Bargains Galore

It's time to head down to our friendly neighborhood car dealer and get a great deal on a car. The ads make it look so easy, but we all know we'd rather walk over hot coals than spend a couple of hours in a hot cubicle waiting for the salesman to "go talk to his sales manager." There's got to be an easier way. But we haven't found it yet. So it's off to test drive and try to out fox the system.

Update

It only took five and a half hours to close the deal on an ordinary, run-of-the-mill, mid priced car. What a coup! The salesman and "general sales manager" made it seem like we we're killing them and getting an unbelievable deal, but it doesn't feel like that. It feels like cars are vastly overpriced. Thankfully, we've got three years 'til we have to do this again.

Contained Chaos

Want a riot of color in that drab corner of the veranda? Put together a container of bright annuals and change the view. Dark colored containers show off hot summer colors best. Just mix up foliage textures: a broad leaf, narrow leaf, fern leaf and colors: complementary like red and green, purple and yellow, and blue and orange. A variety of heights is essential: Something tall, medium , and trailing. If that sounds impossibly complicated, just remember the rule of three: three textures, three colors (green counts), three heights. For a sunny spot use a large bronze container with Persian Shield, yellow lantana, yellow marigolds, and chartreuse sweet potato vine. Cover the exposed soil with pea gravel. A shade container could be a large antique green box with Macho fern, needle point ivy, white impatiens, and pink angel wing begonia. The exposed soil could be covered with moss. Using evergreens guarantees good looks even after the annuals are gone. Everything can be purchased in one stop at Home Depot or Lowes and can be put together in less than an hour. Make that boring corner beautiful and improve your outlook with some fabulous new containers.

Together Again

Number One Son Wes and Jack are reunited in Utah after many months apart. They share a passion for rock climbing so Little Cottonwood Creek is heaven on earth for them. This canyon is in the Wasatch Mountains southeast of Salt Lake City. There are bouldering opportunities every where you look so all they have to do is pull the car over and climb. Just thinking about how much they're enjoying their time together does my heart good.

Eggs Over Easy

Eggs cooked the way you like them. So many menus make this boast but how many restaurants can actually make eggs exactly the way you do at home. Famed Atlanta Journal Constitution writer Lewis Grizzard would go to great lengths to describe the way he liked his eggs, but no one could cook them the way his mother did. It all comes down to secret techniques that people don't share. One way to make eggs over easy is to melt the butter in the pan then just as it starts to sizzle, the eggs are cracked and dropped in. Let them cook on medium high until the white is done. Then flip them over and spell the name of your high school boyfriend(or girlfriend). Presto! Perfect eggs! There are as many ways to make hard-boiled eggs as there are home economics teachers from the seventies: leave the heat on, turn it off, covered, uncovered, or add vinegar to the water. My grandmother told me to put the egg in the smallest pan in the cabinet then fill the water until there's a dry circle on the egg the size of a quarter. When the water starts boiling, turn down the heat to low and time it for twelve minutes. Perfect every time. What about omelets. Should they be folded over or left open? How many ingredients should be added? Some say two or three, some empty the vegetable bin in there plus four cheeses. Even the omelet stations that make customized breakfasts don't always get it right. The vegetables must be sauteed not added raw. Raw red bell peppers in the morning are not good for anybody.

Feed the birds...

...tuppence a bag. Mary Poppins famously taught her charges a simple lesson with that little ditty. Jane and Michael spent most of their days indoors so had failed to learn about the world around them; where food came from, the sky over their heads, and animals in their midst. Sound familiar? Do you know the name of that red bird in the yard or what it's call sounds like? Can you name your state bird? Birds can tell us so much about the state of our world. They are creatures of habit, migrating at the same time every year and waking up at the same time every morning to sing their song. A Red tail Hawk comes to my back yard and sits in a pine tree everyday at 2:00. Every evening a Mockingbird sits in the top of an oak tree next to a hedge and sings for an hour. Cardinals nest in that hedge and visit the bird feeder at 5:00 like clockwork. Migrating yellow finches chatter and hop around in the oaks as they pay their yearly spring visit. In February hummingbirds expect a sip from pineapple sage in the perennial border. A pair of quail used to walk through our yard everyday. We haven't seen them or their offspring for years. They are sadly missed. It's a mystery why they stopped visiting. It's true that quail are disappearing in the wild and no one knows why. But the call of "bob white" still echoes through my memory.

The National Audubon Society publishes excellent regional guides to birds and other wildlife. Many people prefer the Peterson field guide to birds. Either one is easy to use and will help you learn about the birds in your midst.

