Tag Archives: Missouri Botanical Gardens

On the First Day of Christmas …

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Frosted Fields by Katherine McPheeters - The wintry beauty of a frosted field is depicted by a twig wreath and a collection of frosted stems in shades of champagne and chocolate

Frosted Fields by Katherine McPheeters – The wintry beauty of a frosted field is depicted by a twig wreath and a collection of frosted stems in shades of champagne and chocolate

At times, maybe even most of the time, I must admit that I am pretty clueless. I wrote yesterday about our gift basket largess. It did seem a wee bit strange for my brother Frank to send us seven identical food gift baskets. I wasn’t really thinking about the why. I was more concerned with how I was going to shoehorn all of these baskets into our not particularly large refrigerator. My second thought was wondering where I would find room for the Christmas dinner fixings to come. If I did think about it, I thought that maybe he got a good deal. Anne thought that Frank was just trying to fatten me up.

When I came home tonight, I knew that something was wrong. There were another three new gift boxes waiting on the front porch. Plus, a different kind of food gift box from Harry had arrived too. I called Frank, afraid that his vendor had mistakenly sent his order for ten different recipients all to my address. This fear was amplified because I had already taken one basket to work and Anne had taken another one to school. My co-workers devoured the first one and I see no sign of the second one, even though Anne has come and gone from after school. It turns out that upon reviewing his invoice, Frank did in deed order ten gift boxes, instead of the one intended. He suggested that I re-gift the excess boxes and that is what I plan on doing.

This actually works out quite well. To date, I’ve done almost none of my Christmas shopping. Jury duty took a week out of my life and the wind out of this holiday season’s sails. That is my first excuse. Last weekend my credit card company called me to say that my card had been compromised. Someone had tried to purchase $4,000+ worth of radio controlled toys using my account. The operator promptly canceled my plate and then asked if the normal seven to ten-day delivery schedule would be an inconvenience. Yes! I have Christmas shopping yet to do. She thought so too and then offered to FedEx the new plate. I got that yesterday too. That is my second excuse. Let me say this. If I had planned to purchase you a gift, I still will. There just might be an extra food gift box also included under the tree this year.

Santa-Land Diaries

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Gardenland Express Holiday Flower and Train Show

Gardenland Express Holiday Flower and Train Show

On Saturday, I became a practitioner of the domestic arts, I baked cookies. Joe, one of my co-workers has his Christmas party on Saturday night, a cookie making party. At the party we’ll made and decorated cookies, but as is tradition, we also will bring a batch to share. Anne, the baker in the family, is still unable to shoulder her confectionary duties, so I had to man-up and do the baking. I’ve made cookies before, but always from one of those logs of dough. This was the first time that I’ve ever attempted scratch baking.

Step one was to scour the Internet for a recipe that seemed to have that certain panache, but was still easy to make. No eighteen layer thingy-ma-jigs, thank you very much. I selected Mint Chocolate cookies. Next, I pawed through the pantry, determining which ingredients we already had and which ones I needed to go to the store to get. Finally, I was ready to begin baking, or at least I thought that I was.

Somewhere, I had heard that the most important thing about baking is following the recipe as closely as possible. I carefully measured out all of the ingredients. I had the flour, sugar and stuff in the brown Copco bowl and the Cocoa and butter in the red Copco bowl. I knew that I had run off the rails though, when it came to mixing the ingredients. The butter ended up becoming a cocoa covered mess. I called for help and Anne came a limping. She helpfully pointed out that I was supposed to have melted the butter first.

I seriously considered pitching what I had created so-far and starting all over again. Anne attempted to search for some mythical tool that we never did find that would have made everything all better again. Then she suggested throwing it all into the Cuisinart. How did women bake before the Cuisinart? Thirty years ago, when my Mom gave us this Cuisinart she said, “Mock, you’re living in the stone age.” I think that she was referring to the fact that we didn’t have a dishwasher. We still don’t. I think that women simply  followed the recipe. Pass me that mastodon bone, woman.

Miracle that the Cuisinart is, it still wasn’t doing the trick. My dough wasn’t doughy, it was still too powdery. At this point, desperate and out of control, I added a third egg, a third more butter and twice the amount of chocolate chips that was called for. It’s a mystery, but everything came together. I and the dough chilled for an hour and then I was ready to start playing with fire.

I started baking and the first batch came out looking just like the photo on the Internet. Things were going well, until I started running out of dough. I called out to Anne again, “I think that I’m only going to get 24 cookies.” Her response was, “Look at the recipe.” I did, “Oh yeah, two dozen.” After our taste testing and Joanie’s independent taste testing the project was judged a delicious success.

