Back to Life

It has been over 4 years since I last posted.  Life has been busy and I got out of the habit.  Time to change that.

I was recently diagnosed with breast cancer and it seems like a good time to go back and be reflective.  I found a lump - actually it felt like a 2 inch piece of cord - back in late spring.  Then began a round of doctor visits, mammograms, ultrasounds, biopsies and fear.  The hardest part is having to wait constantly for results or plans.  I am a planner and once I know that something is going to happen I like to get on with it.  But this process is different. You get some info and then wait and worry.  Then you get another bit of info and wait and worry.  I finally had surgery - a lumpectomy and sentinel node removal and now am waiting and worrying again.  A month has gone by... and next week I have another doctor visit, with an oncologist this time.  Hopefully I'll get some answers and schedule the next round of treatment.  Maybe.  We'll see.

In the meantime my parents took me on a road trip to Big Bend National Park.  I have never been there as it isn't on the way to anywhere I tend to travel and it's a day and a half drive from Phoenix.  This is the off season as it usually is pretty hot.  We were lucky and had decent weather and not many other people around.  We stayed up in the Chisos Basin where it was nice and cool - at least compared to the 110-ish temps we've had in Phoenix lately. Saw 2 new species of birds - White-tailed Kite and Chihuahua Ravens.  The trip was 6 days in total and was a very welcome and enjoyable change of pace.

They call these Lubbers.  They're about 3 inches long with bright red underwings.  All over the roads in Big Bend.

 View from our Lodge balcony.  This is called "The Window" and looks out on the valley floor 100's of feet below.

 Walls of the north portion of Chisos Basin.

 Casa Grande in the morning with low foggy clouds.

View of The Window from the valley below.  The mountain in the middle is Casa Grande.

Cactus wren fixing up the winter abode.

Not the day I had expected...

I had originally planned on going to Wupatki Nat'l Monument for a photo expedition.  I love the peace of that place - particularly the Wukoki ruin.  I could just sit and listen to the wind all day.  But it's a 2+ hour drive up, 3-4 hours there and 2+ hour drive back down to the Valley and I had agreed to dogsit for a friend.  Dozer needed to be let out for a bathroom break so I didn't want to be getting home too late.  Instead, I decided to go see Agua Fria Nat'l Monument.  It was established by President Clinton in 1999, is right along the Interstate and had been calling to me.  Bloody Basin Road runs through there and I've always wanted to drive that road.  Volcanic canyons, high plateaus and the Verde River...I just needed to explore.  It should have been an hour or less drive up, 2-3 hours there and an hour back.  Right...

The drive was a bit more than I expected.  I had to go into 4wd (high) at one point to go up a steep hill while bouncing over rocks.  That voice in the back of my head kept telling me that I was toast if I blew a tire in this desolate area.  All by yourself and did the last person use a hydraulic tool to put on the lug nuts?  And when was the last time you checked the air pressure in the spare?  Shut up voice.  My tires are new, I have plenty of water and food, sunscreen, and the Interstate is less than 10 miles away.  I can walk that if I have to. My room mate has instructions to get help if I don't contact her by 7pm.  Shut up voice.  Yeah, I know you're right... someone should be with me but part of the specialness of this place is being alone.  So pipe down!

 

There are lots of ruins in the monument but in order to preserve them only one has been identified on maps.  Pueblo La Plata is on a high, wind-swept plateau overlooking Silver Canyon (whence it's name).  It is on the northwestern edge of the Perry Plateau and is thought to have been the first outpost for anyone traveling up that way.  It had an excellent vantage point as you could see anyone coming for miles.  Water was available in Silver Canyon - a little bit of trek with heavy pots full of water.  The gash in the photo above is Silver Canyon, and expanded to the right.  Supposedly more water ran in the canyon back in A.D. 1250-1450 when these rooms were inhabited.  Still, quite a daily trek for water.  The canyon edge is maybe a quarter mile from the ruins.

 

Time and looters have broken down many of the rooms.  Lower walls are all that are really left.  You can still get a feeling for the large size of the pueblo - 80 to 100 rooms according to the fact sheet at the trailhead.  These rooms would have been chinked with mud and would have had thatched roofs over them.  Plenty of grasses to thatch with in the area.  The wind sighed and whistled through them while I was there.  Lots of wind.  It would be a constant of life on this plateau.  It whispered through the rocks and grass, carrying snippets of sparrow song from birds nowhere near where the sound came from.

