Category: another day in the life

Rules of the Road.

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You know the closing shot of “Dazed and Confused” where they are heading down the road, windows down, radio cranked, driving off into summer?  I love that scene.  It sums up one of my favorite parts of summer- the roadtrip.
 We are a roadtripping family.  We take them all year long, but come summer, when we are free of school and the routine that comes along with it, we have a tendency to hit the road with much frequency.  We haven’t had a proper vacation in years, but we have lots of roadtrips and mini-vacations.  We seem to have a number of friends who either live near, have second homes near or access to a family member’s second home near a large body of water.  We like to renew those acquaintances during the summer months when school is out and yes, enjoy the large bodies of water.  It doesn’t have to be a large body of water, it could be a creek, as long as there is water nearby, and we are there. We are not limited to just visiting those near the water, but certainly, water bumps you to the top of the must see list. 
This summer is no different, with our first big family roadtrip this week to Virginia Beach.   While Edie & I have a certain groove all our own for mother/daughter trips, and Pat & I have a groove for our roadtrips,  there are some rules in common for all our family roadtrips.
1.  Music is the driver’s choice.  If you don’t care for the music, you are welcome to put your headphones on at any time.  Edie can and will sing louder than you can play Slayer when she has her headphones on.  Daddy might cut her some slack and play the Pandora channel he set up on his iphone for her that is chock full of Taylor Swift, but I’m not that nice.  (I’m pretty sure the Taylor Swift channel is a total result of her outshouting Slayer. If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.)
I like to think of our time in the car as a chance to work on her musical education and explore new music with her.   Of course, I also have a tendency to listen to the same music over and over which drives everyone nuts, but hey, that’s life.  As a family unit, there currently is a small handful of artists we seem to agree on.  Last Christmas, we spent 10 hours one way in the car only agreeing on NPR’s All Songs Considered series of podcasts on Bob Dylan celebrating his 70th birthday.  (If I could find the podcasts to link to I would. They were great to listen to.) I spent the rest of the time trying to drown out the little voice behind me in the back seat that insisted on singing Michael Jackson over and over while it competed with what her father was playing over the car stereo system.  Clearly I had neglected to pack my headphones.
2. Road food.  I will pack a cooler with drinks, mostly water bottles,  but we are fans of the pit stop at gas stations and truck stops.  I might pack a few snacks, a bag of goldfish, an apple or two, but honestly, we eat junk food on the road.  Everything in moderation, including moderation.  We eat healthy the majority of the time – even when we reach our destination we eat healthy (with the exception of Oysterfest, when we have funnel cake for breakfast), so in the car, it’s whatever you want.  I personally have a thing for BBQ corn nuts on roadtrips. We are also big fans of the Buffalo Hot Wings Preztels, which seems so wrong on one level and yet, they are so good.  
Summertime is also perfect for slushies, preferably half cherry half coke slushies.  Sometimes there really is nothing better on a hot summer day than an ice cold Coke.  Not Pepsi, Coke.  In a glass bottle. 
I’m also always on the hunt for Orange Nehi.  It’s nearly impossible to find anymore.  If you happen to know of where I can find it, will you let me know? Thanks.
3.  Maps.  You may have picked up the fact a few weeks ago when I talked about how impressed I was with my friend Bonnie for bringing her own map on our roadtrip that I am not known for having current, up to date maps in my car.  I don’t even always print out directions, rather I scribble notes down from mapquest and if I remember to bring them, great.  If not, well, we’ll get there eventually.  I happen to think I have a great sense of direction, no matter what my family says.
I recently got rid of the pocket sized 1989 road map that got me everywhere I wanted to go from my college days until it’s replacement with a newer version.  I now have a road atlas from earlier in this century I picked up at The Green Valley Book Fair for something like $3.  It’s never quite in depth enough for my husband, who’s job has required much traveling over the years to the point where he carries his own Gazetteer in his work truck, but never seems to have it on hand when we are in the family mobile.  He has a habit of stopping and purchasing a new map for my vehicle that always seems to end up in his work truck at some point before our next roadtrip that could utilize the map.   
Now that he has an iphone and we have access to whatever app it is that tells us how to get where we are going, we no longer find ourselves stopping to buy new maps.  Not that I bother myself with them anyway.  Despite this, he still listens to me when I give directions and we still find ourselves sometimes slightly uhm, not exactly sure where we are.
4.  Route.  We prefer back roads to interstates.  Sure, there are times when we take the highway, but there are only a small handful of destinations we go to that require the highway route.  This is generally where it can be an issue that I don’t always carry a proper map.  I think it makes for more of an adventure myself.  
I don’t always remember road names or route numbers, but I remember the landscape surrounding a turn I know I should take.  Sometimes it’s the name of a town on a highway sign that tells me where to turn – not a final destination, but I’ll recognize I want to drive through a particular burg to get where I’m going.  This can drive my husband nuts.  Tell me to turn left at the dog and I know exactly where I’m going everytime.  It’s not for everyone, just those of us with extra special senses of direction.
5.  Packing.  We are not pack ahead people.  I might do laundry before hand, but for the most part, we are get up, pack up and hit the road people.  If I’m feeling especially on the ball, I might write up a list the night before of what I want to bring, but don’t count on it.  Really, the only thing I do ahead of time is make food to share with our hosts when we arrive.  The important stuff.
Each man is responsible for themselves.  I started making Edie pack her own road entertainment bags when she was still a toddler and then a few years ago I started making her pack her own suitcase.  I used to double check her bags before we left and sometimes if I remember to do that, I still do it.  There have been times when we’ve gotten somewhere and I’ve realized she’s packed no books to read, or worse, no clean socks or underwear.  I chose to look at it as a learning experience for her.  I’ve learned from it too, in that I now remind her to pack underwear. When I remember of course.
6.  Departure Times.  We as a family are not necessarily known for our promptness, especially if we are headed out for any sort of fun.  I once overheard a friend say to another friend “I knew when they said they were leaving at 8 am that they’d be here for lunch.  Always add two hours to whatever time they say they are getting on the road and you’ll know when to expect them.”  That still rings true.  Even when we do manage to leave at our announced and we really mean that time, we always seem to have to turn back to pick up some forgotten essential.  Our last family roadtrip, it was the tent we were supposed to be camping in.
7. Windows down vs AC. I would always much rather drive with the windows down and the air conditioning off.  I love having the wind in my hair.  I do make exception for those roadtrips in the middle of those brutally hot days, but if I’m alone, I’m driving with the windows down, period.  I don’t care how hot it is. 
8. What we leave behind.  It’s always something.  Perhaps it’s a statement on how much fun we’ve had that we don’t want to leave, but one of us always manages to leave something behind when it’s time to go home.  Always.
 
