Speaking of little natures...

Last night I was in the kitchen cooking my gluten-free pizza crusts, making homemade pizza sauce and topping that with shredded mozzarella, cooked sweet Italian chicken sausage and onion (yuuuuummmmmm!) and what did I see squirming around on the counter?

What?

Can you imagine?

You would never guess in a million years. Well, probably not at least the first few times you guessed...

So, what - pray tell - do you think I saw there on the counter?

I saw this:

A little, bitty, tiny, teensy, wee little inchworm.

An INCHWORM!!

I couldn't put him outside - too cold! He'd die instantly.

So, I took a leaf off one of the cut flowers by the sink, he found it and crawled up onto it and then I put him in the flower arrangement. He then inched his way, or more like quarter-of-an-inched his way up the stem of one of the saponaria stalks! Isn't he so cute?

I can't find him today, but I'm assuming he's still somewhere in the flower arrangement! So, I guess that's what you get when you bring flowers in from the garden. You get passengers!

That's all I gots. Hubby is watching football, we just ate some of the delicious chicken soup I made yesterday and I went on a nice walk to our new organic, local food shop called Milk and Honey. They have the most wonderful selection of yummy foods - I bought amazing looking parmesean breadsticks for my hubby to have with his soup, local milk, local eggs, more quinoa pasta and more gluten-free pizza crusts! They've got good goodies there, my friends!

Despite it being another dreary, gray day, I'm feeling much perkier and am looking forward to dinner out tonight at one of our favorite restaurants, Finz.

Not much else to report...

Hope you are all having a lovely, restful weekend, too!

Later, peeps!

The Little Natures

I cannot believe it's November. Seriously? With all the buzz and hullaballo (love that word!) of October in Salem, you sort of forget what's coming next after it's all over. November's what's next and November means winter is coming. That nastiest of all words in the human language: WINTER. Blech!

Anyway, it's slapping me right in the face so much that I cannot ignore it any more!! Winter birds are arriving daily now. Yesterday I saw my first Eiders. If you are not a nature person this will be boring to you, but I'm big into the little natures and I really do enjoy watching the wildlife change here from season to season. It's fascinating to me!

We see a lot of natures here, as we live on the ocean and there are really quite a wide variety of critters that are here for the summer and then a new set of critters that come for the winter!

Just today this is the list of what I saw on my morning walk with the doggies:

Boring crittters like brown squirrels, different gull species, pigeons, sparrows, and the usual suspects. Then, I also saw these other more interesting critters!

Bufflehead ducks: Aren't the boys so cute with their black and whiteness?

A peregrine falcon! He's been around for two days now:Beautiful.

Eider ducks: They are similarly cute with their black and white outfits!

Snow buntings: They arrived about a week ago. They are tiny and cute and are brownish right now, but as the snow arrives they get progressively whiter! There is a flock of 12 or 15 of them that lives down along the water where we walk the dogs almost every day.

And a belted kingfisher: They have a very specific chit chit that they make and a very bouncy way of flying! Very pretty birds, no? I love their hairdos!

So, kinda neat to have all these cool birds to trigger the changing seasons, right? I dig it.

In other world news, I made a delicious chicken dinner last night. Roasted an organic chickie with onions, carrots, celery and a few little yukon gold potatoes. Also made an acorn squash. Numm. Today, I made a deeeeelicious chickie soup with the leftovers. Added some broth, the chicken more carrot, onion and celery and then seasoned with lots of good goodies including home-grown chives, thyme and rosemary! When the veggies were cooked, I added some quinoa pasta shells and voila! Delicious soup:

And here are my herb plants in the dark bar.
Sun's not out today, so it's dark in there.

Alrighty. I think I'm going to put on some more duds and head outside for a little walk to get my blood moving. It stopped raining, so I'm going to get some fresh air.

Happy Thursday!

Blah with a side of yuck.

