Susan Palmer's Exquisite Now

Stuff gets done here

recent posts

  • New friends drop by

    Susan Palmer 11-06-25

    Other bloggers stopped for a visit here this past week, one from (I think) Helsinki and the other from Vancouver. Their blogs made me happy in two quite different ways. Helsinki (I think) has the best blog title ever: The Snow Melts Somewhere. Maybe it appeals to me, having grown up in Canada and then having lived a decade in Alaska. I visited around in her posts and liked both the pictures and the tone of the writing. I want to sit down with this blogger someday and have a glass of wine or a rich coffee and discuss our travels. One of her posts I particularly enjoyed included a description of a woman riding a bike in high heels, smoking a cigarette. It reminded me of a time in Italy, hot afternoon, I was having an iced drink on Piazza Maggiore in Bologna when a woman in a tight skirt and high heels rode past on a bicycle. Effortless, she seemed. I will never be that, I thought.

    The Vancouver blogger, Damian Trasler’s Secret Blog, has this fine open whimsy. I mean, who doesn’t like a person who builds a respectable Dalek replica? And who takes it out for others to enjoy. Also, besides writing plays he delivers library books to people who can’t get to the library. My mom was one of those people, avidly reading until she died at 99. I imagine Damian Trasler has stories about people like my mother. I appreciated being introduced to a new-to-me book when he reviewed The Legendary Frybread Drive-In.

    The world, so wide yet so connected with these lovely filaments of story from everywhere, gives me hope and belief in goodness. This weekend especially I have really needed that.

  • The January Rule

    Susan Palmer 01/03/26

    If the sun shows up or the moon and stars appear, stop, drop everything and head outside. It could be weeks before you’ll see them again.

    Today, the forecast promised clouds and 95% chance of rain. But the clouds drifted apart in the late morning so we headed down to the river trail. We had a good hour of gorgeous light. A few blooms at the Eugene Rose Garden had not got the season memo.

    In the racing water of the Willamette River, we saw lesser scaups, common mergansers, mallards, Canada geese, and a lone great blue heron standing on an enormous log in the main channel. We figured he was digesting a big old bull frog caught in one of the side channels earlier. Or maybe he was just digging on the sun as the river swept by.

  • Squirrel gardening

    Or should I say gardening with a squirrel assist. I’m not the biggest fan of paper whites. Would never buy the bulbs despite their early winter bloom schedule. But apparently the local squirrels thought I ought to have some. About two months ago the pots on my patio had that disturbed look, a depression, with bits of soil splattered around outside them. I figured either the crows had dug around for some yummy grublike thing or squirrels had left a nut or two.

    Then green shoots appeared sometime in late November. And now I have a couple of paper whites looking fine, blooming with either great joy or great smugness. Now I don’t know that a squirrel did this, but I do know they love a tasty bulb in the fall. I didn’t know they might sequester them for future munching. Looks like these guys may be a forgotten delicacy.

    And maybe I like a paper white or two better than I thought I did. Maybe it’s nice that somebody else did the work.