 In many ways there was the same peacefulness as at Wukoki that makes me want to sit and just listen to the wind, grasshoppers buzzing their metallic sound and the sparrows chirping just out of view.  I sat and tried to imagine the walls intact, people going about their daily tasks, children playing... where the heck did all these people poop?  No privacy at all.  But maybe there were more bushes and trees back then... or maybe that kind of bodily function wasn't the hidden function that it is now.   Other signs of life were evident.  There were potsherds and flints lying all around.

People have piled them up on rocks.  I cannot describe the feeling as you pick up a piece of pottery that was made 3,000+ years ago.  Some person formed that pot, fired the clay and used it for their daily work.  And here this small piece sits.  3,000 years later. Lots of them, all around.  Also plenty of flints - quartz and obsidian pieces that have been chipped into cutting stones.  I stand and look around me, again, wondering about the daily lives of the people that lived here.  I flinch at the scrabbling sound of a lizard.  My mind is very aware that is prime rattlesnake territory.  But all I see in the sand are the trail drags of the multitudes of whiptail lizards.  This guy picked up all his feet off the warm soil  (yes, male from the color on the throat that you can't see) as he waited for me to take my photo.

Funnel spiders had their webs all over the place up on this plateau.  I have only seen one, maybe two at a time in other locations - but here?  Maybe 15 to a clearing - their gossamer webs shining like opal iridescent dinner plates in the low plants.

 This is what you see of the ruins as you approach.  A low hill which is almost completely comprised of the ruins.  Out around the hill they would have had fields as they grew squash, corn and other plants (amaranth? beans?) according to the fact sheet.  Museum of Northern Arizona and Arizona State University are both doing research in this area.  ASU in particular is looking at types of fields and farming techniques used by prehistoric cultures.  Nice place to do your field work.

So here is where my day digressed...  I decided without a partner to the day that I wouldn't continue down Bloody Basin Road the 20+ unmaintained dirt miles to its ending in Cave Creek.  I wasn't sure of the water level at the Verde River crossing and didn't feel like having to back track that far.  So instead I headed back out the way I came.  Got an alert on my phone that 2 accidents had closed I-17 in both directions.  Great.  Memorial Day weekend and the main North-South route is closed.  There ought to be some tempers in high fettle today!  I decided to take another road off of Bloody Basin that would take me to Cordes Lakes.  I wound my way through the neighborhoods heading back to the Interstate.  Another alert... northbound reopened but southbound (my direction) was closed still due to a fatal accident.  So I ate lunch and decided to explore Dugas Rd. - another exit off the interstate that has always called to me.  It is 7 miles to the settlement of Dugas.  The first 3 are paved... sort of.. and then it's dirt from there on.

The scenery was beautiful and flowers were plentiful.  Wind made it hard to photograph the Prickly Poppies as they were waving all around.  Bees were having to clutch the stamens to keep from being blown off while gathering the nectar.  I was trying for a bee picture - but they kept getting knocked off.  Not a good bee day.

 Dugas was a small settlement - from looking online it appears to be mostly the homes of the Dugas and Teskey families - ranchers.  At one time they boarded the men who were working on the Childs powerline.  There was a school and post office for a short time.  It is a pretty place with a creek running through.  The surrounding area is beautiful with canyons and hills.  I can understand why the families remain there.

As the day progressed the clouds became wonderful - trailing wisps.  My room-mate thought they looked like jellyfish tentacles. 

I finally decided that I would take my chances on the interstate - hoping it had been cleared by now.  No such luck.  I spent 2 hours stuck in a bumper to bumper parking lot - occasionally crawling a few hundred yards.  We eventually got turned around at Sunset Point.   This was the glorious sky I got to look at while I sat (and played Angry Birds).

I drove back up to Camp Verde and took the route over to Strawberry and through Payson.  I need to do some camping up there.  Not this weekend perhaps, but later this summer.  Strawberry and Payson were both holding Arts festivals which made for slow traffic and packed roads.  But I eventually made it home, grabbed my dog and some clothes and got over to the dog-sitting house.  Dozer didn't make it and had taken a potty break in the guest room.  Not the day I had expected....

Snow in the desert? Nah...

