Sunday, of course, is Easter; and for pagans like us that means the Easter Bunny will be visiting. Not sure how the Easter Bunny came into existence, but my Lovely Honey Pie mentioned a reference she heard that the famous bunny has pagan roots. I did some searching on the interwebs and learned that nobody really knows where the Easter bunny originated; but there is speculation that the pagan festival of the Goddess Eostre might fit. Legends tell of a goddess of spring and fertility, and a rabbit was associated with both due to their prolific breeding abilities. Nobody seems to know for sure.

Anyway, we’ll be hiding eggs so the grandsons can go hunting. We might even boil some up and color them! Oh wait… that sounds backwards. Maybe that’s because the ones we’ll hide are going to be the plastic kind. You know, eggs you can open up and stash a surprise inside. Hopefully we’ll remember where they all are… might be a good idea to count them before we do the hiding. Last year there was one “golden egg” that had a $5 bill inside. Seemed like a fun idea, until one grandson got a golden egg and the other didn’t. So this year there will be two golden eggs. That way, regardless of who finds them; each grandson will know in advance that there will be one golden egg per person.

In the “good old days,” we would hard boil a bunch of eggs a day or two before, and then they would mysteriously be hidden by the Easter Bunny. Also hidden were the infamous Easter baskets, loaded with jelly beans, chocolate eggs, and of course a chocolate bunny. Back then, it was especially important to find all the eggs; because unlike the plastic ones, eggs will eventually smell really bad if left at room temperature. So yes, we counted the eggs ahead of time and made really, really sure all were picked up before the Easter morning festivities came to a close.

So the egg hunt has evolved into a cash enterprise… my Beautiful Girlfriend has been dropping coins in a jar for the last several weeks so she can load the plastic eggs with money. I’m not sure money is a good replacement for chocolate, but of course you can use it to buy sweets. But since their parents would have to drive them to a place to spend their loot, cash is probably a healthier gift than a few pounds of candy.

Maybe.

Anyway, the most important part of all this Easter fun is spending time with the family. I’ve invited the family over for Thanksgiving. “I’m making Thanksgiving for Easter,” I told them all. “Mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetables, and pumpkin pie.” “Oooh,” our daughter said, “you know those raisins you put in the pie last time?” I assured her I’d be doing that again. I love to cook, but I also love to push the envelope a bit with recipes. Sometimes that works nicely, other times, not so good. Raisins dropped in the pumpkin pie mix just before they go into the oven turns an ordinary pumpkin pie into an intriguing treat!!

Please have a splendid Easter. Oh, and let me know if you see any of these “funny little bunnies.”

Been a lot of whining around these here Beautiful West Michigan parts lately. Folks have been crying and rolling on the floor, thrashing their feet about and all such nonsense. “When’s it gonna warm up?!?!?! I’m sick up and FED with all this cold and snowy weather!! Last year I was mowin’ my lawn already for cryin’ out loud!!! WAHHH WAAAHHH WAAAAAAHHHH! “

Crybaby kaka-roaches…

Holy moly I haven’t thought about that in a long time… when we were kids in Noo Yawk we’d sing to the whiny babies:

Crybaby kaka-roach!

Wash your face in gravy!

Wrap it up in bubble gum

And sell it to the Navy!!

Made absolutely no sense, but when we were very young it seemed to have a nice ring to it. Oh, and don’t forget the “nyaa nyaa na boo boo!!” for good measure!!  Anyway, to all youse whiny kids out there who are all upset that spring is taking so long, I have a news flash for you: too much warm too early makes badness with the crops!! Sheesh!!

That was technical talk, by the way…

If you’re old like me, you surely remember that winter came in around Thanksgiving and stayed icy cold until the end of March or so. Then the weather would gradually warm up and ease into summer. A few years back, unfortunately, we had several 80 degree days in March, which is simply not natural. Not for these parts anyhow.

Consequently, all the fruit trees said, “huh?? Time to make babies?? OK!!” And of course they bloomed way too early. Usually we get enough fruit here to ship out to the world and still have enough to stash in various cold storage facilities. But that year, the inevitable frost came with a vengeance and nuked much of West Michigan’s fruit crops. That caused me to become an “apple snob.” I’d rather be sad and miss my Michigan apples than buy from far away. Now I know the farmers in other parts of the country have to make their money, but there’s simply no comparison to the quality of locally grown fruit. I confess that I’ve resorted to buying some Washington (state) apples some years ago. They looked and felt nice, and were crunchy and juicy. Nice, yes? Ummm… well… this apple snob is don’t liking them so good. They remind me of crunchy, juicy water globes with a subtle apple aftertaste somewhere in the dingle weeds of taste bud world.

