4/13-28/10 - up to my elbows

I'm not exactly a stickler for keeping up with this blog very regularly these days. Believe it or not, my plate's been more than a bit full as of late. In addition to some real-job proofing duties, I picked up a freelance gig knocking out a newspaper article on toenails—yes, toenails. The things I'll do to make a buck! If only it was a comedy piece, I could've gone on and on about my college dorm roommate who left piles of her clipped toenails in obvious places like on the nightstand between our beds or on the dresser that we shared; or I could've told stories about how my sister used to bite her toenails—she was a professional ballet dancer, so not only did she have some gnarly callouses to gnaw on, but she had the flexibility to effortlessly reach foot to mouth; or I could talk about how my husband's infrequent pedicures result in dagger toes that slash my ankles in the middle of the night.

Like Martha, I've also been quite thoroughly occupied with tending to the grounds. My home-started seedlings did remarkably well and Charles finally got the tiller up and running. I spent the better part of last week on my hands & knees up to my elbows in dirt getting everything in the ground in time for the much-needed rains that came over the weekend. In the meantime, my spring garden is not faring quite so well. The early onset of summer-hot temperatures prompted some stuff to bolt. I've had to harvest most of the arugula & I'm not holding out much hope for the radishes—the couple scrawny specimens I pulled up were all leaves & no root to speak of.

I've also been a bit preoccupied with assorted volunteer duties. I helped run a neighborhood yard sale a couple weeks back, and while I did unload a bunch of crap from around my own house, I somehow managed to come away from it with almost as much new (to me) crap! In the meantime, my hipster gardeners had a harvest & plant party. Their spring garden produced gorgeous golfball-sized radishes and great flouncy heads of arugula while rows of chard, carrots, kale, & cabbages are chugging along beautifully. We made a tasty salad & got busy gettin' all the summer seedlings in the ground and everything looks to be off to a great start!

It hasn't been all work though. While Martha attended the Matrix Awards Luncheon hosted by New York Women in Communications, I had an audience with a couple hundred queens at the Boybutante Ball, an annual charity drag show that is a 21 year-old, time-honored tradition here in Athens. This year's theme was "Fairy Tails," so I donned a sexy peignoir set, a few curlers, some fuzzy slippers, & a dollar store tiara, and pinned a snow pea pod to my chest to become the Princess & the Pea. I thought I looked damn cute 'til I got to the ball & realized I'd forgotten my wallet—I guess I resembled nothing more than a tired old fag hag 'cause the door guy didn't even ask for my ID! Not only did my sainted husband chauffeur me & my girlfriend Casey to & from the ball (& came back in-between to deliver my wallet), but when the night was done, he gingerly untangled the velcro curlers from my tresses and put me to bed with a strategically placed bedside trashcan. When I awoke the next morning still clad in my costume (appropriately since it was a nightie), there was no vomit in the trashcan, but somehow my bra ended up in it. This is par for the course post-Boyball—a few years back, Casey found her wig in the gutter outside her boyfriend's house the morning after the ball!

It did take me a couple days to fully recover. And when I did, I celebrated by making cheese! I'd only accidentally made cheese before (when I let my yogurt sit too long & came up with a creamy, spreadable concoction), but a pal in Durham, NC sent me an easy recipe that calls for caraway seeds, milk, & buttermilk to concoct a lovely white speckled wheel of firm & chewy tasty cheese. The only conundrum was what to do with the gallon or so of leftover whey? I packed it away in freezer containers & so far have used it to make yeast gravy & added it to pea soup.

Of course, no spring can pass without a ritual trip to the dump. Friday morning I borrowed a neighbor's pickup to take advantage of scrap tire amnesty week and unload a half dozen old tires that were still kicking around my property from the previous owners. I'd used a couple of them as planters for a while, but several more were living in the crawlspace and stashed away in the shed. Take that Martha! When was the last time your pampered ass hauled a load of shit to the dump? Though I did find a way to pretty up the chore—en route to the landfill, I swung by a friend's house to deliver armloads of hot pink azalea blossoms to be used in centerpieces at her brother's wedding the next day.

