Cool misty day

Looks as if we'll get some actual rain this week. This morning's mist was like a light kiss on my upturned face as I took Sadie Mae out for her walkies. Ah, how nice this feels after such a long hot summer that baked this red clay soil until it cracked.

Mother Nature changed things around a bit...I found two yellow and orange peace roses blooming away, and even the poor old weeping cherry tree that suffered through the drought conditions and some kind of creepy caterpiller that wove nests on the bare brown limbs, even the weeping cherry put out tiny bursts of cherry blooms on several dead-looking limbs.

I even saw wild asparagus sprouting bright green fronds, at a time when I believe they should be dry and golden. Up in Maine, near the edge of the woods where the birds would sit on limbs and...well...drop seeds down, we would look for the asparagus fronds and tie small streamers on the overhead branches, so we could go back and find the asparagus in the spring. We would grill trout or landlocked salmon along with new potatoes and fresh peas from the nearby farmers' fields once we'd had a feed or two of asparagus.

We also would take our persimmon-colored canoe to a swampy island and pick fiddlehead ferns. THAT's work, let me tell you...back-breaking. Fiddleheads taste a lot like asparagus but they have to be thoroughly cleaned of the outer coating before you can steam them. I finally learned to buy them from the fellows sitting beside their pickups along the road who had done all the hard work for me!

One thing I found intriguing...when new potatoes came in, you could stop at any stand on a highway to find bagged potatoes and a price posted, with a basket or box sitting there for you to drop the money in, and make change if need be. If you were a regular, you could leave a note such as: Sorry, Sam, I don't have the right change, but I took a bag of new red potatoes and I'll bring the money by tomorrow.

I remember one time, the Governor (who was married to my boss, the US Senator) was told to drop his rental car at the airport and put the key in the (unused) ashtray, leaving the car unlocked. He laughed, saying if he did that in DC, the car rental agency would never see the car again. He knew I'd grown up in DC and loved to tease me.

Bit of nostalgia there! I do NOT miss the long hard -40 degree weather nor do I miss the driving, sliding, skidding, whirling around in a circle without intending to do so. Ooops, I thought I was going UP this hill but it looks as if I'm heading back down again....

We built our own log and beam home, on the side of a mountain, next to the state park. And I do miss it. Hence our plan to haul our camper up next spring, and spend the middle of summer there. Maybe my daughter Cathie will drive me around in her new car!