I'm so depressed. The boys and Celeste are leaving for California tomorrow morning. The good news is that Torri will be taking them to the airport at 5am. Thank you Torri! They'll be there in time to go wine tasting and I believe they're doing Bouchon for dinner. I don't want to think about when they'll be going to the French Laundry and Chez Panisse. Oh, never mind, I just found their itinerary. Yep, Bouchon is tomorrow night, Saturday is Dolce, Sunday they're cooking at the Fedrick Ranch, Monday is Dry Creek Kitchen, so I guess they're not doing the Monday night special at Chez Panisse, Tuesday is the French Laundry and Redd, Wednesday is A16 and Thursday is Bistro Jeanty. I'm not even going to get into all of the vineyards they'll be visiting. Oh well, next year. The photo is of the French Laundry vegetable garden, which is across the street from the restaurant. Perfection.

Another mosquito-happy day today with all of the rain, heat and humidity. Pretty quiet around here except for the electric sander, sanding the floors. I think the stain goes on tomorrow and tomorrow night we start sleeping in the studio. That should be really interesting. I'm laughing to myself as I type it, but I know it's not going to be fun. I'll be taking the kids to the airport at 4am on Friday, so I'm going to try to get to sleep earlier tonight and tomorrow night, in the hope that it'll be easier to get up on Friday morning. Right. Here's another photo from last year of the guys posing for me after a game of croquette. We were at Krista and Carter's house to celebrate the August birthdays.

We had guys moving furniture last night, getting ready to have the floors refinished in the dining room. Everything seems to take longer in the heat. We've just been spoiled by the cool, albeit wet weather. My garden is not very productive, the peppers are a joke, barely any. We've gotten about 5 tomatoes and 5 cucumbers so far. What we have gotten have been outsatnding though. Lots of green tomatoes, it's just taking them so long to get red. Right now, none are even pink. I put four okra plants in this year. There are two okra out there. One is ready to pick, but what do I do with one? I'll put some butter on it and shoot it in the microwave and give it to Jay. The hens have mostly stopped laying. Just getting a few eggs a day. The broody hen is still sitting on her eggs. They're due to hatch on Friday. Can't wait. On Sunday I went to trade chix with Bailey Hale. I got a Buckeye from him and gave him a little Cuckoo Marans pullet. When she knows this is her home and doesn't try to take off, I'll post a photo of her. Saturday we went to pick up feed at John Fiorella's. Such nice people. I love their farm. It looks like we're going to get a turkey or two from him. Saturday night we went to Enrico Gamalinda's parent's 50th anniversary. We had a really great time. They are 74 and just dancin' machines! They did a wonderful job of raising their sons. So many beautiful people in one room. Everybody certainly knows how to have fun. We were honored to be invited. Today I was out taking pictures of the chickens, so here's a photo of one of my speckled Cuckoo Marans pullets. She's about 10 weeks old.

I was very grateful for the sun today. I was planning to pick up feed in Roxborough, but Jay needed the truck so I just worked around here. I'm experimenting with giving the rabbits more unprocessed foods, fresh foods like plants, herbs, leaves, grasses, etc. The organic rabbit pellets are so ridiculously expensive, especially after shipping is added on, and the worst part of it is that they love to dig into their feed hopper and scratch the food out all over the ground. Fortunately the chickens will eat some of it, but a lot still goes to waste. The chickens don't need it, they have their own food. So this will help. It got me thinking of some cost effective alternatives, at least for the summer, which was pretty much the highlight of my day after I made tomato sandwiches for lunch. Jay and I have been watching "Kitchen Nightmares". The European episodes are good, but there's nothing like an arrogant, egotistical, Italian-American son, that can't get out of the way of his own, super-inflated ego to seriously run a business. You've got to watch the one titled "Sabastian's". Talk about dillusional on so many different levels! He was so irritatingly comical, trying to be very serious and angry. Gordon Ramsay had to practically bitch slap him back to reality! It was very gratifying. "Peter's" is another good one. The photo here is almost a year old. It's from the party celebrating August birthdays and Josie is the birthday fairy. Now she's the rainforest fairy zipping through the forest canopy. Can't wait 'til she gets home.