That afternoon, Charles managed to sneak out of work just a bit early & we took off to the next county for a hot date at our local pick-your-own strawberry farm. We came away with two gallons of plump fat berries and though a sun-warmed, fresh-picked berry is something akin to a taste of heaven, these aren't quite as sweet as the handful of scrawny strawberries I manage to coax out of my half-dozen frontyard plants, and nothing could ever come close to the tiny little underfoot fruits we picked along clifftop hikes during our Newfoundland honeymoon nearly two years ago. Charles tended to cleaning & freezing the booty while I retreated to the garden 'til dark installing the remaining veggie plants. Every day I wander around and survey the scene: a half-dozen freshly tilled beds newly planted with three varieties of beans, five varieties of tomatoes, two of cukes, two of squashes, four of peppers, eggplants, banana melons, three basils, sorrel, carrots, kale, and a bit of room left over for whatever else I might get my hands on in the near future. Now if I could just procure a trio or so of chickens & maybe a little nanny goat, I just might be set when the shit goes down!

3/27-4/12/10 — fleeting Spring....

So it seems our long-awaited Spring lasted little more than a week! By the time April rolled around, temperatures were pushing 90 and the flowers were fading fast. I joyously hung my first laundry load of the season out to dry—nothing says "see ya!" to old man winter like a clothesline full of flannel, fleece, & turtlenecks! I also managed to drag out the sewing machine & do some mending for my neighbor as well as knock out 4 panels of long-overdue undersink curtains for the kitchen (It's been over a year since our renovation & the recycle bins & trash cans still sit exposed under the countertops)—though I've yet to procure the proper hardware to get them hung & hemmed.

Honestly, I've been thoroughly preoccupied by yard & garden activities. I spent an afternoon mucking out my pond and started more seedlings. After a couple of days being shuffled in & out while nighttime temps dipped into the 40s, my little babies are spending most of their time en plein air enjoying direct sunshine. The day before Easter, Charles & I went on an epic poo run alongside a handful of my hipster community gardeners. We traveled into the countryside a county over to procure a pickup load full of well-composted horse manure which Charles immediately spread atop our fallow beds—it's yet to be tilled in as we await a special-ordered belt to get our ancient rototiller back up and running.

In the meantime, I scurried around tidying up the house & yard in preparation for a small Easter gathering. I'd envisioned a balmy afternoon with friends & neighbors on my patio surrounded by daffodils, tulips, violets, & my precious little underfoot weed-flowers, but most of the blooms had shriveled up in the freakishly summerish heat & by Sunday noon the patio felt more like a panini press than a pleasant oasis. We moved the spread under the carport where everyone enjoyed a boozy afternoon nestled alongside a giant pile of rusty, broken-down, dump-bound crap (I hope all were current on their tetanus shots!).

While this month's MSL gives detailed instructions on egg decoration, my gardening distractions led me to skip this activity. I did however turn to Martha's tri-flavored mini corn muffins, which were served alongside a firepit-smoked ham, wild greens & goat cheese frittata, & violet-strewn fruit salad as well as biscuits, sliced turkey, and asparagus casserole brought by guests. I'll admit to cheating & abandoning Martha's recipe for several boxes of Jiffy mix doctored with the directed ingredients (bacon & caramelized onion, orange zest & rosemary, jalapeno & cheddar). Martha didn't suggest to bake the muffins in papers, though she should have because they were a total pain in the ass to pry from the tins. Many lost their tops in the process & the whole fiasco took forever as I had to wait for them to thoroughly cool before coaxing them out of the tins & moving on to the next batch. I was still slaving away in the kitchen while Charles & guests were settled comfortably, booze in hand under the shady carport.

I did have the sense to bake the cake the night before. Somewhat inspired by Martha's Meyer lemon crepe cake (which looked like a total pain in the ass), I turned to my tried-n-true lemon cake recipe & topped it w/ a runny orange cream cheese icing & a handful of violet blooms just before presenting to my pal Carrie for her birthday.

