Monday morning musings

First, some blogging housekeeping. If you are getting bounced email notifications of your comments here, you are not alone. I don't know what's going on; I even turned off the spam filter entirely, and oddly enough I'm not even getting spam. I wonder what else I'm not getting.

Also, the Site Meter says sometime soon, probably in the next 24 hours, Sand Creek Almanac will have its 20,000th visitor. It's been about a year since I installed the meter, so...wow. Thanks to everyone who visits here, especially the "regulars". :) Whether you leave comments or not, it always makes my day that you take the time to read this stuff.

Now on to the usual news from Sand Creek. 85 degrees and sunny yesterday, a little too hot for my tastes but it sure made that afternoon swim in the pond feel good! I'll have to post some pics of Sally (5 month old yellow lab) swimming if we go today; she's a natural in the water, and anyway someone has requested a "pupdate".

Before the swim, Calvin and I had a fishing adventure on the creek. He's been really getting into fishing lately, even though we've only caught creek chubs and common shiners so far. We usually fish from the north side of the creek, which is easier to get to, but I wanted to go to the south side to stay in the shade. Getting there required a shortcut through the horse pasture and some brush busting, but we found a spot that worked even though I had to break off a few alder branches that kept reaching out and snagging the hook.

In garden news, I don't have to water today; we got abouth 1/10 of an inch this morning, which was much needed. We had a meal last night that included barbecue pork sandwiches (we know who raised the pig), steamed sugar snap peas (yum! And there's plenty more where they came from!), and a new experiment, batter-fried garlic scapes. I just learned about garlic scapes this year. Supposedly you get larger bulbs if you cut off the flower shoots (scapes) before they open up, and they have a good mild garlic flavor. So I de-scaped all of the garlic, dipped them in beer batter, and fried. They were pretty good, a little tough in places but sort of like onion rings. I did wake up this morning reeking of garlic, though.

One thing I noticed when I was picking peas: Our garden has, as of yet, no fence around it. I have seen plenty of rabbits around here, even right in the garden walkways. There are some pea vines off the trellis, hanging over the edge of the raised bed, heavy with ripe pea pods just beckoning some critter to come along for an easy meal.

So far, no takers. I want to ask why, but when one is the recipient of such an act of grace, I feel questions are inappropriate. I'll just enjoy it for what it's worth.

Off to enjoy the day!