And that is how we roll down the road.  Music blaring, junk food eating, not always exactly sure where it is we’re going but knowing we’ll get there and half the fun is the journey, right?,  hoping we didn’t forget anything too terribly important and if you know how to translate us, right on time.
So if you are within a few hours driving distance, have any access to water and would love company this summer, just let us know.  We’ll bring baked goods.

Chickens!

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After years of babbling about it, we finally have chickens.
We have been working with a neighbor, fixing up the old coop behind his house. We ordered an assortment of rainbow layers from Murray McMurray and they arrived in yesterday’s mail.

Driving home with them in my car from the post office where I had to retrieve them, they were chirping along to the music.

Brian found someone to split an order of 25 with, which is the minimum order.  We wanted pretty chickens AND pretty eggs, but we only have room for about a dozen hens.
 It’s been a few years since we’ve had a flock of chickens in the neighborhood and we’ve missed the sound of their clucking.  With none of us on this side of the street having dogs or cats right now, we needed a new animal or twelve, so chickens it was.

They are an awful lot of cute right now.
They are installed in Brian’s basement for the time being, where everyone has been wandering in & out, checking on the chicks.  We won’t know exactly what breeds we have until they grow some more, but we do know we have quite a mix.  Lots of little puffballs on their heads, lots of different colors.
One of the things I love about our neighborhood is our sense of community.  Brian’s last flock wandered through all our yards and so it made sense that we pitch in to help out with a new one. We swap plants and produce from our gardens, why not share chickens too?  As I sit here typing this, I hear the kids across the street talking about going down to see the chicks.  There are new chicks on Greenleaf and somehow, all is right with our little world.  As it should be.

Second Wednesday in June.