As the week wore on, the heat wave continued and the trees kicked into high gear unleashing pollen in great opaque clouds that rolled across the landscape, settled in thick layers of gritty yellow dust on every surface, and lent a snotty green hue to the blue skies overhead. My front porch office was well established for the season, but I found myself retreating indoors for fear of doing damage to my laptop while wallowing outdoors in the botanical bukkake. I'm not sure how much it helped as the pollen easily wafted through screen windows and open doors & covered appliances, counters, furniture, shelves, etc. By midweek it even set off the fire alarm! I frantically batted it down from above the bedroom door & shut it up only to hear a mockingbird in the distance mimicking the shrill beep beep beep!

The rains came on Thursday in occasional bursts of drizzle, sending pollen & catkins cascading down the gutters & collecting in swirling pools that strangely resembled puddles of egg-drop soup. Seasonably cool temperatures were rolling in for the weekend and Charles, Andromeda, & I headed North to spend a long weekend visiting with my sister Becky in Chattanooga, TN where we posed for portraits w/ the infamous Choo Choo, frolicked in the riverfront parks, had drinks on the Delta Queen, hiked through Keown Falls to the top of Johns Mountain, and went hang gliding over Lookout Mountain! Chattanooga is a breathtakingly beautiful smallish city with so much going on. My little sis moved there on something of a whim about 6 months ago to take a teaching job & I've since spent about a half-dozen weekends there. This was a first visit for Charles & Andi and we are already planning a return.

In the meantime, back in Athens, summerish temps have returned and I've got poo-covered garden beds and dozens of growing seedlings eager to find a home in the ground—back to the dirt....

3/17-26/10 - Got fever....

Yep, it's here! Much like Martha, I've been spending the better part of the past couple of weeks planting seeds and photographing flowers. I managed to cut back and repot many of my houseplants in anticipation of their annual move back to the front porch in a couple of weeks. In the meantime my little seedlings are sprouting away on my windowsills and a few have even been moved up to little pots from their eggshell starter homes. The peppers seemed to lag behind a bit, but since I moved them to the mantel above the heater a few days ago, they're busted through the soil as well.

And on top of it all, I seem to have regained something of a social life. I'm the first one to use cold or rain as an excuse to not leave the house, and as a result, I've had little face-to-face contact with the world beyond my immediate neighborhood for much of the past three months! Things appear to be changing.... I actually made it out to an art opening Friday evening with my pals Jim & Kenneth. We swilled wine, rubbed elbows, & spouted sarcastic amongst some pretty cool stuff that included a day-glo painting of a patterned monster shooting a neon rainbow out of its naughty bits, a meticulously displayed collection of drain clogs and pissed-on copper tiles gone green, a series of pearl necklace-strewn flesh-colored latex chest casts overseen by a couple of lovely ladies clad in translucent gauze, and a hot-air balloon performance/sculpture that wandered around the reception area propelled by a pair of human legs.

By the time we made it back to the house, Charles was home from the office and settled into schoolwork while me & the boys spent the rest of the evening around the dining room table eating leftover gumbo, tossing back Sailor Jerry n' tea, and pouring over recent issues of Country Living and Saveur. My guests had left by midnight, but apparently I was just getting started....

[Insert backstory: About a week earlier, I caught Charles humming "The Meatball Song" (a.k.a. "On Top of Spaghetti") and decided to chime in. Keep in mind that carrying a tune is a Sisyphean task for me and when compelled to perform, I tend to turn to comedic overdramatization. Charles petered out somewhere in the third verse but I carried on and on and on in a mock opera performance that left him stunned. This is what passes for romance in our marriage and I may as well have serenaded him with an aria from La Traviata—every couple of days afterwards, he'd sweetly ask me to sing the meatball song. Somewhere along the line, while enjoying my second cup of Sailor Jerry n' tea in the tub a few days later, I hatched a plan to perform an interpretive dance to the Meatball Song. I worked it all out in my head giggling along the way and managed to forget about it, until.....]

This is what happens when I relaunch myself into society after a long winter's nap! Possibly inspired by the creative energy and overdue human contact of the evening, I decided it was my turn. I mentioned my rum-inspired performance aspirations to Charles and he jumped on it, immediately reaching for the camera and egging me on. Needless to say, I was hung over and barely remembered the performance the next morning. By the time I made it out of bed and on to brunch, Charles had already gone into the office and showed the video to his coworkers! I gotta admit it's humiliatingly hilarious, especially since I crap out during the last verse and forget the words. My husband is determined to post it to YouTube, but I'm not sure I'm ready to go viral yet....