Good Lord willin’, we’ll have a spring that will be kind to the fruit trees this year. I am always eagerly awaiting the newly picked, simply amazing flavor of local fruits. There’s a cornucopia of yummies we spoiled Michiganders get to enjoy each year. All youse naysayers can bark all you want, but in my professional opinion, climate change is very real. A lot can happen between now and the traditional frost sensitive planting date of Memorial Day. Let’s hope things stay on track.

Not to fret, kids… I heard the spring peepers again tonight!! A sure sign of spring. And one thing I love about this time of year is when I leave the house for work in the morning, I’m greeted by a beautiful, loud chorus of birds. They don’t sing quite like these Byrds…

‘Twas the 1^st of April, but no foolin’, we heard our first peepers. Now we’re coming up on Easter and several more have awoken. That, of course, means that if it ever warms up this month, we’ll be hearing a chorus so loud we’ll have to raise our voices each evening in order to communicate. I said “if it ever warms up” with a smidge of sarcasm; but not really, but maybe yes, I just don’t know, but this seems to be as good a place as any to inject an run-on sentence and whine about the cold nights and HOLY COW it’s supposed to be in the 30s tonight which means any peepers that may have awoken will go back to bed but it’s also supposed to be near 60 tomorrow and then the rains are gonna come and oh boy howdy the peepers will really start singing then!

For those who are unaware, peepers are frogs; and are a welcome sign of spring here in Beautiful West Michigan. Of course, they usher in springtime elsewhere too. But I don’t live elsewhere, I live here, so I’m always a little giddy when the peepers sing. If you’ve never heard peepers, well that’s just too bad. But because I love them so, I hereby include a recorded them for you so you can enjoy their songs. Now the sounds in this recording are from two different species:  peepers and toads (the peepers are the ones shouting, “PEEP!!”).  Just turn on your speakers, click on the little triangle thingy, close your eyes and open your ears. Why close your eyes? Well that’s because the peepers sing at night, and to be honest I’ve never seen them except on TV!! OK, here we go…

And now for something completely different: Peeps. You know, those marshmallow candy chickens that appear in the stores during Easter time. When I was a kid, peeps only were yellow and chicken shaped. The name and the shape went well together; because hey, they kinda looked like little baby chickens. And little baby chickens say “peep” a lot. I’ve never eaten a real baby chicken, but I suer have had my share of Peeps. Now I would never intentionally harm a baby chicken. But regarding Peeps, well just never you mind all the naughty things that went through my mind when the Peeps arrived in my Easter basket.

I admit it, I have squished their little heads. I place my forefinger on one eye and my thumb on the other, and press them together until the Peep’s head looks like one of those cartoon characters that had a very bad accident. I have also decapitated them with great delight. Usually their heads are removed with my teeth. In fact, I don’t think I can ever remember eating them any other way. I’ve never forced them to joust though. Seems like a waste of Peeps if you ask me.

Joust?? Yes, I’m not sure I’m happy to know about it; but a friend once told me about “Peep jousting.” Of course, I just had to ask what the heck-a-ma-hookey that was all about. “Well you get two Peeps and place a toothpick in each one. That’s their lance, you see. Then you put them on a plate and pop them in the microwave; hit the juice and watch them stab each other as they expand. Really cool in a microwave with a rotating plate inside.” Ummm no. Rather boring really. Yes, I tried it, with family watching.

We were not impressed.

Back the peepers… there’s a song about them that has been a jazz standard for many years. It originated back in 1938, and below is a clip with Louis Armstrong playing his horn and singing it in “Going Places,” the movie for which the song was written. When I grew up during the Mesozoic Era, this song was still being played somewhat regularly and was often featured on an extinct brand of TV program called the “variety show.” The second video is a 1958 recording of Louis Armstrong swingin’ it on “The Gary Moore Show.”

My Beautiful Girlfriend and I bought a home here in Bear Swamp back in 1982. In those days, for the exorbitant price of $36,900 we were able to purchase a 1940 vintage home with 5 acres of land. We probably could have done a little more research before buying. For example, as I mentioned, we live in a quaint area known to the old timers as Bear Swamp. We bought the place in the summer, when the two creeks that traverse the property were flowing nicely, the grass was nice and green, and the basement was dry. “Did you ever get water in the basement?” we asked the sellers. “No, no” they replied, “no problems.” The following spring brought lots of snow melt that made the creek REALLY wide. And something strange happened: water in the basement. Just enough to let us know we live in a… um… swamp. And these folks didn’t even bother with a sump pump!! We fixed that of course… still get a little water that comes up through the cracks in the concrete, but not nearly as much as before the sump pump was installed.

