The Mountain Thymes

OK, we've had our snow, icy roads, and frigid cold.  I'm done with winter.  Bring on spring. I made my list, checked it twice, and sent in my order. Bought a lot of my old favorites and added some new vegetables.  Cherokee Purple is an old Cherokee heirloom tomato, pre-1890.  Also trying Tomato Blue Berries which are rich in anthocyanins due to their dark purple color.  Komatsuma is an Oriental green good for stir-frying or salads, Shoigon, a small Japanese mild-tasting turnip that I prefer sliced in salads instead of cooking them, and Crosby's Egyptian beets are a few of the new seeds for this year's garden.  My brain is hyped and each time I walk down to the compost pile with the kitchen peelings, I can visualize the bare clay clumps and the rocks that I'll pick out again and my mushroom compost in the wheel barrow reading to enrich the garden.

We were fortunate to miss most of winter storm Jonas.  As of this posting, we only have two inches of snow with more snow flakes off and on for the next couple of hours.  We have no power outages in our area but from around Asheville to the coast it's a different story. Cliff easily shoveled and swept the front porch.  Later I'll bundle up and walk just to get out of the house and stretch my legs.  It's going to stay very cold, only mid-twenties and breezy.  Yesterday to prepare for the storm I baked snicker doodles. Tomorrow, Sunday, will be sunny and 47 degrees.  Unless a Saskatchewan Screamer or Manitoba Mauler barrels down on us unexpectedly, the ten-day forecast looks promising.  After a few mid-forty days, temperatures rise to 63 degrees.  Snow event last night 5:30 from Lauria in VA. Her front walk this morning even after being shoveled at midnight.  The children plan on making a luge in the back yard.  They have a great yard for making jumps, forts, and

Cliff is still bringing in the bird feeders each night to deter roving bands of marauding raccoons and hungry bears.  I fill the feeders each morning and return them at the first light of day as the Cardinals are already on the ground and perching on tree branches awaiting breakfast.  Lately we've had eleven degree mornings with cutting winds and I've had to put on a heavy jacket when venturing out to the feeder hooks.  This morning only required a light jacket as the temperature was a balmy 26 and felt pretty good.  We're under winter storm warning today so it's a good baking day.  Yesterday I baked a chocolate zucchini loaf and did a slow-cooker chicken with a delicious rub.  When the chicken was done and cooled, I picked the bones clean and saved the chicken pieces, then threw fat, skins, bones, a bay leaf, in a large soup pot with lots of water and boiled it for a couple of hours.  Cliff helped me strain the broth from the carcass pieces so I could make the soup.  T

There have been nights when we've been awakened by rustling sounds coming from the bathroom walls. Faint scratchy scurrying noises, like those of little feet movement.  Then the nights went quiet and for months nothing happened.  Some nights I sleep in the spare room because I toss and turn, thrash, throw pillows on the floor, and sleep with the ceiling fan on.  My sleep has become restless with the RA.   Lately, I've been awakened around 11:30 by a rustling noise in the laundry room.  I told Cliff it sounded like someone moving objects around, shifting things.  Things that really did go bump in the night.   Some nights the sounds were so vivid I would sit up with eyes wide expecting to see a form standing in the bedroom doorway.  Of course we suspected a varmint, not a small troublesome child, was trying to take up residence due to the recent flooding conditions, but there were no traces of droppings to be seen. During the day the walls were quiet.  Until..............one morn