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During the warmer months, I block the second Wednesdays of each month off on my calendar, for those nights my dear friend Leni hosts a gathering on her front porch, simply known as “Second Wednesdays”.  There are always interesting people to meet and good conversations to be had, mostly revolving around gardens and food, two of my favorite subjects.
Leni is one of those people that I firmly believe the universe dropped into my life for a reason.  She’s an amazing woman.  Her website is currently down right now, but I can share this wonderful article published in Virginia Living two years ago about her.  I’m proud to not just call her friend, but a kindred spirit.  Through my friendship with Leni, I have made connections that have literally, transformed my life, starting with the discovery of lemon basil and how it sends my green bean basil pickles to a whole new level. 
Yesterday was the second Wednesday in June.  It was one of those perfectly beautiful sunny June days, not too hot, breeze just right.  I enjoy the drive out to Leni and her husband Kip’s almost as much as I enjoy my visits.  Beautiful views of farmland and rolling hills nestled up against the Blue Ridge give way to windy, narrow country roads as you make your way there.
While wandering through Leni’s garden, I had a serious case of Romaine envy.
How gorgeous is that?  I have never had romaine look that good, not for lack of trying.
She also had a new batch of chicks.  I only stopped to ooh and aah over them briefly, as our chicks are expected to arrive sometime after Sunday and I am saving all my baby chick love for them.

The piggies however, were another story. 
How cute are they?  Edie suggested naming them Wilbur & Babe, but Leni had already thought of Prune and Pork Chop.   Seriously adorable.
When I asked Edie what she thought about us getting a pig though, she shut me down fast with a firm “No”.  This as she was nibbling on some of Leni’s freshly baked bread spread with some of my Bacon Jam.   Seems she’s content to leave it to our friends to raise pigs while we visit them and enjoy them in other forms later on.   
Also quite lovely to take in were the poppies.  One of these days I’ll get around to growing some of my own.  Until then, I’ll make myself content to admire those grown by my friends.
There is something in the combination of landscape, conversation and company that always leads me feeling realigned in a way that I don’t always know that I need after an evening at Leni and Kip’s.  Last night was no exception. As we made our way back into town, we couldn’t help but notice the sky to the west beyond the Blue Ridge still had a glow about it, which I like to think was the universe smiling in agreement as well.

Crazy Busy.

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There are number of things I want to blog about right now. 
There are also a number of things going on that have me completely distracted.
There are also only so many hours in the day,so many days in the week.
It’s the end of school year, so I only have 3 days of lazing around this house by myself left.  Not that I have alot of those anyway, with a husband who’s office is based out of the same house, but we do have the house to ourselves all day, with no not-so-little-anymore feet in & out all day.  That’s about to change for the next few months.
There are activities galore I’m expected to attend.  Piano recitals, chorus concerts, field day, moving up ceremonies, there are so many end of the year celebrations for this, that and the other I can barely keep them all straight.  I’m organizing the class picnic for the 5th and final year in a row.  
My dear sweet baby girl is off to middle school.  How did that happen?
I finally made it out strawberry picking.  I really need to remember to leave time for that earlier in the season.  I picked 20 pounds, froze some whole for the smoothies all winter, made strawberry butter and a strawberry rhubarb crisp.  Up next, blueberries.

I also helped organize the second Cville Swap this past Sunday, which you can read about here.  I scored some more raspberry bushes, so I’ll definitely have a nice patch come next year. 
Turns out Boots, our corn snake, is a girl.  And she’s laid eggs. 
Stay tuned to see what hatches.
I took some time to organize the recipes I’ve posted over the years and created a page for recipes with a link across the top of this blog.  Some of them are original.  Some of them are just links to other recipes on other blogs and websites.  You’ll have to skim through the whole post to find them, but they are in there.  It’s been asked if I will do the same for my wine columns and I might, I just need to get around to it. I can only do so much procrastinating right now.
There’s lots of other behind the scenes stuff going on as well.  Firming up summer schedules.  Edie’s only doing one week of day camp in addition to three weeks at away camp.  She hasn’t had this much time home with us since she was in preschool.  I’m a little nervous about that. We have our city pool passes, we have some great roadtrips planned to the beach, to the lake and to the beach again.  I’ve got some great projects I’m working on right now that I’m super excited about that will keep June pretty busy for me. 
And the chickens arrive the week of June17.
I guess that means we need to finish the roof of the chicken house.
I’m really looking forward to sleeping in next week and not having to have anyone in bed at a decent hour for the next 10 weeks.  Not that she’s been to bed at a decent hour in a month, but at least I won’t have to pry her out of bed in the morning for awhile….