With that hovering over my head, I've managed to carry on. Though I've been thoroughly occupied by cleaning up and cutting back around my garden, I'd realized I hadn't attended to such tasks around my own being! This finally hit me during yoga class the other day when, while in downward facing dog, I glanced over to see a small forest sprouting from my armpit and looked back to realized my feet & ankles had gone Sasquatch. Though I'm not a particularly hairy person, I truly believe that at some point in my ancestry a Hobbit & a fairy must've gotten freaky—somewhere around mid-calf, my legs break into fur and tufts of inch-long hairs sprout out of each big toe (this must explain my long-standing celebrity crush on Chewbacca). It's not exactly something I keep on top of during the winter months as the only time I'm apt to put on a skirt is if someone gets married, someone dies, or the temps soar into the upper '90s. I'm pretty sure the last time my legs had seen a blade was in early December when the spaghetti-strapped minidress I wore to a wedding required some ladyscaping. I figure with temps in the '70s, I'm likely to bust out the cargo shorts & flip-flops soon enough, so I set aside a good hour of tub time and went through three blades tackling the issues. I'll be submitting the drain clog to an upcoming art exhibit....

3/5-17/10 - While you were out....

I really suck at this blogging thing—it's been nearly two weeks since my last entry! Not that I haven't been busy, and actually Martha might be right approving of my erstwhile pursuits. Though she's been engrossed with duties such as deep-cleaning her kitchen appliances (I'm betting this task was thrust upon minions?), cleaning stables (again, minions?), fertilizing & edging the lawns (still more minions?), vacuuming upholstery & curtains (ditto), shopping for art & antiques at fancy NYC shows (she could probably handle this one, though I bet minions were in tow to fend off the paparazzi), and flying to LA and back, I did manage to clear out & plant one garden bed w/greens & root veggies, clear out another bed & lay down black plastic to kill off weed seeds, start my seedlings, clear a nasty patch of privet & replant with native beautyberry bushes, pull the last straggling specimens of lariope from my patio flower/herb garden, take some lovely shots of spring blooms around the yard, cook quite a few Martha-inspired meals, and travel to Tallahassee & back to meet my brand-new nephew in-law, Max (and present him with his own Aunt Melissa-made baby quilt).

Still tackling recipes from last month's foodcentric issue, I served up an easy dinner of croque monsieur sandwiches with a side salad one night (translation: Mr. Crunchy) and whipped up some arroz con pollo on another (this was really tasty but a bit flat, It coulda used a little brightening up with thyme & fresh parsley & a dash of paprika for heat). I also delved into my backup supply of frost-discount local farm carrots and some freezer-burnt broccoli and knocked out a quickie veggie/venison stroganoff one night (in an effort to put a dent in the massive supply of ground Bambi in our freezer). Once upon a time, I toyed with various degrees of vegetarianism for about 12 years. Veggie stroganoff was one of my favorite meals (the chewy creamy tangy combo of sauteed mushrooms, worcestershire, wine, & sour cream makes up for any missing meat—though in these frugal d-i-y obsessed days, I sub homemade yogurt for sour cream). It must've made me nostalgic, because just a couple nights later I set my heart on another favorite vegetarian meal, the Golden Bowl. This is the signature dish of The Grit, a much-adored local vegetarian restaurant. It's basically rice topped w/ soy sauce-sauteed veggies, topped w/ savory twice-sauteed yeast-sprinkled tofu cubes, topped w/ yeast gravy. The Grit cookbook reveals the secret formula for the tofu, but it takes a special touch to pull it off anywhere close to Grit good—Charles declared it almost indistinguishable from the real deal.

Now that Spring has finally decided to show herself a bit, I'm having a hard time staying inside during daylight hours to do stuff like clean my house or blog, much less get around to mending clothes, making curtains, and covering couch cushions. I've been spending every possible sunny afternoon on my hands & knees elbow deep in the red earth of Georgia. I'm not one to wear gardening gloves and my orange-stained fingernails and cracked, calloused hands would definitely cause Rhett Butler to scoff—I wear them like a badge of honor! It is kinda a pain in the ass though when I'm doing something delicate like darning a sweater or sewing a button on a silky flowy thingy and my sandpapery fingers keep catching & scratching the fibers. But when I break a nail, I need only turn to the other hand for built-in file!

