Naked Ladies

The garden has been a complete disaster this year. Tragedy and travesty.

In May we had a couple of trees taken out of the back yard for more sunlight, and the crew smashed and took out more than half of my tomato plants. Then when we left town for a couple of weeks back in June, I forgot to set the sprinkler system. The excessive heat left most of my plants looking literally as if they had been set on fire upon our return. I was able to salvage some of the herbs, tomatoes, and peppers, but the damage had been done. We weren't the only ones with the problem: friends and family called us in search of some good home-grown backyard tomatoes. That made me feel somewhat better.

Then in August I took out a flood insurance policy on our house, thereby jinxing us into not receiving a single drop of rain ever since.

Weather forecasts clearly show that it will Never. Rain. Again.

Ever.

Reminds me of a silly song we used to sing as kids:

Oh, it ain't gonna rain no more no more,

Ain't gonna rain no more,

How in the heck can I wash my neck,

When it ain't gonna rain no more?

Once I had an old gray dog,

I wish I had 'im back,

He chased the big pigs over the fence,

And the little ones through the crack!

I found something similar to it on YouTube; the words aren't quite right, but you get the gist of it.

No matter how much water we poured into the yard, the heat and weather factors just would not cooperate. Now I understand Grandpapa's frustration during his farming days. It makes much more sense to me why he wanted a weather/crop report from me when we'd travel through the Delta to visit when I was younger.

So you can imagine my utter shock when I saw this outside the window the other morning!

Mom and Cindy dug up these spider lilies, or lyroris radiata, from Cha-Cha and Papa Doc's house up in Canton years ago. I planted them in the first few months after we moved into this house, but they never came up. I eventually gave up hope and forgot about them.
These were Cha-Cha's favorite flowers. She called them naked ladies because they have no foliage; just a slender green stalk with an exquisite red Amaryllidaceae on top. You should have heard my phone call to Mom, "There are NAKED LADIES in my back yard!" Without missing a beat, she responded, "They're in my yard too!"

If Big Brother was listening to our conversation, I'm sure he's investigating via satellite right now.
But why did they decide to come up this year, of all times? Nothing but dirt is currently growing in the yard. Even our evergreens are browning up. But we have naked ladies all over the place, throwing caution to the wind and stubbornly visiting us, making the yard look not so forlorn and crispy.
The only thing I can figure is that Cha-Cha is pleased about the Peachick in my belly and letting us know it in her own way. I hope they come up every year forever.

Red Sail Lettuce

From this:
to this:

in 10 minutes.

I forgot to post a picture of the Easter lilies after they popped. I love them so.

In other news, the headaches are MUCH better. I realized that my head doesn't hurt when Mike is home. But he can't stay home all the time. So in a non sequitur mind-over-matter kind of way, I've managed through the two weeks of lots of pain while overcoming the NSAID rebound, and now I'm doing well even when Mike is at work. Without filling the prescription of loopy pills.

Easter Flowers and Christmas Chainsaws

I absolutely adore this arrangement that the Easter Bunny brought me, along with my favorite Reese's chocolate eggs and some Edward Cullen Sweethearts. The E. Bunny knows me entirely too well.

And during the weekend, Mike decided to break out the chainsaw that Mom gave him for Christmas. Sure, we might have been able to break up this limb with a hatchet, but it's always a red letter day when Mike pulls out the power tools. I love our protocol: I poke around the yard, pulling weeds and straightening up, while Mike mixes oil and checks everything out. When he's ready, he comes to find me so I can watch.
My lumberjack is so hot.
Dante really wanted to help.

Otherwise, we have been largely worthless this weekend. We had a lovely dinner with some old friends last night. Mike has come down with a cold, and with the long hours of the outtage coming up, I'm happy to just lie in the sun in the backyard. God was good enough to provide us with some rain this afternoon, so I don't even have to water the vegetables.

Flowers & Fruit Salad

Does this chocolate make my butt look fat?

I have recently been accused of making everybody around me chunky with my cooking. Thing is, I'm just as guilty of taking in calories as everybody else, as I'm the one stuck with all this food at the end of the day. So what if I bring a platter of brownies to the office every now and then? I have to spread the
fatlove around.