Mom Hooky.

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The Fourth Grade had a field trip to DC yesterday.
 
Over our knitting a few weeks back, my friend Bonnie & I decided we wanted to go along.  Where exactly in DC they were going we weren’t sure, but there was a security clearance involved and as there is a classmate who’s family has a few connections in the area, we thought it might be a fun field trip to chaperone.  Also, there was no call for parent chaperones, which intrigued us. 
We are those moms. 
Bonnie is the mom friend who calls me to ask about the upcoming holiday party in our kids’ classroom and when I say I think the teacher has it under control, by the end of the call, Bonnie makes me realize that we should offer to help, we should just put it together ourselves and besides, I’m good at that.  This is what I do.  Which really is true you know.
So, our kids were going on a potential kick-ass field trip without us?  No way, we were so going along. 
There may have been wine involved when this conversation took place.
There was a point Tuesday, the day before,  in which I thought this wasn’t actually going to happen.  Bonnie threw her back out again and wasn’t sure she could do it.  I have a million different things going on and really didn’t have a day to devote to a road trip.  But, Tuesday late afternoon, we decided we were game. 
The kids were leaving at 6:15, A.M. On the schedule given us, there was a scheduled White House tour (hence the security clearance) at 11 that parents weren’t invited on (because we didn’t have it), but, if we wanted to meet up for lunch and then do the Monuments on the Mall with the kids, we were welcome. Also, there wasn’t room on the bus for any parents, we were going to have to drive ourselves, but that was my plan anyway.  I never ride the bus on field trips.  I love that time in the car for myself and I’ve learned that roadtripping on these things with a mom friend is a darn good time.   So, Bonnie & I decided we’d meet the kids for lunch and the afternoon, leaving a few hours after the bus.
We were exchanging text messages with staff members on the bus via Bonnie’s phone, keeping up with where they were.  There was a schedule change and their White House tour got bumped, so they were going to lunch early, they’d meet up with us after their tour.  Which was great,  because it’d give us time to find a parking space and fart around on our own.
I have never, ever driven in Washington, D.C. and not gotten lost and circled the monuments in an seemingly endless loop.  I also have a problem with always ending up at the Pentagon. (I think it might be the magnetic north of my internal compass.) It doesn’t matter where I set out to go, I end up at the Pentagon and circling the monuments. Always.
Our plan?  Drive past the Pentagon, head straight to the monuments and find a parking space.
A free one, on the street.
Bonnie came prepared with a map.
A real DC street map.
We found a parking space, a three hour parking space, on Constitution Ave, NW, which was exactly the time frame we needed, on the street.  Free.
Across the street on the driver’s side was the Washington Monument.

And directly across from that was the The Ellipse, the Presidental Park and the White House itself.
We ended up with time to kill, so we sat in the park.  We had no where to be, nothing to do and so we just sat.  And chatted.  And people watched. 
There was a group of men playing a soccer game that we watched, older men schooling some middle aged ones, with some fancy footwork.  There were some good tourists to be seen as well, but somehow the soccer was the entertainment. 
I really hate that I’m a soccer mom.  But I am.
We knew the kids were touring the White House and it seemed to be going long.  As we sat in the park, we watched men appear on the roof of the WH and walk around, surveying the scene.  All but one were in dark suits, one was in a white shirt.  We saw black SUV’s pulling up in front of the entrance, we saw people moving around.  We kept thinking we saw our kids, so eventually we left our bench and walked across the park.
Right after we took this picture, security came down and started clearing everyone on that side of the park.  Clearly, someone was either coming or going from the WH and the fact that our kids were inside was really sort of exciting.

So we sort of dawdled on our way back from the front line.  When the very handsome and nice gentleman on the bike there came up to us, I told him our kids where in there and that’s why we were taking our time moving on and for a second, I could tell, he was considering following up to see where they were for us. 
Eventually, they finished their tour and we met them up at the Lincoln Memorial.  There were protesters at the WH that morning, and that’s what got their tour bumped to a later time.