In the meantime, daffodils of every variety are all abloom and the yard weeds have exploded into a carpet of tiny flowers—this is when I know winter is truly behind us. Say what you will about daffodils & crocuses as the harbingers of the season, those lyin' ass flowers are known to show their sunny faces well before the final snowstorm—shit, in these parts they tend to be up & at 'em around Christmastime! I'm more prone to celebrate the miniscule little blossoms of stuff like henbit, chickweed, pepper cress, violets, and a dozen other adorable little mystery weeds that appear scattershot across the lawn. Unfortunately so many people go to great measures to eradicate these precious little specimens. I won't let Charles near the mower 'til the purply haze of henbit cloud has started to dry up in the near summer sun and the chickweed has long gone to seed. Instead I head out with my camera to photograph the blazing glory. I'm even prone to creep around on hands & knees and collect some of the edible varieties to toss into a salad—this practice won't seem so freaky when the shit goes down!

This is exactly what I did yesterday as I picked through a patch of dock and collected a handful of dandelion greens & violet leaves. Today is St. Patrick's Day and in an effort to acknowledge my ancestors, I always make corned beef and cabbage and colcannon. Though supposedly, corned beef isn't purely Irish. From what I understand, the proper Irish meal is boiled bacon and cabbage (Irish bacon being more akin to what we know as Canadian bacon rather than those fatty pork belly strips we like to fry to a crisp). Apparently the Irish immigrants to America were introduced to the corned beef brisket via their new Jewish immigrant neighbors and adopted it into their traditional dish. As for the colcannon (mashed potatoes and greens), that's pretty damn Irish and I made it just like my peasant kin would've done back in the homeland—with lawn-gathered greens, overwintered onions, wrinkly old potatoes, and a healthy dose of homemade soured cream (in my case, yogurt). And in an effort to make proper use of our Bambi supply, I actually corned a venison roast myself. A three-day cold bath in a seasoned brine made for a perfectly savory little hunk of meat. I even lay a couple strips of American bacon on top as I piled on the cabbage, local farm turnips, and mutant forgotten carrots discovered during spring planting prep.

I'm pretty damn proud of my efforts to acknowledge my ancestors and Charles repeatedly declares corned beef & cabbage to be his favorite meal of the year. Though he was a bit suspicious when I informed him of my plans for a more home-grown version of the dish. The meal was ready and waiting for him when he walked through the door carrying grocery bags full of on-sale corned beef and potato chips—my Irish ancestors are likely spinning in their graves knowing the fate that's fallen upon their precious potato! I pretty much banish crap like potato chips from the house, but apparently our weekend with the in-laws kindled some nostalgia in my husband. At some point he'd polished off a bag of readily available chips and it reawakened his craving for nutritionally vapid crack food—he just couldn't resist when he came across the 2 for 1 sale on the way to the checkout aisle.

In the end, I had the last laugh. He gobbled down a second helping of the venison & veggies & even declared the weed-infested colcannon a hit. And I'm already hatching plans for an appropriate eviction of the potato chips....

2/23-3/4/10 - Beware the Ides of March

How the hell can anyone with a real life keep up with all this crap?!!! With two deadlines, a couple of meetings, a presentation & a workshop to give, and a neighborhood function all piled into the same week, my house has gone to pot! In the meantime, Charles had a client in town which had him out for dinner on the company dime a couple of nights. Although this conveniently relieved me of my obligation to cook for him (and he managed to sneak home with enough leftovers to keep me fed as well), that box of crap he'd swept off the dresser over three weeks ago is still sitting in the middle of the living room, and it's attracting followers—piles of schoolbooks, pairs of smelly socks and shoes, unopened mail, scattered DVDs, an empty box of Cheez-Its, and a half-eaten jar of peanuts.

