too. We spied…

The mystery prize from the other side of the big pond

Just this morning I received an email from my dear BloggyVille friend Rachel, putting me on alert that she’d put the prize from her Could Do Worse: Adventures in London anniversary sweepstakes in the post. A bit back Rachel had noted how she’d been publishing her words and photographs here for several years, and would…

A quick glimpse at a portable grilling paradise

A trip to the nearby Home Depot to buy some energy-efficient lightbulbs for the back porch ceiling fans earlier this week led to a parking lot discovery that proved some more that summer, she’s a coming. Orange-coned off in the outskirts of the big box parking lot was a lonely tractor-trailer that was drawing a…

And the Earth still does what she wants

And on the day after Earth Day, my dear wife Karen and I wake up in the Little Bitty in the Syracuse city Eastwood neighborhood to a reminder that spring can still be mean. The new flowers and greening lawn were hit with overnight snow. It stuck. The temperature now at 8:45 a.m. reads 37º…

A walk in the Lake park

Everybody, their cousin and whatever kid they could find was taking advantage of the sunny Sunday at Onondaga Lake Park. The Wegmans area set up with all the play equipment to keep children happy and their parents and grandparents busy watching them was chock full on the breezy, 60º F early afternoon. My dear wife…

Coming clean at my dentist’s office

I learned something new at the dentist today. Well, two things, actually. As my kind and gentle hygienist Joanne did her usual great twice-yearly job of picking my teeth clean of that bothersome plaque and tartar build-up, she casually mentioned to me that she also was removing gravel from the site — my mouth, that…