But yes, I suppose a little fruit here and there is in order. And it's the perfect excuse for me to buy a new gadget that I've been eyeing lately. Ladies and Gentlemen, feast your eyes on (drumroll please)

A pineapple slicer! Actually, Williams-Sonoma calls it a Pineapple Easy Slicer, but that name is a complete crock. If you follow the link and watch the video, when it comes time to pull the pineapple rings out, you can see in that woman's eyes a glimmer of, "are you kidding me?" And it's true: this thing is not really easy. It helps to take a knife and run it around the edges after you've twisted it down into the fruit, but you should still expect to come out of this experience sticky and to have let fly a few expletives.

But it makes this possible:

I do love a crisp fruit salad. They're pretty, they're easy, and gosh darn it, you can't have a decent brunch without one. This one included the following:

1 pineapple

1/2 pound strawberries

1 pound black grapes

1 green pear

5-6 sprigs fresh mint

2-3 sprigs fresh basil

5-6 leaves fresh lavender

Chop it all up and throw it in a bowl. Or a pineapple.

Yesterday was neon limey green from all the pollen. Every year it's this way - the great equalizer, as everybody's car is covered in green - but yesterday was especially different as I could actually see the stuff in the atmosphere. Swirling, settling, puffing out from everywhere. It's strange, as last week it snowed on my tomatoes.

I had to work, so Mike scrambled around the backyard protecting them. The man must love me.
But spring is most definitely in the air.

Ka-POW

Spring has sprung all over, and I adore it. This is by far my favorite time of year. I could wax lyrical on it all day, but I'm certain there are plenty of bloggers out there doing the same. You know, stuff like, "...when the drowsy earth shuffles off the mantle of frost and awakens to a new year...." or "daisies pied and violets blue..." and there's some nonsense about a month coming in like a lion and leaving like a lamb. Or something.

I like best how Twain put it: "It's spring fever.... You don't know what it is you DO want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so."

What do you want for spring?

My wants have simplified drastically now that I'm old enough to wear red lipstick. I want a good husband. Check. I want a dog. Check. I want a home. Check. God is good to me. So I decided this year I wanted the best bang-up garden I've ever had. Complete with entirely too many plants for us to consume at their peak, thereby forcing my hand at canning and preservation.

And so it begins.

The above is hard proof that I am not Martha Stewart. She would firmly state that I am cheating out the wazoo by purchasing almost fully-grown plants, but to that I say nay nay. It's tax season, folks. If I were to attempt seedlings when this busy, I'd end up with tiny pots of dirt all over the utility room. That's not to say I've never done it before and won't do it again, but this year, I took the easy route. Sue me. The tomatoes will still taste just as good.

Along with tomatoes, you're looking at jalapenos, bell peppers, cilantro, basil, and mint. My new crops this year are variegated oregano (so pretty), lavender (might do some lavender-infused creme broulee), lemon thyme (perfect for salmon), banana peppers (sweet and saucy), yellow bell peppers (extra color and kick), and lettuce. What the hell am I going to do with lettuce? Did you know there is absolutely no way to preserve lettuce? And if the chipmunks don't get it (Kearney is on patrol) in 45 days I'll have 9 heads of the stuff. Salad, anyone?

But we aren't eating the whole yard.

The bulbs that I planted in memory of A3 are coming up.
I love the smell of hyacinth.

You can't just delve into an entire Saturday of planting without a good breakfast. And no, I didn't bake this one. Tax season is becoming such an easy excuse for picking stuff up at the Fresh Market. Hello, my name is Fran, and I am human.
Once I set out to get dirty, I noticed this little guy in a pot of leftover dirt from last year. Mike would call it a weed. I call it a sweetheart shamrock. Fitting that this Irish lass would find them all over the yard.

And a word about frost: I planted just this early last year. Yes, I am aware that we have not yet had the first day of spring. Mike is shaking his head at me in dismay and chagrin. Even the plant guy at the nursery said he would be happy to sell this stuff to me twice after it dies in the ground of cold. But every nerve in my body is saying to plant, plant, PLANT, and by golly, I'm listening to it.