Apparently Martha spent her week attending to pleasantries such as arranging pussy willows, harvesting spinach from the greenhouse, repotting seedlings, wandering the grounds in search of snowdrop & witch hazel blooms, and showing off her orchid blooms. Granted, I am the mistress of procrastination and I function best under pressure—I certainly did my fair share of late evening lazing google-eyed in front of the TV watching the lovelies on ice of the Olympics (Evan Lysacek is my new celebrity crush and I'll be asking Santa for a Johnny Weir dress-up doll come Christmas).

I'm a bit hyper-involved in our little neighborhood association, and we had a potluck party to throw at a downtown bar Saturday afternoon. I found myself running the bake sale and managed to use what was left of last week's runny chocolate icing on a dozen or so s'mores-themed cupcakes (they were quite a hit with the kiddos). I also somehow managed to take it upon myself to come up with a neighborhood park proposal to be considered for a list of future sales tax-funded projects. Friday evening had me baking cupcakes while most of Saturday was occupied with icing them, baking venison sausage balls for the party, and constructing a display on the park project for the neighbors to check out that afternoon. Somewhat sadly, partygoers seemed more interested in swilling beers, shooting the shit, & shoving cupcakes down their throats than offering any constructive commentary—the Power Point that I presented to the local gov committee had a much more interested audience (OK I guess, since they're the ones that wield the power).

When it rains it pours. Part of the reason I even took on this blogging project was because I found myself bored & broke as the freelance writing gigs just weren't pouring in like they used to. Blogging certainly won't cure the broke, but it definitely helped with the bored. With that said, I've suddenly got two articles and a copyediting job due within a week of one another. And while I managed to hold a seed-starting workshop for my townie hipster community gardeners on Sunday, I've yet to get my own garden started—probably a good thing considering it snowed again this week! I swear Mother Nature if fucking with us. While they spent two weeks trucking in snow to Vancouver, we managed to get slammed with two snowstorms in Georgia! And lately she seems to be bustin' out the big guns & getting tectonic on our asses—Hell hath no fury.... Can't say that I blame her.

While I wiled away at my Power Point late Sunday afternoon, Charles got busy on my belated Valentine's gift. Both the south-facing windows in our house now sport handy little shelves hungry to host happy little seedlings. In the meantime, March arrived and I've moved on to my new issue of MSL. This week's duties seem a bit spring-cleaning oriented (not my forté), but I did manage to bleach-soak the kitchen sink yesterday (only after a foul smell started emanating from the drain) and I finally tackled a massive pile-up of laundry. And when I was through, sitting triumphantly amongst towering piles of fragrant freshly-folded clothes, it dawned on me that it had been nearly 72 hours since I'd washed myself! Deadlines be damned, I retreated to the tub with a hot cup of Sailor Jerry n' tea. By the time Charles made it home from night class, I was pajama-clad and soundly passed out!

2/15-22/10 - Good shit

Sometimes I feel like my day-to-day life is defined by a series of run-ins with shit—I mean like literal shit! If I'm not frantically trying to discourage my dog from dropping a pile in the neighbor's yard, I'm wrangling cat turds back into the litterbox. If I'm not scraping the bird crap off the car door handle, I'm digging the dog shit out of my shoe. I write this as I've just finished unclogging the Poover Dam from the toilet for the third time in a week.... I wonder when was the last time Martha Stewart ever picked up a plunger? Though I imagine she may have had plenty of opportunity for such activity during her stint in The Big House.

While Martha spent last week enjoying the Westminster Kennel Club Show and attending to anal-retentive chores like "Clean window shades and blinds," "Groom cats," "Organize pots-and-pans cupboards," "Season wooden cutting boards," and "Harvest kumquats from the greenhouse," I managed to walk and bathe the dog, measure my south-facing windows for seed-starter shelves (which Charles promised to build as a Valentine's present), buy cat food, clear out a garden bed for early planting, and make some headway on my ant problem (finally broke down & set out poisoned bait to be carried back to their secret lair). And while Martha made a dogfood cake for her pooch Sharkey's birthday, I made a birthday cake for my pal Kenneth. It was intended to be classic yellow with a rich chocolate icing, but I've still not come across the perfect frosting recipe. This one was still runny after cooling all afternoon, so I opted to whip up a pastry cream filling & poured the icing over the top to transform it into an "eclair cake"—it was actually a big hit!