They were given matching hats to wear on the field trip.  I had no doubt that when we caught up with the kids, mine would not be wearing hers because well, it’s my kid.  If everyone else is doing it, she’s not going to do it. 
She did not disappoint.
I assured her it was way better than the neon t-shirts we’d seen other groups in.  When she saw them, she agreed.
See what I mean about the neon t-shirts?
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool is currently under construction, hence the concrete instead of water in the pond.
While we standing at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial we saw a WH helicopter fly overhead.
That’s Edie and her classmate Shaniah, a little girl I’ve gotten to know this year on my weekly volunteer gig in their classroom at the MLK Monument.  As I looked through my photos, trying to choose one to post, I realized that two little girls of different skin colors standing together at the feet of a man who devoted his life to making that happen, well, that was it.
On the drive home, we stopped for slurpees.   
We’d have gotten Corn Nuts, but they had no BBQ and everyone knows, you only eat the BBQ Corn Nuts.
We felt like we had played hooky yesterday and we loved it.  The highlight of the day was definitely sitting in the park, people watching, with absolutely no where to be, no one to keep up with, just sitting somewhere that was out of our usual path. 
And for the first time ever, I didn’t circle the monuments.  I didn’t get lost.  Heading straight for the Pentagon is the way to go.  As is bringing Bonnie along.

A good time was had by all.

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This weekend, we packed up the family car and headed out for a wedding that had been on our calendar for some time. Pat’s former co-worker Brooke, whom he has a particular fondness for, married her beau Nick, whom I happen to have a particular fondness for.
The first time she brought Nick around, Brooke & Pat were getting ready to run a week long trip. They took off to buy food for the next week, leaving me to entertain Nick. He helped me can a half of bushel of peaches, we made a pot of gumbo, drank a 12 pack, talked politics, religion & family and by the time Pat & Brooke had returned, I had decided I was keeping him.
When they showed up last summer to tell us they were engaged, I had Nick rearrange the ceiling fans in my house in celebration. Friends that you share projects with are the best friends, aren’t they?
Nick had proposed to Brooke on some property his family owns in Bedford County.  It was so beautiful out there they told us, that they wanted to have the wedding there.  There are some areas of Virginia that are so beautiful you simply cannot describe it, you have to just see it to believe it.  Bedford County is one of those areas.

Penn’s Mill Farm, where the wedding was held, is pretty much smack dab in the middle of nothing.  Lots of winding country roads.   Breathtaking views. We turned at the arrow, drove up a steep, freshly graveled road that led to this:
In the middle of a field on top of a mountain, surrounded by hay bales and more mountains were several tents staked together, which served as the site.

The setting was breathtaking.  Mountains every way you looked.  There were a few houses in the valley over yonder, but for the most part, it was all nature.
The groom surprised the bride with a horse drawn carriage to bring her to the ceremony.

The ceremony was short and sweet, with a most perfect backdrop.
I think I took about 100 shots of the landscape. 
As twilight started to set in, Edie commented on how the mountains appeared blue.  That’s why they call them the Blue Ridge baby girl. 
At one point, the four year old niece of the bride absconded with my camera.  She took, literally, over 100 pictures.  This is one of the better ones.
I mention this because at a wedding we attended years ago, there was fun with cameras.  There may have been tequila shots involved, but my friend Greg & I started picking up abandoned cameras on tables, taking pictures and putting them back down.  The bride and groom at that wedding said they received well over 50 pictures of us, sent by various guests for months afterwards saying “I don’t know who this is, but clearly, they were having fun.” It was only fitting something along the same lines happen to my camera at a wedding at some point.
There was a whole crew of Pat’s former coworkers and their better halves, some of whom I’d never met, despite the fact that I’ve hosted their husbands many times over the years. There were friends I hadn’t seen in forever, mostly because life and kids have gotten in the way. We have always packed Edie up and taken her everywhere with us, so she spent the day hearing about all the times her parents brought her to this or that. Her first overnight trip away from home was with this group. There was a point in time during her terrible two’s that only Deidre could get her to go to bed without a meltdown. We were the first ones of this group to have kids and we were the only ones to bring our kid along this weekend.  We’ve always brought her along though, so this is nothing new. Our friends are her friends too you know. Everyone was amazed at how much she’s grown into a little lady over the last few months.  I know she had to have gotten sick of hearing this, but she smiled and accepted the compliment graciously every time.
When Edie saw the horse and carriage coming up the drive, I heard her mutter, “I’m gonna need one of those”.  When she saw the pink shiny Toms the bride was wearing, she took notes.  My baby girl might only be 10, but those wheels are already spinning on what her ‘princess’ day is going to be like and Brooke, you have just written a few pages in her playbook.
This was, hands down, one of the best weddings we’ve been to. It wasn’t just that the location was stunning, that the weather, despite being hot and muggy was really sort of perfect, that the food was plentiful and amazing and just kept coming late into the night and that there was an endless supply of alcohol.  Yes, it was a kick ass party, as we knew it would be. Brooke and Nick are the type of folks that have never met a stranger, so their wedding was full of kindred spirits that had not met yet. A good number of folks camped out on top of that mountain, meaning the party went all night long. (I do mean ALL night).  There was a bonfire, there was a picking circle, there were fireworks.  There were late night ribs smothered in the best damn bbq sauce I have ever had.  The port-a-john was the best I’ve come across – it was airconditioned and had real stalls, that flushed.  It was the cadillac of port-a-johns.
What made it such a great wedding was the couple throwing it. Together they radiate a love and contentedness that you see when two people truly fit together.   It was one of those days where everything in the universe seems complete and exactly as it should be.  It was magical and a perfect reflection of who the bride and groom are.  Congratulations Brooke & Nick, and welcome to your happily ever after.

