Little Things

It is a beautiful sunny day here finally, after weeks of rain.  It is a little on the chilly side at 52, but I will take chilly dry over wet.  I love the rain, but after a steady diet of it, I am ready for some sun to lift my spirits.  It was nice most of the day yesterday, so I was able to wander out in the yard and the woods a bit, and enjoyed a fire in the chimenea, once I located enough dryer wood to keep it going.

Libby was so happy to see me come home after I had been gone for a week.  She is usually in here with me, with or without Rex.  They are my two homebabies.  Although there was still a tad of space on the end of the bed when I first got home, there is now no place for her to lie, so she is in the floor.  I have suitcase and travel things scattered as I start to pack for my Belize trip.  It's finally almost here!  My friend, colleague, and fellow traveler Kim is coming over tonight for me to help her set up a blog.  She will be there for 5 months, so will have a lot to share.

Roadie, that's not a kong!
Rex, looking for a clear spot for him, Mr. Blue Bear, and Mr. Chicken.
"What do you mean I can't have the toilet paper, Mom?"

Now here is an example of an experiment gone wrong.  Someone got the bright idea to introduce kudzu to the south as erosion control.  It was not indigenous to the area, so one has to wonder why we would deliberately bring something in to the area that would grow so prolifically.  Whilst it is pretty during the spring and summer, in the winter, the landscape is a great gray mass of dead and/or dormant kudzu.  Actually, since it is about the only thing holding up my fence at the moment, I guess it is kind of handy.

Mary keeping watch over the front yard.  She was a present from Jimmy W many years ago, and traveled with me to Mississippi from Texas, where she used to reside in my Peace Garden.

The moss is another prolific thing in my yard.  There is so much water in the hill constantly draining down that moss is here year round.
Some type of parasite in one of the many huge trees in my yard.

The woods next door.  It's a great trek for my chimenea wood--pieces that fall out of the trees are usually just the right size.  The deer who live here also come over to snack on my grass, eat my birdseed, and when I can find it, eat the corn I put out for them.  There are slim pickings around here in winter, so I enhance their diet a bit so they will stop eating my birdseed--and the birdseed feeders.

Sweet Potato Bread Pudding with Pecan Praline Sauce.  This is my favorite southern food, created by Chef Kelvin from Lenoir Hall.  I like to think of it as a vegetable with protein enhancement.  Chef Kelvin published his recipe in the special edition of the Daily Mississippian as a Christmas present to all us fans.  I finally got this rich dessert (I had no idea how many calories were in it till I started tossing in eggs, heavy cream, and butter by the cartons.  No wonder I love it.)  I think while Chef K--who is personable and entertaining and often comes out to sit with us when we are dining--passed on his recipe, but not some little secret somewhere along the line that is his unique signature--like maybe that he uses only Mississippi Vardamon sweet potatoes, or only French butter, or Madagascar vanilla.  Wait, I only use Madagascar vanilla--that can't be it.  While it was delicious, and definitely sinfully full of calories, and the pecan praline sauce was superb, the pudding just did not have the same taste nor color as Chef K's.  It did have the same texture, I might add.  Ah, well, I guess I will just have to make it again, this time wearing a poofy chef's hat and white coat with my name embroidered on it and see if that makes it work better.

Mine and Rando's Christmas present to ourselves--the new flat panel TV, not Rambo.  I have turned into a couch potato after all these years.  And if you are going to watch TV, you should watch a really good TV. :)