MAN does this weather bring a sistah down! It's been quite chilly here, but at least with the gleaming sun, it's actually been beautiful for the last couple weeks! Downright lovely! But, alas, here is the rain. And gloom. And darkness. It's one of those days where it never really feels like daytime. It's sort of this misty twilight until nighttime arrives. A good soup day, fo' shizzle!

And, I've got something brewing in my sinuses. My husband was sick for 3 weeks with a terrible sinus infection and chest cold, so I'm doing all I can to stay well and beat whatever is trying to get me. I've been SOOOO tired for the last few days, but ignoring it, so today I'm laying low, as they say, and letting my energy reserves go back up.

Good news is that my back is significantly better! I know you've been terribly worried! hee! Anywho, my chiropractor sees improvement in my alignment so I'm happy with that.

Not much to report on the flower or plant front - I finished up a season of maintenance for one of my clients yesterday, so that was nice. I have one more garden to finish up and then I'm pretty much done with that sort of stuff until April next year. I do have some decorating jobs to do - evergreens and that sort of stuff, so I'll have fun with that! I do love doing up the pretty stuff...

I ordered a bunch of dried and preserved flowers, berries and greens for these upcoming projects. Wanna see?

Salal (also called lemon leaf) and pepperberries:
Big fan of the pepperberries!

Rosehips:These are more red than the pepperberries, but cute, nonetheless!

Flowering eucalyptus:HUGE fan of this stuff. The preserved lasts forever...I have some from last Christmas that I've recently used in flower arrangements and in a decorating job!

Another type of flat-leaf eucalyptus:
This has a wonderful aroma and is such a lovely deep shade of gray-green. LOVE it!

And for some odd reason? I really dislike the common kind of eucalyptus! The roundish kind? Hate it. I can't tell you why. Just like I hate red flowers. Across the board: HATE! No good reason, it just is!

Lastly, I also have some wheat left over from last year that I've been using in different things:


In other world news, Kanye West is an idiot. Just read this article. Good LORD a-livin'!!! Such a noodlehead! Someone needs to check his ego!

As I mentioned, it's been getting downright COLD here lately, particularly at night. The other night it was in the high thirties. That's COLD! So, I brought in my herbs (still have tons of chives, thyme and rosemary) and I picked the remaining basil:
It is sitting next to the sink here and it smells SO fabulous! Sorry that I can't grow it year-round, is all!

I also picked the remaining tomatoes, as the plant is looking rather scraggly and unhappy now. I've got quite a few on the sill in here waiting to ripen:
Quite the bounty, right?!

I also picked a few flowers that I had blooming so I could enjoy them inside:
I grew all of that stuff except for the big stalky green things - the rest are the saponaria (mystery weed that wasn't a weed!), angelonia, Montauk daisies and papyrus.

Lastly, I bought this little bonsai schefflera earlier this year and I just love the darn thing! It has THE cutest baby leaves you've ever seen:That is about the size of a dime! AAAACCCCK! So cute!

Mostest last (I know that's not a word!), my friend June over there at Bye, Bye Pie has done a cute post today featuring yours truly when we were five years old. Well, actually I was five. She was a mere four and three-quarters. I'm older than she is just by a hair and that always made her so upset that my birthday was ALWAYS before hers! Somehow, I don't think it still bothers her now that we're 45! (Even though it IS waaaay better to be a little older. And therefore wiser. And much more fun!)

Heee!!

Until we meet again...Au revoir!

Flowers and the aftermath

I don't have anymore good costume pictures to show you yet. Will do so when I get some more.

So, no more costume pictures, but I DO have pictures of the destruction left behind after the party was over. Luckily, my husband thought to take a picture with his Droid before the cleaning people arrived on Sunday morning.

Brace yourselves.

This is about as bad as it gets.

Ready?

It's nasty...

Gird your loins...

Take a deep breath, now scroll down and LOOK!!










Classy, right?

Is that not the most disgusting thing you've seen? And you didn't even get the full effect with the candy and food on the floor, decorations hither and yon, parts of people's costumes strewn about, the sticky, gross floor tracked into the kitchen and bathrooms...And the list goes on and on! SOOOOOOO gross!

