I saw the plum tree's leaves as red as fresh blood

[sovay]

And now it's raining, in a particularly thin, bitter, wintry way: as if to impress on all the Black Friday shoppers that there is absolutely nothing to be thankful for, especially the Christmas rush. The front of our house is plastered with winter moths, which it has been for the last three or four weeks; they flurry inside every time someone opens a door, after which they turn up in corners of the bathroom, stuck to the baseboards, patiently buffeting up against the white and blue and red LEDs of Orion. The lawn is still green, but the trees are leafless, blackly wet against the unraveling sky. The greyness of the clouds makes even the old fallen leaves look oddly dense with color, hammered down chestnut-colored over uneven turf; dry, day-lit, they will merely look leftover.

Below the cut are some photographs from yesterday, mostly of the mango pomegranate guacamole, which I decided to make after all. For those people within applicable geographic range, I can probably be induced to do so again.




The avocados for the guacamole, shortly after their sticky demise.



The mango and the pomegranate met similar fates.



Also the cilantro, the white onion, and the serrano chiles.



Their loss, art's gain.



And it tasted good with blue potato chips, too.



I have no idea what precisely was going on in this picture. It doesn't help that there's a perspective problem—some pot stacked on the raised end of the island is blocking the action. It was definitely something to do with the Zwiebelkuchen.



Across the island from me, Randi showed off her mad apple-peeling skills.



Somewhere in the world, there is a picture of me in which I do not have red-eye. My brother looks his usual photogenic self. My father appears dubious of multiple forks.



This is their first married Thanksgiving.









Pumpkin flan.



In which my brother demonstrates that our ancient cow-headed oven mitt is, in fact, kind of frightening.



I like this one of my mother. She does not think she looks particularly awake.



But she likes this one of me, and I think I look one neuron short of brain death, so there you go.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

And tonight's the night! Only I didn't look at your entry before I went to the supermarket, so we have one extra mango, and only three avocados, and I didn't get pearl onions, but we have a sweet giant yellow onion, so will have part of that, and I didn't get limes, but have lemons (but that is a shame, because lime is such a beautiful flavor...), and no serrano chilis, alas, but jalapeno... and as for cilantro, I didn't buy it, but I had seedlings from the summer, coming up in the garden box, and so just now I went out into the dark front yard and scrabbled around in the slushy snow and came back with a handful--look!



Snow cilantro!

And I did at least remember the vital pomegranate.

So, I will let you know how it turns out... it will not have quite the authentic taste, but it will be a variation on the theme.