Predators and Prey

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White-topped Pitcher Plant

White-topped Pitcher Plant

Pitcher plants are carnivorous plants whose prey-trapping mechanism features a deep cavity filled with liquid. This is known as a pitfall trap. Insects such as flies are attracted to the cavity formed by the cupped leaf, often by visual lures and nectar bribes. When moistened by condensation or nectar, the rim of the pitcher is slippery, causing insects to fall into the trap. Liquid contained within the pitcher traps drown the insect, and their bodies are gradually dissolved. This particular Pitcher plant was found in the Mediterranean House at the Missouri Botanical Gardens.

Speaking of prey, Commerce our everyday bank, has settled a class action lawsuit and Dave, Anne and I are in their preyed upon class. According to the notification that we received, Commerce improperly posted debt card transactions from highest to lowest dollar amount to increase the number of overdraft fees charged to customers. We three have all been negligent of not studiously monitoring our bank account balances, but I can remember one weekend trip from Rochester to Toronto that Dave made. He had miscalculated his available funds, but because he was on holiday he was freer than normal with his debit card. There were several hundred dollars in overdraft fees and all for a sum total that was less than a single fee. Here is an example; Dave would purchase a candy bar for $1.39. Commerce charged a $25 overdraft fee for that transaction. We’re not done though; because this was an international transaction a few cents transaction fee was also charged, along with its own $25 overdraft fee. This pairing was repeated way too many times and all for less overdrawn money than a single overdraft fee.

The bank robber, John Dillinger was once famously asked why he robbed banks. “Because that’s where the money is”, was his reply. Dillinger used guns to steal with, but his theft only ran into the thousands. According to our notification, Commerce is on the hook for $18.3M in settlements. 30% of this settlement goes to the lawyers, but that still leaves over $12M in damages. Our actual damages were not so great, but if there are also punitive damages, cha-ching!

‘Tis the Season

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Winter Stars, by June Winter, wildflowers

Winter Stars, by June Winter, wildflowers

Work this week was in turmoil. There was the usual program politics, which level set the workplace angst. On top of all of this, was Friday, the final day in our open enrollment period for next year’s benefits. There’s no minute like the last minute. The angst can be fairly placed at the feet of Obamacare. As a Democrat I am entitled to say this. This year, we had a Cadillac healthcare program, or so it would have been judged, if the company hadn’t jacked-up our rates for next year. Like I said, there was a lot of angst this week at work.

A month ago, the previous paragraph would have been preamble to a mighty political rant. Today, I don’t really have the heart for it. I guess that the furor of this year’s election season has tamped down. All of our elected servants are back at work, doing what they do best, bickering. We’ve heard it all before and we will certainly hear it again, and again, and again, before it is finally all over. As we careen every closer to the looming fiscal cliff, I say let Toonces drive.

Although it was a little grayer than I had hoped, Saturday was way too unseasonably warm to spend all day railing against the Republican’ts. “Holy climate change Batman, to the bike cave!” Anne is still on the disabled list. She started PT for her injured knee this week. So, I’m riding solo today.

Afterwards, Anne and I returned to the park and went to the Missouri History Museum to view the Discover the Real George Washington exhibit. I’ll write about this show later, except to say that they had a pair of Washington’s false teeth on display and they weren’t wooden. The other main exhibit currently at the history museum is Missouri in the Civil War. We’ve already seen this show, but in the MacDermott Grand Hall separating these two shows, a museum intern put on a one woman dramatization of African-American history in Saint Louis, during the Civil War. After the show she took questions, but was quickly overwhelmed. Her boss stepped in and answered this question so thoroughly that no further questions were asked.

Except I saw the boss later and asked her about the Spirit of Saint Louis airplane that hangs in MacDermott Hall. She said that this replica of Lindbergh’s plane was built in 1928, the year after the famous transatlantic flight. It was built by Ryan Airlines, the same company that built the original plane. Our replica is quite special itself, having been featured in the movie “The Spirit of Saint Louis”, starring Jimmy Stewart. Both Stewart and his consultant, Charles Lindbergh, flew this iconic replica.

Jane Winter’s “Winter Stars” wreath is part of the collection on wreaths on display this Christmas season in the Ridgeway center at the Missouri Botanical Gardens. I like this wreath, but I really like the juxtaposition between the work’s tittle and its designer’s name. There are many other wreaths in this show and I’ll be doling them out, in this year’s run-up to Christmas.