In any case the measly amount of money we paid the cleaning people was worth every single nickel. It was SO nice to not have to spend the day cleaning! As it is, I'm just now almost done putting away the decorations and tracking down the owners of plates, and platters and dishes that were left behind!

In flowery news, a woman in town I know randomly ran into me when I was out walking a couple of weeks ago. She was going to call me and ask me to do a flower arrangement for a table for a small party she was hosting yesterday; so that was part of my day yesterday - went to the flower place and found lovely fally fleurs and the cutest little container that looked sort of like crackled glass, but it was a lovely dusty shade of green and had some brown accents on it - looked sort of like a small pumpkin, so it was a great container for this arrangement!

Here are two views:

Very fally, right? And you can sort of see the cute container in that first one - click on the image to enlarge...

I love all the different mums, with the alstromeria, dasies, hypericum, maroon eucalyptus, greens and then the curly willlow and dried lavender for accents. I thought this was mighty pretty, if I do say so myself!

Today, I spent much of the day cleaning up this and that and doing 780 loads of laundry since I didn't do any in the past week and then I walked and walked all over the place! It was a chilly, but lovely fall day here - only about 50 degrees, but it was sun, sun, sunny and just beautiful. So I walked to our polling place and voted. Hope you remembered to VOTE today! And then I walked over to lovely Salem Common and walked around it and then walked over to my husband's office to see if he wanted anything for lunch, as I was headed over to our local Brother's Deli for their delicious soup. I contend that their soup must contain cocaine or something, as I am completely addicted to their Greek chicken-lemon-rice soup, their vegetable soup (to DIE for!) and their lentil soup. All of them are beyond delicious, and perfect for a crisp, fall day!

Now, I will be heading outside to take down the remaining Halloween lights and cobwebs... Packed away for another 11 months!

Hope November is treating you all well!

Let's start thinking about Thanksgiving! YUMMMMM!

Talk at you later!

Snooks HEEYAAAHHH!!

Last night we had our big bash. And a proper bash, it was, my friends! A great time was had by all and there was much revelry, fun costumes, good food and lots of...well...how do I say this politely? Imbibement. That's a good word for it! Luckily the imbibement stayed under control and there was no regurgitation of said liquid. The imbibed stayed with the imbibers, thank you VERY much!

It was a mess this morning, but lucky me - my husband hired this very nice man and woman to clean up the bar, the dining room and the kitchen. They needed professional help, and I'm happy to say that after about 2 hours the house was looking totally fabulous and clean and nice! I worked and worked for two days to make it all pretty and nice and clean, and then within an hour of the party starting - POOF - instant messiness. I just had to go with the flow, knowing that it would all be cleaned up the next morning...

All told we had about 100 people show up; all but 3 or 4 in costume, so that was really great!

Here are the decorations:



A nice selection of bats, skulls, spiders, shimmery stuff, pumpkin lights and purple LED lights. We also had black lights in the bar and one orange light! I didn't go too crazy with the decor since we're all decorated outside and mostly it was really all of the costumes that made it so fun!

Here are just a few costume pictures - I have many more to come, as our neighbor, Marcel, deemed himself the hired "staff photographer!" He was telling everyone we paid him to photograph people, but we didn't! Sure hope he's not expecting money from us!! hee hee!

Here's my husband as "The Situation!"


Here is Marilyn Monroe, 60's Mod-girl, and vampire from Twilight:


Barry Gibb:


And here I am as the infamous Snooki with vampire girl and her Dad who was a zombie. I think. One can't be sure! Funny, right? People were flipping out over my get-up. It really was perfect Snooks! The giant hoop earrings, bunny slippers, sequined leggings, the ugly, terrible top and my VERY orange makeup really did the trick!

Hopefully someone took a good photo of my get-up from head to toe, because I was really something to behold! Even my legs were orange! : )

More to come as my friends and my "staff photographer" send along their photos!

I'm off to walk the dogs and then watch football and hand out treats to the little kiddles!

Happy Halloween, all!