My Apologies to William Carlos Williams and My Husband

This Is Just to Say: an apology composed in the garden

I have eaten
the strawberries
that were in
the garden

and which
you were probably
thinking
I would not see.

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so warm.


This is what happens when English majors grow their own food.

Blowing in the Wind

5 Reasons to Hang Out Your Laundry

1. It's free; all it takes is a little extra time.
2. Your clothes smell nice. I mean, Bounce smells good as long as you aren't thinking of all the chemicals used to make that smell.
3. Sunlight is a natural bleach. (Which is good for white clothes, but not necessarily for dark, black, or red)
4. Your clothes are easier to iron after they have had a good blow in the breeze. It's true. Try it.
5. Hanging out your naughties on Sunday morning gives the neighbors and the congregants at the church next door something to talk about.

It's Too Dark to Read

It's hard to believe that it's been over a month since my last entry. We've planted all the onions--300 sweet and 400 storage onions--more potatoes, radishes, golden beets, tomatoes, and cabbages. We should be weeding and mulching with compost, but it started raining several days ago, and it hasn't stopped long enough to allow the soil to dry out so that we can get back in there. In the meantime, the weeds are growing as fast as the desirable plants and they like the compost just as much, too.

Fortunately, the spinach and lettuce are growing in raised beds behind the house. They tend to dry out faster, and they are not surrounded by soupy mud that sucks my shoes off. We've been eating fresh spinach for several days, and I picked the first bunch of mesclun lettuce to sell at work.

The easiest way to use up that spinach is to eat it in a salad with homemade balsamic vinegar dressing. A friend at work gave me pecans for Christmas, and I chop those and toss on sometimes or add some parmesan cheese--or both--sometimes. At Easter, I added some fig goat cheese and cranberries to the spinach, and I must say it was quite tasty. I also make a beans and spinach dish that tastes much better than it sounds. I saute a red onion, open three cans of cannelini beans, drain and rinse them, then add them to the onion. A half cube of Knorr veggie bouillon and a cup of water goes in and I simmer that for about 20 minutes before adding four big handfuls of prepared spinach. Once the spinach has wilted, I stir it into down into the beans, add some salt and pepper, and we have a simple, hearty dinner.

I've been quite busy with yet another endeavor. Our sweet little Junie B dog was so sad that, after much research and discussion, we decided to adopt a dog from Kentucky Lab Rescue. We came home from Winchester two weeks ago with a surprise for Junie, and I'm thinking she might wish she hadn't acted so depressed!

Trudy is a handful, to say the least. She's two years old and little more than a giant puppy. We've started obedience training, and I'm not sure whether I'm being trained or she is. She's just about gotten me whipped into shape. Sometimes I think perhaps I made a mistake in taking on yet another project--I counted my unfinished knitting projects last night, and the ones downstairs alone numbered twelve!--but eventually she'll settle down, I hope, and be a good companion for me and I'll be able to rest my feet on her while I read.

I need her near me, because as Groucho Marx says, "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend; inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."