Leaves of a Book

Yesterday I pulled a long forgotten book down off the shelf and a folded paper fell out of it. I picked it up and opened a memory. There was a flower that had been pressed between the pages years before from a trip somewhere. It's a habit I started as a young wife to remember trips with a free souvenir. The first one was a Queen Ann's Lace picked from a roadside in Michigan. Next was a California Poppy from somewhere near Yosemite. There have been Red Maple leaves from Toronto and Rhododendron from Seattle. Even Cherry blossoms from a cold spring trip to Washington D.C. When my parents were moving from their long time city home to their farm, I walked around the garden picking leaves from my favorite plants. The funny thing is, there were always plans to frame or scrapbook these leaves and flowers but most of them never made it out of the books they were pressed into. So now they are little treasures that turn up whenever I pull an old book off the shelf.

Turning Bananas Into Banana Bread

Down here where the air is moist and trees wear moss like a necklace, summers are a lazy time. The hammock is the place to be with a tall glass of lemonade tea. All living creatures seek the cool shade of the Live Oaks and gentle breezes off lakes and bays. Standing in the kitchen, baking in front of a hot oven, is the last place anyone would want to be. But when there are six over-ripe bananas in the fruit bowl, something has to be done.

The favorite cookbook is carefully taken down off the shelf. It's yellowing pages are tearing away from the brittle plastic spiral binding. It holds the secrets to rich brownies, buttery pound cake, and nutty banana bread. The most used pages are easy to find as they're marked with drips and splashes from ancient baking sessions. Just opening the book brings back memories of family birthday dinners and cooking lessons for children standing on stools with Peter Rabbit aprons tied on.

Banana Bread

1 stick of butter

3/4 cups sugar

2 eggs

3 bananas, mashed

2 cups flour

1 tsp soda

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup chopped pecans

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs one at a time. Beat in bananas. Sift flour, reserving 3 tablespoons, with soda. Fold flour in by hand in 3 equal additions. Add vanilla. Dredge pecans in reserved flour and fold into batter. Pour into well-greased and floured standard loaf pan. Bake at 325 degrees for approx. 1 hour and 15 mins or 325 for 50 minutes on convection bake. Cool for ten minutes then run a knife between the pan and loaf and turn out onto a cutting board. Watch it disappear!

Hitting the wall

Modern technology is a wonder. It staggers the mind to think about how it's changed our lives in the past twenty years. Remember when it was so important to have a Walkman? Where are they now. VCR's, Cd changers, and boom boxes are filling our dumps and antique stores right now. Recent movies are easy to date by the size of the cell phones the actors are using. The audience will actually start laughing during a serious scene if the leading man is holding a phone the size of a horses leg. Now cell phones can do everything a computer does and it fits in the palm of your hand. Did they even have that in Star Wars? I don't think so.

Keeping up with using all these gadgets is the real trick. As long as you can download music to your Ipod, silence your cell phone in a movie theatre, and send email to all your friends and family you're okay. But at what age are we simply not going to get it anymore? When are we just not going to know which button to push? Maybe there won't be any buttons and you only have to think an action to make it happen. I'll probably be too distracted to make it work. Instead of silencing my phone, it will return that call I forgot to make earlier. The Ipod will play the FSU fight song repeatedly because I can't get it out of my head after a football weekend. The computer will send emails to everyone I know telling them the things I should have said to that rude clerk as I continue to think of rejoinders too late. That's when technology ceases to be a convenience and gets chucked in the garbage along with yesterday's news.

You Can Come Home Again

For several weeks now our house has been almost empty. With one son working in Utah, the other in California, one daughter away at school, one house sitting on the other side of town that leaves just hubby, dog, and me. There are some perks to having an empty house. It's possible to walk in the laundry room for the first time ever. Shoes left by the door only belong to me. The dishwasher only runs once a day even with pots and pans. The second refrigerator in the garage is beginning to look redundant as the grocery bill plummets. This is no time to do anything rash like getting rid of stuff, though. In just a few short weeks everyone is going to come flooding back in. Just in time for their Daddy's birthday, all but one will be coming home. The chores will pile up again but they'll be done cheerfully. It's just more fun having everyone around the table and under one roof.

15 Million Light Years Away

Here's an amazing photograph of a spiral galaxy called the Southern Pinwheel. It can be seen with binoculars in the constellation Hydra. Just another reason to take a few minutes to look up in the sky while you're walking the dog tonight. If you're not sure what you're looking at, pick up Navigating The Night Sky by Guilherme de Almeida. The author explains how to find the brightest stars and constellations and use them to navigate around the night sky. This would be a fun book to take along to the beach where you can see far more stars than in suburban areas. If you are going anywhere with fewer lights on at night take advantage to look up at the heavens. You may see a shooting star. Make a wish!

Virtual Homes

A fun site to explore is Victorian Station for pictures of 19th century houses and interiors. There are house plans, pictures of interiors, and answers to restoration questions. Even if you aren't restoring or building this site is a good read.

Another site to look at and dream is Dream Home Source. It's loaded with house plans of every description. It can be searched by size, number of bedrooms, etc. Take a look and dream up a home for yourself.

Another interesting site is Yankee Barn Homes. This company has dozens of plans for homes built in a barn style. You can see pictures of houses and interiors. You can even contact them about visiting their houses if you'd like them to build one for you.