Come on!

Please take note that this is happening TODAY. it is April 17th.

Whoopie!

Martha's recipe for chocolate whoopie pies with peanut butter filling.

i will make this recipe again.

'Tis the Season!

There was going to be a lovely post about baking the traditional New England dessert of Whoopie Pies with peanut butter filling, but Big Spider Season has begun!

Here we have a small specimen of a wolf spider. In my kitchen. The largest one i have seen here was 3" diameter. Every spring, huge beautiful Luna moths hatch and flutter around like small green nocturnal birds. You may ask, what eats big moths? The Circle of Life answers "really freakin' big spiders!"

Wolf spiders don't spin webs, and females carry their babies on their backs. so if you ever step on one, all the tiny babies scatter into all the crevices nearby. Did i mention that they run really fast and jump too? just for fun, really.

Big Spider Season is celebrated by shrieking and lots of hollering "HOLY CROW THAT'S A BIG SPIDER!" Other traditions are; shaking out every item of clothing, and flipping over the bed covers before sleeping. Shoes are knocked on the bottom like recalcitrant bottles of ketchup. Towels and shower curtains are also gaily flapped about in sheer dread of being caught nekkid and having to run screaming from the bathroom.

sweet smell of gardening

One of the women in my knitting group generously offered another woman in the group manure for her garden. i pounced on their private conversation "MANURE?!?!?! REALLY? Can i have some? pleasepleasepleaseplease..."

these are very kind and gracious women who are getting used to my flatlander manners and they let in on the manure loop! the soil we are putting in the garden boxes is purchased and beautifully clean, but devoid of organic matter. a generous helping of animal poo would go a long way to make happier plants.

today i spent four hours in the gathering and delivery of cow/goat/llama poop. i drove a truckload to the original recipient of the offer and then a truckload back to the house. then about two hours shoveling it out of the truck and into the boxes.

it was kind of a gross day, but totally worth it. there were interesting conversations, beautiful homes and gardens and i came home with not only fertilizer but a bag of hothouse tomatoes and a jar of homemade maple syrup. absolutely worth a little hard labor and a little smell.

Boxes! Yay!

Let me explain about why these boxes are amazing. They are far and away better than any boxes ever seen! They are made from the white cedars that were once growing on the site.

White cedar is one of those indestructible woods that will resist rotting and insects and last at least five years in box form with wet dirt packed against them. and that's without any sort of stain or weather proofing on them. i figure they will last 10 years.

so, My Guy cut down the trees, milled the trees into lumber, chipped the parts of the tree that weren't mill-able, built the boxes, and then helped me move the boxes on top of the mulch. then, above all of that, he left me alone to move them around until they were just right by my own plans.

Our Neighbor, upon hearing that i was under the weather and unable to spread the mulch around under my own devices, brought his tractor over and pushed it around so all i had to do was rake it into an even 3" cover.

Behold! a raised bed garden built entirely from the ground that it is standing on! There are another eight or nine boxes in the works once he has finished dispatching with The Big Tree. It is lying on top of the other half of the garden plot. My Guy is great.