Strawberries Out Our Ears

I am ashamed to admit it, but I grew up in Los Angeles. Along with the smog and the traffic and the cranky people, LA produces some spectacular strawberries.  They are positively huge.  Sweet, and good.  However, until moving to the northwest I never had anything with which to really compare them.

Our strawberries are NOT large, by any stretch of the imagination.  But what strawberries in the northwest lack in size they make up in HUGE taste.   How one little berry can pack so much flavor and such intense sweetness, I will never know.  They are so small they don't even begin to approach round, but in their little football-shaped frames there are quite a few surprises.  If you have the chance to try these sweet little explosions of flavor, I strongly recommend you do.

Now excuse me while I wipe the drool off my chin and go raid the fridge one more time for the fruits of our harvest today.

Night Banjo

 It was hot today, not so hot that you don't feel like doing anything, but spring is clearly gone in the northwest and summer is here for the interim.  However, come evening the breeze blew the heat out and as the stars came out the air became pleasant and sweet again.

I found myself this night on the back porch with no one but myself, two dogs, an oil lamp, and my (borrowed) banjo.  It was bliss.  I was not precise but very productive - learning three new songs in less than an hour.  I will spend the next few nights working over those songs, adding pull-offs and hammer-ons, and if I'm lucky a few drop thumbs.  I will make them mine and will add them to the growing litany of songs I know that are older than my grandfather's grandfather.

While I played, everything else melted away and my life reduced down to the music and the lamp and the evening breeze.  My unemployment was unimportant.  The weeds in the vegetables for the time being forgotten.  It was wonderful and it was mine.

Seriously, We Need a Cow

We have friends staying with us while they look for a home nearby.  We love having everyone here, all of them, but the speed at which we go through milk is astonishing.  We have six kids in the house, all under 10, so you can imagine how much we drink.  Add to that my cereal habit (still, can't help it), and we're going through nearly eight gallons of milk a week.  It's amazing.

Now, how to get a cow past the City Code Enforcement???