Housekeeping Notes and Other Stuff.

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I’ve done some housekeeping on here.  I changed the comments settings, taking away word verification and moderation.  There was a stretch in which I was receiving some snarky and rather insulting comments, from someone who wanted to remain anonymous which seemed to have stopped.  I don’t mind snark, but own it, you know what I’m saying?  I’ve realized from commenting on other blogs what a pain the new word verification settings have gotten to be.   Some of you have thought blogger has been eating comments lately, but through the magic of the internet, they’ve shown up and been published.  Well, the ones I know about.

I’ve changed some things around on my side bar too.  I hadn’t updated my blogroll in quite some time, so I added a few new ones. My friends Ryanne, Julia, both of whom are new bloggers and quite entertaining.  I’ve also added Suzicate’s “The Water Witch’s Daughter”, which I find inspiring.   Suzicate, I’d love to go winery hopping with you next time you’re in Nelson.   There are a slew of other blogs I read, so I hope to be better about swapping them out a little more frequently on my sidebar. 

The conversation on Facebook that sprung out of the link I posted to my canning class yesterday led to it being restructured a bit.  Instead of tomatoes and peaches, I’m going to teach canning tomatoes and pickles.  I’m even more excited about this now.  If you’ve paid attention to my posts over the last couple of summers, you’ll know how much I love to pickle things and that I will pickle anything.  I plan on doing bread & butter pickles in the class and I will be sharing some of my other favorite pickle recipes.  There’s a link sign up for the class on the sidebar now too.

I’m pretty sure I’m the last person out there to discover First Aid Kit.  I can’t even take credit for discovering them, my dearest babydaddy heard them, realized I needed it and he made it the tunes I cooked to one day.  I do love that man.  Best Coast has a new album out, that I’ve heard great things about.  I haven’t listened to it thoroughly yet, but I do like what I’ve heard.  Anyone catch “Birth of an Album” on NPR this morning with Neko Case?  Totally made my morning. 

In a year of non-parties, the Oxford Road Block party was last weekend.  I was worried when I wasn’t hand delivered my invite and instead happened to catch a flyer on a telephone pole.  Turns out they didn’t invite anyone, it was all they could do to get the flyers up. At least they had the party though. There was a wonderful ‘mom circle’ that happened that refreshed my spirit that day in a much needed way.  I heard other women that were there say the same thing.  Maybe we need to do those things more often ladies.  D- I’m totally serious about Wine Thursdays, just hollar.  Also, I want that recipe please.

The best part of the evening though may have been watching Edie give the Fein boys a firehouse bath in the driveway.  All is always right with the world when there are boys who understand she holds the hose and stays dry while they get soaked.  I blame all older neighborhood boys who catered to her so much in her toddler years that she now expects all boys to do exactly what she tells them to do.  The male portion of humanity has no idea what they have wrought upon themselves.

Scenes from the week.

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 It’s been a busy week around here.  Here’s some of the highlights.
Playing around with the settings on my camera, I finally figured out the b&w one.  
The Planting Seeds Festival

held at the Buford Garden, had a fantastic turnout and was a success

despite the fact that Mother Nature didn’t fully cooperate.