After I weeded and raked the beds and turned the compost heap, I found that a pair of toads had been unearthed. With a little help, Dante spied one about the size of my fist. He was in the way, so I gently bumped him with a gloved hand to see what the dog would do. His reaction was priceless. The toad jumped. Dante jumped. The toad jumped. And so forth. Then Dante became a little more aggressive, at which point the toad puffed up. When some toads puff, they emit an enzyme that tastes very much bad. Lucky for the toad. Though I warned him against it, Dante licked the toad. I wish you could have seen his face. Lemon sour with a side of super ick. He quickly retreated to curl up in the pile of leaves and smack his mouth for the rest of the morning.

And I inadvertently learned a sure way to make Kearney come inside from the back yard: activate the sprinkler system. (tee hee)

So after a beautiful spring day of weeding and digging and gently unpotting and watering and fertilizing and toad discovery and wolf whistles from the Mexicans replacing the neighbor's roof (unless "AI MAMI!" is one of their names, which I doubt), everything is in the ground, I am a little sore, and a G&T is remarkably in order.

All my wants are fulfilled.

Snow Day

If you live anywhere close to Mississippi, you are well aware that we had a little snow last Friday. The official count was 5 inches in Clinton. Everyone has asked me if Mike went to work; of course he did. Somebody has to keep the nuclear power plant running. He was out of the house by 5:50 and slowly made his way down 61 to be in Port Gibson by 7:30. His brake lines froze toward the end of the trip, so stopping was somewhat problematic. But temperatures rose above freezing, so he was able to come home safely later that evening.

Meanwhile, Dante and I jumped in the truck and took some pictures.





He loved the snow. He would bounce and pounce and run and bark, eating as much snow as possible in the process.
These bushes are usually straight enough for an adult to walk underneath them.






There was a Norman Rockwell-worthy snowball fight down the street, complete with cardboard boxes and summer pool intertubes put in the facility of sleds.

I had to take Dante to the vet for his shots, but it was just a really pretty drive through a surreal landscape. The only danger was at the end when the truck slid on a patch of ice in our own driveway. I dropped it into 4 wheel drive low and plowed on up.

Around 11 AM, the doorbell rang. It was a delivery man bringing me a beautiful Valentine's Day bouquet from my sweetheart! Now that's what I call service.

We lost power around 8 AM, but even though Entergy's recorded message related that it wouldn't come back on until 6 Saturday morning, it was back up by noon. At which time everybody in the neighborhood started running their dryers.

And as of noon Sunday, the snow is still here. Global warming, my butt.

Oh hail.

Last night was a wild ride. We knew storms were coming, just not sure when. Dante and I cut a walk short because it started raining, and don't you know as soon as we stepped inside the house the sun came out. The weather yesterday afternoon was so calm and pleasant that I was lulled into a false sense of security, basking in the balminess of having all the windows and doors open. Kearney tried to eat a shrew. You know, the usual at the Peacock house. Little did I know I'd hear tornado sirens twice before the night was over.

Around 5:30, I set out to Ridgeland for a meeting at one of my clients' offices. The lightning on the Natchez Trace was spectacular, and before long I realized the hair on my arms and the back of my neck was standing on edge from the charge. Once I entered Ridgeland, I heard my first set of sirens for the night but figured I'd be safe in the brick walls of our meeting place. Remembering the tennis-ball-sized hailstorm in Jackson in the early 1990s, all I could think about was that I bet Nissan's hail cannons will finally have a good test run. You know you're getting old and cynical when your biggest worry during a storm is that your car will be dented by hail.

The meeting adjourned, and I drove home safe and sound. It didn't even rain on me, so I pulled into the garage, had supper with Mike, and went to bed thinking it had passed.

Movie-worthy thunder and lightning woke us up around 11 last night. We had watched The Skeleton Key last weekend, so we had a good time joking around about the spookiness of it all. Kearney and Dante were edgy. We cuddled up and tried to sleep when I heard twigs and small limbs hitting the roof. Remembering the limb from July, I said a little prayer that the whole tree didn't decide to follow suit. After a few minutes, I realized that was an awful lot of twigs to hit the roof.

