Ready, set, go

The weather man predicted 100% chance of snow tonight. Well, guess what. It's snowing!
So I want everyone to place their ruby snow boots on your feet and close your eyes. Now click your heels together and repeat after me:

There's no place like spring.
There's no place like spring.
There's no place like spring.

Now when we open our eyes, it will be spring.......
Ready, set, go........

It might be spring but it feels like winter

There's a really cold wind blowing off of the northern mountains. It looks like it might snow again. The chickens were reluctant to venture off their perches for breakfast this morning as they are all snuggled into each other. The rabbits were hunkered down covering their feet with their soft fur. They looked like giant spotted puff balls in their cages. No one wanted to move when I first went into the coop. I don't blame them. It was hard to shrug out of my warm bed this morning, too.

On days like this, I have to remind myself that it really is spring and the snow will stop eventually. When we lived in Texas, if you didn't already have your potatoes planted by February 14, they wouldn't have time to make before it got too hot. I was planting tomatoes and warm weather tenders by April's end. But here in Montana I wouldn't even think of planting potatoes yet. And the tenders won't go into the soil until late May or the first week of June. So I have to placate myself by wandering down to the basement where the new seedlings are thriving in plastic containers and (home made) organic liquid fertilizer. Running my hand gently over the tomato and oregano babies lets off an amazing aroma. Closing my eyes I can breathe deeply and dream of summer.

Collecting eggs by proxy

I hate going out to the chicken house at night. I don't do it on purpose. I always have the intent to get chores done during daylight hours but sometimes things get in the way: telephone calls, homework, dishes, dinner.......you know, life. The problem is that my chickens are special chickens. They don't sleep on the roosts I made especially for them. No. They have to roost in the rafters of the little, red chicken coop. So when I find myself out there in the night, this is what I have waiting for me: chicken fannies. 15 chicken fannies to be exact. They pretend to be asleep but they are really positioning themselves to bomb me......just for the sport of it. They think it's funny. They probably even take bets to see which one of them will release the perfectly executed poop that lands on my head. I can sometimes hear them whispering and giggling to each other when I stomp into the coop with my headlamp in place on my head. They might just be laughing at my headlamp. (It makes my hair stick up.) But I think they are planning a bombing.

I quickly dish out chicken crumbles, rabbit suppers and distribute fresh water for all. Then I gather the eggs from the day. This is the real reason I make a run into the live ammunition loaded coop. The eggs. Poo or no poo, it's always worth the trip.

There. Did you hear that? I think that black one on the left, in the back just laughed at me.

We have a great family. My mountain boy and I didn't even meet until we were both OLD. We met at work when I was 32. He was a flight paramedic and I was a new flight nurse. He cut a pretty handsome figure in his navy, blue Nomex flight suit with the-glow-in-the-dark-stripe down the leg (In other words-- he was HOT! He was as hot then as he is now! Don't tell him I said that.) It was a whirlwind relationship (get it.....helicopter, whirlwind......) We married on October 9, 1993 at 11:00 in the morning after dating for two years. And nine months and 45 minutes later our first born arrived. A son. He was, ummm, a challenging baby to say the least. There were many times I was ready to give him back. But we kept him and have never been sorry. Well. almost never.

Our oldest son is a normal kid. He was born in Texas, was verbal pretty early (he could talk in complete sentences at 20 months but he could not run or climb....weird) and he was a big kid. He still is a big kid. He is the oldest of four; one sister and three brothers. He takes his big brother duties pretty seriously.

He is 15 years old now (is that possible?) and a freshman in high school. He's 6'4" and one of his life goals is to be taller than his dad (hasn't met that goal yet!)

He hunts-

and fishes (or is it "fishs"?)

and plays in the snow.

(Montana is kind of like a big play ground for boys.)

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But his heart is baseball. He lives and breathes baseball. He watches baseball on TV when he's not at the field. He constantly is reading about how he can improve his game. He's pretty good too. He would like to play ball in college and maybe further. He dreams about professional ball.

Which is why my heart sank when he called from the gym the first week in Janurary where he was playing basketball for the high school to tell me that he had hurt his right knee........again. He had dislocated his patella (knee cap) three times over the last 2 years, each time the damage was extended a little more. This time the damage was too great. His orthopedic surgeon (pretty bad to have your own surgeon at the ripe old age of 15) scheduled him for surgery on Janurary 26th. After 6 weeks on crutches and 6 weeks of physical therapy he will be able to run in a straight line; no cutting or twisting or deep bending of his knee. Then after 6 more weeks of a slow quiet jog and more PT he will maybe be able play a little sports........that puts the date at July 26th......6 months post surgery and one week after the baseball season has ended.