Yes, all you non-desert dwellers are looking at this photo and thinking "So?"  This kind of stuff is what makes desert dwellers go crazy.  Literally.  Suddenly, sane drivers become lunatics.  Half the drivers slow down to 15 mph certain that if they apply their brakes they will go into tailspins.  The other half of the drivers speed up to 60 mph frantic to get around the slow ones.  Honestly people.  It's just some hail.

Last Wednesday we had rain showers/thunderstorms on and off all day.  For once I was working from home and could enjoy it all.  At 5 I took off to get a new phone (love my new iPhone!) and while waiting for them to transfer my contacts the big black nasty-looking cloud in the west snuck up and decided to dump its load.  First a huge boom of thunder and then heavy rain began drumming down.  A lady ran into the store and shouted "It's snowing!" and ran back outside.  It wasn't snowing, not even hailing, perhaps a small amount of sleet.  But 30 seconds later it began to hail - pea-sized stuff.  And it was REALLY hailing.  Withing 2 minutes about an inch of hail had fallen and the parking lot indeed looked like it had snowed.  People were running all over.  The store came to a halt as everyone came to look.  I reached for my phone to take a picture... oh yeah.  They have both of my phones.  Rats.  So this picture was taken about 20 minutes later when the hail had started to melt from the warm engine.

Next morning I still had a bunch of ice on the car.  About a foot square chunk on the hood that hadn't melted.  And after I stopped at the first streetlight I discovered that I had a large sheet up on the roof.  It broke into a few pieces and one came sliding off as I took off.  It slid off onto the hood of the idiot that had pulled up within 2 inches of my bumper.  I'd like to think it taught him a lesson, but I'm sure he won't stop pulling up so close.

We desert-dwellers don't get a huge amount of wild weather so we always freak out/enjoy what little we get.  Today it is very windy - 30 mph.  It feels cold though it is in the 50's.  My wind chimes are dinging out a regular song on the front porch.  Trees in the back are flapping and swaying.  My eyes are itching like crazy - allergies have begun to torment me this year.  Some new pollen or industrial pollutant.  But hey - it's weather!  I'm off to enjoy.

Changelings...

I have been watching quite a few movies lately since the TV shows have been so abominable.  I have been amazed by a couple of actors that happened to be in several movies lately - the parts they have played are extremely different.  The talent necessary to conform to such different parts is exceptional.  Guy Pearce is the first on my list.  On New Year's Day we watched the movie "Lawless" in which he plays an evil government anti-bootlegger.  Slicked back hair, straight-faced, and causes chills when he looks your way.  2 nights later we watched LA Confidential in which he plays an up and coming police detective.  Straight-laced (instead of faced), squeaky clean (instead of greased back) and near sighted.  Very different.  Today we happened upon one of my all time favorite movies - Adventures of Priscilla - Queen of the Desert.  I suddenly realized that he was one of the actors.  So now he plays a not-straight, superbly made-up, happy drag queen.  He plays this part equally well.  Talk about a chameleon.  I checked IMDB( IMDB-Guy Pearce) and found out he's also been in some other good movies that I've watched, like "The King's Speech" and "The Count of Monte Cristo".  He's got 5 movies coming out in the next 2 years.  Someone to definitely watch.

My daughter was watching Priscilla with me today and suddenly gasped - "Mom!  That's Elrond from Lord of the Rings!"  Yes, Hugo Weaving is in Priscilla and in all the Hobbit movies.  IMDB - Hugo Weaving  He is in a myriad of other movies - including one of my daughter's favorites "V is for Vendetta".  Another chameleon.  And I so love his eyebrows.

Tom Brady is another from Lawless that keeps popping up.  Something about him is very appealing - even when being evil/bad.

However, tonight shall be a Downton Abbey night.  It starts the new season tonight and is very addictive.  I think this may be a rerun from last season unfortunately - the last episode in which Shirley MacLaine makes her appearance as the American MIL.  Still, glad it's back onto my Sunday evening schedule.

Winner of the Chili Cookoff

Yes, I know... I repeated the same picture but it's the only one I had.  This shows the first step, before the meat gets added.  The recipe came from Stephanie Anderson's "Killer Chili" and is originally from Cesare Casella's Maremma restaurant in Manhattan.  I think the Garam Masala and chocolate are the key ingredients.  You can't place them in the final outcome, but they give the unique flavor.  Don't let the long list of ingredients daunt you.  It's not a difficult recipe.  I changed up the wording of the directions a little for brevity purposes.

