Yesterday there was a little rainstorm in the afternoon, so I came inside and stirred up some vegan gingerbread. I made a huge mess. Molasses and syrup dripped off the edges of the counter, and sugar sparkled on the floor as the lightning flashed. Of …
For lunch last Sunday, we made our favorites, Thai Tofu Burritos, but this time we improved them by adding some homegrown sweet potatoes to the filling. I’ve included the revised recipe below, along with our recipe for purple cabbage slaw, which is what we always …
Black swallowtail butterfly, Piedmont azalea, and the Atlanta Stoveworks table-and-chair set
This weekend we did most of our spring vegetable planting. Rob planted 17 tomato plants in brightly colored cages. He planted four Romas, one Arkansas Traveler, one Japanese Black Trifele, one Sweet Baby Girl, one Park’s Whopper, one Red Grape, one Yellow Pear, one Red Brandywine, one Mr. Stripey, one Indigo Rose, one Tommy Toe, one Stupice, and two Matt’s Wild Cherries. He also planted a bunch of hot peppers: four Long Slim Cayennes, one Super Cayenne #3, one Kung Pao, one Holy Mole, and one Dante’s Hot. He planted four Icheban eggplant, one hill of zucchini, and a hill of yellow scallop squash.
Meanwhile, under the Chinese chestnut, I was arranging our newly painted Atlanta Stoveworks table and chair set. (The little set is so heavy, full of iron curlycues.) After I got it positioned, I planted Indian pinks, Southern wood ferns, and chain ferns all around it, and I made a little path of stepping stones leading right up to it.
Rob kept “thinking aloud” as he planted the vegetables. I was having a bit of trouble following as he pondered the complex subject of crop rotation.
“This is getting a bit too entailed for me,” I’d say from time to time. I love using “entailed” that way; it makes me sound nice and dumb.
Oh, this was fun: On Saturday we bought a plecostomus to help eat up the algae in our pond. Rob was talking to the little black fish as he released him into the dark water. “I think you’ll like it here,” he said. “There’s lots of algae, and lots of places to hide. Well, goodbye. Good luck. I’d like to see you again, but I suppose I never will.”
You see, we had already become quite attached to the plecostomus during the car ride home from the pet store. He seemed a very grave and dignified creature.
As soon as Rob opened the bag, the plecostomus disappeared into the darkness, the watery shadows.
We kept passing Jammer’s grave all day on Saturday and feeling sad. There’s an old bird bath pedestal near it, near the grave. “Gosh,” I said, “I wish we were rich. Then we could commission a marble bust of Jammer and set it up on that empty pedestal.”
“He would deserve it,” Rob said. “He was a very deserving cat.”
Last Sunday when Jammer was still with us, when he was still resting in his little bed next to my desk in the Little House, we harvested a couple of fine cabbages, glittering with raindrops, and we made a cabbage salad. We’d check on him, …
Last night I had a very nice little cozy evening making peach cobbler in my pajamas and watching an NCIS marathon with little June Baxter curled up in my lap. Then this morning I got up in the freezing cold and picked some of …
On Sunday we cleaned the house from top to bottom and made a few little improvements. We’ve now got a chalkboard in the kitchen, a slightly–no, very–tacky tall lamp on the sugar box in the living room, and a fancy, frilly brass and marble plant stand in the sun room (with a half-dead fern sitting on it). I’m using the chalkboard to keep track of the cats’ behavior. June Baxter has already lost points for whining. And Francie is in trouble for writing “Rob Rulz!” on the board without permission and signing with a paw print.
New lamp in the living room
New furniture arrangement. We now have a table on either side of the couch.
Little mahogany shelf and my collection of biscuit jars
A terrible picture of the new plant stand. I’ll have to try again.
I wanted to show off my wedding china. It’s Wedgwood, Queen’s Plain.
I’d like to take time out from my England-trip posts to say how happy I was to be home this weekend. I got to do all my favorite things: play with the cats, garden, and bake cookies!
Right now I just want to eat up the world because everything is so pretty! Suddenly we have hurricane lilies–everywhere! They come up without leaves, without warning.
It hasn’t rained here in a long time, and our native plant gardens have turned brown and crunchy. But even in this depressing, desiccated landscape Rob and I still managed to have fun this weekend–well, at least part of the time, when we weren’t dragging hoses around.
We baked vegan peanut butter cookies on Friday night, using the beloved Joy of Vegan Baking. Our cookies came out looking so professional! It was all Rob’s doing. Most everything I’m involved with comes out lopsided.
On Saturday we revamped the stone path under our grand, moss-draped banana shrub (the spring flowers smell like nail polish remover). We set the stones in the ground more securely and weeded all around, and every two minutes I would say to Rob, “So, do you have any other funny stories?” I also sang “Tell Her About It” and other Billy Joel songs. I was being annoying.
It was so hot and dry we got totally parched, so when we were done with the path we made a big pitcher of ice-cold limeade. (It was so frosty and lovely.) Then we sat on the breezeway and played with the cats and drank the entire thing. Francie was being really funny, cuddling with Rob’s dirty sock in her sleep. She is such a sweet, naïve little country girl (we pretend and so she seems). Rob always says she wants to change her name to Frantasy.
It was Rob’s birthday on Saturday, so in the evening we got all dressed up and went out for a big Indian meal at the Curry Pot in Tallahassee. It was very festive. We got appetizers and dessert–the whole nine yards. My dessert was a big puffy air-filled pillow of fried dough, steaming hot and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. After we ate we went to see Restrepo.
Today we made another batch of cement stepping stones. . . . Oh, and I got my Halloween tarot set in the mail. Now all I need are the Gypsy-Witch Fortunetelling Cards I ordered and I’ll be all set for the spooky party I’m throwing for my niece and nephew next Saturday!
Vegan peanut butter cookies. Why did I pose them with salt and pepper shakers? This makes no logical sense.
Here I am picking herbs. How wholesome. You can see the suffering sweet potato patch behind me.