I did follow Martha's lead and hosted something of a Mardi Gras dinner—I boiled up a pot of gumbo (a regular late summer meal when the garden is bustin' with tomatoes, peppers, & okra) and a quickie chocolate-chip bread pudding sprinkled with what's left of this fall's yard-gathered pecans. A couple girlfriends stopped by for a quick nosh before we hit the town to checkout our buddies' bluegrass band, The Mudflapjacks. And despite the fact that I managed to keep my top on, I still came home strewn with several strands of plastic beads that are likely to find their way to the landfill any day now.

Tolerable temperatures settled in by midweek, allowing me to catch up on the previous week's command to "Pick-up winter debris from garden" as I hauled a month-old pile of privet & holly branches to the curb less than 24 hours before the city trucks came by for monthly pickup. By the time my dad blew into town, using the excuse of dropping-off a few things I inherited from my dear departed Grannie's Brooklyn brownstone to escape the snow mess up North, the weather was sunny & balmy and more akin to what we're used to for winter in the South.

It was a perfect weekend to get busy in the garden. Ironically though, I managed to score a press pass to an organic farming conference that came to town & I spent a sun-soaked Friday afternoon befriending a llama & alpaca while exploring greenhouses & fallow fields on a farm tour & most of Saturday in dimly lit conference rooms learning about herbal medicine & seed saving—skills I can put to use for many sunny days to come, and which are sure to prove absolutely necessary when the shit goes down. I've been to a handful of conferences & expos in my day, and usually end up walking out of them with a bag full of worthless schwag—crappy pens, magnets, keychains, etc.—I came away from this one with a stack of seed catalogs and a bag of compost.... Now that's the kind of shit I can actually put to good use!

2/8-14/10 - A long winter's nap

Somehow a week has managed to fly by & I've not much to show for it.... Many of Martha's commands of the past week have either been foiled by crappy weather, an overfull schedule of meetings & deadlines, impossibility, or sheer ridiculousness. Like Monday's "Prune weeping willows in the wetland while the ground is still frozen." With all the rain we've had of late, my entire yard is a wetland—though I've no weeping willows in need of pruning (I guess I could've braved the driving rain & tackled some privet & honeysuckle). And Tuesday's "Make glittered valentines; address and stamp envelopes" and "Assemble candies for heart-shaped boxes"—What am I twelve? I know Martha's hard up to unload her custom line of glitter in these hard times, but I'm not falling for it.

I did, however, fall for the cute little heart-shaped pies on the cookie-of-the-month back page, although I didn't get to them 'til much later in the week. Martha tells us to make pie crust in a food processor, well I don't own one of these (my cabinets barely have room for my Salad Shooter and combo mini-chopper/stick blender and my lime-green Kitchen Aid mixer lives out in the open on a shelf in the dining room). I took my pastry-making cues from the November '08 issue of Saveur that featured step-by-step instructions on making the perfect pie crust. I settled down with a ice-cold metal bowl and watched Keith Olberman's left-wing pontifications while working my fingers through a pile of flour & chilled butter chunks 'til they morphed into a lovely cohesive lump. Martha's recipe called for a filling of pears & fresh raspberries, but I happened to have apples & craisins on hand—where the hell do you get fresh raspberries in February and why would you wanna ruin them by baking them into a pie?! My version simmered on the stove for an hour or so & got stashed in the fridge with the dough for the night.

The next morning I got to assembling them. I don't own a 4-inch heart-shaped cookie cutter, so I fished an old bean can out of the recycling bin, scrubbed it out, & bent it into a slightly wonky heart shape. Martha didn't recommend to crimp the pies' edges, but I figured this would be a good idea lest the filling come oozing out in a sticky mess. It was a pretty labor-intensive process & I ran out of filling toward the end (the last 3 pies got a scoop of marmalade which actually did run out in a sticky mess), but I've gotta admit, they're really friggin' cute!