The whole shebang was moved into the cafeteria at Buford when the skies opened up and the children took over the face painting stand. 
Face painting became full body painting.
Apparently this is what a gang of girls will do when left with a stand full of face paint.
When the headliner, Dar Williams, took the stage
there was dancing and sing-a-longs.  A good time was had by all.

Anniversary dinner of shrimp and grits.

This bug paced the top of my monitor literally all day Wednesday, back and forth, for hours. 
Please ignore the dust.  He did.
My Mother’s Day gift to myself.
A variegated leaf geranium. 
There’s practically a rainbow on every leaf!
My winning streak lately has not been limited to just new fly rods. 
I won a seed giveaway thanks to the Eco Women.
That’s a cosmos popping up from seed.
I also won some apron patterns from Lesa , but I’ve used my rainy days to clean around here, instead of sewing, despite what that picture of the top of my monitor tells you.  Sewing when your hands are covered in poison ivy is not ideal anyway. Neither is cleaning really.
While I was at the nursery, I spied a tag for Becky Mix. 
Of course it came home with me.  They are now planted in the back yard.

Near my new patchouli plant.
Who knew it was a plant?
It has a much softer scent than what you  remember.  There’s no second note of uhm, well, you know.
I was listening to the Dead as I ran errands that day and as I’d already bought and planted my scarlet begonias for the year, I thought why not?

One of the roots of that pesky muscadine vine I’ve been digging up from all over the back yard. 
It’s huge.  I need to take an ax to it.  It’s the size of my foot, maybe bigger and
I wear women’s size 10 shoes.   
I may have underestimated it’s ability to not die.  It’s the energizer bunny of invasive plants.
I threw the hibiscus in a spot of dirt a few weeks ago and despite the neglect, it’s thriving.
I guess it’s earned a weeding and mulching session, hasn’t it?
Just as soon as I dust off that computer monitor and finish hacking away at that muscadine root.
I finally found myself some new canvas gardening gloves so I am going to try to stop ripping roots out of the ground with my bare hands.  Wish me luck.

I Got A New Toy.

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Remember that Fly Fishing and Wine Festival my better half was working last month, that Edie & I at the last minute decided to swing by and visit him?  The one that resulted in us going to the dinner being held at the Country Club, where I was thanked for being such a supportive wife while being fed a dinner of prime rib and chocolate cake that someone else cooked and cleaned up?  Well, I had entered a raffle while I was there and last week recieved an email telling me I had won.

A new fishing pole.
Okay, not a pole.  A rod and reel combo, from the nice fellows at Angler’s Lane down in Lynchburg.  It’s a TFO NXT combo that came with a nice carrying case.  It breaks down into 4 pieces, which means it fits nicely in a suitcase. Pat was down there for meetings yesterday and swung by and picked it up for me, to save them from having to ship it.
Edie, who had also entered the raffle, is slightly beside herself about this.
“You don’t fish.”
“Well, I haven’t had a new fishing pole since I was about your age.”
“It’s not a pole, it’s a rod.  You don’t fish.”
“Well, maybe I’ll start.  You know, try to share one of Daddy’s interests with him.”
“You don’t fish.”
And she storms off.
Not that she fishes all that much.  I guess maybe if she had a rod that wasn’t the pink Barbie one her father bought her when she was a toddler, she might fish more.  Although there is an older neighborhood boy who loves using the Barbie rod, because he always catches a slew of fish with it.  But she does not care about this fact, she think she deserves the new rod because she has never seen me fish.
I told her I’m sure she’ll get to use it, but she’s still pouting about the whole thing.  Pat of course, is thrilled that I’m expressing an interest in his favorite hobby.  I think he also thinks he’ll get some use out of the new rod too.  He brought it home, put it together and tried it out.

 It is apparently the nicest rod and reel in the entire family now, which has definitely not helped with a certain someone pouting that they did not win.  Never mind it’s a 9′ rod that she had a hard time maneuvering in the yard last night.  It’s the principle of the matter. 

The Best Wedding Ever.

