Sunday, July 7, 2013

Good Stuff


We’ve finished with the “Light Explosive and Incendiary Devices” holiday.  That’s good.  

We had a legal (and therefore tame) display in the yard last night. The biting insects had a more exciting time eating our ankles than we did looking at ‘fireworks’.


Sparkler Teepee

Fireworks in PA: Safe, legal and rare. Not to mention lame.

Emergency water bucket


Today I’ll be driving my niece to Girl Scout camp.   Yesterday I drove several hours on the PA Turnpike (a hellish road) to make this happen.   But that’s okay.  I received some unbelievable benefits from this arrangement.  Here are the thank-you gifts my brother gave me for transportation of his child.

1) Humongous lunch for the Common Household Son.  We met at Perkins Restaurant. My brother and I each had a small bowl of soup and a half-sandwich.  My son (who came to help with the driving and to provide music from his iPod) had “Take Twelve”:  3 eggs, 4 pancakes, 3 sausages, 2 hash browns.  Or something like that.  It was two large plates heaped with food, and he ate all of it.  This was a gift to me because it reduced my grocery budget a tiny amount.

2) Fresh Maryland corn.  Eight ears of heavenly delight.

Oh, baby.  This stuff is good.

3) Peaches and Black Raspberries.  I doubt they are from Maryland (it seems too early, especially this year) but they are deeee-licious.

Black raspberries.


A good peach is hard to find.  My brother found
 some, and then gave them to me.  
In the category of good things in the yard:

1) At Easter, we received one pansy at my brother’s church.  It languished in a plastic cup for about two weeks before we put it in the ground outside.   Despite that shabby treatment, it is the prize-winner in this year’s garden, doing the best of all our annuals.


Valiant pansy plant (night photo).



2) My balloon flower plant has loads of blooms!  One plant was chomped by attack rabbits (or evil deer), but this one is doing well.

Courageous balloon flower plant (night photo).


3)  Fireflies.  They've been beautiful and plentiful lately.  
Brilliant photo of fireflies (night photo).


Trust me, there were lots of fireflies.

What's good stuff where you are?


5 comments:

Cassi said...

That corn looks good!

We are harvesting black raspberries here --well, Emma is, since she's willing to put up with the mosquitoes :-)

We have a Mennonite store near us that trucks Michigan peaches back here later in August and they are usually wonderful. A good peach is definitely hard to find!

Anonymous said...

Wow--that's a haul for hauling a kid to camp!
We like our fireworks here--and our berries, fireflies and dragonflies.

The Crislers said...

This collection of photos seems like a perfect summary of summer! Fresh corn on the cob (oh, yum), fresh blackberries (oh, yum, and they're ripe here, so maybe they really are freshly picked), and that photo of fireflies (you meant lightning bugs, right?) really made me laugh.
Also, "Take Twelve"? Holy cow.

Karen (formerly kcinnova) said...

I've never seen a balloon flower before -- interesting! I miss fireflies (we had tons of them in NoVA but none here in WA) and I even (sort of) miss fireworks in my own yard. Those dangerous things were illegal in all forms here this year to my boys' disappointment.

Jay said...

The plate full of food for your son sounds familiar! And all the fruit looks yummy, I've never seen black raspberries.