BasilandFig

My Guy:  Can we throw this rotten fruit in the compost?

Me:  What rotten fruit?

My Guy:  This bowl full of rotten fruit.  Right here on the counter.  It’s disgusting.

Me:  No, no, it’s still okay .  I was going to make something with it.

My Guy:  Oh my god.  I’m gonna be dead for three months and you’ll [...]

I learned an important lesson the other day.

And that lesson is: don’t store food in the automatic ice-maker/dispenser.

Even if it seems like a good idea at the time since, Number 1: you don’t use that much ice and Number 2: there’s no room in the freezer.

This may seem like a good idea at the time, [...]

Last weekend was clean-out-the-fridge time.  On the list of things that needed tending-to: a chicken carcass.  Carrots that had begun growing roots.  Celery, green onions and various other vegetables that were wilting and on the verge of becoming slimy.  Corn and garlic from my garden, along with a handful of tomatoes from front-porch pots.

Half a [...]

I bet you are not even going to believe this but I’m going to tell you anyway: there used to be a time when there was no electricity.

And—get this—even once there was electricity, it still took years for it to make its way to every home, especially those in the rural south, especially, for example, [...]

I love the slant of light that shines from behind a closed door;

the dark promise,

the glowing mystery.

Have you been making refrigerator pickles all summer?

We have.

I wish I could say that they’re from my own cucumbers that I grew but, save for one, they’re not.  For some reason I have bad luck with cucumbers, and by ‘bad luck’ I mean that there is some virus or pest that always kills them, but [...]

Well, it’s happened: The squash vine borers have invaded my garden and killed off all but a handful of squash plants.

I did my best to keep them at bay, digging them out of the stems with a knife (lesson learned: next time I’ll be using a pin or straightened-out paper clip, as the knife seems [...]

When I was in middle school we sometimes took class trips to (insert ‘educational destination that obviously had a long-lasting impact on my life seeing as I can’t remember it’ here), or we had away (insert whatever sport I happened to play at the time) games that, for some reason, required the hiring of a [...]

My parents recently returned from a trip to England bearing various gifts.

For my brother and his wife, who have a salt-and-pepper shaker collection there was a hedgehog S&P set.

They’re quite adorable, really, except for one thing:

The set included a little ceramic tray to hold them, which at first seemed like a nice bonus.

Unfortunately due to [...]

My Guy:  Yeah, you would’ve really liked her.  She’s totally effing weird.