Cesare Casella's Tuscan Chili

1 red onion, quartered
1 small carrot, chopped
1 jalapeno, chopped
1 tbsp chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 tbsp chopped fresh sage
2 stalks celery, chopped
4 cloves garlic
2 oz pancetta, chopped
8 strips bacon
3 tbsp olive oil
2 lbs beef chuck or skirt steak (I used a flank steak)
1 tbsp garam masala
1 16 oz can tomato puree
1/2 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp fennel seed
1 1/2 tbsp chili powder
1 small potato, peeled and cut into 1/2" cubes
2 cups water
1 cup brewed dark-roast coffee
5 cups beef broth (I ended up using 4 cups)
2 cups canned red or kidney beans
3/4 oz unsweetened chocolate (I used 1/2 oz)
freshly grated Parmesan cheese for garnish
1 small white onion, coarsely chopped for garnish
1 avocado, peeled, pitted and coarsely chopped for garnish

Cook the bacon.  (Cesare does it in the oven - I did it in a pan because the oven was in use). 

In a food processor, chop the onion, carrot, jalapeno, rosemary, sage, celery, garlic and pancetta.  In a large, heavy pan combine the olive oil and chopped vegetable mixture and cook over medium-high heat for 10 minutes.

In a large bowl, season the meat with the salt, pepper and garam masala.  Add to the vegetables in the pan and cook for 12 minutes, stirring occasionally.  Add the tomato puree, cumin, fennel seed, chili powder, potato and water.  Cover and simmer for 20 minutes.  Add the coffee and 2 cups of beef broth and cook for another 20 minutes, stirring occasionally (Cesare says constantly... ).  Add the beans and 1 more cup of broth and simmer for 30 minutes.  Add the remaining broth and simmer 15 minutes more.  Grate in the chocolate and cook for another 20 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Serve the chili garnished with Parmesan, crumbled bacon, onion and avocado.  Serves 6

December Wrap-up

December has been a busy month.  It's almost finished and I have yet to think about New Year's resolutions...other than the annual "I WILL lose weight".  Still have to pay my car registration fees as well.  I still have a day!

My son turned 21 this month.  I still think of myself as about 27 so how can I have a 21 year old kid?  We had all the birthday hoopla - he had more than us as it should be.  He celebrated for about 4 days between friends and family.

And someone who is ALWAYS underfoot in the kitchen got in the way during birthday cake decoration - or at least that's the story.  He did eventually manage to lick off all the frosting.

We dog-sat twice in December for my son's rambunctious puppy, much to the dismay and disgust of our 2 cats and the old-man Jake dog.  Puppy-ness is cute, but it sure takes a lot of energy out of everyone else!







 We had all of the usual Christmas activities.  I feel as though I spent the month listening to horrendous music in stores, shopping, cooking, washing dishes, planning, planning, planning, more cooking, more shopping and GADS!!!  More dishes!  I also managed to fit in my job.  I'm sure they were happy about that.  Why do retailers play the worst renditions of Christmas songs?  Do we REALLY need to listen to the latest singers trying to fit 15 warbles into each word of "The First Noel" or shall we say "The first ir ir ir ir ir ir ir ir ir ir ir st No o o o o o o el el ele elelelelelelel".  My ears hurt.  And if I have to listen to Jingle Bell Rock one more time someone might get hurt.


We wrapped up the festivities on the 26th with a Chili Cookoff.  Chili chefs were myself, my daughter, and my brother.  The rest were either working all day or scared of the competition.  Some fierce competition...














This one was a chicken based chili.  Lots of cumin and jalapenos.

 

The others were a beef based one with toasted cumin - excellent flavor.   And I'm pleased to say that I had the winning chili... thanks to my room-mate's new cookbook.  But they were all worthy of winning!  I'll post the recipe separately so that it will print better.
 

Winter in the Desert

Two years ago, or was it three, I spent the day at a rugby festival held locally.  My daughter and I and the occasional rugby boy manned the T-shirt booth all day.  It was COLD!  We were both in multiple layers, gloves, hats... she melted my fleece gloves getting too close to the propane heater.  This year is a completely different story.  It's a beautiful morning.  I'm not at the rugby fest...though it's going on today.  That's my boy in blue in the photo.  Rugby is a wonderful sport if you haven't ever seen it.  Once you get the hang of the rules it's great!  But not for today... we have other plans.

