The Mountain Thymes

 Sunday was my birthday.  What more important event is there than a person's birthday?  A celebration of life. (The Jane Goodall Institute) Tucked in the mailbox with the birthday cards from family and friends was a envelope from Cochran Family of Funeral Services.  That was quickly discarded to the trash. Cliff and I made an old-fashioned apple crisp from a recipe online by The Chunky Chef.  You can't go wrong with a chef named Chunky.   Easy, juicy, and delicious especially with vanilla ice-cream or whipped cream........or both. I finally picked the three chocolate peppers and grilled them with Cliff's shrimp and my mountain trout for lunch today.   This morning our temperature was 27 and even with full sun was slow to rise.  As it reached 60 by mid-afternoon, the sun started back down behind the mountain taking the temperature down too. So far our November days have been comfortable. Last night was sleepless for me.  Shoulder and wrists inflammation sent me to the reclin

 The Covid virus continues to surprise me by inconveniencing what I thought were simple things. Back in the summer I ordered my garlic for the usual mid-October planting.  The garlic just arrived Monday.                                                          chesnok red My all-time favorites..........music garlic Cliff helped me put the fifty-plus cloves in rows, spacing them six to eight inches apart, before the rains arrived.  Then I mulched the three areas with dead leaves, which were not hard to find here.  While I was working in the garden, there was such a cacophony of bird noise and flying that the sky looked like a scene from Alfred Hitchcock's "The Birds." Hundreds of black birds perched high up in a couple of trees then took flight talking and screeching overhead settling in the next trees.  This went on for a couple of hours.  As they flew over, pinging sounds came from the garage and house roofs and Cliff's motorcycle trailer.  More dropping and bouncing