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Fourteen years ago today, what many people agree was quite possibly the most beautiful wedding they ever attended was held.  It wasn’t a huge wedding, so perhaps that’s why you haven’t heard about it.
It was held in my mother’s back yard.  We had a small budget to work with, which encouraged creativity.  The groomsmen insisted I was not going to make the groom (or them) wear any sort of ridiculous rented garment and I didn’t.  I did make him wear a tie though.  And he wore new pants, fancy ones even,  he’d picked up at Salvation Army with the tags still attached. 
I still love that about him.
We did most of the planning in a day.  My mother had set up meetings with different caterers and florists for one day – we met with exactly one of each, realized we could work with them and that was that.  We had very specific ideas about what we wanted and most of them were not very traditional.  In fact, when I sat down with the florist, I refused to look at her standard wedding flower pictures.  I asked if she was up for something different.  She practically hugged me in response and answered with a very emphatic YES.  We talked about what would be blooming when we got married and she worked with what was local.   My Granny let me have at her peony patch (which was absolutely glorious) for the flowers for the tables.  Rather than wear a veil, I had a crown of lilies of the valley and lenten roses.  My bouquet was purple snapdragons and lilies of valley and a few other purple wildflowers that were blooming at the time.  The boutonnieres were leaves and seeds.
A friend of Pat’s had found a copy of this awesome 1974 wedding planning book entitled “Celebration: The Wild Flower Write Your Own Ceremony Picnic Reception Wedding Book”.  Pat had a huge amount of imput into our wedding. These were back in the days when he had most of the month of January off and he happened to discover that Martha Stewart was doing a week long series on weddings on her show that he not only watched, but taped for me, so we could talk about what he thought our wedding should be like.  Needless to say, our wedding was a Martha Stewart version of that most delightful book.  The wording for our invitation came from that book.  A good bit of the inspiration for the ceremony we wrote came out of that book.  My dress, which was the first dress I tried on and was absolutely perfect although not at all what I thought I wanted when I walked in the bridal shop that day,  came with a train that got chopped off, so that the hem was right at my ankles.  I wanted to get married barefoot, but compromised by wearing a pair of sweet white leather sandals that matched my dress perfectly.  I had seen a picture in one of Martha’s wedding issues of an antique plant stand that was put into use as a cake stand, in lieu of a tiered cake.  I sent the picture to my brother-in-law, who likes to build things and had him build me a similar one.  The florist draped it in flowers and each one of the four ‘layers’ had a different cake on it.  Each cake had white icing, so it looked traditional, but Pat didn’t want ‘traditional’ cake.  I agreed.  So, under white cream cheese frosting was a carrot cake.  Under a white buttercream was a strawberry shortcake type cake, with layers of fresh strawberries.  Under a white chocolate buttercream was chocolate cake. 
It rained daily for a good two weeks prior to our wedding.  We didn’t have a back up rain plan.  My mother got nervous and kept talking about one, but Pat & I knew we didn’t need one.  (To this day, we still don’t come up with solid back up in case of rain plans and it has never failed us.).  Exactly two days before our wedding, the rains stopped and everything dried up just enough for us to hold the wedding outside.  The weather on the day itself was perfect. We pressed all our friends in helping us set up the day before and clean up the day after.  My mother, my Aunt Jenny & myself made all the bridesmaid’s dresses – they were a lovely green linen.  It was a very much do-it-yourself wedding, which is really how we still live.
I recently read Mindy Kaling’s book “Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? (And Other Concerns)”,  It was funny, but I mention it here because she wrote the most spot on chapter I’ve ever read about marriage, mostly based on her parent’s marriage. How marriage is about committing to things like houses and neighborhoods.  About how a happy marriage is really based on being great pals with the person you marry and having fun with them, that marriage is work, but it’s work you choose and you should choose work you love.   About weddings she said, “In real life, shouldn’t a wedding be an awesome party you throw with your great pal, in the presence of a bunch of your other friends?  A great day, for sure, but not the beginning and certainly not the end of your friendship with a person you can’t wait to talk about gardening with for the next forty years.”  That so perfectly sums up my wedding and my marriage that when I read it out loud to Pat in bed one night, I got choked up.  I think he did too.
Fourteen years after the fact, people still tell me how our wedding was the best wedding they’ve ever been to.  They talk about how it was so perfectly us, it couldn’t help but be beautiful.  We’ve been to a few weddings that had some copy cat touches, we’ve even lent the now plant stand out for service as a cake stand again.  It was an awesome party to celebrate our friendship so that we can spend the rest of our days talking about gardening and music and everything else in life we babble on about.  Fourteen years into this being married thing, I am still madly in love with my husband. And we still throw really great parties.