Snow All Day with Extra Wind

What a crap day today was weatherwise--it was snowing when I opened the curtains, didn't stop all day, and in the afternoon (when we were out for voting and an appointment, of course) the wind came to town out of the north and has been throwing itself around ever since.  Fortunately all of the streets we drove on were main ones so they were moderately clear and non-slick.  We did get home before the sun went down so didn't have to deal with dropping temps icing up the streets.  One cool thing, I was getting supper started when the doorbell rang.  It was the young woman from across the street who had started making cookies only to realize that she was short an egg.  I can't tell you the last time a neighbor came over to borrow something like that.  Made me feel like Donna Reed just for a minute.


You don't have to go inside Goodwill when you make donations so there was no danger of me ending up bringing more home than I got rid of but I did get snagged in the Michael's checkout lane by a floorstand of books for $1.  I got paperback copies of Little Red Riding Hood and Snow White with simple words and short sentences because Miss LC has learned to read.  She's 4.  Her mama says that she got a set of Level 1 I Can Read books for either Christmas or her January birthday and started reading.  When they asked how she'd learned to read she told them that she knew the letter sounds and just put them together.  Yep, just like that.  She read a book to me the other evening when I stopped over to deliver that jumper I sewed for her.  Just sat down next to me, opened the book, and read every word.  Next year she'll probably get a job and learn to drive or fly a plane.  I got the paperback condensed copy of The Secret Garden because it's one of the books that Mom read to me, a chapter a night, when I was small and I've always loved it.  When we were in Knoxville, TN a few years ago I happened on a plaque on a boulder on the river bank marking Frances Hodgson Burnett's house where she wrote it.  I was quite excited to be in the same space where that lovely book was written.






Today in the waiting rooms I finished Car Knitting Warshrag #10 and crocheted a border around it once we got home.  After supper I went downstairs in search of two different colors of cotton yarn and cast on #11.  It's so handy to have that project in a little cotton drawstring bag nestled in the driver's door pocket of the van.  It takes a long time to get one done but I've always got an emergency bag of knitting handy, just in case.

In honor of the crappy snowy weather I whipped up a batch of Chicken Zoodle Soup this morning.  I had a zucchini and a yellow squash just waiting to go bad in the crisper, a bag of rotisserie chicken meat in the exact amount called for in the freezer, some Vidalia onion chopped and frozen, 5 cups of homemade chicken broth, a stray Roma tomato, about 1/4 cup of V-8 left over from thinning out last week's chicken spaghetti, and a partial bag of frozen mixed veggies.  I added a box of store-bought chicken broth because the recipe calls for 9 cups of the stuff and I had to dice up a couple stalks of celery.  So the only real cooking I did was to saute the onions, celery, and a bit of minced garlic (from a jar) for 10 minutes or so, then it was just a matter of dumping in the rest of the ingredients and simmering it for 20 minutes.  The only change I'll make next time is to cut the zoodles into shorter pieces because some of them ended up a foot long and they're kind of hard to ladle up.  It made a lot and it sure is a tasty lunch on a snowy day with a few sesame crackers from ALDI and a clementine.






April 3--Frederick Carl Frieseke, In the Garden.

The riot of flowers
encompasses her.
Even her white parasol,
her blue and white striped dress
seem to blend into the chaos.
If she is still too long
I fear the garden
will absorb her,
like a fly trapped
in a spider's web.
~~~~~ 

And now I'm going to turn in because I am certain that I'll be up and out with the snowblower tomorrow morning.  Maybe the wind will die down overnight so I don't end up spraying snow all over myself in the process.  I'm just glad that it's not enough to make a big plow drift (she says hopefully) at the end of the driveway.  I am also glad that I had the brains to get the trash and recycling bins out when we got home this afternoon so I didn't have to go out in the snow and blowing snow tonight.  Every once in a while I'm smart.
--Barbara