I'm sure there's a story behind it ...

I try to notice something funny or interesting every day. Sometimes I have a camera or my cell phone with me, and I get a photo. Here's Wednesday's:




It's posted at the entrance to the road leading to the town salt piles (for you warm-climate folks, that's what the road crews spread on the pavement in the winter to melt ice). There has to be a back story. If anyone hears it, let me know.

Just so they don't go to waste, here are a few more recent finds:

You were expecting maybe sour cookies? Or savory? Or salty? Sorry ...




(Notice they're Original Classic ... and also New.)
Or you could just have a nice cookie.





Gee, I thought maybe they'd have a PRO-vandalism policy. (This sign was posted in the public rest room of a supermarket.)





And this one seemed a little sad: found in a Target rest room.

See what I sawed

I did some serious weeding today:



I had the truck all packed up with recycling and trash before I realized it was Thursday. The recycling center is closed on Thursdays. Change of plans.

So I put the truck in the garage and got out the chain saw. Rawrrrrr!

OK, it's just a little electric Remington with a 10" bar and a pole-saw option. But it does what I need -- it takes down trash trees that grow up along the brook and shade my vegetable garden.

Sharp eyes will note that the above "weed" is not a trash tree, but a catalpa. It's one of many babies our old catalpa generated before we had to have it taken down (professionally -- it was a double-trunk giant with power lines running through it). You can see another one growing up against the barn.

This baby was supposed to have been dug up and moved a few years ago, but somehow we never got to it. By this year, it had gotten too big to move and was growing up through the branches of an apple tree, shading one of my perennial gardens.



I was sorry to cut it down, but it had to go. Sigh ...

I had more fun tackling the overgrown honeysuckle bush with a combination of the saw and long-handled pruners, then hitting the stream bank and taking down what I think are ash trees.



I felled a couple of trees parallel to the brook and let them lie where they fell, but I cut most of them up into 15' to 20' sections and dragged them down back to the brush pile.

It's a job I've been putting off for weeks, but I'm glad I tackled it. (And I'm also glad I had extra-strength aspirin and a thermal wrap for my tendinitis -- one of the reasons I had procrastinated!)

They eat celery, don't they?

I am not really a fan of rhubarb. The very idea of cutting up leaf stalks and baking them in a pie is just ... so ... wrong.

Especially SOUR leaf stalks.

Who thinks this stuff up?

But I do have a small rhubarb patch (look behind the walking onion in the photo below), and I was raised with a New England penchant for thrift. I can't just grow the stuff and let it go to waste!

So I finally found a couple of rhubarb recipes that I like. Basically, surround the stuff with enough sweet dough, let me tell myself it's really Granny Smith apples, and I'm in.

Here's the first rhubarb recipe I ever made:

Blubarb Cookies

1 cup shortening
1-1/2 cups packed brown sugar
2 eggs
3 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1-1/2 cups rhubarb, chopped into 1/2" to 1/4" chunks
1 cup blueberries

Cream shortening and sugar. Beat in eggs.
Combine flour, soda, salt; gradually add to creamed mixture and mix well.
Fold in rhubarb and blueberries.
Drop by large tablespoonfuls 2 inches apart on greased or parchment-covered baking sheets.
Bake at 350 F for 15-18 minutes or until golden brown. Cool 1 minute; remove from sheets; cool completely.

Makes 28 to 30 cookies. They will be puffy, soft and cake-like.

I'm baaaaaack

What's the record for longest time between blog posts by someone who isn't actually dead?

I think I broke it.

Yet another gardening season has rolled around and I am in the thick of it. Thick, as in you can't see my garden because of the weeds.

I had a rototiller once, but it conked out, then got stuck in a spring flood. Twice. Anybody want a third-hand, early 1990s, flooded Troy-Bilt for parts? You haul it away, it's yours.

So I dig. And fork. And spade. And trowel. And power up big rocks with a shovel or a pike. It's called aerobic gardening. :)

One fine crop of dandelions has already flowered and gone to seed. I got about a third of them out of the veg bulb garden before that happened, so my leeks and walking onions got to see the sun.

The walking onions are kind of fun. If you like nice, neat rows of well-behaved plants, you would not like these at all. But if you like something a little quirky, they may be for you.











Instead of flowers, they have lumpy and twisted clusters of new onions growing at the top of a fat, hollow stalk. The bulblets fall to the ground (or the stalk softens and falls over), starting new plants where they hit the dirt. Thus they slowly "walk" around your garden!

And yes, you can eat them. I only planted mine last year, so I let them grow, but I may harvest some this summer. I'll let you know. Really. The same year.