Carlie-Rose Cooks


This is a picture that warms my heart, Carlie is cooking a Mexican dinner. She has been taking lesson's from Sam's mom, Eleanor, and we have been the oh-so-willing guinea pigs (and pig is probably the appropriate word here...) of the most delicious fare. Almost very time she cooks she makes a batch of salsa; around here chips and salsa are their own food group!  I guess I should probably be learning along with Carlie for the day that is bound to come when she is no longer here to cook for us.


Here is a quote that I found in a book I purchased recently: "Being a writer does not necessarily mean being published. It's very nice to be published. It's what you want.  When you have a vision, you want to share it. But being a writer means writing. It means building up a body of work. It means writing every day. You can hardly say that van Gough was not a painter because he sold one painting during his lifetime, and that to his brother. But do you say that van Gough wasn't a painter because he wasn't "published"? He was a painter because he painted, he held true to his vision as he saw it. And I think that's the best example I can give you."   ~Madeleine L'Engle~


And that, in part, is why I created this blog. I need to write on  a regular basis and this is one kind of outlet that provides the opportunity. Hopefully, the reader will bear with me as I continue the writing journey.

Easter 2010

Last year JJ was too young to get a lot of enjoyment out of the Easter egg hunt, but this year he got quite the kick out of it.  He would find the egg drop it into his basket and scurry off to look for the next egg. He had his share of plastic eggs with candy in them, pretty sure he got a sugar buzz because he was pretty "animated" when his Papa was opening belated birthday gifts.
He would throw his arms in the air  and yell, "BIRTHDAY!" and then shriek with laughter when we laughed at him.  Funny how children become the focus of family gatherings, they are just so much  fun to watch as they experience things for the first time or learn something new.     
We played a new game that Heather brought over called Banana Grams, it is like Scrabble only each person plays their own game. We only played one game as it had grown late for  JJ, besides we wanted him to come down from his sugar-high at home...



                                                      

"Parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme..."


Believe it or not, this is my rosemary bush, it is about five feet tall and probably healthier than I am! I love fresh herbs, I have grown oregano, basil, mint, and sage with  great success in the past. However, I inherited this rosemary when we moved into this house and it appears to thrive on benign neglect, an apparent necessity for living under my care, if you are of the plant species. I have wonderful intentions but too often they do not come to fruition. I tend to begin gardening projects with great gusto and finish with little fanfare, sad but true. Last year I grew tomatoes, the plants themselves were huge and put out tomatoes at an astonishing rate, we ate a LOT of tomatoes but by the end of the season they had become so out of control that I couldn't even get to the tomatoes to harvest them.  Lesson learned, this year I will put my tomatoes in a different location. The garden I had last year was also far bigger then I wanted to keep up with  so the end result was a very weedy patch with a lovely fence around it. We did have some amazing green beans and yellow squash out of it; but really there was a lot of work that went to seed, pun intended. Note to self: CONTAINER gardening on the deck.