Looking back I also remember asking, “heater works well?” we queried. “Oh yeah, keeps us nice and warm in the winter.”

Well that’s nice.

Winter came, and our ½ tankful of fuel oil was gone rather quickly. No biggie… didn’t really know what to expect. We filled the tank, and it was gone again in less than a month. Not so good!! Fortunately, the chimney was originally built for a coal furnace, so I knew it would be OK for firewood. Got us a cheapie wood stove and started burning wood. Lots more work, but saved us a bunch of cash.

Since I work for a living, I don’t want to spend all my free time cutting wood; so we buy most of it. Lots of folks out there who want to sell us firewood. Some are better than others. Now my Dad kept me and my brother very busy with firewood when we were kids; so I know a little bit about this wood heating stuff. One of the cardinal rules: seasoned (dry) wood works the best. Sounds like a no-brainer right? And lots of folks say they have seasoned wood for sale.

With wood suppliers, we’ve had good luck and we’ve had bad luck. Good luck is when we get nicely seasoned wood, predominantly oak; nice clean load of logs. That’s the kind of luck we’ve had for the last couple years; but this past time we got about 40 % oak and 60% beech. Oh, and we also got at least 2 cubic yards of soil that I don’t recall ordering. Apparently the front end loader they used to scoop up my wood went just a smidge too deep. I was not very happy when I literally had to use a shovel to get some of the logs out of the pile. And when I bring the logs in the house for the fireplace (actually a furnace with glass doors and fake bricks for pretty), it’s pretty dirty and leaves a nice little mess.

Really bad luck is one of those “learning the hard way” experiences. We ran out of wood a couple of winters ago, so I found a guy who said he had some nice, seasoned oak. Well the wood was green, and about 10% of the logs were full of ants. Can’t really bring logs full of ants in the house… they crawl around while wondering what the heck happened to their home (poor kids…). Well guess what? After exhausting all the logs from the dirt pile, I answered a Craig’s List ad for seasoned oak. Called the guy and he knew who I was!! Then he told me who he was, and I was apprehensive.

“So… your ad says this is seasoned oak? Ready to burn?” I asked. “Yep!” he assured me. So I went ahead and bought two cords. He delivered it after dark, so I didn’t get a good look at it. I did notice it was a bit heavy; and the following day I realized why. Green wood. And just like last time, about 10% of the logs were full of ants.

So this year our wood stove started out eating dirt logs; and when the dirt logs were gone I started roasting ants. I know it sounds cruel to burn the ants. Seriously, my spirit hurts when I embark upon the selfish journey of heating my home with ant infested logs. I keep the logs just outside the door and bring them in only when they can go straight into the fire. And I say a little prayer for the ants.

Needless to say, two of our local firewood suppliers have lost my business. I bet they don’t even know the log driver’s waltz!

It’s that time again… my Beautiful Girlfriend is away for the weekend. She and several of her friends have embarked upon a Women’s Retreat; and of course boys are not invited. That’s OK… I had chores to do. I took advantage of the sunshine today and brought in some firewood to warm our bones. We do have natural gas heat but we like the way wood feels much better. And it’s pretty in our “fireplace” (it’s a furnace that looks like a fireplace, with glass doors).

Anyway, there I was, earlier in the week, scheming about what I was gonna do when my Baby left for the weekend. There was a time when I was young and much more foolish when I would seize such an opportunity for drinking too much herbal stuff and smoking too much beer (or something like that…). Thankfully, those days are long gone; but I still have a propensity to spoil myself with goodies that I don’t normally eat too much anymore.

One of the first treats that always seems to pop into my noggin is pizza. I mean, hey, that stuff should be classified as a controlled substance. It’s right up there with fried chicken, potato chips, and butter pecan ice cream. I like all that stuff way too much. Good thing I limit my intake, or I’d soon weigh 793 pounds. I’m no skinny boy mind you, but I’m not a complete Harold Honk-A-Doodle either. And yes, Harry Honk-A-Doodle is a name I just made up and that would be on my shirt if I ate all the goodies in the universe until my skin exploded.