OH HAIL.

I sat bolt upright in bed and exclaimed, "Oh Mike, your car!" Of course he had already figured it out, so he was resigned to having a pocked vehicle. Poor guy. I laid back down and commented, "You know, in the year and a half we've lived here, I've never heard the tornado sirens. I bet we can't hear them because of the retaining wall."

Not two seconds later, we were almost knocked out of bed by the sirens. Turns out, yeah, you can hear them. Even with the retaining wall.

So all four of us went to the living room to find out what Barbie Basset had to say. It's times like these I really miss Woody Assaf. He always had a great time during storms. Dante was thisclose to us all night long, and when Mike swung his legs out of bed this morning, he stepped on the poor pup, who was all huddled up as close to the bed as he could be.

The hail was officially classified as golf ball sized, but a few pieces seemed bigger than that. I'm very surprised the dining room window didn't break, as it sounded like some guy was throwing rocks directly at it. Short story long, we didn't have any damage; just some debris and mud on the sidewalk. Mike's car even came out unscathed according to my inspection this morning. If the engineer does find a couple of dents, I have no doubt they can be vacuumed out.

During our walk this beautiful morning, I smelled mud and crawfish.

Photos courtesy of the National Weather Service.

Update: when I wrote this post, it was still dark outside, and though I went out with a flashlight to look, we believed the vehicles emerged unscathed. Unfortunately, I was incorrect: in the light of day and once they dried off, Mike noted that there are dents all over both his car and the pickup. Yuck. I guess that's why God made insurance.

Cold

Did I mention it's a bit nippy down South?






The pond below didn't freeze over only because of the two pumps keeping it moving.
This pond behind Mike wasn't so lucky. It froze completely across.


Obviously hell itself has frozen over.

Cold! If the thermometer had been an inch longer we'd all have frozen to death.
- quoted in Mark Twain and I, Opie Read

English Toffee

Oh my, has the weather been dreary in Mississippi. It feels more like we're living in London. Not much rain, just a drizzle and fog that dampens everything in its path, including your spirits. Bad hair days are running rampant. And a cold, a wet cold that goes deep into your bones. We've been warding off the chill rather well so far, but the past two days have been downright soupy. So I figured I'd get in the kitchen and come up with something to brighten Mike's day when he gets home.

What to do, what to do.....

Well, what would the English do?
Wow do I have a new favorite recipe.

Remember how I once mentioned to never trust a skinny cook? You'll be able to trust me just fine now that I know how to make English toffee. It might just be really fantastic beginner's luck, but this stuff is easier than divinity. Easier than fudge. Hell, it's easier than brownies.

1 pound butter or oleo
2 Tablespoons water
2 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 cups finely chopped walnuts (of course I used pecans)
8 ounces of milk or dark chocolate, depending on taste
About 1 1/2 Tablespoons Gulf candy wax (optional - it gives the chocolate a more shiny, more durable texture)

1. Combine butter and water in a 4 quart Dutch oven.
2. Cook over medium heat until butter melts.
3. Add sugar and salt.
4. Boil, stirring constantly.
5. When mixture begins to lighten in color (I waited until 250 degrees), add one cup of nuts.
6. Continue cooking, stirring constantly, until it reaches 298 degrees.
7. Pour into a buttered 10 x 15 inch jelly roll pan and spread to cool.
8. Slightly mark into 1 inch square pieces with knife and cool completely.
9. Melt chocolate and wax in a double boiler.
10. Spread over toffee and sprinkle with nuts, gently pressing nuts into melted chocolate.
11. Break into squares.
12. Makes 3 pounds.

Since this post began so drearily, I thought I'd end it with a little sunshine from a photo taken just last week. Could somebody please explain why the paperwhites on the right are growing so much taller than the paperwhites on the left?

London photo courtesy of Time.

Mississippi Snow

Check out what happened last night. Cinnamon rolls, sausage balls, and coffee were enjoyed after our morning romp.