I didn't get to sleep until after 5 this morning. Jay stopped and got me a small milkshake on his way home last night. It must have had caffeine in it, because about an hour into laying there with my eyes wide open, I realized my heart was racing and I was having anxiety about not taking my vitamin E and Co-enzyme Q10! I should have read, but I was so tired, but not able to sleep. I just finished The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Gill Blair gave it to me for my birthday last year. I really enjoyed it, but the humor and clever way it was written, distracted me from the horror that the story was really about. Thank you Gill. Heavy rain for most of the day threw my schedule out the window. So my day started by prepping rabbit for the freezer, cleaning the kitchen and then making dinner, mixed in with working outside when it wasn't pouring. I baked a couple of small chickens and fixed some potatoes with the purple and green beans that Mikey Hess's mom, Jo brought over on Saturday night, to trade for eggs. I was going to do the potatoes and string beans the way my mother made them, however, I'm embarrassed to say that I ran out of olive oil. I used butter instead which added a whole new thing to something already great. Man it was good. The chickens while small and not very fleshy--truly free-range chickens can be like that--were very tasty and tender. They're more like pheasant or a game bird, although not at all gamey. When Jay came home late from teaching we watched the Australian No Reservations which was fun, but made me crave Chinese food. The photo above is of Isabella a couple of summers ago at Chanticleer. I really miss the kids....they're not even gone a week.

Made it in late tonight. The day just flew by and I feel like I didn't get a thing done. But I actually did. I picked tomatoes and cucumbers and some herbs and sliced the tomato and sprinkled it with a chiffonade of garlic chives and basil, fleur de sel, pepper and the olive oil that we had imported from Italy. Jay Jr. and Danny are having a weight loss competition so after I tasted it I gave it to Danny for lunch. Then I made a cucumber salad, the first one of the summer. Danny, Torri and I finished that. After that I started dinner and made a healthy Quinoa, tuna, zucchini, onion, garlic chive, buttercrunch lettuce and sugarsnap pea salad. Jay looked at it when he came home for dinner and put a tiny bit on his plate. Well we both really liked it, 'cause there wasn't any left. It feels so good to eat fresh and healthy. I hate the heat, but just love this time of year for the garden. I don't know what we'll do about the garden next year. We're losing it to the shade and the tree roots invading the beds. Two Cuckoo Marans chix hatched today and I have two hens that are broody now. I have eggs in the incubator that I'm going to put under the Olive-egger tomorrow and they'll hatch next week. I'll leave the eggs that the Cuckoo is sitting on, under her, to hatch out in three weeks. My hens haven't been broody in years. I love watching the mother hen show the chix how to find food and how protective she is of them. I should be able to get lots of great photos of them. Tonight's photo is of one of my Cuckoo Marans hens.

We spent much of the day moving stuff out of the dining room to make way for the floors to be refinished. Later in the afternoon I had some chicken business, which I always love. It's wonderful meeting new people that have chickens. After dinner...I had a tomato sandwich from my garden and the tomatoes are really good this year....Jay and I watched a movie "Perfect Stranger". We both thought it was a good movie, but the ending was weak. Several weeks ago, Melissa and David Clark invited us to see Diana Krall. Apparently, a bunch of our friends went to see her "Quiet Nights" concert as well. Don't you just love it when you see people you know in a big crowd of strangers? Anyway, Diana Krall was just amazing and I really appreciated her sense of humor. I have many of her cds, but was shocked at how they don't do her voice justice. Seriously, it may be sultry, but it is big! There's so much depth and power in it. Also, as Jay will testify, she is an amazing pianist. If you get the chance to see her, do it. We had a great time and thoroughly enjoyed the show and the company. Thank you Melissa and David. Tonight's photo is a head shot of my Cuckoo Marans rooster, "Elvis". He is of Cottage Hill lines, which is owned by Ron Presley. He's the father of many, many chix. 'Nite.