He might be able to play next year if he takes care of himself.....that means no horse play with the possiblity of re-injuring his knee. That means no cheating and pushing his knee to perform before complete healing has really taken place. That means wearing his brace and doing his excersizes and NOT running or jumping before it's time.

He's been on crutches for ever. It's been a hard winter for him. He missed the rest of the basketball season, he missed the bulk of ski season. My mother's heart has bled all over him in the form of overprotectivness and food.

We've all been holding our collective breath while he heals. It has nothing to do with his ablility to play baseball. We've really been holding our breath because he is our son. He has been hurt. And because we are a family, we've all been hurt. We are all waiting to heal.

So it is wonderful when I see him beginning to show signs of normalicy. And in this case, normalicy means...........being a goof-ball.

He said the skipping "hurt" but it felt good too. It felt good to be a goof-ball again.

I'm so glad he's feeling better. I really love him and if it feels good to skip then that's alright with me.

Chickens and a Rabbit or..... 10 hens and a bun

Here's a veiw to the chickens pecking, kind of frantically, at a handful of dehydrated corn. One of our escaped rabbits from last fall gets into the action too.

Here's the story on the rabbit: last August, I separated a litter of 8 week old rabbits- does from bucks- with the intent to save the does for breeding and harvest the bucks for the freezer. They were split up with one cage of 3 does and another with 5 young bucks. Well, one night really late, I heard a funny sound coming from the back porch where the rabbit cages were at the time. But I just rolled over and went back to sleep instead of investigating. The next morning I noted with the utmost sadness that the buck cage had tumped (yet another Texan word; "tumped" meaning "to tip") over the step Finding Nemo-style (remember the scene of all the fish in the net?) and spilled all the young rabbits into the night. Of course they were no where to be found. The next several weeks we spied them frolicking in the yard and fields by our house. Though we could never catch them once they tasted freedom, I left food out for them through the winter. All but one disappeared. That one is pictured in the video.

It began snowing just after I took this picture. You can kind of see it blowing in just behind the kids from the west .

That's just spring in Montana! HAPPY EASTER!

The house smells like home

Wednesday, the kids and I took a last minute trip to "The Big City"........Missoula (pop. 57,053 in 2000). We spent 3 days and 2 nights in a HOTEL. With a pool. And a slide. And restaurants like Olive Garden and Fuddruckers and Cold Stone Creamery.......mmmmmm. My goal was to spend as little money as possible and still have a good time. So we ate cheap the whole time we were there then splurged the last night. Cracker Barrel. I had never been to this restaurant. But my kids had. And of course they let me know how deprived (or is that depraved?) I was because I had never eaten there. So we went to Cracker Barrel our last night in the Big City. I ordered chicken and dumplings. I haven't had chicken and dumplings for years. The taste took me back to my childhood. With one bite I was standing in my Texas grandmother's kitchen helping her stir chicken noodle soup; the house saturated with the intoxicating aroma of sauteing celery, onions, carrots, sage, thyme and of course, chicken. It was wonderful.

Our trip home was uneventful. And though I had lots to do, my first undertaking when home (even before unpacking the car) was to start a huge pot of chicken noodle soup in the big cast iron kettle that once belonged to my grandmother. I had barely walked in the door before I was at the stove lightly browning winter storage onions and carrots in butter with a splash of olive oil. I added two quarts of water and dehydrated celery. Then I included a bit of that gelatinous material left in the bottom of a roaster when baking a whole chicken (I'm not sure what this is called but it's a great soup starter. I collect this "stuff" in a small plastic container in the freezer when cleaning up the leavings of a chicken dinner so I always have some on hand) and the carcass of one whole (previously eaten) chicken. It was just minutes before the entire house smelled like home. Only after bringing the water to a quiet simmer did I get the children organized and the car unpacked. After a bit, I fished out the chicken bones, added the noodles and some salt and other seasonings. The weather was vacillating between snow and rain and it was kind of dreary; a perfect night for a warm house and home made soup.

I really miss my grandmothers. Both my Northern Nana and my Texas Grammy were wonderful cooks and each left me with a legacy of precious kitchen memories. I hope that some day certain smells or tastes will transport my own children back to their childhood where happiness in the form of good food was shared nightly around our supper table.