 I've been outside admiring my salad greens growing on the front porch, petunias of deep midnight purple and burgundy on the back porch and the orange bell peppers ripening on the bush in my garden.  T-shirt weather.  T-shirt and shorts and bare feet weather.  I love it.  Mooch has grabbed "the kitty chair" in my bedroom and is taking his morning bath prior to a long nap.  Peaceful day.  It's a day for a good long book read on the back porch but I think it will end up being a day of shopping, putting up a christmas tree and baking (there's a birthday going on tomorrow!)

May your Saturday be as peaceful as I feel right now!

Mutt Lucks

Ever heard of Mutt Lucks?  My dog is very happy with them at certain campgrounds.

He is at Sunset Crater in northern Arizona in the above photo.  The ground is cinders - of varying sizes and are very sharp to the dog's pads.  Within a few hours the dogs are limping around and licking their paws excessively.  Not my dog.  Although he didn't like these at first, he now patiently offers his paws to have them put on.  Heavy duty leather on the bottom and ripstop nylon on top with velcro to go around the ankle.  Need a pair?  Try REI.

Colors of Fall

Here in the low desert we don't get a huge amount of fall color.  Things start to look a little less crispy and begin to green up a little in the cooler temperatures.  It's time to plant petunias, marigolds and other fall flowers.  Yes, I know easterners think petunias are a spring plant - but here we plant them in October.  They don't like the heat very much, though with enough daily water they can survive it.  This year though, I did get a taste of fall color.  I visited my brother and his family in Tennessee just as the colors began changing.  So not the full blast of yellows, reds and oranges... but a taste nonetheless.

One little red tree amongst the green.

Yellow just starting to show around the edges.

Reflections give me a bit more color.

And a last bit of red and orange...

Beautiful, but we have our own color here in the desert...

Reds, greens and blues...

Yellows and more blues...

And golds...

Bane of the Peppers

I've been waging war on these suckers for the past few weeks.  Tomato Hornworms.  Big, squishy, and wiggly when you pry them off the plant.  I have no clue where they hide during the heat of the day, but dawn and dusk they are rapidly consuming my various peppers.  I was squeamish about them at first, but when they stripped a beautiful plant of all its leaves and buds I got mad.  Now I have my worm-stomper flip flops right by the back door. I pry these guys off my peppers throw them to the dirt and stomp.  The one in the photo above was the size of my index finger.  I've pulled them off when they were a half inch long.  They turn into Sphinx Moths.  I felt bad about all the Sphinx Moths being caught by my hunter cat as they never seemed to survive the encounter.  Now I tell Mr. Meeps that he is a great hunter (just leave the lizards and geckos alone please) and that he should target the moths.

Rain - or lack thereof...

It has been a long time since we've seen rain.  It seems like forever.  I took this photo last March as I drove home from Tucson.  Unfortunately, I only got to look at the storm.  Raindrops never came my way.  And now that the temperatures have soared here in the desert I am craving rain.  I can't wait for the first big thunderstorm where I will sit on the back porch and listen to the thunder boom and watch the wind have it's way with the trees.

I now work on the 6th floor of a building that is all windows.  It's very hard to concentrate when the storms begin to blow in. To heck with the programming, let's watch the clouds!  We probably won't get any storms until the end of July.  Hopefully I'll get a little taste of rain when we travel up to the Colorado high country later this month.  Thunder there is phenomenal as it echoes around the mountain sides.

Meanwhile I torture myself with these storm photos, trying to conjure up the smell of rain in the desert (ahhhh, creosote), feel the excitement of the electricity in the air, watching lightning zot down to the earth.  Soon, soon. 

Has it really been that long?