We had plans to go to Pat Jordan's art reception at the cafe' on Friday night, but something tried to get a hold of me and my lymph nodes, neck and head started aching so we stayed home. Saturday we went to Ray's Greenhouses in Earlington, PA and got some chicken, plants and vegetables. We then went to Merrimead Farms for lunch. We sat at a picnic table in the gorgeous weather and relived the times we took the kids there. On our way home we stopped by Eve's and got zeps for dinner. After dinner, one of Jay's students and his father stopped by for a visit and then when they left, Mikey Hess's parents brought heirloom green and purple beans from their garden We trade eggs for veggies with them. So we broke out a couple of bottles of wine and sat around the table outside and told stories. Really fun. Yesterday we went to Maryland to surprise Jeanie and the kids with a visit before they leave tomorrow for Utah, Idaho, then California for almost a month. that's going to be weird. I don't think I ever showed you the actual eggs from my Black Copper Marans hens. Now that the girls are hens and not pullets, their eggs are even darker. Today I worked outside all day. I picked tomatoes, cucumbers, parsley and basil and now I'm ready for bed. sleep tight.

This week, for the first time since October, I believe, there are no hatchlings in the studio. There are three growing eggs in the incubator due to hatch next week, but I hope all of this humidity doesn't drown them in the shell. Even though it's not hot here in the studio, it looks like I'll need to pull the air-conditioner out of the shed to control the humidity. There are also no grandkids here. The Johnson's are preparing to leave for a trip to the ghost towns (where there are rattlesnakes!) and California and Josie is in Costa Rica riding 10 zip lines, a Tarzan swing and 2 repelling ropes all at 5 stories high, in the rain forest! And with a big smile on her face...my baby! I can't believe they would let her do that. Just say your prayers for all of them. i'm obviously a wreck. The photo is of the Johnson kids eating the spaghetti they helped make. Looks like they liked it. I have to remember to tell you about the Diana Krall concert we went to. Enjoy your weekend.

I had an errand to run in Telford today so since Bill Stewart's was on the way, I stopped by to see if I could buy those black swans there and on my way down the driveway I spotted Gussie waddling down to the pond. I stopped the car, put down my window and called out his name. He stopped and looked up at me. So I forgot about the swans and continued up the driveway and told Jamison that when he was ready, I wanted to get him back, but with a wife. Jamison said he'd let me know. I must be crazy. But I miss him. Working out in the heat and humidity really did me in today, so I'm going to make this short and say goodnight. Above is a photo of Gussie, not pretty is he?

This morning I went out and opened the gate to the garden where the "growing out" chickens live. When they see me coming they always start running to the gate, because they know they're going to be let out to free-range, then, as though they're planes on a runway, the ones in the back run and fly through the gate so they don't get left behind, one after another. It's a great and a funny thing to watch. I love seeing it everyday. But today, for some reason the whole scenario went awry. They saw me, started for the gate, first ones ran out and the rest did their runway flight, but then the first ones started squawking and flying, then they were all squawking and flying around the huge forsythia hedge straight across my neighbor's driveway and down into the creek! I can only think that the latter chickens in line spooked the first ones by flying at them like a predator would and they all stampeded. What a sight! I then tried to round them up and get them home, no such luck. They really liked it over there and didn't come home 'til it was time to roost (go to bed). The photo tonight is of my rooster "Chanticleer" flapping his wings...which is a macho thing for roosters. Kind of like a gorilla beating his chest. He's such a sweetheart. He lets me pick him up every night to put him to bed. He's a French breed, Black Copper Marans.

