I met Skully down at Fox Point Marina and we walked a couple miles in the newly cool morning. It's like someone flipped the "season" switch from "summer" to "autumn" yesterday when the light rain came and now it's bright and sunny and COOL. I love this time of year. The leaves are just beginning to turn (none on my maple tree yet) and there's a bit of a nip in the morning air. Love. It. There was a pretty vigorous breeze blowing off the river too that made us retract our hands into our sleeves and put a bit of pep in our steps. I don't understand why I make excuses not to walk or work out when it makes me feel so good. Am I simple, or what? DS & DIL1 made supper for us last night as a uber-belated-birthday celebration for me. I don't mind. They're busy, we're busy, it can be my birthday just as easily on September 17th as on September 1st. When you're 61 who cares? Besides then my birthday goes on and on. What's not to like? DIL1 made tilapia fillets en papillotte with homegrown tomatoes, herbs, and peppers on them, and whole wheat penne with homemade pesto and pecans. She served a little salad of mixed greens with balsamic vinaigrette, a few homegrown cucumber slices and some homemade croutons on top. For dessert DS made homemade (do you sense a theme here?) ice cream with hand-picked strawberries in it. It was a lovely evening. This is the first time DIL1 has planted a garden. She had failures (lots of squash blight & borers and what were supposed to be yellow plum tomatoes are round & red [dratted unsupervised kids in greenhouses swapping plant sticks]) but many more successes. Her basil is growing like the proverbial weeds and she was thrilled to go out and cut 3 cucumbers for me to have for my lunches as she's running out of things to do with them. She's been roasting and milling tomatoes, peppers & onions, and freezing the resulting sauce for winter deliciousness. She marveled than you can put tiny specks of seeds in dirt and, poof, food grows. It's kind of a miracle, don't you think? I'm glad that gardening seems to be making a resurgance. We had cucumbers sliced and in salads last week that the director of The Clearing grew in his garden. They were tastier, not only for being so fresh, but the care that they were grown with enhanced their flavor too, I think. It's good for people to realize that they can actually feed themselves without going to the grocery and coming home with cans and bags of frozen stuff. Not that we don't eat a lot of that ourselves (well, not so much canned anymore) but knowing that you can if you have to is empowering. Also getting dirty and sweaty out in the garden's good for you too. Makes you smelly and strong, and don't we all want to be that? Today's Photo a Day theme is "price" and since I'm kind of surrounded by people preserving food I thought I'd show you the tools Durwood uses to can his soup. This is the price of having fresh tastes all winter long.(I didn't write to a prompt last night before bed. Didn't want to. So here's the first morning's writing from my workshop last week. The teacher, JB, walked around with a basket and asked each of us to select something to write about; here's mine.)
I reached in, not looking, and this fuzzy, snakey thing leaped into my palm. Leaped, I tell you. I pulled it out and it turned out to be the leg of a sweet-looking plush bunny with a pink nose and a pink bow. Innocuous, innocent looking, but I know it's not, SHE's not. What shrinking violet of a bunny would be so eager to get out of that basket, be so eager to get away from the other prompt objects that she'd shove her nearest body part into the first random hand that came questing along? (ooh, isn't questing a good word?) This pensive-looking bunny has cleaved to my hand, well, her left leg has anyway, and I can't seem to let her go. I am her escape pod. I am her ticket to the wider world, to the light of day, to freedom. I'm naming her Elaine.
I am sorely tempted to knit a tan, fuzzy bunny, I even went downstairs and sought out a bunny pattern that I knew I had. But then it'd be so much faster and easier to just go buy one... I'm thinking about it. Maybe I can find a little bunny that needs a home at Goodwill on Friday. I'm off to buy birdseed.
--Barbara Sue
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