I logged in to update this blog and realized I haven't posted anything in over a month.  That's not good.  It's not that I don't think about blogging...I "write" quite a bit in my mind.  In my mind isn't posted though.  In my mind is just that.  So I need to get off my duff and write.  Helps that I got a beautiful new writing desk from IKEA.  It's purple.  It called me from across the room.  It's small - just big enough for a lamp, a coaster for my ever present beverage (desert living - always have water handy), my laptop or pad of paper, and an extra something...currently my camera.  I caressed it in the store.  Shouldn't spend the money but it's purple and it's perfect.  My daughter (for whom we were really shopping for) just got a little smile on her face.  "Write the number down Mom.  You can think about it as I pick out my dorm sheets".  I thought and thought.  The typical "can't justify the dollars", the "But  it's perfect", the "we're here for Mariah", the "NO! DON'T" and finally, the "It's what I've always wanted - I'll kick myself if I get home without it".  So here I sit at my beautiful purple writing desk... but I digress.

This post is really about flowers, Sunflowers in particular.  I like sunflowers.  They're cheery and very easy to grow, at least they are in my climate.  But I prefer other flowers like petunias.  They come in a billion colors and smell so nice in the evening.  Of course, my favorites are the purple varieties.

I also have a beautiful Monarda species that I'm loving currently.  I bought a plant labeled "Oregano" at Home Depot and yes, there was a dying little sprig of oregano in that pot.  But I wasn't paying attention to it - I saw what I thought were nice lush oregano leaves.  Nope.  That little oregano sprig quickly gave up the ghost and the other plant sort of flourished.  It was a Phoenix summer.  Not the best time for plants in pots to flourish.  So the plant limped along and made it to winter.  It did fine over the winter - morphed from a low soil-hugging plant into several tall spikes.  Then as our weather warmed up (and UP!) it got buds.  This beautiful plant burst (well, 6 spikes did) into bloom exactly on the day that my daughter was having a high school graduation party at our house.  Perfect timing.

Monarda... bee balm.  My mom has a whole patch of this plant up in Colorado.  I tried many times to grow it and it always died as the temperatures hit 100º.  So now I have a mislabeled plant - or a rogue seeding - and it does fine.  Scraggly, but the spikes that grew are healthy.  The flower is about the size of a raquetball.  Bigger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball.

But this was supposed to be about sunflowers.  My daughter planted a variety of sunflowers in the raised garden bed we put together back in February.  First to bloom was the typical "Mammoth" variety that kids love to grow.  These things would grow an inch or so a day!  Very gratifying for elementary kids that can't wait for things to grow.

The above flower isn't the first that opened.  I missed getting a photo of that one.  Or it's on the other SD card that I've misplaced.  This one is pretty small - about 4 inches across.  The first one was yellow like this - but about a foot across.  Gorgeous and very gratifying given the amount of water I've put into that garden.  Next up were the red-brown varieties:

Beautiful flower and the bees love this one.  As you can see.  This variety has about 6 or 7 flowers on each stalk whereas the larger varieties (like flower number one) grow only one large flower.  Finally, the orange ones have opened:

This looks more yellow than it really is due to the backlighting.  But you can see that this is another that has multiple flowers on the stalk.  All of these are standing about 6 feet tall - 7 feet in some cases.  My daughter is ecstatic and is searching for more colors for next spring's garden.  Meanwhile, I'm enjoying my pink, purple and bluish petunias.  Don't get me started on the gardenia that went to town this spring.  Sigh.  What a scent.

Springtime in the desert

Today is one of those perfect days which reminds me of why I love the desert so.  Mornings are cool - a good time to water plants and do the yard work that needs attention.  Palo verde trees are all in bloom this week.  Beautiful bright yellow blossoms against the green of the tree.  The city is blanketed with fallen yellow blossoms which swirl in the breezes.  My gardenia plant is in bloom - scenting the day with its beautiful smell.  Every once in a while as I work on the computer I get a waft of the gardenia. Lovely.  Birds are all singing - particularly the mockingbirds.  My yard is the corner of 2-3 males' territories.  So I benefit from a lot of singing.  White-winged Doves were out this morning, eating seeds from the acacia and cooing.  Finches are working over the hummingbird feeders.  Afternoon is warm.  We're in the mid-nineties which is perfect to me.  But soon it will be hot.  That's when I pull out photos like this one and remind myself that cooler times will return.

Snow in the Grand Canyon is always a beautiful thing.  It was chilly this day - with snow showers blowing through the canyon.  Wind was icy to our faces and we didn't linger anywhere for too long.

But now back to my beautiful day.  Split pea soup in the crockpot - thanks to the Easter ham bone that my brother saved for me.  2 salads as I couldn't choose between them.  Dinner and swimming at my brother's house - it's a wonderful day.