But once in a while is OK, right? Well I can convince myself of that. And yes, my Lovely Bride knows full well what I’m up to this weekend. I toyed with ordering pizza tonight, but I like lots of sauce. Seems like every time I ask for extra sauce, the opposite occurs. And here in Michigan pizza is often cut into squares. Don’t they know you’re supposed to cut it like PIE??!!?? Pizza… pie!! Hello!!!

The more I mulled it over, the more I kept going back to the same conclusion: if you want something done just right, sometimes you gotta do it yourself. Got me a Boboli crust, poured almost the whole jar of Classico pizza sauce out and spread it on the crust. Cooked up some Italian sausage; laid some chunks in the sauce. Then on went the cheese, and on top is onions, mushrooms, black olives, green pepper and uncured pepperoni (no nasty chemicals). I actually read the directions on the Boboli crust package: preheated the oven to 450 and popped it in for about 10 minutes. The final product was magnificent!! Oh, and had to wash it down with a Coke from Mexico… they use glass bottles and real cane sugar.

Am I naughty or what?? But wait, there’s more… I might accidentally eat some ice cream later. And you guessed it, butter pecan. Haagen Dazs no less. A little container. I had to do it you see, it will nicely complement the last piece of carrot cake that’s left over from my birthday.

My Beautiful Girlfriend will be home Sunday some time; so that means I’ll need to chill out on the goodies beforehand. Why? Well no special reason, I just don’t want to greet her while I’m spacing out from a food coma. Probably would be a little weird… eyes like little slits, walking badly, nodding off during conversation, burping, mumbling unintelligibly… yeah I’ll need to avoid that scene.

Good thing she’s only on retreat once a year!!

This week’s video has nothing to do with the story… but it’s a hoot.

So there I was, minding my own business, enjoying life, the universe, and everything (42 for those in the know) (nudge nudge, wink wink), and oh yeah by the way I’m fixin’ to enjoy my 65^th trip around the Sun; when suddenly some radio guy says an astonishing FaceTalking thing: this summer will ring in the 50^th anniversary of Woodstock; and I can’t believe it because, hey, I was 15 that year and I would really liked to have gone to that magnificent experience but there was no way in H-E-Double-Hockey-Sticks that was gonna happen so I listened intently to every piece of music on the radio that had anything to do with all the concert action and HOLY MOLY this run-on sentence is OUT OF CONTROL!!

*Whew!!*

This aging stuff is so crazy!! I consider myself very fortunate… my health is good; and I can pretty much do everything I was able to do when I was much younger. The only difference is that sometimes it hurts or sometimes it takes longer. Apparently I don’t look to worn out. I was setting up a computer for one of my very new coworkers; and I mentioned that I had a “big birthday” coming up. She asked, “oh, are you going to hit 50?” My immediate response was, “we can be FRIENDS!!” Not sure if she was sucking up for some future special computer help or what… OK probably not; but I took it as a nice compliment.

Saw my doctor the other day, and we chatted about my upcoming retirement next year. She urged me to make a plan, because “some people have a difficulty with too much time on their hands.” Umm… no problem for this kid!! I have a few million things I want to do, so hopefully I’ll actually get to do maybe a tenth of what’s been floating around in my mind for the past several years. I love to grow food, and I also enjoy writing. I think I’d like to try my hand at teaching food how to write. Perhaps we could use beet juice for ink!! That would involve some “bloodletting” from some “volunteer” beets. Now that I think of it, I’ve never heard beets volunteer for anything. And thankfully, I’ve never heard beets cry when they are bleeding.

I’m often asked, would we be doing any travel? Well we sure hope so. One of the big things on the agenda, though, is to clean up the mess in the garage that’s the result of that giant Clutter Bomb exploding in there. A Clutter Bomb simply has to be what caused that mess. I mean, I walk around in the garage and I fall to my knees and scream “where did all this crap come from??” Then I get up and remember where the hammer is and oh yeah there’s my drill and HOLY CARP I found that door hinge I buried in the back of the shelf about 12 years ago!! So OK, the Clutter Bomb exploded very gradually… over the course of the 37 years we’ve lived here.

There are, of course, other parts of our little universe that have suffered Clutter Bomb explosions. I’ll get to those too… just have to chip away at it. I really do plan to stop procrastinating. That will happen either tomorrow or perhaps a couple weeks after that.

I hope.

Maybe.

In the meantime, I can hardly wait  to see what advances lie ahead for the travel scene…