I really have a love/hate relationship with deer. The love part is obvious, they're beautiful, graceful and the does are so loving and protective with their fawns. I really don't hate them, I should hate what we humans have forced them to become. I won't get into it. My problem with having chronic Lyme disease is that I see them as giant tick carriers. I had a deer tick on me last night. It never ends. I also hate it when they eat my flowers and plants. This one cleaned off all of the buds of my daylilies while I took her picture. It was already too late when I went out and shooed her away. The driveway was directly in front of her, so she could have eaten from there, but no, she had to smash the other flowers beneath her feet. She's really big. There's another doe across the road. She has four fawns. Four, just what I need!

How embarrassing, I haven't posted since May. Well, as you can see from the photo, I've been very, very busy with family business. Like teaching the grandchildren how to make homemade linguine. We used the 9 egg yolk recipe, which yields, a rich, firm pasta. The kids have been here--one, two, or all of them--since early May and we've been having a great time, cooking, gardening, caring for the rabbits and poultry, catching toads, feeding the fish and frogs in our pond and going swimming. While they're here Jay Jr. and Celeste take them overnight and they stay up late, play video games, eat candy and drink soda with Jay and then Celeste makes them pancakes for breakfast. Danny comes home from work and wakes them up in the middle of the night, gives them treats and they roughhouse and watch movies until morning. Poor kids, no one loves them. We had a big graduation party for Celeste, celebrating that she is officially an RN now. We're very proud of her and I admire how steadfast she's been and how hard she's worked with school and two jobs. The party was so much fun. We got to see some of Celeste's family again as well as old and new friends. Speaking of parties, I'm putting it out there now as a save the date, I'll be 60.....ugh, how weird to say it...anyway, my birthday this year is on a Sunday, September 20th and we're having a pig roast, so put it on your calendar now. Jay and I celebrated our 31st anniversary on the first and Jeanie and Derek celebrated their 10th on the third. Congratulations! We had their kids that week, while they went to new York, so we went to meet them there and all of us spent the day together. We went to FAO Schwartz, Central Park and the Central Park Zoo and petting zoo--what an experience, it was more like a circus!--and finally to Isabella's for dinner, which was no great shakes, but they were very nice to us especially since Isabella has the same name. I've painted one picture since the last time I posted. A watercolor of the frogs in my pond. I'll post it, eventually. The garden isn't doing all that well this year, probably because of all of the rain and cold, but it looks like we'll get out first tomato/es, tomorrow or the next day. I have several real Italian tomato plants from Chris Boyd, my friend Karen, the "Orchardess's" brother. They finally have flowers on them, but no tomatoes yet. I cannot wait. It's such a great story. I'll get around to it another night. I've been feeling really lousy, a lot of pain and fatigue, so I've been going to bed earlier, but getting up later. One good thing about it is that I've been reading a lot more. Three, Ann Rule books, a D.H. Lawrence compilation of short stories, Alice Waters and I recently finished "Julie and Julia", or is it the other way around? Anyway, it kind of guilted me into getting back on here and writing. It's been made into a movie, which to me is odd, because even though I enjoyed the book, I didn't think it was all that. I was surprised that the whole thing got that much notoriety, although I did love how brutally honest and intimate about herself and her friends Julie was. It takes some real big ones to share that kind of stuff with the world. That's probably what did it. It's getting late and I'm sleepy, but just one more thing, if you get a chance, go to Alba in Malvern. If you like a creative and interesting slant on Italian, you will thank me. Seriously, we had a handmade, rabbit agnolotti with the pasta so small (as in the size of your thumbnail) and as thin as tissue paper, but firm and delicious with tasty rabbit inside in a savory, velvet broth. I was so impressed. It must take hours and hours for the girl that makes them to produce all that they'll need for dinner service. The foie gras, the Muscovy duck breast, just amazing. Go. OK, really, one last thing, speaking of Muscovy ducks, Gussie had to go back to the farm where we got him. Not only did he try to run away because we didn't have a wife for him....thanx for saving him Rich...but he also suffocated and crushed Frida and Beatrice by trying to have his way with them. Hopefully Jamison found a wife for him. That's it, I'll be back tomorrow.