18-April-99 Great Meadows and Bob the Chef

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But first, some desktop publishing. We needed a flyer to let people see our new stamp designs, so we spent a lot of the day with PageMaker. I'm getting more efficient at using it, and once I had all the designs saved in the right format and resolution it didn't take long to put a few new pages together. Getting it all to print out was another matter; maybe the disk is too full, but we crashed and rebooted four times before getting it all to print.

The weather was getting iffy, but there were reports of good birds at Great Meadows in Concord and we hadn't been there yet this spring, so we headed out around 5:00. Great Meadows is a national wildlife sanctuary off a residential street. It's a marsh and two shallow ponds each about half a mile square with a dike between them. You park, walk out the dike, maybe walk another 30 yards to check out the Concord River, turn right from the dike and walk for 3/4 of a mile on another dike through a cattail marsh with frequent views of the open water, circle right again into the woods, and finish up on an abandoned railroad grade that comes back to the dirt road into the sanctuary. There were reports of green-winged teal, shorebirds, and swallows, but we saw few birds except several great blue herons, a killdeer, a pair of wood ducks, and savannah sparrows. But it was the day of the muskrat. We've never seen so many muskrats in one day. Many were swimming in the pond, but I saw two on the ground between the cattails within twenty yards of me. Arlene said it was the first time she had ever seen more muskrats than Canada geese.

In the evening we went to Bob the Chef's for my birthday. My birthday was back in January, but Arlene thought it would be difficult to park in the city when there was snow on the streets, so we marked a date in April to substitute. Bob the Chef's is the best known soul food restaurant in Boston, and I had never been there. It turned out to be only a few blocks from Symphony Hall, but in a direction we don't usually venture. It's not elegant inside, but very together looking -- good posters and photos carefully mounted on the walls, mostly with a jazz theme; suspended grille ceiling, lots of wood. I didn't look carefully at the menu; once I saw barbecued ribs on it, and blackeye peas and collard greens among the choices for side dishes, I was set. I really felt that I had come for the greens, and they were worth the trip. There are other places in the area that serve ribs, and even frozen blackeyes are edible; but I haven't had good greens like that in years. We saved room for sweet potato pie for dessert. The food was everything I had been hoping for, and at very reasonable prices. I hope we'll go back soon.