Martha also commanded me to "Make compost tea for plants in greenhouse." I don't have a greenhouse, but I do have a collection of houseplants that occupy assorted cobwebby corners in my bedroom & bathroom. They're definitely looking rather sickly as they await their springtime return to the front porch and could use a litle pick-me-up. To make a proper compost tea, you're supposed to use aquarium equipment to aerate the compost/water brew. I don't exactly have that stuff kicking around, but I figure I'll give it a good stir & maybe blow through a length of pvc pipe to add some bubbles to it once in a while.

Apparently Martha spent Thursday attending the opening day of New York Fashion Week and having cocktails with friends. For my fashion quest, I managed to drive out to the Goodwill past the mall & pick up a few new button-downs for Charles to wear to work and a green wool sweater that I hope to felt into a fun purse some time in the near future. As for the cocktails, a hot bath with my friend Sailor Jerry will have to do.

Friday arrived with a threat of snow, an occasion to freak the fuck out here in the deep South. My compost tea had developed a respectable crust of ice & I'm thinkin' not much biochemical action is happening under such conditions. By mid afternoon the flakes had started coming down and I'd yet to make it to the post office to mail off my valentine pies (so what if they won't get there 'til the middle of next week—like me, my loved ones aren't exactly sticklers for a schedule). I braved the icy conditions & went on an errand run—from the looks of the mobs at the grocery store you'd think a nuclear winter was nigh. I also decided it was a perfect time to visit the garden center and pick up ingredients for my seed starter mix. My seeds had arrived in the mailbox and I decided to stare down the wintry mix with some kind of proactive gardening activity. Close to five inches were on the ground by midnight—a pretty respectable accumulation for these parts—and it made for the perfect excuse to stay in and eat leftover pizza, watch the Olympics opening ceremonies, and make vanilla cinnamon cake layers for my pal Lysa's 40th birthday party Saturday night.

Saturday was occupied with enjoying the winter wonderland. The world was bright and sunny & stuff was melting fast! We assembled a posse of friends & neighbors & our accompanying pooches & set off for a long walk around the 'hood, down the tracks, and through the woods. The rest of the afternoon had me wrestling with the tiered birthday cake. I'd hoped to make a nice dark & shiny chocolate frosting, but the recipe I lifted off the internets was sticky & gooey & set like fudge as it cooled. I one and a halved it and still had to make a second batch to cover the whole cake. Needless to say, I was running pretty late for the surprise party, but so was the birthday girl ! As they say, "Birds of a feather....."

Several hours and many bottles of red wine later, Charles appeared at the party to chauffeur me & my drunkass girlfriends home. Apparently it took some degree of force as we threatened to ditch him at a stoplight and make a mad dash for a local bar for late-night disco. The child safety locks on our Honda actually had to be deployed.

Valentine's Day found me hungover & we eventually made it out for brunch after tracking down at least one drunkass girlfriend to return her to the scene of her car. Charles & I celebrated our love by braving crowds of well-clad churchgoers and random pairs of heathens out for an awkward Sunday brunch post Saturday night hookup. I made it halfway through my Southern-style eggs benedict (two biscuits topped w/ a slice of country ham, fried eggs, and a puddle of sausage gravy) while Charles doused his homefries, pork chops, & eggs in hot sauce & inhaled the entire plateful. Back home, I immediately collapsed into a carb and cholesterol-induced coma and spent the rest of the afternoon in bed while my beloved slaved away over school books.

I did manage to arise by dark to resurrect those almost forgotten duck breasts.... A couple weeks back, I found a recent issue of Field & Stream laying on the toilet seat opened to a recipe for Duck Salmi—this is Charles' subtle way of requesting a particular meal and I figured Valentine's Day would be the proper occasion to make it happen. Salmi is a red wine-based mushroomy game stew—served over the toasted remnants of last week's home-baked bread, it was rich and hearty and finally put to rest my red wine-induced fuzzhead.

And by the way—yes, we get Field & Stream too. Some anonymous benefactor must've signed us up, but Charles actually re-upped the subscription as the writing is actually really good, it's chock full of pretty nature photos, and there are some great survival & hunting tips that will really come in handy when the shit goes down. If Martha had only included the occasional recipe for squirrel stew or illustrated instructions for field-dressing a doe, I might never have doubted her.